Whoa. MMORPG + Sociology = Teh Weird.
Loyola media professor David Myers tells the tale (as an academic paper) of what happens when you flout social rules, even if you are perfectly legal (and even supported by the codified moral laws) in doing so. The answer: you become very, very unpopular.
What makes this interesting is that Myers is writing about an experiment he ran himself in CoX, using a veteran toon named “Twixt,” both in its original incarnation on Champions (where it was a long-time character), and rebuilt on Infinity and Freedom. In each case, he managed to get driven out of groups; DOSsed from his chat channel; subjected to disparagement of his intellect, experience, and morals; hunted down by collective teams of heroes and villains; and personally threatened.
All for being a super-hero. As opposed to being a social hero.
Twixt’s activities were run in Recluse’s Victory. His basic sin was doing whatever he could to support the heroic side of the endeavor, regardless of whether it made people happy. His specific and most egregious “breaching” offenses, according to Myers:
- Teleport Other of villains into security drones (“droning”) or NPC heroes.
- Attacking of villains who were “collaborating” with heroes to farm NPCs in the zone with Heavies.
- Declining to team with others (which turned into refusing to do so when too many teams turned into traps by players colluding with each other).
None of these behaviors was illegal. In fact, the Devs never acted on the many petitions lodged against Twixt, In their own way, these actions, esp. the first two, were perfectly keeping with the milieu of heroes vs. villains, much more than many of the folks condemning Twixt’s actions were. Worse, Twixt was very successful at what he was doing, Myers notes
Myers’ conclusions are that social rules are not necessarily constructed based on natural rules (Myers couches this all in various sociological terms such as social constructionist theory, ethnomethodology, positivism, etc., but that’s what it boils down to).
In real-world environments, “natural” laws governing social relationships, if they exist at all, are part of the same social system in which they operate and, for that reason, are difficult to isolate, measure, and confirm. In Twixt’s case, however, two unique sets of rules – one governing the game system, one governing the game society — offered an opportunity to observe how social rules adapt to system rules (or, more speculatively, how social laws might reproduce natural laws.) And, the clearest answer, based on Twixt’s experience, is that they don’t. Rather, 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.
[…] 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. The most important negative consequence of Twixt’s behavior in the eyes of other players, then, was not his failure to achieve game goals – Twixt’s opponents “failed” this test more often than he did — but his failure to garner and sustain social connections: the most repellant consequence of Twixt’s behavior was that it made him unlikable.
While there are some quibbles I have over Myers’ experience in the game vs. my own, his overall observations seem sound. If the majority of the people playing are there with a goal of socializing, then folks who break the social laws are going to be unwelcome, regardless of the house rules.
Remaining likable – socially connected — within the CoH/V community meant playing the game according to values other than those made explicit by the game design and the game designers. Players could only learn these values – much like those affecting social activities in the real world — by becoming (or already being) a member of the game’s entrenched social order.
Looked at another way, the game produces goals, but those are necessarily what is intended with the game design. While the designers intended to promote heroism vs. villainy, and structured RV around that conflict, what has happened is that the actual goals being sought are socializing and character advancement, which can be more easily done (to some or many) through ignoring the RV core conflict and simply farming NPCs — and that usually means ignoring the PvP in the zone. This all gets back to the discussions around farming with the AE mishes — it’s utterly against the milieu rules, and it’s aesthetically repugnant to many, but it’s also a key way that a lot of people (clearly) want to play.
Myers suggests, further, that these sorts of social restrictions create boundaries in gameplay, discouraging people from trying a variety of tactics to pursue the game goals. In the notes, he says:
Play in CoH/V, since its inception in 2004, has displayed at least three distinct stages. The first, most exploratory stage occurred immediately after the game’s release, when all players, due to their inherent ignorance of game rules and methods of play, explored the game environment through a trial and error process very similar in appearance and function to that of Twixt’s breaching play. Once a critical mass of successful game play and players (and information) had been achieved – regardless of whether that success was the result of analysis, effort, or luck – other, not-so-successful play and players began to ally with and mimic the more successful.
Subsequently, once social groups had been established through such alliances, the game entered its third and current stage, dominated by entrenched groups of experienced players. During this latter stage — in which Twixt began his breaching play — there was no longer any pressing need to find or share game information with others. As a result, game information became devalued in favor of social information and orders. Perhaps it is only during this latter stage of mature online game play that Twixt’s breaching play is most threatening and most likely to evoke such strong negative reactions as those observed in CoH/V.
I think that’s key. CoX has, for many of its players, become not so much “be a super-hero/villain and save/rule the world.” It’s become “PL to 50 ASAP, come up with cool costumes, and hang with your buds.” Myers was the equivalent of the guy at the job who tries to do the work, rather than just earn a paycheck while leaning on the water cooler; that he not only made the folks facing him look bad by taking the actual genre seriously, but by poking at them by defeating them, made the likelihood of social ostracism and threats even greater. (Another analogy, in the NOLA comments below, is that of the guy on the freeway going exactly the speed limit, and the amount of fury that “asshole in the green car up there” can cause to others.
