Changing the culture of MMOs

[Breand]

Had a Facebook friend post this article who thought it was an eye opener. I think it is a pile of bunk, personally.

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Response to griefing to me, is a company's reaction to fixing a weakness in their code. By players exploiting the system that was created, a company has to do what is expected of them, and try and close the loopholes. One could even say the MMO product is so bogged down with its response to griefing, that we have a milquetoast, more vanilla product now that doesn't break any new boundaries and is why we are currently stuck in a cycle of the same MMOs with a different IP because no company wants to create a new version that will be open to new exploits . We have instanced dungeons now because of griefing, which I think is a cheap, lame band aid to the issue and has really hampered genuine fun in MMOs for years. Human behavior and the culture of MMOs has not changed, we just have a police force now. In Everquest, we had to respond to griefers as a vigilante force and respond back ourselves. I think in regards to the actual point of the article, yes, the culture had to shift for maximum profitability of the product, but as someone who played MMOs back when they were called MUDs, darn if it wasn't a fun, and camaraderie building exercise to have a guild drop everything it was doing to go and respond to a guildmate getting griefed. Guilds were the central focus of MMOs...finding and accumulating that group of likeminded players that "get it," poor game design be damned. You could take action as a group instead of waiting for Big Daddy to arrive and stick the guy in the corner.

[Jakensama]

Well his points about verbal abuse do tend to resonate, wow had some fuckwads in it's community but compared to launch UO or League of Legends or shooters the communities are utter saints. You shouldn't have to be rolling deep in a guild to not have someone call you a faggot every three seconds, or a female player should be able to not be constantly sexually harassed by a bunch of socially awkward sociopaths.

(Although IMO Self regulation is a piss-poor way to market a game to all but a small hardcore group, either socially or the rules. I remember after getting enough money to buy a House in UO and some asshat exploited the system and stole it from me and teleported away. That was the end of that broken ass game and it getting my subscription, so as a designer I think the author is spot on.)

That being said, it seemed like the primary point was social policing rather than exploit policing, and considering the abusive sewer that most gamer culture is, thats certainly something that is not necessarily bad to address. 4chan the game is not appealing to many.

[Slamz]

Some semi-related thought:

* Griefing just means causing problems. It can include exploits/hacks but it can just be "being an asshole". Fixing exploits is not the whole solution.

* It's not a "gaming culture" problem. It's a problem with society in general. Spend 5 minutes in any environment anywhere that's unmoderated and lets people be anonymous. "Trolls trolling trolls".

* Community policing is "tyranny of the majority" and is not the solution. Sometimes the trolls are the majority. I think every community-policed forum in the world, including things like YouTube comments, are a failure.

The solution is basically for every game to install as much accountability as possible and police their shit.

Either that or somehow fix society as a whole so that people do not tend to become sociopathic fuckwads as soon as the authorities can't see them, but I think that's a job too big for video games.

[Flab]

I had more fun in UO and early EQ than any of this vanilla crap they have now.

[Donions]

project 1999. get on it.

[Vllad]

Well his points about verbal abuse do tend to resonate, wow had some fuckwads in it's community but compared to launch UO or League of Legends or shooters the communities are utter saints. You shouldn't have to be rolling deep in a guild to not have someone call you a faggot every three seconds, or a female player should be able to not be constantly sexually harassed by a bunch of socially awkward sociopaths.

So basically people want to play multi player community games with communities that don't exist?

MMO's are full of fucktards, if you don't like playing with fucktards why would you want to play an MMO? Regulating work place behaivor and a gaming enviroments are two different things despite what game producers think.

I get it, game producers want people to think their communities are civilized in order to make more cash. However MMO's really have no means to police their own communities beyond making sure people can't cheat. If the community itself doesn't police the MMO it will remain un-policed.

Players need to take responsibility for themselves not the game producer. If a female player is constantly sexually harassed she has as much responsibility in that happening as do the people doing the harassing her. Complaining about fucktards in MMO's is equal to strippers complaining when men call them whores. Next thing you know we will have strip joints where women aren't allowed to take off their cloths because that creates a hostile enviroment for the strippers.

[Slamz]

I actually think Planetside has one of the better communities just in terms of shittalking and people acting like trolls and douchebags to their own team.

Every time someone runs around with their mic on blasting something into the proximity channel, I shoot them.
I do my best not to run people over but if you're going to intentionally get in the way of my tank, I will run you over.
If you want to shit talk, I will get in my tank and then find you and run you over.

The griefing system has always been kind enough to allow you to intentionally kill someone who deserves it once in a while.

I think a good system of friendly fire is one of the better ways of policing a community. Anyone who tries to create a toxic environment makes it much more toxic for themselves than for anyone else.


The worst trolls and griefers appear in games with no friendly fire because there you have no recourse against the troll.

[Jakensama]

So basically people want to play multi player community games with communities that don't exist?

The vast majority of people, yes - but a moderated community does not mean a community doesn't exist. The non political forums here are moderated, does that make in an unmoderated community?

MMO's are full of fucktards, if you don't like playing with fucktards why would you want to play an MMO? Regulating work place behaivor and a gaming enviroments are two different things despite what game producers think.

The internet is full of fucktards in general (as is life, and anonymity just amplifies this), plenty of clubs and leagues and other groups where people associate for entertainment reasons have rules of behavior that, if violated, will cause you to be kicked out. If I go and start calling every chick in our softball league a whore, i would not be welcome back in it.

I get it, game producers want people to think their communities are civilized in order to make more cash. However MMO's really have no means to police their own communities beyond making sure people can't cheat. If the community itself doesn't police the MMO it will remain un-policed.

