Griefing, Horrors of the Internet Manifested
As mentioned on The Buzz recently, I've been playing a text-based massively-multiplayer online game (MMO) called Urban Dead, in which players assume the role of either a survivor attempting to stay alive in a zombie-infested city or that of a zombie, eating brains and laughing at the humans' attempts to flee before the legion of undead.
Players who are killed, either by being eaten by a zombie or shot by another player, are then zombies themselves. Zombies can be "revived" (and life brought back to them) using a strange serum developed by a company known as NecroTech, who apparently brought about this apocalyptic scenario through careless handling of their research.
The game was introduced to me on the 22nd of February by a member of a forum community I belong to known as Something Awful. He brought forth chilling news: this game was populated by gamers who used in-game "action points" for trivial role-playing actions instead of fighting off zombies -- who were, surprisingly, a minority. The game had been running for two years and the survivors were on the brink of finally purging the city of zombies once and for all. More-over, the lack of zombies was allowing for "creative" types to begin establishing institutions, such as bars, in which players ordered fake drinks and talked about Paris Hilton's latest exploits. Zombies were all-but excluded from these events (something about brain rot).
This would not stand.
Today is the 12th of March; it has been almost three weeks. In that time the survivor-to-zombie ratio has changed from 60/40% to 37/63% and growing. Something Awful heeded the call to make this zombie-survival game about surviving zombies and 1,500 players registered with organized coordinated attacks on the various suburbs of this city to eat all humans who stood in their way. We broke the record for the number of suburbs considered "very dangerous" (the highest warning level). We broke the record for the number of malls in the city controlled by zombies. We broke the record for the number of malls to fall to zombies in one day (three, via careful planning). Our group, The Dead, now outnumber our top-ten rival groups. Combined.
The game's wiki, a horrible place where obsessed players frequently post in-character to make updates on the progress of the city, the city's suburbs, and even specific buildings, has been overwhelmed in attempting to keep up with the carnage. The goal of The Dead is to destroy the game. To ruin everything the players who had taken the game too seriously spent so much time building up.
Now let me stop here.
This is the point where I attempted to explain the concept to my wife. She then explained the "concept" was sick. I realized then and there of what I had become: A Griefer.
Griefers are possibly the worst sort of folk you can meet in online games. I've often wanted to become a griefer only to miss out on the opportunity: Second Life griefing is too difficult because the game is terrible. EVE Online cost money. World of Warcraft is too well built. Urban Dead, on the other hand, is just a small game that is free to play. The game's designer, even, is related to the Something Awful community (he may even be a member himself). I often wonder, that given his ability as the single programmer for this game, why he hasn't stopped us (as he so easily could). I have a deep suspicion that he's sympathetic to the griefing, and that because it's not nearly as bad as it could be (I would highly recommend reading the article linked here), that it's breathing life into this otherwise (un)dead game.
I would consider myself a pretty easy-going sort of guy. I'm not very good at games, and I'm okay with that. I'm happy with my skills on the computer in general; I'm constantly learning new things. Lately I've been teaching myself Python, a simple programming language for client and web-based application. I'd like to soon develop my own games for others to play in my free time. I once considered a career in the gaming industry. But I've been playing online games for awhile and have had my share of struggles. I think it's very important that people remember that these are just games and that they need to take them less seriously. This seems to be the underlying mantra for griefers. Some do it for their own enjoyment -- bullying, if you will -- but I believe most enjoy taking a game and bending it to create chaos and havoc on a non-permanent level of destruction.
My earliest exploits with griefers, before they were generally known by that term, was in the game Ultima Online in 1999. I was a humble lumberjack and carpenter who specialized in creating wooden shields. I spent a month chopping trees near Britannia and turning the wood into shields to sell to local vendors with one goal in mind: I wanted a house. Not a big house, but a little house. Something I could decorate and put my stuff in. One day, I finally took my earnings to the bank and discovered I had saved up enough thousands of gold to be able to make the purchase. I was still a bit inexperienced at the time and decided to purchase a deed which, when I found an available parcel of land, would allow me to build a house upon it.
I spent the next few hours searching for an area to build. I brought my deed with me in hopes that the search would be easy. I hadn't even thought of the danger in doing so, as areas outside of a city were not regulated by a local police force and other players were able to kill you and steal your things. By this time, it's easy to see where this is going: I was jumped by a highway robber and my possessions, including the deed I had worked so hard for, were stolen. I was really upset to know that that "player-killer" (PK) had luckily found me, bearing an item worth thousands, and ran off with it only to sell it back to the vendor for its worth.
Anger welled up inside of me for a few hours. After some deep-breathing and reflection, I realized this was just a game and that I had learned a valuable lesson to be more careful with my possessions. I channeled my loss by joining an Anti-PK guild (players who banded together to hunt down player-killers and collect the bounties on their heads) and made some good friends because of it. The whole experience, though started by something upsetting, was quite positive when I look back on it now.
There are griefers out there who are trying to destroy people. Not just their virtual avatars, these players are trying to destroy a person's emotions, even attempting to destroy online businesses and ruining a person's real reputation. I have my reservations about these individuals and most other griefers that I know do too.
