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Life presents many challenges. Unfortunately, people seem to be inclined to add needlessly to them, even in the virtual world of gaming. Being a gamer, I have gotten accustomed to griefing. Roughly put, that is when other gamers f@ck with you, just for the sake of doing so.
My main game now is, of course, World of Warcraft. While the folks at Blizzard have tried to limit the opportunities for players to screw with each other, the enterprising jerks will always find a way. I’ll just use two examples as illustrations.
While I was waiting for my arena team to get into a random battle, I was fishing (yeah, you can fish for fake fish in the fake world of the game). While doing so, someone kept going and putting his character over the bobber so I could not finishing catching my fake fish. The first time, this is a tiny bit funny. The second time, not at all. The third time, well that was annoying. Out of curiosity, I kept trying to fish so I could see just how long this person would keep at it. After about three minutes I was pulled into the arena battle, but he was still trying to grief me.
In my second example, I was jousting at the Argent tournament and somebody arrived and started trying to block my view of my opponent. This fellow was clearly devoted to his task-he kept bringing out ever bigger mounts (he eventually got up to his mammoth) so as to better block my view. He actually kept this up the whole time I was jousting and then kept following me around.
Being a philosopher, I did not just think “wow, there are some real monkey f@ckers who play WoW.” Instead, I thought about how odd the situation seemed.
Normally, people turn to annoying others when they are bored and have nothing else to occupy their malign minds. However, this griefing was taking place in a video game that is full of things to do. I began to wonder what sort of person would find parking on a bobber or spending so much effort trying to cover my jousting opponent more entertaining than questing, running dungeons or even playing another video game. After all, even if they were so bored with WoW that sitting on a bobber was a great joy to them, there are thousands of other games they could be playing.
I really tried to understand that mind set, one that would think “I could be out playing the game that I pay $13 a month for and doing some of the cool content. You know what, f@ck that. I’m going sit on this bobber like a chicken sits on an egg. Like a damn chicken. I like chicken. I could really use a KFC double down now. No, must keep on the bobber…but the bacon calls to me…no, must keep griefing!”
Despite my efforts, I just could not quite grasp that level of random, senseless monkey f@ckerness. However, I did have one important consolation: while those monkey f@ckers are on WoW doing their griefing, they are not out in the real world doing real griefing (like busting lamp posts or busting bottles in the bike lanes).
More seriously, I do wonder about the psychology and value systems of people who are griefers in games and in reality. As noted above, one explanation is that griefers are bored. But, of course, when normal people get bored with a game, they would tend to stop playing. As such, griefers must have more going on than mere boredom. There must be something extra, something that drives them to that behavior. I suspect this sort of factor (or factors) are involved in a wide range of bad behaviors.
I would think that this sort of behavior would incline you to be in agreement with Hobbes.
I try to think back to my delinquent times. What was my motivation? In many ways, I think it may have been attention. The easiest way to get attention is to do something bad, and it takes little creativity or work to destroy or much things up. However, it takes quite a bit of time and effort to do something constructive.
Even though you may not think that attention could be the motivation of someone in a game world, I tend to think it could be. Afterall, the game stimulates a vaiety of emotions and reactions while trying to present a semi-realistic world (people “die”, there’s an economic system, you can talk and interact etc).
I see this with young children all the time. They’ll do annoying things just to get someone to look at them or interact with them. I suspect the people in WOW to some extant act out frustrations that they have in their actual lives, too. Most of it is an unconcious motivation. They don’t really think to themselves: “I’m doing A action to get B reaction.” They just instictively do things to get certain things they want.
It’s actually incredible to me how much we can learn about the world through children. Seriously, I think I could write a whole thesis on foreign policy just based on how we can best handle children.
The ignoring tactic works best when children are throwing a tantrum. Timeout removes the audience they are seeking. That was a good strategy during your fishing. If your session had not started, eventually the guy would have gone away. Unfortunately the people in WOW can actually interfere with what you’re doing, like your jousting, and unlike children who are small and weak (thus you can physically impose you will on them when need be) the people in the game have the same abilities you do.
Too bad there isn’t some sort of “law enforcement” in the game.
“law enforcement”= “regulation”
Couldn’t agree more. Are we talking “private contractor” enforcement here? Where do the laws come from?
