[Rant] Why should we tolerate abuse in virtual environments?

Original Article

Quote:

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. -- Mark Twain

Massively multiplayer environments of all sorts are under attack from within. Gankers and vultures of all sorts litter the landscape of any MMO that allows for player-vs-player combat, we have griefers a-plenty for the ones that don't. Unless you're playing Neopets, online servers are full of foul-mouthed, racist junk-monkeys. The hate-filled miasma they spatter around them has reached the point where many people who could be on those services won't go, and those who do brave it won't go without a posse and riot gear. Virtual community sites, blogs, message boards and lists spawn their own sort of virulent, cruel muck with moderators scrambling to keep things scrubbed down to a socially acceptable level.

Is this the brave new digital world? Why do we put up with this? What do we do to stop it?

First, I think it might help to back off a bit and get rid of some loaded words. I do not believe this is in any sense in the same realm as a physical attack, or even a face-to-face verbal attack. But there are those out there who have had their personal lives attacked. And while there's no physical components, finding out someone has photoshopped pornographic photos of your mother and broadly disseminated them as Kathy Sierra did or even just finding that someone has hijacked your Xbox LIVE account is definitely is not something to just write off as "boys will be boys".

Where the line can be drawn between those types of issues and being told to bend over and face the Warthog so someone can simulate a sexual act with you in a game is very fuzzy. A lot of the words we can use to describe this have too much baggage to them, and people get caught up in that rather than the issue. We need a noun that isn't so loaded. I'm going to use the word "assault" to describe the situation. Assaulting others with just words is well defined and documented, especially in a sexual context. You can also assault someone with images on a screen. Both of those seem to apply most closely to the situation. Look at the legal definition of assault in most jurisdictions, as well as the term harassment.

It's not just the graphically-oriented virtual environments. Anyone who's ever been caught up in an old-fashioned early '90s newslist war can tell you predatory users have been around since acoustic couplers and they don't require shiny pixels to do their dirty work. These people have figured out how to make sticks and stones out of their words. Anyplace where people interact online is full of all sorts of behavior that would get you in deep trouble in real life. Why do we put up with it online?

People treating each other like this isn't "just the way it is." Unless your office environment is criminally dysfunctional, I bet you don't have to worry about being shivved by the CEO and having your new shoes taken off your dead body on the way to the coffee machine in the morning just because they match his suit better than the ones he has and he's four steps higher up the org chart. If you sent an email to one of your customers or co-workers that just said "M.I.L.F.?" or asked her for pictures of her boobs you can guess what would be coming next. It's not just work; if you pulled any of these stunts in a bar or other social gathering you'd be facing consequences there, too. If these same people are functioning in the real world, they have the basic skills to not act like jerks online.

We can speculate about the technical issues and blame the systems, but in the end that's not the core problem. There's always a bigger hack, to mangle a phrase from Quigon Jin. Hacks or strategies that allow predatory players to assault others aren't new. My own personal encounter with it being used in a predatory fashion was in a MUD I used to hang out on over 10 years ago. Or you can read an account of one on another MUD. Whether you're talking about giving someone a virtual roofie or the older, cruder VoodooDoll hack approach there's always going to be someone misusing any angle they can.

They aren't built into the systems for malevolent reasons. Someone doesn't just decide to make sure there's a huge back door with a neon sign that says, "Hackers enter here". VoodooDoll and other sorts of puppet commands were a part of the default command set of several of the old MOO/MUD systems. They were designed for system admins to help users out of jams by simply moving the character using the game's system rather than the risky business of twiddling around in that avatar/account's code. It was the user who found a way to invoke that command out of context that was the problem here.

Turning the online systems into everyone's nanny isn't the answer, either. I think they need to do their part, but we can't expect them to do it all. Think about how we handle other large scale interactions with rude people like driving. We have a fairly complete set of rules that describe how everyone is supposed to act behind the wheel, and you have to prove you know what it is to drive. Add a couple state troopers camped out on an overpass with a radar gun to keep drivers who follow them from the worst depredations safe from the rude little punks whose parents who bought them that ugly little imposter-rocket that just whizzed by you 20 m.p.h. over the speed limit, or that guy in the continent-sized SUV who is firmly convinced he does in fact own the road. The online systems need to have cops and their speed traps, but the state troopers are few and far between, and they have one hand tied behind their back. I wish we could impose a license test to connect to the Internet, too, but we can't.

The fact that there's money involved in this doesn't give anyone carte blanche. You pay for the privilege of driving too, but you don't expect the DMV to magically protect you from from the stench of a roofer's truck loaded with hot tar. So why do you expect Microsoft to protect you from all the smacktalking tweenage twits who plunked down their cash to play on Xbox LIVE too? It's like expecting the road itself to give out traffic tickets to drivers who flip you off.

