I remember on Pinnicle when PVP first came out people dreaded that and Illusion Controllers because you would see a lot of that TP-Foe.
Fancy research there. *eyeroll*
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"Hey lets see what happens when I do something that people don't like"
"OH WHAT DO YOU KNOW THEY DON'T LIKE IT"
...
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/end thread
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So why isn't anyone offended by the idea that other players would verbally abuse and insult someone (including making real-world threats against the player) because his behavior in game isn't considered appropriate?
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Mostly because a "real world" threat made in an online game where both people are anonymous means absolutely nothing. There simply is nothing there to be offended about.
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Heh, and yet in Korea there was once someone killed over a similar dispute in Lineage (also an MMO for those who don't know it).
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Never heard of him.
Eastern Standard Time (Australia)
is 15 hours ahead of
Eastern Standard Time (North America)
which is 5 hours behind
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
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Okay, what am I missing here?
Every time I go into a PvP zone, it's made very clear that there are no rules. Everything goes. That's been the mantra on every occasion I've set foot in there.
So this professor operates under that agreement, and gets pages worth of hate for it? I'm confused.
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Twixt was... I'm not sure how to explain it. He stood around and droned people. If he was attacked or threatened (in game, such as it looking like someone might kill his character) he ran. Either into the base or out of the zone or wherever.
I'll let you decide how much fun that was for people in the zone with him. But you should probably be able to guess (unless you're Twixt, I suppose) that people are going to get frustrated at your behaviour. Frustrated people tend to rant in whatever manner is available to them. In this case that would be the pages and pages about what an idiot Twixt is.
Yes, there are no rules against what he did. You'll notice that no action was ever taken against him by NCSoft over his behaviour in the PvP zones. That doesn't mean he wasn't making the game as unfun as possible for the people around him.
And yeah, I'm so thrilled to learn that he needed to do a study to learn that people don't like those they consider jerks and griefers. Or that groups tend to favor people who follow the norms of that group. Really shocking stuff. This wasn't funded with any sort of grant money, right?
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It wasn't just Droning. Droning is obnoxious, but the only consequence it has is wasted time. He was a specialist in camping out among NPCs friendly to his faction and using TP Foe to drag other players into that same spawn, then using Mez effects to lock them into place (he favored Fear, because it's rarely resisted even by Melee ATs) while the NPCs got the kill. The difference? Drones don't give you debt.
In other games with more serious penalties for dying, this is called MPK for "Monster Player-Kill" and considered one of the most unambiguous forms of actionable griefing, the kind of thing that the GMs treat the way ours would a whole coalition of X-Men Clones ERPing in broadcast. In FFXI for example, it was a tactic employed almost exclusively by RMT farmers to keep competitors from camping the same areas, since they couldn't attack said competitors directly. It's never caught on as a griefing technique in this game, because we're not competing for outdoor spawns either for Loot or Prime Leveling Camps (in fact our only major reward-granting Outdoor Spawns, Giant Monsters, are built to encourage you to invite as many people as you can get to help instead of competing for the kill, and everything else respawns too quick to matter), and because even at its worst Debt has always been a cakewalk compared to some of the alternatives. Also, it's bloody hard to do in this game. The more famous MPK attempts I've heard of typically involve multiple Giant Monsters being dragged into Portal Court before the drones were added.
Most of the PvP community was frankly baffled by him. He wasn't getting credit for these kills, since his only contributions were two non-damaging powers before teleporting away and letting the critters do their jobs. And, as noted in the article, his aversion to actually engaging in Player vs. Player Combat generated enough ill will that his own faction refused to assist him. I saw far more people speculating about his mental health than actually trying to communicate with him. And when people weren't paying enough attention, he'd fabricate a "kill log" in the forums, listing his PvP victories, the authenticity of which was clearly to be questioned both because NPCs did all the damage and got the kill credit, and because this was before Cut and Paste function was added to game text. If actual Screen Shots were ever provided, I must have missed them.
