Crossposted over at Blog of Heroes, a sociological look at what happens when in-game social rules don’t align with the natural rules of the game/milieu, and then are flouted.
I usually keep the online game stuff over there, but this is of enough general interest to warrant mention over here.
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Ok, so if you had left this on your other blog, I’d never have known, but you didn’t so…
A couple of things come to mind after reading the original article.
1. The author seems to see that the protection of the social order at the ignorance of the rules is a bad thing. Which leads me to believe that he doesn’t understand role-playing games as well as he should. As you well know ***Dave, the cohorts that you play RPGs with (online, by email or in person) are not just any 5 people off the street. Over time, players and game masters are drawn together by similar styles of play and desires for their game interactions. We’ve all played in the ‘wrong’ game or invited the ‘wrong’ person into a game we’re playing. Most play by the rules, but that doesn’t always make for the best gaming experiences for the group as a whole. (And that doesn’t even include those who glow red and disappear, who seem to want to ‘win’ no matter what!)
Not being an online player (it’s just not my thing), I can only extrapolate that COH/V is a more social environment than it is a ‘win the game’ environment. I like RPGs because they are more about the journey than the reward and can I see that in the author’s examination of the game COH/V seems to be similar.
2. If the game is more about the social interactions that the points, it seems perfectly logical that the group would want to promote collaborative play. If ‘rule-breaking’ of the type Twixt engaged in occurred during a game played on your dining room table, it’s likely the other players would have tried to prevent social strife. If he continued to do so, it’s likely he wouldn’t be invited back, but since he hasn’t broken the game rules, COH/V can’t uninvite him as The Consortium might. We are social creatures – we protect those people/places that have made us feel welcome and safe. The other players were doing exactly what I would expect them to do. Other than to prove a point, I wonder if the author could actually thought otherwise.
3. Nowhere is his article does he mention his own part in the experiment. He was playing to a purpose (at this time), but he kept that secret to his own ends. During the Stanford Prison Experiment, the principal scientist Phil Zimbardo had his then girlfriend Christina Maslach (also a PhD in social psychology) come in to observe several days into the experiment. Though the scientists watching thought the interaction of prisoners and guards was fascinating, Christina was taken by how the others had lost sight of the human beings that were the test subjects. She was primarily responsible for opening Phil’s eyes to the real suffering that the experiment was creating.
Though the author of the paper didn’t reach this level of blindness, he conducted an experiment on subjects who didn’t know they had signed up for a sociology experiment. He screwed with the social order because it served his ends, and I can’t help feeling that he got off on his power to throw a monkey wrench into the system. (Please excuse blue language, but it seems appropriate.)
I have clearly put in more than my nickel’s worth and now must retreat to make dinner. Your mileage may vary….
Well, I was hoping you would come in with a sociological note, Mary, so you’re certainly welcome to toss in your nickel and then some …
It’s not clear, from the situation, the degree to which “RP” had any role here. In theory, Twixt, as a hero acting despite the OOC pleas, was doing more RP; in practice, none of the servers mentioned in the paper are known for RP (though I used to RP on Champion).
It’s deceptive here. Yes, different groups of gamers are looking for different things. But, then, Myers’ point (which is not necessarily a condemning one) is that the social environment does not necessarily reflect the physical / natural / system environment except where it must. So Twixt was acting in accord with what “heroes” do (defeat villains by whatever means necessary). The social environment was “hey, let’s hang out and farm NPCs with Heavies — we won’t bug you guys, you don’t bug us, and never mind what the story here is about.” Even though Twixt was played more true to the natural environment than the folks he attacked, he drew their ire (and, per the paper, their defiance about how true to the milieu he was).
It reminds me a bit of “Knights of the Round Table,” where lust for gold, magic, and EP outweighs any trivial items like alignment, narrative, or logic. E.g., an LG character burning down the parson’s barn to get 800 * 0.25 EP for the rats that are killed, then kvetching when there are alignment ramifications.
A valuable point. Arguably, though, it’s the Devs’ table; neither Twixt nor the farmers were breaking any rules (or breaking them egregiously enough to be punished).
Personally inserting yourself into the experiment is always a risk. It’s hard to tell whether he [insert Mary’s nasty blue language here] on zapping folks and watching them go ballistic; certainly there seems to be some resentment leaking through as to the way he was treated for it. I don’t think it was unethical on his part, but it wasn’t as pure science as I think I’d like to see — and ultimately it’s anecdotal, if well-documented, at least as presented here.
I guess I stressed the RP of the game more than I should have, but any time someone plays a character in a game (even if the game allows less ‘role-playing’ than an in- person game allows), they have a vested interest in the game beyond strictly winning. Although I’m sure there is a spectrum of personal interest in a game character – less for a marker in Monopoly than for a character in Amber certainly – the player does identify with the character on some level The author may well have been ‘role-playing’ more along the rules the game designers created, but the game isn’t being played by robots.
As to the rules being stretched to the desire of the players, have you ever played a game of Monopoly where someone doesn’t try to invoke ‘house rules?’ As someone who was just happy to have other folks willing to play, I never cared, but I’ve seen others go on about “Free Parking” and “Jail” exceptions to a degree that seemed out of proportion to the playing of the game. I saw certain criticisms of diceless RPGs that felt the ‘rules’ were too easy to fudge, not really understanding (in my opinion) that the story was bigger than dice roles.
And, to the author’s interactions with other players, I can’t help feeling that if I played regularly with someone and then found out he’d been using our group as ‘lab rats,’ I’d be kind of perturbed. And I’d expect an apology and promise not to do so again. It’s not quite cheating, but it’s not really playing fair (even if it’s by the rules), either.
Too early to make dinner, I’ll have to go for a walk. Maybe I do have things to say….
You always have things to day, Mary. And that’s cool.
Something Margie has noted is that a major variable here is the server you play on. Most MMOs have servers where RP is considered important, others where it’s considered irrelevant at best. Myers experimented on Champion (a middle-of-the-road server), Infinity (I believe) and Freedom (the largest server, not known for its RP).
On the other hand everyone was RPing to some degree — it’s just that some folks were RPing to different ends. You’re correct that toons, even when simply used to level up, have at least some personality vested in them — at least as much as a t-shirt chosen to be worn.
I agree I’d be disturbed to discover that someone I’d been playing with had an ulterior motive — though, of course, on the Internet, everyone’s got hidden aspects to them.
On the other hand, while I think Myers’ experiment was a valid one, and the treatment he got highly inappropriate, reading his blog makes it clear that he does not (and probably did not) have the degree of analytical detatchment that one would hope for from an experimenter. He remains pretty ticked off at the way he was treated, by comrades and strangers alike, and it seems to me that colors his thinking more than a bit.
Based on the sheer volumn of discussion this has generated on various gaming fori (pl. of forum), I almost wonder if this Twixt character isn’t actually more interested in how a community responds to having its internal rules challenged . . . .doesn’t mean he’s not a dink, though.
Plural of “forum” is actually “fora”. (What can I say, I took Latin in college.)
The discussion outside of the game (on the CoX boards, e.g.) is definitely part of what Myers is interested in. Though much of that discussion is a repeat (often a cut-and-paste) of those board debates.
I’d argue that Latin, but I’d need to find my dusty old Latin texts . . . . fora indicating feminine plural,(or is that forae? Damn you time!), I went with fori because it was gender neutral, like octopi.
Might I also add: college Latin is yet another eerie point of convergence.
Ah, but you forgot the neuter -um turns to -a. (It’s -us that turns to -i, usually, and -a is usually a feminine singular).
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060623010216AAx8boT :
Now, don’t get me started in “indices” vs. “indexes” …
D’oh!
Heee! (Not often I get to trot out the Latin knowledge.)
Your liberal arts education is showing!
And from classes at Pitzer, no less.
I guess my inferior UW-Madison Latin is showing . . . .my TA would be appalled
I would use “fori” as the plural of “forus,” if such a word existed. (We did actually refer to our “to hit boni” in our D&D games some 30 yarns ago.)
I’d have to look up “bonus” — it could be that weird form where it’s “bonus / bonus.”
As an adjective, bonus/bona/bonum.
As a noun, bonum/boni, though bona shows up in some of the examples.
More disturbingly, Cassell’s says forum/fori. Must research more.
Ah — the genitive is “fori” — the plural is “fora”.
And “boni” is both nominative plural and genitive singular. “Bona” only seems to appear as an adjective form.