We don't have to take online abuse. I wouldn't put up with it in the real world. I certainly wouldn't expect my child to. And yet, if I want to participate in most online environments, it's what I have to do. You can report people who abuse your character in most of these systems, but it's often virtually impossible to really get rid of the offenders. The online systems for dealing with player misbehavior are overloaded and they have to be as careful as they can that the person making the complaint isn't abusing that function and actually making it as a form of attack.

I don't have all the answers. But I do have a few things to think about here.

* Designers need to think. If you're going to hand off an awesome amount of power like literally being able to control someone else's character like a Muppet within your system, then abuse of that power has to be addressed within the system. The same applies to killing each other, taking items from each other by force or by trade, or any other interaction allowed by the system between players. Even if it's a good feature in and of itself, more attention needs to be paid so that your cool player vs. player setup doesn't turn into the Infinite Fountain of Gankers.
* Players need to think. They need to think about where they put their money, their effort, and just how they're going to deal with the line between this world and that one. This applies to both sides of this.
* Society needs to think. This is a whole new ballgame, and just letting the digital worlds grow wild is not working. We cannot let the social mores of the online life be dictated by the technical savvy and predatory instincts of a subset of the users. It's becoming too important to the rest of us.

The mainstream is beginning to notice the current state of affairs. Slate had an article over two years ago when two of their 30-something writers tried to head off into Halo 2, one of the most populous games on Xbox LIVE. Most of the text of the article is their impression of the place as a cesspool full of foul-mouthed little brats. Things are getting more serious now. No one was really afraid that those two writers adding at 14-year-old to their Friends List was pedophilia as they suggested. But recently Wired reported an incident in the online environment Second Life that the Belgian police are investigating as a rape.

This isn't the Old West. Having our online environments held hostage to the black hats with the bigger guns is no way to build a digital frontier. Unless we want others to step in and make these decisions for us, we as a body of online participants need to find a new set of social structures that allow us all to interact with the maximum freedom but also with the maximum of safety.

If we wait for the new sheriff in town to fight this battle for us we might not like the town we're left with.

This was originally on slashdot, but I'm curious about some of you guys' reactions. Any time the genders meet ideologically it seems like there's bound to be friction, but it's interesting to me that we all acknowledge these things happen, and the overriding attitude is one of "suck it up," or "it's just a part of the game." The question brought up here is, should it be?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It really shouldn't be part of the game, but unfortunately, as the author of that article points out, it is. The last time I checked, the point of playing a game, online or off, was for enjoyment. Unfortunately though, some people's enjoyment from these games stems from the verbal abuse they dole out regularly. It's really kind of sad that people have to resort to abusing innocent players due to their own boredom (or in a lot of cases, loneliness). The only thing you can really do against them is fight back, which in the end is bringing you down to their level, and is probably what they wanted in the first place.

How ya doing, buddy?

A lot of the things they speak of in this article is a bit to the Extreme. Talking about things like personal safety and kids growing up with improper values and what not are total BS. First off, I'm sure that parents have a lot more influence in a kid's life then a game, and if not then there you're problem right there. There's no excuse if your kids are growing up thinking that they can act the same way in life as they do in online games. Same thing goes for the violent videogame arguments going on in other camps.

Secondly this "maximum of safety" thing is really far out there that I don't think I need to explain as to why.

Lastly this whole thing can be ended right here, "We don't have to take online abuse. I wouldn't put up with it in the real world." well then turn off the damn game if you don't like it so much. And if you don't think that that's fair or right, I think that they'd probably be in the minority on that one. Sure everyone has their challenges in online communities and that, but when you have hundreds of thousands of people interacting with one another what the hell do you think's going to happen? Sure as hell not going to be all PG stuff that's for sure. So if this author has that big of a problem with the situation then be productive and do something about it instead of writing about it because I think most people have a good idea of what online communities are as it is without these extremist's writings.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I really don't feel like you can be victimized in online games unless you're running around pretty clueless and opening yourself up to being taken advantage of. Of course, the only game that I've played extensively in the last 5 years is World of Warcraft -- and there really isn't much about WoW that leave you open to abuse. You can ignore players so that verbal harassment isn't an issue, and you can play on servers where PvP isn't allowed. If you choose to play on a PvP server, you really have no right to complain about enemy players attacking you.

Naturally in any type of game where the intent is, ultimately, competition for the best gear and the most prestige, you're going to have conflict between players in some form, whether it simply be smack talking and epeen contests to actual player versus player fighting (assuming the game mechanics allow it).

