Originally posted by MustaphaMond

Originally posted by paulscott

What's with this study is the guy literally already knew that online communities where as such(IE: 1984 again).   But what he does is are actions that will only draw a negative response, to see just how negative those responses can get, for the easy end result of free-press to look good when it goes up to a funding commitee.   I would be seriously surprised(and humbled) if the professor did the same study in reverse, just to see what it takes to be represented as the positive side of the spectrum(he does have a study to show how easy it is to go for the negetive side, allowing for an interesting future paper to compare and contrast how an individual can "grow" in the community).

 

LMAO... that's a professor for you. ;^_^

Lazy sods find their "money" idea and milk that golden goose for the rest of their careers.  I should've known... heh heh.

I'm still reading through the paper in question and will track other stuff by him down.  I wonder how he'd go about studying what you describe.  By acting like an asshole and doing things that only would draw negative reactions, he was actually using a common technique that sociologist employ called "Garfinkeling," I guess.  Essentially, you rock the boat to show how inconsistent the "rules" social groups perceive as sacrosanct really are.  And it pisses people off because they don't really have logical reasons for hating you, just that you are violating a custom or something that is just not, by tradition, ever violated.

And, think about it.  He only did things that would be perceived as "negative" by a community that refused to play the game according to its actual rules.  He was following the rules and playing the game as designed.  It's only "negative" actions because players had created an arbitrary "non-aggression" pact of sorts.  The cool part of what he did to me was to show that "negative" and "positive" actions are determined by some pretty arbitrary forces that most players don't even notice, and when they do, they don't question it.

All I know is if I was a Hero and saw Twixt saying "yay heroes!" and killing Villains and all of that, I'd probably go and help him... lol.  Yes, death wish for sure and would be like "betraying my family" if it alienated guild mates and fellow gamers.... But, for sheer entertainment value, what he did sounds hilarious (though it sounds like he hated being hated.... which is no big shock either)...

And THAT obvious fact, that he hated being hated will probably be the "no shit, sherlock"-topic of his next academic paper. =D

Reading up on what he actually did in-game he basicly exploted a loophole in how the arenas were designed.  The killer drones were there to stop people from entering the other factions starting zones and were not meant to be used as weapons in PvP.  IT was bad coding by the CoH devs.  The community realized this and put a social rule on it that it was not to be used for PvP since it was a 'cheat'. 

People despise those who cheat and exploit a system and then get away with it on a technicality.   The way the guy played was the most obvious in-your-face griefing and since he was doing it for 'research' people could not decipher why he was doing and the only logical conclusion they reached that he was a physocopath who did it for kicks and giggles.

Originally posted by paulscott

Originally posted by MustaphaMond

I just found a link to the actual academic paper he published about this subject (as if anybody cares... I do though, so suffer~!... lol):

http://www.masscomm.loyno.edu/~dmyers/F99%20classes/Myers_PlayPunishment_031508.doc

Oh, and it is a .doc file, but I guess that's obvious from the address. ;>_<

 

Wow the poor guy got utterly raped by the reporter.   Over the course of a period that long and gameplay as deviant as  he did.   So few RL death "threats" isn't really that bad.   I can safely say that being as disruptive as he was(wasting 5-15 mins of people's time) in real life you'd get far more death threats and would have far incidents with the "enforcement powers".  

If anything it just proves that MMORPG players are considerably more tolerant in game than the average person would be in RL.  It also proves that people playing a game in their free time are also more likely to follow an "unnatural" 'revenge curve'* if they do decide to take action.

 

*coined by me.

ya i think he hyped it up jus like he did on his combat skills lol

the big tip was when he said he enterd the zone (pvp) an everyone was nice an chattin, he really should change the paper name to, i acted like a ass an got e-threat news at 11!

ps. i played coh/vil an seen him a few times doing what i said

he left a lot out an hyped a lot to he was never the most hated lol.

On reading the article, it seems to me that the professor did not actually PvP.  As pointed out by someone else, based on the available information, it would seem that the professor simply teleported the opposite faction's players to an area where they would then be killed by NPCs.

While the article does mention that, when attacked by mobs of players in "retaliation," the professor dispatched them all, it does not say whether the professor actually fought them or simply waited for a cooldown timer to wear off and teleported them off to the "robot firing squad."

