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CypherJF
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 Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 12:00 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: When bad people happen to good games... |
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| Quote: | When Bad People Happen to Good Games
From Game Development
Vol. 1, No. 10 - February 2004
by Josh Coates, Internet Archive
OK, so I admit it—not only am I a total closet gamer geek, I admit that I actually care enough to be bitter about it. Yep, that's right—this puts me in the "big-time nerd" category.
But I think I have a lot of company, which sort of makes me feel better. In fact, at any given moment there are hundreds of thousands of people online playing games. Sure, some of them are playing very simple games like Yahoo! Checkers, and others are playing complicated realtime strategies like Blizzard's Starcraft—but no matter what game they are playing, they are playing with other people. This is the real attraction of online games. No matter how good games get at so-called artificial intelligence, humans will always make more interesting teammates or opponents. That's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing. And this is where the bitterness comes in.
All right, this is the armchair psychology part of my rant: Anonymity breeds meanness. It's really simple: If you don't know someone, and they don't know you—and there is like a zero percent chance that you will ever know each other—and they cut you off, make an insulting remark, or inconvenience you in any way, you're going to fly off the handle at them. That's just the way people are.
Back to online games. The fun (as in "wow, this sucks" kind of fun) thing about the anonymity of online game players is that they can get very creative in their sociopathic behavior. This creativity gets cultivated and transferred from one idiot to another, and voila—you've got a perfectly fun game that has become crippled by morons. What kind of behavior am I talking about? Here's a sample:
SMACKTARDS (AKA GRIEFERS)
This is the classic condition. Smacktards do the exact opposite of what they are supposed to be doing. Playing capture the flag? They will take their own team's flag and run it to the other side. First-person shooter game? They will shoot their own teammates. Realtime strategy? They will spend their time building senseless walls around their teammates' armies. If your goal in life were to ruin the game experience of as many people as possible, then you would be a perfect smacktard/griefer.
CLAN/ADMIN ABUSE
I've got a great idea! Why don't we form "members-only" gaming clubs that will filter out the idiots? That way we can actually have fun with serious game players. Duh! It turns out that a vast majority of bad behavior is perpetrated by players affiliated with these clans. Yep, I'm talking about an organized roving gang of immature cretins.
This bad behavior usually occurs when someone in the clan gets their feelings hurt. If they aren't playing quite as well as they usually do that day, and some nonclan member makes a friendly (read: offensive) suggestion, all heck will break loose—usually in the form of a vote-kick or team-killing of the offending person. (A vote-kick is when the group of online players votes on whether or not to boot a player from a server. A team-kill is when someone on your team decides to kill you.) Oftentimes, a clan will run its own game servers and invite the public to become cannon fodder. If the unwary public gets out of line (e.g., by playing better than a clan member or suggesting that the clan game server needs a CPU upgrade), then they get summarily booted off the server by the clan admin.
OLD-FASHIONED CHEATING
Some people just have to win. No matter what. So they cheat. Cheating is when players use some client-side software that gives them an unfair advantage over the other remote players. These kinds of cheats usually just intercept the server-to-client communication and make "adjustments" where necessary. These adjustments can make your aim perfect, make it so you can "see" people on the map that you couldn't normally see, make you move faster than you should be able to, etc. This kind of stuff is actually becoming less common because it is technically difficult to do, and game developers are starting to get a clue and building in preventatives for it.
Interestingly, the average age of an online game player is 29, so we can't blame this idiotic behavior on immature teenagers. The blame must be placed on immature people. Even though ageism is alive and well in the real world, it doesn't carry any weight in the online world. There are really great teenage players who are mature and make excellent competitors and teammates. There are also teenagers who are the complete morons that you'd expect them to be: four-letter-word-littered chatter, sexism, racism, and delusions of grandeur—all rolled up into one. Of course, many adults have these traits as well.
GAME DEVELOPERS
Wait a second—I'm bitter about game developers, too. You can't change human nature, but you sure as heck can engineer around it. The problem is that the game developers don't care about these issues. Very few games are engineered with implicit anti-idiot features. I'm not sure why. Could it be that game designers play the game in the sterile vacuum of the QA (quality assurance) lab with their administrative privileges ready to stamp out injustice?
Perhaps game developers don't realize they're enabling roving gangs of sociopaths who are effectively destroying the virtual world the developers have worked so hard to create. I'm guessing that if they played with the unwashed masses as a regular n00b (that's nerdish for newbie), they would soon feel the pain of irresponsible game engineering and likely think a little more about how to include implicit fairness mechanisms in their next design.