But when you spend $10,000 on a virtual spaceship, you shouldn't expect you're immune from being found and destroyed (link not safe for work due to profanity).
Players who are killed, either by being eaten by a zombie or shot by another player, are then zombies themselves. Zombies can be "revived" (and life brought back to them) using a strange serum developed by a company known as NecroTech, who apparently brought about this apocalyptic scenario through careless handling of their research.
The game was introduced to me on the 22nd of February by a member of a forum community I belong to known as Something Awful. He brought forth chilling news: this game was populated by gamers who used in-game "action points" for trivial role-playing actions instead of fighting off zombies -- who were, surprisingly, a minority. The game had been running for two years and the survivors were on the brink of finally purging the city of zombies once and for all. More-over, the lack of zombies was allowing for "creative" types to begin establishing institutions, such as bars, in which players ordered fake drinks and talked about Paris Hilton's latest exploits. Zombies were all-but excluded from these events (something about brain rot).
This would not stand.
Today is the 12th of March; it has been almost three weeks. In that time the survivor-to-zombie ratio has changed from 60/40% to 37/63% and growing. Something Awful heeded the call to make this zombie-survival game about surviving zombies and 1,500 players registered with organized coordinated attacks on the various suburbs of this city to eat all humans who stood in their way. We broke the record for the number of suburbs considered "very dangerous" (the highest warning level). We broke the record for the number of malls in the city controlled by zombies. We broke the record for the number of malls to fall to zombies in one day (three, via careful planning). Our group, The Dead, now outnumber our top-ten rival groups. Combined.
The game's wiki, a horrible place where obsessed players frequently post in-character to make updates on the progress of the city, the city's suburbs, and even specific buildings, has been overwhelmed in attempting to keep up with the carnage. The goal of The Dead is to destroy the game. To ruin everything the players who had taken the game too seriously spent so much time building up.
Now let me stop here.
This is the point where I attempted to explain the concept to my wife. She then explained the "concept" was sick. I realized then and there of what I had become: A Griefer.
Griefers are possibly the worst sort of folk you can meet in online games. I've often wanted to become a griefer only to miss out on the opportunity: Second Life griefing is too difficult because the game is terrible. EVE Online cost money. World of Warcraft is too well built. Urban Dead, on the other hand, is just a small game that is free to play. The game's designer, even, is related to the Something Awful community (he may even be a member himself). I often wonder, that given his ability as the single programmer for this game, why he hasn't stopped us (as he so easily could). I have a deep suspicion that he's sympathetic to the griefing, and that because it's not nearly as bad as it could be (I would highly recommend reading the article linked here), that it's breathing life into this otherwise (un)dead game.
I would consider myself a pretty easy-going sort of guy. I'm not very good at games, and I'm okay with that. I'm happy with my skills on the computer in general; I'm constantly learning new things. Lately I've been teaching myself Python, a simple programming language for client and web-based application. I'd like to soon develop my own games for others to play in my free time. I once considered a career in the gaming industry. But I've been playing online games for awhile and have had my share of struggles. I think it's very important that people remember that these are just games and that they need to take them less seriously. This seems to be the underlying mantra for griefers. Some do it for their own enjoyment -- bullying, if you will -- but I believe most enjoy taking a game and bending it to create chaos and havoc on a non-permanent level of destruction.
My earliest exploits with griefers, before they were generally known by that term, was in the game Ultima Online in 1999. I was a humble lumberjack and carpenter who specialized in creating wooden shields. I spent a month chopping trees near Britannia and turning the wood into shields to sell to local vendors with one goal in mind: I wanted a house. Not a big house, but a little house. Something I could decorate and put my stuff in. One day, I finally took my earnings to the bank and discovered I had saved up enough thousands of gold to be able to make the purchase. I was still a bit inexperienced at the time and decided to purchase a deed which, when I found an available parcel of land, would allow me to build a house upon it.
I spent the next few hours searching for an area to build. I brought my deed with me in hopes that the search would be easy. I hadn't even thought of the danger in doing so, as areas outside of a city were not regulated by a local police force and other players were able to kill you and steal your things. By this time, it's easy to see where this is going: I was jumped by a highway robber and my possessions, including the deed I had worked so hard for, were stolen. I was really upset to know that that "player-killer" (PK) had luckily found me, bearing an item worth thousands, and ran off with it only to sell it back to the vendor for its worth.
Anger welled up inside of me for a few hours. After some deep-breathing and reflection, I realized this was just a game and that I had learned a valuable lesson to be more careful with my possessions. I channeled my loss by joining an Anti-PK guild (players who banded together to hunt down player-killers and collect the bounties on their heads) and made some good friends because of it. The whole experience, though started by something upsetting, was quite positive when I look back on it now.
There are griefers out there who are trying to destroy people. Not just their virtual avatars, these players are trying to destroy a person's emotions, even attempting to destroy online businesses and ruining a person's real reputation. I have my reservations about these individuals and most other griefers that I know do too.
But when you spend $10,000 on a virtual spaceship, you shouldn't expect you're immune from being found and destroyed (link not safe for work due to profanity).
posted by Rick Pierce at
1:01 PM
1 Comments:
What, no Hobowars?
By the way sir, you are brilliant.
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