First, I agree that it does appear that the professor, while not violating the TOS or the EULA of City of Heroes, did push the envelope of acceptable behavior in using what some people (including me) would call an exploit (wikipedia definition: "In the realm of online games, an exploit is usually a software bug, design flaw, hack or bot that contributes to the user's prosperity in a manner not intended by the developers."  This definition has been used by some game developers on games' official forums to explain to players that, while what they are doing does not "technically" violate any TOS or EULA restrictions, the action is still considered an exploit by the development team).  It has been some time since I played City of Heroes, but I don't know that I am certain that NCSoft intended for players to be able to port other players to a kind of killing field.  It is certainly possible that it was NCSoft's intent, but honestly, I'm having a hard time seeing what the point of deliberately allowing one player to teleport another to an area where they will certainly be killed is - especially given the fact that City of Heroes does have a death penalty of sorts (or rather, it did when I played).

Second, I am actually inclined to agree with the professor's apparent train of thought, even if I find his methods very distasteful:  a PvP zone is intended to be a place where opposing factions are fighting one another, not standing around chit-chatting.  While I have always had many friends who were members of the opposite faction as I was, we kept our chit-chatting to ./tells or in ventrilo, and when the PvP started, we made a bit of sport out of trying to kill one another...then laughed about it later.

As a side note, I also find the professor's bragging in open chat about his "victories" rather distasteful - but then, I have never been a fan of "trashtalk."  You lose, you go back and try again; you win, bragging isn't necessary.  I have only ever encountered one MMO gamer whose deeds could keep up with his mouth - and he was my sparring partner who helped me improve my own skill at the game...but then again, that is only my opinion and experience.

Well, of course no one should insult or threaten someone else, there is no excuse for that.
But it seems to me that Mr Myers only got the result he was looking for. He continually used some sort of bug or imbalance for ganking other players. It seems to me that he was acting like one of that PVP-for-life-l33t-boys, and tried to provoke other players all the time. I’m curios how long it too Mr Myers to get the player base to react as he intended.

In every game, even in a pvp-centric one there are goes and no-goes. And it is a good thing that there are players that turn against others that excess this common sense continually. Games more often lack of this engagement.
Again, this is no excuse for what players did to Mr Myers. But to me the article rather proofs that city of heroes has a quite healthy player-community
 

Originally posted by Torik

Reading up on what he actually did in-game he basicly exploted a loophole in how the arenas were designed.  The killer drones were there to stop people from entering the other factions starting zones and were not meant to be used as weapons in PvP.  IT was bad coding by the CoH devs.  The community realized this and put a social rule on it that it was not to be used for PvP since it was a 'cheat'. 

People despise those who cheat and exploit a system and then get away with it on a technicality.   The way the guy played was the most obvious in-your-face griefing and since he was doing it for 'research' people could not decipher why he was doing and the only logical conclusion they reached that he was a physocopath who did it for kicks and giggles.

Well, that makes a huge difference then. (;-_-)

Obviously, I don't know CoH so when I read the descriptions in this article it was hard to tell that it wasn't playing the game as the devs intended and was more about him exploiting a design flaw.  The article and his blog (have also been reading) really mischaracterize things, then.  Oh well, it still made me laugh thinking of a crusty old professor doing this and, best of all, getting paid for it.  Talk about a crazy job, heh. ^_^

You don't have to be a college professor to figure out that if you act like a dick in an MMOG you are going to piss people off... not rocket science. People get paid for this? I hope noone really thinks this is some sort of breakthrough research...

LMAO.

Wow, only in America.

I don't know what's a sadder commentary, the people judging the CoH community for reacting negatively to a griefer, or a major university subsidizing the activities of said griefer. 

Ok, threatening his life was a bit much, but come on.  If you act like a dickhead, shouldn't you expect to be treated like one?  All of this nonsense about territorial community behavior research is a joke.  Yes, humans are territorial, and frankly, anyone that says they wouldn't react negatively to an outsider coming in and upsetting the balance is lying to themselves.

This is basic stuff that most of us learned in the fourth grade, but here we have a college professor spending time and money to prove what most take as common sense.

Unbelievable, and completely unworthy of any scholarly mention.

Originally posted by MustaphaMond

Originally posted by Torik

Reading up on what he actually did in-game he basicly exploted a loophole in how the arenas were designed.  The killer drones were there to stop people from entering the other factions starting zones and were not meant to be used as weapons in PvP.  IT was bad coding by the CoH devs.  The community realized this and put a social rule on it that it was not to be used for PvP since it was a 'cheat'. 

People despise those who cheat and exploit a system and then get away with it on a technicality.   The way the guy played was the most obvious in-your-face griefing and since he was doing it for 'research' people could not decipher why he was doing and the only logical conclusion they reached that he was a physocopath who did it for kicks and giggles.