It sounds like the ideal game for the author of this article would be something more along the lines of The Sims Online or Second Life, where people can interact online without the purpose of competing with one another.

But it's hard to say what exactly this person is talking about, because everything is just vague reference with very little information to back up claims. MUDs, while still played by many people, are very archaic in terms of programming and are therefore easily exploitable. Multi-million dollar online MMOs tend to have a little more security in place, and people who manage to find hacks for these games are usually reprimanded with bans, any damage they cause to other players being reversed. So I don't really see an issue there.

I understand that there are people who enjoy the social aspect of games more than the competitive aspects, and that's fine. But the ultimate underlying truth is that, no matter how relaxed and casual the playerbase might be, what they're ultimately playing is a game. And I, personally, am hard pressed to think of a game where there aren't winners and losers, whether or not the game has a true "ending." In MMOs, the winners are the players that have managed to climb the social strata and have earned the respect of the community at-large. The "winners" are the people that come away in the end, having fun playing the game however they like. The "losers" are the people who let their guard down, and take the game so seriously as to let it ruin their fun or negatively affect their life. If someone is "raped" in Second Life, they really are taking the game far too seriously, and I would suspect that they need some sort of help in real life. It's not like you hear about rape cases running rampant in that game.

All this really seems like the bellyaching of a pseudo-gamer who has yet to realize that, yes, unfortunately the core audience of computer games are teenage to mid-twenties males, who have big egos. Everything is a competition. Your enjoyment of games depends on how you can adapt to the playing environment.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

It's quite a double-edged sword, that whole "Freedom of Speech" thing. You can say whatever you want, but so can everyone else. People are gonna say shit about you, whether you want them to or not. Period. It's a part of life, and if you can't handle it, then you need to stay at home and avoid all human contact forever. Of course, that's not to say that it's okay to be a prick just because you can. In this day and age, people are generally pansies, and let simple words do so much damage to them that you'd think someone just walked up and punched them in the mouth and left with their wallet, but not before pissing on their shoes. I saw something on tv today about some presidential candidate who said that some black man was articulate, meaning it as a compliment, but said black man took it the wrong way, somehow, and got all bent out of shape about it. But that's a different topic for another day.

As for player-killing, most games like that have non-PvP servers you can go to to avoid that sort of thing. People can't complain that they're getting PK'ed if they intentionally play on the PvP servers.

While it is truly sad that the general attitude is "too bad, so sad" regarding online games, as long as there's no real penalty higher than account/IP banning, I don't see people's behavior changing any time soon.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Slayer X

A lot of the things they speak of in this article is a bit to the Extreme. Talking about things like personal safety and kids growing up with improper values and what not are total BS. First off, I'm sure that parents have a lot more influence in a kid's life then a game, and if not then there you're problem right there. There's no excuse if your kids are growing up thinking that they can act the same way in life as they do in online games. Same thing goes for the violent videogame arguments going on in other camps.

Secondly this "maximum of safety" thing is really far out there that I don't think I need to explain as to why.

Lastly this whole thing can be ended right here, "We don't have to take online abuse. I wouldn't put up with it in the real world." well then turn off the damn game if you don't like it so much. And if you don't think that that's fair or right, I think that they'd probably be in the minority on that one. Sure everyone has their challenges in online communities and that, but when you have hundreds of thousands of people interacting with one another what the hell do you think's going to happen? Sure as hell not going to be all PG stuff that's for sure. So if this author has that big of a problem with the situation then be productive and do something about it instead of writing about it because I think most people have a good idea of what online communities are as it is without these extremist's writings.

Can you honestly say the last time you played Halo online or any MMO in the history of man, you weren't being teabagged at some point, or watching two South Park drones talking about dirty Mexicans and/or fucking the other's mom in the ass? I realize there's language filters and such for parents to use, and obviously some things will go under the radar regardless, buuuuut:

Your suggestion to turn off the game is a cop out. That these things are tolerated as the norm is strange, given that they're not in any other environment. I don't think refusing to address them constitutes any kind of solution.

Edit:

This is rather interesting. If more games had an infraction system, it'd be pretty cool to see griefers stuck in a jail cell for a while.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Dev: I think that's because XBOX owners tend to be douchebags.

oh yes i did go there.

To address Skexis' point (if I'm reading him right):

While it would be ideal for many to move away from the sophomoric humor in the gaming community, it's just a really hard thing to do when the core demographic for video games is males from age 14-30 or whatever it is. It's no different than going to a frat party and hearing nothing but guys talk about big tits, bong hits and the latest Dane Cook movie.

Unfortunately, it should be so easy to just remove these types of people from a gaming community, but there are always going to be spoilers that go against the conventional norm. I've met some very immature people who are 20+ years older than me while playing online games. So there really is nothing realistic that people can do to eliminate this persona from gaming. It simply is not realistic to constantly police players and watch every single thing they say or do on the offchance that they might offend someone.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Devoxycontin

You're really contributing to the thread there mister. And Xbox live isn't the only medium I've experienced sexism and harassment on. Far from it.

You're just a victim of the demographic. And until there's a realistic way to make everyone shut up and play nice, there's unfortunately nothing you can do. I'm contributing because, unfortunately, what I said is true. If you're not a douchebag you shouldn't be offended by what I said.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Guru

Unfortunately, it should be so easy to just remove these types of people from a gaming community, but there are always going to be spoilers that go against the conventional norm. I've met some very immature people who are 20+ years older than me while playing online games. So there really is nothing realistic that people can do to eliminate this persona from gaming. It simply is not realistic to constantly police players and watch every single thing they say or do on the offchance that they might offend someone.

I'm not advocating complete fluffiness or constant policing. The question remains why many of these things are given the header "boys will be boys" and then turned a blind eye to.

Eliminating the person isn't realistic, but I think redressing their behavior is.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Skexis

I'm not advocating complete fluffiness or constant policing. The question remains why many of these things are given the header "boys will be boys" and then turned a blind eye to.

Eliminating the person isn't realistic, but I think redressing their behavior is.

Well, like I said...when these "boys" are your core demographic...you can't just change them all. That's going to require change on a much larger societal level...and I don't think that there's anything that gaming companies can do to address that.

If you take issue with the way people act in video game environments, you'd also likewise be offended by the way people act many highschool/college aged parties.

Gaming is a huge business. If companies start banning people from their games because of any possible thing they might say or do that could offend someone else, they stand to lose lots of money. As unfortunate as that may seem...companies are not going to shoot themselves in the foot. It's far easier and much more profitable to provide means for the potentially offended player to protect themselves, usually done by adding text filters, ignore functions, or simply telling these offended players not to use voicechat or not play at all. Because they're not the core audience, and the company doesn't mind brushing them off to keep the cashflow coming in.

But saying that we as gamers shouldn't accept this type of attitude is silly. Until there's a significant demographic shift in who plays video games, it's all going to fall on deaf ears. You can't tell boys to play nice when they're just playing with a bunch of other boys that do the same thing.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't really have these problems, pretty well every game has a mute function, so if someone is bugging you that much take the two seconds and mute them. It's the best of both worlds, you don't have to hear them but you can still kill them.

Skexis: To answer your question stuff like that to me in a day of gaming may happen two or three times however I usually only play games along with a couple of friends so all I need to do to shift the power from the moron to myself is a joke degrading them or something and I have the whole game laughing at them, this usually sends them out of the game or at least makes them shut up. I know that this may make me "on their level" at times, however you can only fight a numbskull with something that they understand, and that's usually by competing with them on their level, to rationalize or to take "the high road" is just too much effort and time to waste on each encounter.

I'm not advocating my ways for others to use, however you at least know a bit about my experiances and where I'm kind of coming from. And really, are there even intellegent paople playing Halo? lol, jk

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'm not one of many counter tactics for sexist gamers, however in the group of people that I play frequently with on XBL there are a couple of girl gamers that I play alongside of a lot from Gears of War to Halo 3 and usually people tend to shut up when they start getting their asses handed to them by one of our femfatals or when they find out that these girls have some friends along... perhaps one who's even the host. Trip to Italy anyone? lol

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

When it comes to online interaction, I think it's safe to say the John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory holds some truth behind it.



You give people a barrier of anonymity and they get comfortable, sometimes too comfortable and then you can see some of the real nasty sides of people out there.

I've noticed that often the GM's in MMOs like to take a non-interventionist stance on a lot of the negative behavior. More often than not they'll tell you to just put someone on /ignore rather than dealing with the individual.

Demographics can't help too. In the case of FPS games, I'd imagine many of the players are males who can be described as being aggressive. If not in the real world then certainly in-game. Those kinds of people can be majorly annoying to those in the game who aren't like that.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Devoxycontin

Guru: I think you're ignoring the other demographic that's growing in number, girls. Most of us stay silent and take gender neutral names because of the bullshit we receive if we don't, but we're out there. Most I've had the pleasure in playing with don't partake in swearing the other team out, teabagging or cheating. And many of us don't play fucking Barbie games, we like FPS's, racing and fighting games.