The funny thing is, I've seen the old "it was a social experiment" excuse trotted out by a lot of jackasses on the internet trying to cover for some obnoxious behavior or another, but this is the first time I've seen that card played by an actual Sociologist. That is, if the guy's legit, and the article isn't just a new chapter of a wildly elaborate ongoing trolling.
@Eisenzahn
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Email - scorpany@yahoo.com or <sameasmyAIM>@aol.com (for the sheer novelty of an almost 20 year old email address that hasn't been overwhelmed by spambots yet)
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....what a completely biased attempt at 'research'....
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This. This isn't a worthwhile social experiment, not because he poked people and got poked back, not because he got flamed and threatened, but because he abandoned even a pretense of scientific approach.
At a minimum, he should have had multiple characters running, some that PvPed fully, some that engaged in the droning tactics, and some that did not PvP at all. Ideally, he should have had further subdivisions into characters who did and did not flame others, and who did and did not have a board presence. The "experiment" probably could have done with a few other people working with him, and the aware observance of a neutral third party.
Oh, and it could have done with someone who realized that this should have been "let's take a small environment free of the normal social penalties for violating mores, and see what happens when we do" instead of "let's see what happens when I break social but not legal rules". The former, by all rights, should have been a fairly interesting report, complete with case studies of common allies/enemies and post-experiment interviews; the latter is about as ethical as "let's kick over an anthill and watch".
As to the specific social rules he willingly broke, I couldn't care less. In my better days with such people, I shrug and leave the area. In my less enlightened moments, I do my best to counter their strategies and get imaginary revenge for pretend wrongs. The way he's been writing, I'd be surprised if he even kept a tally of people he droned compared to people who responded. He deserves harsh criticism not because he broke the rules of the online community he studied, but because he broke the rules of the study in the first place by throwing out any thought of objectivity.
He was playing the game within the confines of the rules. That was a large part of his experiment.
If players in PvP weren't supposed to be droned or TP'd into NPC's for insta-gib, then TP Foe wouldn't work on them. It does. Therefore he was just "playing the game". The same defense that so very many AE 1-50 in an hour farm exploiters used.
I'm just saying.
Socially, what he did is objectionable. However, it was well within the bounds of game rules. You don't like it is all.
@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
I agree with the assessment that the "experiment" was hardly done in an objective and scientific manner. For one thing, doing it only on CoH/V, whose PvP is extremely limited, is too small a sample for his conclusions.
IMO, he should have made a "Twixt" on WoW, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan and other places with much heavier PvP populations. It would have been more interesting to see if all games have the same "unwritten" social rules, and how the players on those games would have reacted.
Just doing it on 2 out of 11 servers of a single game is not a large enough sample. All he was able to prove was that "if you annoy people, they get angry." I'm hoping he got a C on this thesis, because it's short, not well researched and, like someone earlier said, I think he chose his actions to elicit the results he needed to support his paper.
Live arcs: 517377 and 517381
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Intel Core2Duo 2.4 Ghz 4 GB RAM**NVIDIA Geforce 9600 GT set to 1280 x 1024**Windows Vista 32 bit
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web page
This is his post/blog about his last day with CoH. He goes back and does the exact samething, then wonders why he gets the responce.
EDIT: Wow. I was reading the replies from his site and a woman was discussing the matter with him and making valid points. He was responding and answering her questions respectfully, but once he found out that she was "just a player" and not someone at a 'his' level he just blew her off.
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Ty 
That's me and while I am not familiar with sociology I actually have several papers in well known peer reviewed Scientific Journals like the Journal of Neuroscience, and the Journal of Experimental Neurology, so I know how to conduct a controlled experiment. His lack of ethics still astounds me, I can't imagine any sociology journal publishing any work of his and he dismissed me when I brought up ethics and IRB review boards lol.
It almost sounds to me that he is using the whole paper and book idea as a way to justify to himself why he was acting the way he was.
Lack of scientific method does create problems for his review, and the response to people asking simple questions about how and why he went about doing it, and those questions being dismissed, show a lack of respect for others.
A peer review of the paper would raise too many questions for him to be able to handle, and could affect his standing in the real world communities he is part of.
Sounds to me like he is alienating himself in many fashions.
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Social anthropology is murky and dubious to begin with and it doesn't appear this fellow has helped it's case.
It seems it had little in the way of scientific rigor beyond the 'researcher' using his character to abuse others within the rules of the game. One game, 2 servers does not draw a line. Multiple servers, multiple games would go a long way towards solidifying his thesis. Ellis makes the point very well.
He picks a very specific instance to substantiate his point, droning, but nothing else.
He tried this on Champion and Freedom...how about Virtue, since it seems his methodology was to in effect role-play a hero. Would the RPVP community have reacted the same?
I saw nothing in his paper discussing the 'warping' of the social group due to the lack of power players have over others due to COX being primarily a money making venture. Does it matter? Doesn't it? He doesn't address but I think it would have been worthwhile to cover.
Nor does he address the issue that the society has chosen such unwritten rules to address a failure of the simulation, drones, because COX doesn't want one side camping the other side waiting to blast anyone who shows up making again for an unpleasant play experience and potentially driving away a paying customer. Most folks do not join an mmo to play 'Lord of the Flies.' except maybe Darkfall players.
A concern I also have is one of privacy in that avatar names can be tied to player accounts and billing information in real life. He should have had to get consent to use them in any experiment as far as I understand. Maybe his IRB board didn't understand.
Also, he was potentially using children in his 'experiment' and I know IRB boards are very particular about the use of kids in humans subjects testing. I can't imagine they were ok with this if they knew.
Honestly he would have found out the same thing in a badly played game of DnD or better, a game of "Bang Bang. I shot you! You are dead!"
At least archaeologists just get accused of grave robbing. :P
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything. ~ Donald Hall
He didn't take his "research" to an IRB board I asked him and he dismissed me. I also brought up the fact that he used an unknown population which possibly had minors in it which hold a special set of ethics rules.....guess what he dismissed that too.
Sounds like a PhD. :P
Maybe he was out sick the day they covered Tuskegee.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything. ~ Donald Hall
Dear Twixt.
Come to Virtue. We'd love to play with you.
Signed,
Flea.
Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!
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Dear Twixt.
Come to Virtue. We'd love to play with you.
Signed,
Flea.
[/ QUOTE ]
Criminy, don't even joke about that.
That is one of the most bizarre "academic" papers I have ever read. I'm an engineer, so I guess I'm just accustomed to a bit more rigor in papers -- you know, data to support your conclusions, detail of experimental methods, control groups, stuff like that. Judging by this paper, "social science" is a gross abuse of the word "science".
I would like to propose a follow-on paper, "Fire Is Hot". It reads a little something like this:
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Fire is hot. One time, I touched a candle and it burned me. Candles are made of fire, for reals. Therefore, fire is hot, and will one day rise up to kill us all.
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But seriously, his conclusions are outrageously grandiose, given his "data". Social rules counter-act game rules? That would be a no. A rule would be a requirement or hard constraint -- that is, you are required to kill villains in RV. In actuality, you are not required to do much of anything in RV, but you are capable of killing villains. Which would, on the face of it, make social rules in CoH much like social rules in real life -- and, thus, make his conclusions complete junk.
Of course, he could be using a different definition of "rule" than I am -- I wouldn't know, since his half-[censored] slop of a paper didn't define any of its terms. Except for "toon" -- thanks for that one, Doc.
If he was in RV and i joined his team and TP'd him into a drone in the villian base over and over again would his mind change on the actions taken by the people he was doing it to?....darn TP prompt for allies.
His idea is interesting on the surface and he never did anything "against the rules" but the issue is hes doing something people find offensive. Without the ability to properly retaliate other than become vocal on the situation. If your going to write a paper on what people do when you harass them in a text based game with no chance to retaliate against you in proper PvP match what is going to happen. If you cant hypotheticaly come to an answer and you need to grief a game then maybe you need to take a break from videogames.
My biggest problem is his claiming its by the rules and hes not doing anything "wrong" It sounds like a laywer who knows his client is guilty but because of how the law is writen hes able to get the criminal aquited. Just because the law is flawed doesnt mean the person didnt do something illegal. The fact that the mods allowed this kind of harassment to go one would make a much better paper on the roles of those who are incharge of disipline and when is too much and when is not enough.
ooh well he no longer plays and im glad i never even heard of him untill this post because i dont like people that cause trouble to cause trouble and see how big the train wreck gets.
Also Id love for him to get some Flea Justice!
Virtue
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ooh well he no longer plays and im glad i never even heard of him untill this post because i dont like people that cause trouble to cause trouble and see how big the train wreck gets.
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Actually, if you read his blog after his "I'm leaving CoH" post, on January 29 of this year he was giving readers instructions on leveling lowbie CoH characters if they wanted to get started early (on what? sounds like a class assignment...), suggesting powersets for pvp, offering to give the folks to whom he was speaking 1m each to fund enhancements etc., and talking about arranging teams to get folks from 10-15 so they could go to Bloody Bay and get beaten up.
Then there are the folks who claim to have seen him in RV recently on other servers. I don't need that. I just need his own words (he even provided a global...) from after he said he was leaving to show me that he's still around, "collecting data".
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
Let's hunt this plague down and expunge him...
I don't think it is fair that everyone is bashing this researcher simply because there was a news article posted about what he was doing. No one knows exactly what, when, how, and why he was doing any of this... What everyone is reading is just a small news article outlining that someone was doing research within a video game that was written by someone else, not the researcher himself, and therefore doesn't contain all the information that he may have been researching - Who knows, maybe he has already gone into other games and this news article just happened to focus on his small experience on City of Heroes?
Ok, in the article is a link with his name in it, it leads to a website about him and it included an Email address.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
you *******!!!!
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Additionally, his paper detailing his experiences and assertions thereof are also linked to within the article.
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Okay, after reading through again... I'm still a bit puzzled.
While I'll happily concede that his writing style is less than complete (though I don't recall ever reading a description of an MMO that really felt right to its inhabitants), it seems that the largest point of contention was his play style. And that's where I'm confused. His choice of tactics - and more importantly, the mentality behind them - is the exact same as every other PvPer I've encountered: win, with as little risk as possible to myself.
I see a lot of muttering about "social mores", but there aren't any in PvP. The point is to win, period. Everything is fair game. As long as you're not doing something to the game's base code, it's legal. That is the point of view I most often see in PvP discussions, inbetween the name-calling and braggadocio.
Is the issue that he's written a paper that makes him look to be "skilled" at something that just requires a lack of concern over your opponents? Or is it that he shows that the mentality needed to repeatedly beat up on others for extended stretches, such as PvP, is simply another form of stroking your ego?
(Personally, I found the effects of when he went silent for a bit, such as the viciousness of the rumors and speculation that popped up, to be somewhat interesting.)
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I don't think it is fair that everyone is bashing this researcher simply because there was a news article posted about what he was doing. No one knows exactly what, when, how, and why he was doing any of this... What everyone is reading is just a small news article outlining that someone was doing research within a video game that was written by someone else, not the researcher himself, and therefore doesn't contain all the information that he may have been researching - Who knows, maybe he has already gone into other games and this news article just happened to focus on his small experience on City of Heroes?
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I read his essay it really can't be called a paper i am bashing his ethics and experimental design.
I remember that guy. I've never PvP'ed against him, but I remember interacting with him on the PvP forums when I used to post there regularly. He certainly didn't come across as a college professor. I always thought he was a teenager based on how he posted.
LOL @ the article that implies TP droning as requiring some level of skill.