 

Well, that makes a huge difference then. (;-_-)

Obviously, I don't know CoH so when I read the descriptions in this article it was hard to tell that it wasn't playing the game as the devs intended and was more about him exploiting a design flaw.  The article and his blog (have also been reading) really mischaracterize things, then.  Oh well, it still made me laugh thinking of a crusty old professor doing this and, best of all, getting paid for it.  Talk about a crazy job, heh. ^_^

Even without this, he was deliberatly creating a situation that pretty much anyone with any common sense could tell would blow up.  He was placing people in a 'either me or him' situation. 

He was just like that guy at work who makes your workday miserable but stays within the workplace rules so he gets away with it.  At some point things will get bad enough that the only choice people have is to quit or make that guy quit.  He was deliberately poisoning the in-game society and and the only way poeple had of stopping him was to force him out of the game. 

Additionally he was using the game rules as a moral code where if something was not prohibited in the game rules then it was perfectly fine for him to engage in that activity.  Game rules are like laws of nature.  They define very solid boundaries but a society cannot function on them alone. 

The goal of the 'experiment' seems to have been how an in-game society would react to a rebel, a troublemaker, someone who breaks their norms.  Instead he found out how the in-game community reacts to the MMO equivalent of a terrorist.

 About the article:

The point of the article is that there are "social" rules on games.  There are the law rules, and the social ones. If you follow the law rules, but break the social ones, everyone will hate you, to a extend that people will become...  violent. 

This guy tested that on CoH playing a griefer that follow the pvp rules of a arena, killing enemy players teleporting then to npc's.  

I think is a interesting studio, to proff something.  Anyway is something that is painfully obvius to everyone: follow the unofficial social rules, or the world will become violent against you. 

I played CoX for 5 years and this article is BS. Teleport is used by many people in the game, not just this “professor”. And there are many counters to teleport.  Trust me, many many people us it in pvp.

Sounds like he was solo most of the time. Most people in pvp areas travel in packs. Anyone trying to be a solo teleport griefer wouldn't last long.

And teleport griefing in CoX has been around before there was even pvp. (People would fly in the air and teleport teammates in the air so they would fall to their death).

This guy did not invent it, in or out of pvp, and he is not the only one doing it.

Okay, I get that his behavior was bound to make people angry and there's nothing crazy about that.  But that was NOT what he wrote about in his paper, though.

While I am suspect of his paper considering what others have established RE: that he was exploiting poor code, not playing as designed (and his paper is clearly misleading about this), it is still very clear that he was doing this to document HOW people tried to coerce him into changing his behavior, not WHY they did it.

I've read through almost all of his paper and while he expresses dismay over the reactions of players and what it says about people, it is really more about the PROCESS other players employed to marginalize him, not about the fact that they did so (though he discusses that some too).

-----------------

Still, there are still parts of this bunk paper that are really fascinating, especially given how posters here will dismiss the opinion of another person (e.g., "this game rules" vs. "no it doesn't and you wouldn't know because...").  And bunk or not, I think we can still learn something from it, and yes... I know that is not the soundest reasoning.

In his discussion about how players essentially made him into an outcast ("The Consequences"), the paper tends to point out that the METHODS are what is important, not the fact that the community responded negatively to him.

He talks about the most common ways that players tried to change his awful behavior by sending him insulting tells or posting stuff on forums/in game chat.  Read here how people go about messing with those who won't conform, and then compare them to what we can see here on a day to day basis (especially in Aion threads, or threads were people attack WoW... or w/e):

These messages promoted a rationale for Twixt's behavior in which he was either too ignorant ("retarded"), too young (a "noob"), or too mean (a "griefer") to understand prevailing social norms.

So, think about your typical thread here and what happens when people disagree, or somebody posts something that the greater community doesn't buy or accept:

1) "You clearly don't know what you talking about because you're a F---ing moron!" (or....)

2) "You clearly don't have enough experience to know anything about this topic, F---ing noob!" (or...)

3) "You clearly don't care about anybody but yourself and are probably a real bastard in real life, so it doesn't matter what you say, F---er!"

To be honest, it's given me pause to think about *some* of the responses to the "Aion sucks!" posts that really rake the OP over the coals (though some people are just trolling for the sake of trolling).  Still, there are many harsh responses that cite stupidity, inexperience, or ill-feelings toward all that is good and great as the only reason the OP is saying what they are saying (and I admit that I've posted as much).

I guess the paper is bunk (still going to contact the professor about his claims regarding he was playing according to the game's design, not even mentioning it's an exploit), but... especially for this forum (obvious or not), it will be interesting to watch if anybody calls me a retard, or inexperienced, or just an asshole to refute something I say.

If they do, or especially if more than one person does, I might actually wonder if I'm breaking some social rule instead of my usual conclusion: 3) People are just jerks, so why bother? ;^_^

He was grieving people purposely. Thats like a serial rapist claiming its the victim when a group of bf/husbands/parents beat the rapist down. If you can't handle the consequences dont commit the crime.