It's true, gaming companies care more about profits at the moment then general customer service. But more and more I've noticed live cracking down on real assholes, all you have to do is capture it.

Dev, I never said there weren't a fair number of girl gamers. But it's still nothing compared to the number of males. I was just saying that it's going to take a while before the numbers even remotely even out to the point where you can expect to see any sort of noticeable change. That's why nice guys are the "rare occasion" right now. But you never know in the future, if girls keep cropping up in gaming communities.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

People will be assholes in online games (or anything really) because they're a username and a voice. That's it. You either get punished, or you continue doing it. Getting banned leads you to going to an alternate server and doing the same shit over again.

People enjoy being assholes. Bottom line. Not only do you play your favorite game, you get to ruin someone's fun online for your own personal enjoyment while playing your favorite game. I don't find many people in online games (most notably FPS) who aren't abusive since they take it way too seriously.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Elixir

People will be assholes in online games (or anything really) because they're a username and a voice. That's it. You either get punished, or you continue doing it. Getting banned leads you to going to an alternate server and doing the same shit over again.

People enjoy being assholes. Bottom line. Not only do you play your favorite game, you get to ruin someone's fun online for your own personal enjoyment while playing your favorite game. I don't find many people in online games (most notably FPS) who aren't abusive since they take it way too seriously.

The sad thing is, I've met people off of Tetris Worlds for Xbox Live who were taking it way too seriously and being real dicks about it. You know you've sunk to a new low when you're bragging about your imaginary block-laying skillz.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I guess you weren't around for all the Tetris Attack ZSNES smack talk back in the day, Malahk.

People do enjoy being assholes. And the assholery is overexemplified when you're playing a game that has you killing each other in various ways. If shooting rocket launchers at each others' heads hoping for a "M-M-M-MONSTER KILL KILL KILL" isn't a testosterone pumping circle jerk, then I don't know what is. BEEFSTEAK BEEFSTEAK!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Kalekkan

You give people a barrier of anonymity and they get comfortable, sometimes too comfortable and then you can see some of the real nasty sides of people out there.

I think you're right, and I think it's as simple as that. Take away complete anonymity, make accountability tied in with a person's gaming account, and you solve the problem. It doesn't even require a human element, at least not right away.

Make it like the warning system on AIM, so that if a person gets so many warnings within a set period of time, they get jailed. They can't do anything.

It doesn't require the intervention of the company, and doesn't leave the messy to-do of having to ban someone.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

But people I know abuse the AIM warning system all the time. How would something similar not be abused in the same fashion?

(I never really understood the AIM warning thing anyway. AIM is a terrible program).

How ya doing, buddy?

Well, it would see abuse, but then at least the question is about building a better mousetrap instead of ignoring the mouse while he's eating your food. Maybe limit a person to one report a day? That way they know they have to make them count.

The point is that this isn't really difficult to come up with solutions for, it's just a matter of someone taking the initiative. Unfortunately that initiative might mean the guy's job if the thing went south on them, so everybody wants to play it safe.

You can speculate all day and convince yourself that it won't work because of X, but speculation is as good as you can get when it simply hasn't been tried yet.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

You can likewise speculate all you want about ways to supposedly place some sort of rule and structure in video games that punishes people for the type of people that they are.

But the point of contention is that that type of person is the majority of the gamers in our current society, and until this majority either has a swift and all-encompassing change of heart (highly unlikely) or they're no longer the majority...there's not going to be a single way to remove the competitive and assholic attitude that they represent.

A way to warn people in the style of AIM, even with single-use-per-day restrictions would just result in these same, immature gamers forming clans and collectively warn-bombing the same person just to get them banned. And all for what? To get a laugh at the expense of said person, and ruin their day.

It's unfortunate that you have to suck it up and grin and bear it...but if you're going to join public games with people that you don't know, that's the risk (and it's mighty risky) that you have to take...at least with the current state of the gamer population climate. But that's not to say that these people aren't unavoidable. Private games, private servers, ignore features and many other options are available to people that either can't handle or don't want to subject themselves to immaturity.

I was speaking idiomatically.

The point I was making is that you can't preempt the whole idea because it might not work. I'm not trying to make guarantees of success, but you seem to be making guarantees of failure.

How ya doing, buddy?

You are a man of faith, I assume?

I'm skeptical of anything until it has been done successfully. Seeing is believing, and theories of utopia are a dime a dozen.

Which is not to say that I don't understand the point in trying. But it's just so highly unlikely that anything would successfully curtail what I consider to be a byproduct of competitive environments such as online video games -- what I call the epeen effect.

FELIPE NO