Hey, game developers, need a clue? Drop me an e-mail at jcoates@archive.org and I'll see if I can help out. |
Source: ACM Queue
ACM Queue vol. 1, no. 10 - February 2004
http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=121
Copyrights, etc. are still maintained by the owner of the article, etc. etc.
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Cyan~Fire
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:05 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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Nice. Some of this doesn't apply to Subspace, but plenty does. 
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CypherJF
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 7:07 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| It's a good article - I was glad to have seen it last night when browsing archives.. |
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Assassin2684
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 7:51 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| Ya actually that was a good artical. I actually have time to read it all lol. |
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Phyran
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 8:59 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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whats really interesting is that you usually see this in american gamers
asian gamers are more polite...heck you see japanese players standing in line in ragnarok online waiting for DC/OC with merchants |
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D1st0rt
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 11:41 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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I've met some really obnoxious european players on BNet (USA East, wtf were they doing there anyways? They claimed there was no europe server, noobs). Then there are people like the guy in my cs class that actually CRASHED BNet for Diablo II with some super item glitch/hack/something. Bottom line, you will find polite and impolite in every group of people
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lp_street_soldier
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 6:41 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| Phyran wrote: | whats really interesting is that you usually see this in american gamers
asian gamers are more polite...heck you see japanese players standing in line in ragnarok online waiting for DC/OC with merchants |
What? Do you go around subspace forums and go in zones especially to PM them "r u asian/japanese/american?" |
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Phyran
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 10:26 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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no i dont in Subspace but if u played Ragnarok online you'll be amazed how friendly asian gamers are in their servers compared to the idiots we get here in america that make an ass of themselves, i dont know about europeans thats why i didnt mention them
its something that has to do with culture |
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CypherJF
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 10:29 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| the US is generally seen as loud-and demanding .. I guess it is part of our culture. My teacher was saying, and is backed by many foreigners that - you know who is american because they're - loud and demanding lol. |
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Phyran
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 10:32 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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that sounds like New York where i live lol
California is like a whole different place when i visited there...i saw ppl gasping in shock as i jaywalked across streets with no cars.... |
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lp_street_soldier
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 12:03 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| sigh.. |
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D1st0rt
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 7:20 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| Phyran, I find that hard to believe since California has strict laws protecting pedestrians. If you stepped out into a highway, the cars would have to stop and let you pass first. Or at least that's the way it was a few years ago when I was there, haven't talked to anybody there recently about it |
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Muskrat
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 8:22 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| But that's still not polite. I've found Californians ready to help anyone. In Texas on the other hand.... well lets jsut say you only get that kind of help if you are white, protestant and your pants are starched. |
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Cyan~Fire
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| Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2005 8:53 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| d1s wrote: | | the guy in my cs class that actually CRASHED BNet for Diablo II with some super item glitch/hack/something |
Actually, I don't see a problem with that. If Blizzard makes their servers crashable, point it out to them. Maybe they'll get serious about proper coding. |
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i88gerbils
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| Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 10:49 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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Bah. Nonsense. His perception of others is limited to his Nietzsche-like mentality and Americanism. That is all.
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Cyan~Fire
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| Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 2:09 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| I don't see how this is nonsense when it occurs right before our eyes. |
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i88gerbils
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| Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2005 11:31 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| Let me rephrase: his reaction is nonsense. |
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50% Packetloss
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| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 12:51 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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Testing my signature, ignore.
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Cyan~Fire
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| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 11:17 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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If you mean that blaming the game devs is nonsense, I whole-heartedly agree.  |
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Gravitron
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| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 1:04 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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This place is unsuitable for an intelligent discussion, as each attempt rolls over onto a streak of mind-numbing idiocy and/or SPAM.
The article is right.
Many of the comments are wrong.
Nothing more worth to be added. |
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i88gerbils
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| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 2:00 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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The article is "right"? I guess it's kind of conservative, but not really...
Correct? Not. Hah. |
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Cyan~Fire
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| Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:19 pm Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| You don't realize how hypocritical that was, Grav. |
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Gravitron
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| Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:08 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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I differ.
I would most likely be more fitting to comment on that article than the rest of you.
And you in specific, are no more than a dummy spammer or dummy and a spammer.
I leave it at that. |
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Cerium
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| Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 7:49 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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| Gravitron is good at making internet friends. |
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Gravitron
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| Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:21 am Post maybe stupid Post subject: |
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Indeed.
People I wish to be a friend of, I am a friend of. |
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