- having read through the thread, my posting was superflous and even wrong -

again, he was not complaining about the consequences.  I don't know why I'm defending what appears to be a hack professor, but I'm telling you his paper is a pretty dry, academic catalogue of what happened.  It's like a robot just kinda spits back to you what happened.  He draws some conclusions about the behavior and its implications for technology and humans in general, but it's pretty clinical.

What I see a lot of people here doing is totally ignoring the interesting stuff (his observations of how groups will bully others into doing what is "acceptable") and just dismissing it because he was griefing.  You are using one of the techniques that he, and other sociologists, appear to note in human groups.

[self-edited out b/c if you were willing to change, I won't dog you for it]  <---- and now I'm guilty of coercing another into conforming, oh the irony! ;-P

Thinking about this stuff makes me crazy, I'm going to play Civ4 until I go comatose.  Sorry all for the walls of texts (not just here... in other threads too).

Originally posted by Adamantine

Bottom line: so what ? 

You don't find anything valuable about knowing HOW groups pressure individuals into doing something?  You don't think knowing more about that process might be helpful considering how "group-think" and "herd-poisoning" are common reasons given for atrocities like the holocaust?

I mean, now that's an outrageous stretch too, but again... the "so what?" is that by doing what he did, he could observe and document how players tried to force him to change.  *THAT* is important, not that people got pissed at him.  It's not like there are a lot of RL ways he could pull the same thing off and not wind up losing a limb, or his life, in the process.

And still, I post all of this madness knowing fully well that this guy's paper is built on a house of cards... =/

Originally posted by protoroc

He was grieving people purposely. Thats like a serial rapist claiming its the victim when a group of bf/husbands/parents beat the rapist down. If you can't handle the consequences dont commit the crime.

Have you played Portal?  you sould, was one of the best games latelly..

HE WAS DOING SCIENCE!

It was *not only* a moron, but a moron with a science agenda.  

Originally posted by heerobya

First off, IQ doesn't mean anything.

Sure it does. IQ is by far the best way to predict academic and work performance. That doesn't mean it's a very good and precise way, but it's better than nothing. Yes, there are some false positives and negatives, but there'd be far more if it weren't for IQ tests.

Originally posted by Praetoriani

Originally posted by heerobya

First off, IQ doesn't mean anything.

 

Sure it does. IQ is by far the best way to predict academic and work performance. That doesn't mean it's a very good and precise way, but it's better than nothing. Yes, there are some false positives and negatives, but there'd be far more if it weren't for IQ tests.

IQ is skill at filling IQ test, nothing else.  I think is good, If you don't take it serius, but I fail to see how most people can do that, so yes, I better nothing than IQ. 

Originally posted by MustaphaMond

again, he was not complaining about the consequences.  I don't know why I'm defending what appears to be a hack professor, but I'm telling you his paper is a pretty dry, academic catalogue of what happened.  It's like a robot just kinda spits back to you what happened.  He draws some conclusions about the behavior and its implications for technology and humans in general, but it's pretty clinical.

I just don't understand what other conclusions of his study could he have arrived at.

Society has always imposed its standards on the people via fear and respect.

Originally posted by MustaphaMond

Originally posted by Adamantine

Bottom line: so what ? 

 

You don't find anything valuable about knowing HOW groups pressure individuals into doing something?  You don't think knowing more about that process might be helpful considering how "group-think" and "herd-poisoning" are common reasons given for atrocities like the holocaust?

I mean, now that's an outrageous stretch too, but again... the "so what?" is that by doing what he did, he could observe and document how players tried to force him to change.  *THAT* is important, not that people got pissed at him.  It's not like there are a lot of RL ways he could pull the same thing off and not wind up losing a limb, or his life, in the process.

And still, I post all of this madness knowing fully well that this guy's paper is built on a house of cards... =/

I've read some of his paper and what I saw was that online communities will react just as RL communities do and use the same methods (just modified to the online medium). 

The guy was not just an rebel and and outcast.  He made himself into a pest.  His actions had a massive negative effect on the other players and they could not stop him through normal means.  Since his actions were technically legal people tolerated him but things wer building up.  You victimize people long enough and the emotions start building up.  When the authorities fail to address the problem, people have only two choices: remain a victim or take matters into your own hands. 

In RL the threat of physical violence tends to keep most people civilized.   You pick on people long enough and they will punch you.  If you persist, things will escalate till someone is dead.   It can only be interrupted if one party decided that they are not willing to continue.

In this case the prof was doing an experiment so he was not going to stop since he did not care one yota how much negative impact his behaviour had.  That meant that if the other players wanted him to stop they had to keep escalating.