The NOLA article below (which was cross-posted onto CoX forums) has some interesting (as well as disturbing) comments, some of which make it seem that the other articles (less so Myers actual paper) are overstating things. Many of these don’t get the point — which is not that if you flout social rules then society will get ticked off at you, but that social rules are not necessarily aligned with “natural” (or, in this case, game) rules, and in fact resist those who adhere to the latter rather than the former. The point of Twixt was not, per se, to be a “jerk” or to “grief,” but to do what the game allowed, and what it (and LR in particular) was designed for: vanquishing of the opposing side (XP or not). This irritated the folks who were using the zone instead to farm and socialize and who only considered some forms of combat (i.e., those that didn’t include TP Foe) legit and honorable.
I confess that, caught flatfooted in the face of a really bad ambush in a city zone, I’ve been known to run for the nearest drone. TPing the PvE foe there isn’t any different, and it’s not effectively different of it’s a “P” vs an “E” being TPed).
(If this were, in fact, such a big deal, I shouldn’t think it would be that dire a mechanics change to prevent TP Foe from being targeted within 100m of a drone, or to have someone TP Foed be subject to NPC attacks for 5 seconds after arriving, or something like that. Clearly the Devs don’t think i’s that high a priority.
Still, it’s a very sad indictment of CoX, as an established community, and it makes me glad that I “do my thing” solo or duoed with Margie, rather than as part of some farming collective SG.
Wow, that was a cool paper to read. Oddly, if he had been in an RP guild, things may have been different. I would love to see what would have happened on Virtue.
Sad to see that the PvP zones have turned into Farming zones.
I say Woot and Huzzah for Twixt for hoving to the spirit of the Genre v the sociatal norm, in that way he truly was a Super Hero amungst posuers.
Hell, I remember being wall Gank’d and TP’d in the PvP zones, I guess I saw it all as part of the tactics of the zone, and how things worked.
Also, I found it funny that no one got it that he was playing the game as it was meant to be played, v the way the player base had decided that it was to be played. You would think that his broadcasts would have been a key give away.
I also had to laugh that the leader of his CoH guild got pissed when Twixt nailed him while on his CoV alt.
In reality, this paper speaks more to the sickness in the society of CoX specifically, and the MMORPG’s in general, more than Twixt’s.
I slogged through the comments, and I found the comment from someone who’d encounter Twixt telling – it sounds like Twixt was not just “playing by the rules” and “flouting social conventions”, but actively being a complete douche…
I’m copying the comment below just because there are so many, and so many are so painful…
Me, I stay out of the PVP zones, and I have several great groups I play with (not farming groups either). I’d love to run with you and Margie some time, Dave!
Posted by iltat on 07/06/09 at 5:09PM
I’m actually a CoH player who PvPed both with and against Twixt (I am not any of the players named, and my verbal interactions with Twixt were quite limited). I’d like to clear up a few things that seem to be missing. Note that I am, in no way, discounting the seriousness of death threats, but maybe a little more understanding of what really took place will allow people to relate better to the frustration.
1) Twixt’s actions in PvP translated to an investment of time. By teleporting (the action described) villains into a row of firing squad computer-generated enemies, he would give the other character debt. This debt would impede the character’s ability to gain experience by cutting it in half for a certain period of time. Thus, anyone who suffered from what Twixt did would pay for it by having their progress cut in half the next time they got the opportunity to play. A full portion of debt could take upwards of 3 hours of nonstop play to be worked off.
Imagine you go play miniature golf. Directly in front of you is a group of 10 children who have no idea what they’re doing. You are unable to skip past them, and as is allowed, they refuse to let you pass. Due to this inconvenience, you only get to play 9 holes (or 4, if you’re only on a 9-hole course). Would you be frustrated? I sure would be. They didn’t break the rules, but they hurt the fun of my outing by specifically robbing me of the time that I had dedicated to accomplishing my goal. It’s not much different than traffic, bowling balls getting stuck in the lanes, people talking during a movie, or any other issue that would rob an individual of their free time. The individuals causing your frustration may not be breaking the rules, but they are affecting your enjoyment.
2) Twixt’s account of what took place in the PvP zones he visited just plain isn’t accurate.
People did chat because many of the players had played together prior to the release of City of Villains (CoH was released in May of 2004 while CoV in October of 2006). Most of us already knew each other. However, that didn’t result in a lack of fighting. Many times, Twixt would simply teleport people from battles already in place to his computer-generated death squads. He’s presenting the situation as if he was the only one using the zones correctly when, in actuality, he was just the only one manipulating loopholes to allow him to generally be mean to other players. That’s the biggest reason why he was despised.