Policing itself just leaves the hard-core in charge, for the vast majority of people who do not put that much time in a game the concept of community self regulation is ridiculous. The League of Legends tribunal system is a great example, they do nothing to regulate the asshatery of the MOBA sewer and instead just punish people who aren't very good at the game. Great if you are a group of hardcore people, for the vast majority of the player base it isn't.

MMOs certainly have means to police their own communities, you can get bans for anti social behavior - it doesn't happen all that often as there is a low GM to player ratio, and they don't want to kill their subscriber base, but it certainly has happened to some extent and is not impossible.

If a female player is constantly sexually harassed she has as much responsibility in that happening as do the people doing the harassing her. Complaining about fucktards in MMO's is equal to strippers complaining when men call them whores. Next thing you know we will have strip joints where women aren't allowed to take off their cloths because that creates a hostile enviroment for the strippers.

Yeah, women playing a video game is just like choosing to be a stripper, those whores are just asking for it.

I know ya'll have grass is always greener memories of the halcyon days of EQ, but the membership base was smalltime and the industry has realized that catering to that group is not the best way to sell a lot of your games, and thats not exactly a bad thing. Some rules does not equate to "going to a strip club where women aren't allowed to take their clothes off", unless the whole point of gaming to you was verbally abusing other players constantly.

Moderating a community happens all the time, offline and online, and does not destroy the concept of community. Self policing only works with small groups of people who see each other all the time and when they can do something substantial, this doesn't apply to most gamers. Why do I give a fuck if someone is policing me if there are so many people in the world that I'll never see them again, and the most they can do is maybe kill me and force me to respawn? Similarly, most people don't want to play a game where the consequences of EQ apply to them, so once again unless you are super hardcore the concept of "self-policing" becomes irrelevant.

Agree with Slamz though, if you can't even frag your own teammates it's pretty hard to do much of anything.

[Vllad]

The vast majority of people, yes - but a moderated community does not mean a community doesn't exist.

You are missing my point. I am pointing out the irony of people complaining that they want to play MMO's with enviroments that don't exist anywhere. MMO's in general are a cesspool of dumb asses. MMO's are not the work place. If you want to play MMO's the fucktards come with the territory. If you don't like that then why the hell are you playing MMO's?

Playing MMO's with the expectation that it will be the enviroment of a Brittish tea party is moronic. Since you didn't like my stripper analogy let me give you another one.

Complaining about bad communities in MMO's enviroments is like playing Panzer General and complaining it is too turn based.

Self policing only works with small groups of people who see each other all the time and when they can do something substantial, this doesn't apply to most gamers.

Every MMO is primarly policed by the community on the server not the game producers.

It starts first by the type of player the product produced brings. Next comes the mechanics. PVP communities for example are some of the most mature vs. PVE communities because of the lack of retribution. Depth comes next, i.e., if you play in a game that promotes large multiplayer dungeon crawling like WoW players must make friends in order to participate in 40 man raids.

As long as game producers can reduce cheating that is pretty much all they can police. Game producers can't put enough GM's in the game to monitor the game in enough detail to counter any poor behaivor. The reporting features all fail and no game wins by banning paying customers. It is simply impossible to scour logs to look for the guy who called someone a fag 10 times in 2 minutes.

Ultimately in the end it is always the community plus a few mechanics that determine the type of the community an MMO has. Even then it is subjective. Even the most nazi type MMO's suffer differences from server to server.

I have played about 25 MMO's in the last 15 years and all of them sucked from a community perspective however one thing was always true. If they sucked less it was always because of what the players would accept not what game producers would accept as far as community quality goes.

[Jakensama]

Playing MMO's with the expectation that it will be the enviroment of a Brittish tea party is moronic. Since you didn't like my stripper analogy let me give you another one.

Complaining about bad communities in MMO's enviroments is like playing Panzer General and complaining it is too turn based.

That's better, I was thinking on my way home that the stripper example might be bad because they do have moderation in there if you start calling them whores or abusing them, the very large men who violently deal with such people

Going to get birthday drunk, will be back at another time to discuss further.

[Diggles]

I actually think Planetside has one of the better communities just in terms of shittalking and people acting like trolls and douchebags to their own team.

Every time someone runs around with their mic on blasting something into the proximity channel, I shoot them.
I do my best not to run people over but if you're going to intentionally get in the way of my tank, I will run you over.
If you want to shit talk, I will get in my tank and then find you and run you over.

The griefing system has always been kind enough to allow you to intentionally kill someone who deserves it once in a while.

I think a good system of friendly fire is one of the better ways of policing a community. Anyone who tries to create a toxic environment makes it much more toxic for themselves than for anyone else.


The worst trolls and griefers appear in games with no friendly fire because there you have no recourse against the troll.

I like it quite a bit too, many a mic spammer have gotten a shotgun blast to the face from me.

[Slamz]

A lot of the problem, I think, is how games have put on kid gloves in their treatment of players.

Like in Everquest, there were certain lines you didn't cross because ultimately you could not be an island unto yourself in that game. When your corpse was at the bottom of Guk, someone had to help you get it out and if everyone hated you, you were probably just about done playing the game.

Not to say EQ didn't have assholes, of course, but the assholes were forced to band together in discrete asshole guilds and everyone knew who they were.

In more modern games, they go out of their way to ensure that you do not rely on your community for anything. Assholes can be assholes forever with no repercussions. They don't need anyone's cooperation and these "megaservers" help them stay anonymous -- you might never see the same asshole twice.


Changing the culture of MMOs may be as simple as finding ways to make people rely on each other in a more meaningful manner.