On a single viewing ,”Inception” would seem to illustrate similar problems at the various levels of dreaming. But the “monkeyf*rs” are actually inhabitants of the dreamer’s mind. ALERT! Avert eyes if you don’t like spoilers: Cobb’s ‘train’ is a personal,internal, not external “monkeyf*r”.
“Couldn’t agree more. Are we talking “private contractor” enforcement here? Where do the laws come from?”
Ummm, the company that runs the game unless you think the government should do it.
So, in the game, as in life, regulations are needed and they must be enforced. In the game, the company will decide which regulations are necessary, how encompassing they must be and who enforces them. In life the process is much more complicated. Much more complicated than, say, Grover Nordquist, who would drown government in a bathtub, may think. Much more complicated than some Tea Partiers my think. Much more complicated than an all-or-nothing approach to regulation. Down that road lies a world full of monkeyf*ers
My-my, did a Tea Party goer ‘tea bag’ your cheerios this morning? Yes, there needs to be regulation just like in real life. They are called laws and rules. Who in hell is talking about all or nothing for regulation? Even in real life? Are we arguing ‘Emperors and Anarchists’ now? Seems like a horrible concept for a game.
I seem to have gotten the wrong impression from those who argue that the only reason our economy ever fails is that we don’t have a pure free market economy. They seem to think that means no government intervention–though Smith wouldn’t go that far.
And I can’t get out of my head the picture of that old lady carrying the placard “Keep Gov’t Out Of My Medicare” as if she could have its benefits while it runs itself.
Or, again, G Nordquist and his dream of shrinking government down to the size that we can drag it to the tub and drown it. Some would see that as hyperbole. Not me.
My Cheerios are laced with a strong dose of reality and pessimism- – – and topped with my pet monkey, Fred’s, bananas. 🙂
Can’t you just blast them with your magic staff or something?
Unfortunately people grief the people in their own faction the most. On a PvP server the two factions can kill each other, so being a jerk cross faction tends to lead to death.
‘Griefers’ often have hacks too. Are you surprised they might be the same people? You pull out you magic staff to thwart them and you’ll get a ‘WTF-PWNed Vorpal Sword up side the head.
What is it with the current fixation with monkeys, humping or otherwise? I wake up to your article, bemoaning monkeyf*ks screwing up your WoW. Life’s a b*ch. . .
Then I find this in today’s Times online:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/moral-camouflage-or-moral-monkeys/?hp
I’m wondering. . .Are monkeys the new zombies? Is Krugman planning to comment at length on monkey economics?
I say let the furry little f*rs screw till they don’t have another f*k left in’em. Unlike zombies, that don’t tire and presumably don’t copulate
(?), they’ll fall asleep after f*king just like humans do, and fall out of their trees to their post-coital demise. Your problem will be solved, Mike.
Perhaps I am a trend setter?
God help us, I just saw a monkey in a car commercial this eve.* Give the little f*ers an inch and they’ll take over the world.
Thanks a lot, Mike. 🙁
*I’m reasonably sure he wasn’t f*king.
The Monkey Apocalypse is nigh, just as the Mayans predicted. I’m locking up my bananas and hiding all the empty barrels I see. I suggest everyone do likewise. Only the well prepared will survive.
I think you’re right…
http://www.motivatedphotos.com/?id=34896
Watch your monkey wife closely–Cannibal monkeys are coming!!
The Divine is everywhere and in all things, even World of Warcraft. These apparently nasty griefers are a nuisance only to the ego in that they try to prevent its selfish gratification. In truth, they are the Divine, highlighting one’s epicurean interest in a self-indulgent pastime.
Thankfully, there are many griefers in the real world too. They are catalysts for change like those agents in The Matrix compelling Neo to evolve, to transcend his mundane humanity and attain a more sublime consistence. Unfairly derided and perceived as irritants, treated as pariahs for such time as we identify ourselves with our ego, Griefers are a Force for Good in an ever evolving world – the clouded angels of an ignorant fold.
One’s ego is a necessary Guardian to a consecrated threshold, the path to defeating it narrow and at times frustratingly difficult to pass, however, poised within each of us dwells the Divine, The Ultimate Gamer. The Griefers have no lesser task than assisting His enthronement.
The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world.
It is only if you belong entirely to the Divine that you can become free.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga.