'Twixt'? Anyone remember this guy?

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I have said this before in threads about him. He did an extremely poorly designed experiment with a unknown population that is too small of a sample. He had no IRB review or approval and no informed consent. His work was unethical and worthless. I won't even get into the points on ethics of human test subjects in regards to minors which some of his population was most likely.

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I agree with you completely; there seems (to me) to be some much potential for research in human interaction in PvP. What he did does not seem to be worth academic scrutity. Determining that "I can piss people off and become a pariah in a very small populaton" is kinda pointless. Why not study what interactions goes on in PvP zones? What activities occurr there? Are the people that enter the PvP zones only there to battle other players? Do the players in the PvP zones follow the set zone rules or do they create their own? If they do, why do they create their own PvP rules?

And I'm sure many people could add considerably to that list of questions. To answer those questions, observing and asking questions, probably using PAR( Participatory Action Response) methodology, would be best.

And there are so many avenues to ask questions. Did Twixt make use of the forums at any time for research( I have )? Was permission asked for or granted at any time? By anybody?

Myers' work seems pretty sloppy and unfocused, I my opinion. Considering the factual errors that exist in both the news article and his "Play and Punishment" paper( which I may point out has the length and depth of an undegraduate essay, not a doctoral paper), I would seriously question Myers' credentials.

Grizz

EDIT: I just looked at David Myers bio at Loyola University. The only credentials listed are that he is a reverand and a proffessor. No where does it say which Bachelor, Masters, or PhD he received. That's a little odd, as most universities like to promote their proffessors' credentials.

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"When Chuck Norris can't go on, Petra Majdič perseveres!"

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An amazing PvPer based on what assessment?

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twixt's original thread at the time received well over 300 pages ...

this one has gotten up too around 12 and twixt has been gone for at least a year .

that basically speaks for it self.

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some people are just padding their post count... theres only 1 person in here who is all this serious buissness >.> i wont say who.

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old is old pwnz is old.

far as my post count yup it goes to show i have better things to do than spend all day on the forums.

i rarely visit these forums because mainly people write the dumbest stuff or just complain all the time .

only thing worth reading are the guides and that's a stretch.

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It is actually quite saddening to me that you refrain from posting in this section for the most part yet one of the few times you see fit to throw your hat into the ring it's with an uninspired and quite standard "I am teh superior to forumerz"

The only thing the popularity of these several discussions is an indication of is the fact that most people don't particularly like:
[*]Jerks [*]Academic dishonesty[*]Yet more "the internet is evil! I have proof!" sensationalism

Nowhere does it indicate his PvP skills unless your argument is that one merely needs to become mildly notorious as a jerk to be considered a successful PvPer.

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Sadly, I think I understand what Twixt was after...


Most of the replies I'm reading assume Twixt was "testing" the game's "technique" of being a PvP griefer when in fact he was "measuring" the community's social response to a hostile "virtual reality" setting (which he created using valid PvP techniques that "the system" allowed him to use).



That said, the academic results of Twixt's inquiries are false/skewed for three reasons:

1) Twixt failed to maintain objectivity because his testing focused solely on the negative social impact of a virtual reality setting. He deliberately excluded any positive social impact(s) observed/experienced in the same situation/environment.

2) Twixt did not test the entire equilibrium of "the system" (aka PvP environment) as a whole. Again, he focused exclusively on one negative aspect of the enitre system and excluded all other data - both postive and negative (including "what else" the system would have allowed him to do or what it "didn't" allow him to do).

3) Because the community didn't react as intended (either by "the system's" reckoning or to Twixt's own expectations), Twixt broke with the neutrality of the study and became part of his own testing environment by manufacturing an unbalanced "sub-system." Any social reactions recorded in these conditions occur as an unnatural reaction to Twixt himself rather than "the system" he originally set out to evaluate.



Ultimately, Twixt's conclusions are unreasonably biased because he failed to disassociate himself from the experiment and remain objective while trying to prove a theorem (ie., that society is losing its ability to distinguish "real life" from "virtual reality" and that, in the latter setting," the human mind "defaults" to antagonistic behaviors). By introducing himself as a self-appointed "chaos element" in the system, Twixt has transcended the role of being a neutral observer to becoming an active participant in his own experiment.

As a result, Twixt has proven his own inability to decipher "real life" from "virtual reality" and the published results of his academic experiment are neither true, objective, nor scientifically accurate.


And his PvP skills just [censored] suck.

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I don't remember Twixt, however, I did happen to notice him on my ignore list for whatever reason, so he had to have been a jerk to me at some point.

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Okay, here's the thing. As I see it, there are two issues at hand here.

The first is David Myers's ("Twixt's") actions in the game and his resulting "research." I took some time this morning and actually read his paper, the entire 22 pages, plus footnotes. If you don't mind getting past the first three and a half pages of psychobabble, it's actually an interesting read, and you can see for yourself--in Myers's own words--his take on what happened and why.

In some ways, I feel it actually compliments the City of Heroes community. One theme I see repeated over and over is that when when a player breaks the social norms of the game, even when they are following "the letter of the law, as it were" (p. 4), that character and indeed the player suffer repercussions such as ostracism and various degrees of criticism.

To me, this isn't a bad thing, it is exactly as it should be. There is no possible way that the developers will ever be able to make people play 100% like they're "supposed" to. To a large degree, we as a community self-regulate what is and isn't acceptable. Even if someone is being an a-hole but still not breaking any rules, they will be punished. Hopefully, that encourages people from not being a-holes, and without that social norm in place, we'd have a hell of a lot more a-holes in the game.

Or, as Myers put it in his paper:
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...if game rules pose some threat to social order, these rules are simply ignored. And further, if some player -- like Twixt -- decides to explore those rules fully, then that player is shunned, silenced, and, if at all possible, expelled. (p. 19)

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Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't that a good thing? That if some twit (oops, forgot the "x") decides that he's going to take advantage of a game mechanic that allows him to consistently defeat enemies with very little effort or skill, and he is asked to stop because it is interfering with the larger community's fun, and if the developers and/or moderators are unwilling to address the issue, should we simply have no recourse and be resigned to allow the game to suffer for it?

Now, I've always been one to argue that short of outright cheating, pretty much anything done in a PvP zone is fair game, and I still maintain that. Still, I do acknowledge that this is a game, and as such and in spite of the backstory and MO of our characters doing what they do, the end goal is for us all to have fun, or at least as many of us that can to do so.

So yes, characters such as Twixt (and their associated players) do indeed have the right to do what was done. However, I also firmly believe that in the interest of my own fun and for the benefit of the larger community, I have the right to react to characters such as Twixt (and their associated players) by doing things such as petitioning him if I believe he is breaking more than just social rules, thwarting his efforts to break social norms, and if necessary, avoid him altogether. And I guess that's really the bottom line.

Myers says, "Indeed, the strong, negative, and increasingly emotional reactions to Twixt’s behavior were almost always focused on preserving beneficent social communities and friendships in blatant disregard of game rules." (p. 19) To me, that's actually highly complimentary of the City of Heroes community.

However...

The problem is that as I'm reading Myers's paper, it seems that he is representing this social quality of the game as a negative aspect of it. Part of me thinks that it is because he had grown tired of the game. At one point, he says:
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The main pathway to success in CoH/V -- and, in fact, in all established MMORPGs -- is a rather dreary and, once successfully completed, very repetitive grind: defeating the game’s npc’s over and over again. CoH/V’s most dedicated players had well-established routines for advancing their multiple characters (alternates or "alts") through the game’s leveling process. In CoH/V, these routines consisted of "farming" certain missions and activities that were considered either particularly easy or particularly rewarding or, preferably, both. (p. 8)

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I'm reading two things into this. First, in an indirect way, he is actually acknowledging that the primary fun in City of Heroes is the social experience, not the repetitive game mechanics, and I completely agree with that. Second, though, is that he simply doesn't like the game any more. This could have been a deciding factor in his decision to go scorched-earth on us, and at some point, he probably figured that he might as well get an academic paper out of it.

At any rate, I feel like he grossly misrepresents the City of Heroes community. While he writes with the pretense of of exploring what happens when one deviates from the social norm of the game, he focuses exclusively on what happens when one deviates negatively. He simply ignores positive deviations.

Nowhere in his paper did I see mention of groups like the Taxibots, who do not focus on the advancement of their own characters, but whose self-stated goal is "to help the heroes in many different ways to provide for an easier, more fun experience," or the Paragon City Search and Rescue, whose mission is to "perform Heal/Rez patrols throughout the city and forego leveling, missions and XP altogether while on duty," or even individuals such as LunarDivine ("Paragon Hero Neos"), who simply gives out stuff to anyone who passes by and asks. These are deviations from the social norm too, but they are completely ignored.

As such, I take serious issue with the premise of the paper, "Play and Punishment," insinuating that deviation from the norm is always necessarily negative.

Also, I seriously take issue with the extent to which he represents the negativity. He presents chat lines and forum posts as if they are representative of the entire community of City of Heroes players. Personally, I think the guy has a bit of an ego problem in thinking that while he was in a zone, all attention was focused exclusively on him. While he undoubtedly commanded some attention, what you don't see represented in the paper is the number of people who simply ignored him, who went about their own business, who engaged him on the level he was seeking--as a villain working to defeat a hero--without the necessary "trash talk" and such. Instead, all you see are the extreme cases of people calling him names, and the one of someone who allegedly sent a death threat.

Speaking of which, I hate to burst his bubble, but I have a really hard time interpreting "if you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding" (p. 13) as a "death threat." For one thing, hopefully everyone knows that unless you deliberately reveal your personal information, the player who said that has absolutely no means by which to carry out such a threat. For another, "for real" can be interpreted simply to mean that the player intended on going and getting some friends to more diligently attack "Twixt," much the same way one might tell a coworker, "If you screw up that report one more time, I'm going to come over there and knock the [censored] out of you for real," without literally meaning that you're going to physically assault them. (Although I still suggest against using such words against coworkers, as I suggest telling people in the game that you're going to kill them "for real," because of the potential for misinterpretation...) I don't know Syphris and Myers conveniently left out the entire context of the comment, so I cannot say for certain what he meant, but as I said, based only on what was written, I don't see this as a death threat.

So in short, reading Myers's paper, I feel that:
- It was written from a non-scientific (arguably non-academic) non-objective standpoint,
- It presents observations in a much more negative context than that in which they took place,
- It does not fully explore the subject of social reaction to deviation from social norms,
- It ignores data that is contrary to the premise of the paper, that the vast majority of players had no interest in "punishing" his character.

But hang on, I'm not done yet, I have another post coming about that second issue I see here...

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We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)

The second issue at hand here is that a reporter named Ramon Antonio Vargas from the New Orleans Times-Picayune picked up this paper and ran a story on it. In the process, he changed the purpose of what happened from research (even if you feel it is dubious to call it that) to a story designed to represent the City of Heroes community to the outside world.

I feel that the story that he wrote reflects extremely poorly on the community, as if we're all somewhere on the spectrum between a bunch of high school conformists and fringe psychotics firing off death threats over a game.

Mr. Vargas completely ignores the fact that this research was conducted to present a negative aspect of the game. To me, this is like someone conducting some research on how modern medical advances have put snake oil salesmen out of business, and then a reporter follows up later with an article about how devastating the development of antibiotics has been on so many livelihoods and families. Are we really supposed to feel sorry for the snake oil salesmen?

The first impression we get of City of Heroes players come in the fourth paragraph of the story in which Syphris tells Myers, "If you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding." (See my earlier post about how this is misrepresented as a death threat.) Nowhere in the article are the positive aspects of the community (see my earlier post about the Taxibots, PCSAR, etc.) reflected. In the effort to make us sound as bat[censored] crazy as possible, only the worst quotes are pulled, completely out of context, for the story.

I found the following quote equally telling:
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"[Myers] believes it proved that, even in a 21st century digital fantasyland, an ugly side of real-world human nature pervades, a side that oppresses strangers whose behavior strays from that of the mainstream."

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Although I believe that Myers's intent is to portray social reaction to deviating from the social norm as negative, nowhere in Myers's paper does he explicitly make that judgment. Apparently for the article, that is exactly what he admits.

There are also several other misrepresentations and inaccuracies in the article, such as:
- Stating that PvP battles "are designed to distinguish the most skilled players." Talking about who is most skilled is extremely subjective, and given that most people don't engage in PvP, I think it grossly misrepresents the emphasis (or lack thereof) of "cred" that players put on skillful PvP players.
- It completely ignores that Myers was using a game mechanic that is widely thought of as not skillful and even "cheap" to defeat other players.
- It completely ignores that unlike a genre such as first-person shooters, the goal of an MMORPG is the social experience, not so much "winning."
- It implies that Myers's study started in 2004 when the game came out, when in fact, it lasted roughly from December 2006 through March 2008.
- It implies that Myers simply fought battles. It says, "He took his character to the virtual war zone and set out to simply battle villains." It completely ignores that in reality, he instigated these battles, effectively "goading" players into treating him negatively.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about the article, though, is its gaping omission of anyone representing an alternate viewpoint. Mr. Vargas could have come here and posted a message asking for more information from those who the article is condemning. The only attempt that I can find to do so is a request for comment from NCsoft regarding banning a player that didn't receive a response, which is clearly part of the company's policy. Hell, I wish that I had had a chance to talk to him and respond to Myers's comments.

At any rate, I plan on writing to Mr. Vargas and possibly the editor as well. I don't like it when City of Heroes is portrayed negatively in the mainstream media, and I especially don't like it when I feel that it is so grossly one-sided and misrepresentative of the community. I hope that at some point, Mr. Vargas and/or the Times-Picayune will present an alternative viewpoint and show the positive aspects of the City of Heroes community.

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We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)

I can't believe we are still talking about the worse active PvPer to ever leave the game.

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Holy [censored] I agree with TonyV

Good post

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...so a guy that was so shaken up by death threats makes a paper about how it makes him scared. and now that the paper and his real name is out there peoeple can find him?

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I can't believe we are still talking about the worse active PvPer to ever leave the game.

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We're not.

This thread is now about puppies.

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...so a guy that was so shaken up by death threats makes a paper about how it makes him scared. and now that the paper and his real name is out there peoeple can find him?

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...
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I can't believe we are still talking about the worse active PvPer to ever leave the game.

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We're not.

This thread is now about puppies.

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*gives Dispari a PhD in Cuteology*

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That blue thing running around saying "Cookies are sometimes food" is Praetorian Cookie Monster!
Shoot on sight, please.

I found Tony's comments to be more sound and interesting that most of the observatiosn in that so-called paper.

I would have had something that all round bad and ridden with POV issues torn up in front of me by my profs.

Admitedly hard science like chemistry is a little harder to get POV stuff into but it does happen.

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@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617

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I found Tony's comments to be more sound and interesting that most of the observatiosn in that so-called paper.

I would have had something that all round bad and ridden with POV issues torn up in front of me by my profs.

Admitedly hard science like chemistry is a little harder to get POV stuff into but it does happen.

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That has nothing to do with puppies.

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Words fail me. Having also read the Twixt/Myers report, I feel like I've been teleported (heh) to the Twilight Zone. This isn't a scholarly paper, it's a thinly veiled PvP rant with footnotes. The "sad" case of Twixt indeed.

Did the author verify that the messages he collected from other players weren't all simply coming from the same small group of people playing multiple characters? No.

Did the author consult the creators of the game to determine what their goals were in establishing PvP mechanics? No.

Did the author explain that "griefing" tactics are as old as the Internet itself? No.

Did the author consider that "what the game code lets you do" is different from "what is intended you do with the game code"? No.

Did the author suggest that players hated being teleported into enemies because it truly WAS a cheap tactic? No.

What the author did do is publish a highly disparaging article that almost reads like a venegeful screed. I hope, for his sake, he at least changed the names of the characters he cites, many of whom are real, identifiable people who I'm sure have not consented to his work.

For those who don't want to read the actual paper, a few choice highlights from the paper are submitted below:

Droning, on the other hand, was....clearly an acceptable tactic as determined both by the game design and as confirmed by lack of moderator intervention on any petitioner’s behalf.

The inability of Twixt’s opponents to acknowledge his success in zone play was probably, on one hand, motivated by having entirely different, more socially oriented game goals.

At one point, in fact, toward the end of breaching play on the Freedom server, Twixt posted verbatim transcripts of the game’s online combat log as a confirming account of what had occurred during RV play. This post drew severe criticism – most harshly from those players listed in the log as defeated by Twixt; several denied their defeats outright, others attributed their defeats to more devious or pitiable causes (including a rather long and detailed post drawing parallels between Twixt’s behavior and Asperger’s syndrome.)

...there were several incidents that forced a re-evaluation of the context and the seriousness of player reactions to Twixt. The first of these was the rather sudden and unexpected expulsion of Twixt from his Champion-based supergroup.

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TonyV pretty much summed up everything I was going to say. To me Myer's chose the wrong game to examine social PvP interactions. To truly examine the broadest range of interactions in CoH he should have simply taken a character from 1-50 Blueside then one Redside. I'm not saying avoid PvP, but rather experiment with it when the zones pop up with the contacts and then move on. All he did was test one mechanic to see if he could get a reaction and when he did he continually repeated the unskillful tactic until the PvP community took notice. I have no doubt he was asked to stop what he was doing and I also have no doubt that some tried to explain to him how true PvP works, but that would invalidate his findings so none of it saw print. As it stands his article is, as TonyV stated so well, focusing on only the negative experiences.

NOTE: I should point out I did do this tactic myself when PvP first launched, but only one time. Why? Because I found myself in a conversation with someone about being a true competitor. The player even went so far as to show me the PvP ropes. My point here is, the PvP community has always been small on CoH and there is always someone extending an olive branch like they did for me. I find it very unlikely that a similar extension was never made to Mr. Myers.

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...I feel that the story that he wrote reflects extremely poorly on the community, as if we're all somewhere on the spectrum between a bunch of high school conformists and fringe psychotics firing off death threats over a game...

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I guess we know how Furries must feel now, eh?

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What is really important and I think everyone is overlooking is TWIXT's poetry...lol too bad the forum ate all those old posts, he used to make all kinds of funny poems about his PvP "skills"

Someboby please say you saved those posts... maybe Xury2 or someone from PWNZ might have them copied?

The aspergers posts brought out alot of TWIXT responses that were instant classics.

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An amazing PvPer based on what assessment?

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twixt's original thread at the time received well over 300 pages ...

this one has gotten up too around 12 and twixt has been gone for at least a year .

that basically speaks for it self.

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Meowtch must be the greatest PvPer that ever lived. She's started 2 different threads that have had over 1000 pages.

Find a more unrelated and obscure measurement to determine the abilities of a PvPer please.

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- Ping (@iltat, @Pinghole)

Don't take it personally if you think I was mean to you. I'm an ******* to everyone.

It's a penguin thing. Pingu FTW.

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I PvPed in zone with Twitx for over a year, I know exactly what occured and also have had the record chat feature on to verify any broadcast chat. FYI the arena is not the only test of PvP skill LOL.

Get a clue because apparently you do not have one on this subject.

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If you truly have records of the broadcast chat, POST THEM.

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I PvPed in zone with Twitx for over a year, I know exactly what occured and also have had the record chat feature on to verify any broadcast chat. FYI the arena is not the only test of PvP skill LOL.

Get a clue because apparently you do not have one on this subject.

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k

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- Ping (@iltat, @Pinghole)

Don't take it personally if you think I was mean to you. I'm an ******* to everyone.

It's a penguin thing. Pingu FTW.

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I PvPed in zone with Twitx for over a year, I know exactly what occured and also have had the record chat feature on to verify any broadcast chat. FYI the arena is not the only test of PvP skill LOL.

Get a clue because apparently you do not have one on this subject.

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If you truly have records of the broadcast chat, POST THEM.

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Indeed. Perhaps then we'll able to determine why he even bothered to whip out his e-peen.

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Follow-up article: http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2...web_sound.html

It appears that Mr. Chuck Cook is as lazy as the good professor when it comes to writing. He links to this thread in his article, yet makes no mention of all the legitimate ethics issues and continues to treat the professor's word as truth. He also repeats the worst examples of the out-of-game abuses from his first article and cherry-picks responses to make it sound like all gamers respond that way.

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If anyone already has a registered account with that site, please post a link to this thread in a comment At least that way, people who read this garbage will get the truth about the situation, instead of badly biased and stilted commentary.

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Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed

There's a link to here in the link above your post.

Hello World.

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