3) Twixt commonly made fun of players he killed.
He did not simply say random hero-supporting things, he oftentimes bragged openly after using his computer-generated helpers to kill someone. Like any other competitive situation, bragging and talking trash will earn people talking back and becoming more upset. He worked to goad individuals into becoming angrier at what he did.
He mentions the forums as a place where people speculated about parts of his life, but he seems to have left out where he posted kill-logs from his time spent in PvP zones. He posted quite frequently on those boards, and he went out of his way to fuel the hate that developed for him. Professional athletes who do such a thing are widely derided by the media and fans. Twixt worked hard to generate hate, he was not simply an innocent victim.
4) Twixt died. A lot.
Twixt perfected his method of generating debt for other players by dying a whole lot along the way. Statements like, “But no one could stay alive long enough to defeat Twixt…” completely misrepresent what happened.
5) Twixt’s research plays a role by examining another realm of society, but his results are predictable.
It’s not surprising that people get upset when you’re mean to them without reason. On an unmarked curb, it’s legal for me to park 5 feet away from the cars in front of and behind me, but it’s simply rude to do so. If I did so directly in front of hundreds of different people who were looking for a parking spot, it’s not unreasonable to think that these individuals would be angry with me. I would say that’s completely predictable. It’s also not unheard of for such individuals to threaten others in such a situation. The fact that the anonymity of the internet allows such hotheads to go more extreme with their threats shouldn’t exactly come as a shock to anyone either. Thus, while I think research into the societies of online communities can be interesting, I don’t think Twixt’s can be classified as such.
It’s a shame that Twixt is the face of the CoH PvP and gaming community. He presents a very one-sided tale that some folks, such as the writer of this article, have apparently bought into entirely. A whole lot of good takes place in that community, but apparently, writing about that just wouldn’t sell a book.
Jae, thanks for the quote. I did slog through the comments and saw the one you gave. I’ll note, though, that the people who hopped over from the CoX boards are not necessarily unbiased sources either. A couple of notes (the quotes below are all from the commenter, not from Jae):
First off, in a PvP zone, characters can expect to be attacked. Twixt’s TO tactic may be a cheap shot, but it’s legal, and known. If you can’t stand the PvP, don’t go into a PvP zone.
It is worth noting that defeat by an NPC (e.g., Drones, Longbow) will cause debt.
I don’t expect anyone to be happy about Twixt’s behavior, at least not if they were on the receiving end.
I’d suggest, though, that a better analogy is that you are hanging out at the miniature golf course, picnicking on the 5th hole, and a group of 10 kids is insisting that they be allowed to play through because you aren’t really playing the game that was laid out. Sure, as long as the course owner doesn’t kick you (or them) off, it’s legal but unpleasant — but the kids, however obnoxious, are playing the game; you’re enjoying the setting for a different reason.
I’ll note that Myers’ paper is much less self-serving than the NOLO article.
It still appears that, in this case, “being mean” is doing whatever the game mechanics allow to defeat villains, regardless (or intentionally disregarding) of the social conventions.
CoX is comic book Heroes v. Villains. In a PvP setting, both are present as players. To use a comic book example, would Cyclops complain if Nightcrawler was bamfing Hellfire Club members directly into holding cells? Sure, Ben Grimm might grumble if Spidey administered the coup d’grace against a villain who was fighting the Thing, but he’d simply move on to the next villain, not file a petition about “kill-stealing” to SHIELD.
So does Spider-Man. So do most comic book heroes, except the grim-n-gritty ones. Hell, go back the Silver Age, and you’ve got Batman and Superman trash-talking and gloating over their enemies being defeated.
He mentions the forums as a place where people speculated about parts of his life, but he seems to have left out where he posted kill-logs from his time spent in PvP zones. He posted quite frequently on those boards, and he went out of his way to fuel the hate that developed for him. Professional athletes who do such a thing are widely derided by the media and fans. Twixt worked hard to generate hate, he was not simply an innocent victim.
The actual paper mentions that kill logs and transcripts of sessions were posted on the boards to answer claims that certain events (victories, statements, etc.) never happened. I can’t speak to which, here, is true.
Chalk that one up to the NOLA article more than the underlying paper. Myers does tout his abilities a bit (I don’t assume that everything he says is objective truth here), but he doesn’t brag about it quite to the level that the NOLA author does.
The point here was not to determine whether “people get upset when you’re mean to them,” but the intersection between “natural” rules (in this case, the controllable and discernible game rules) and “social” rules (in this case, the folks who preferred certain PvP styles, or who preferred to farm in RV than fight their opponents). In this case, Myers’ conclusion is that social rules need not be based on the expectations of the milieu or what the “natural” laws allow — and, in fact, were directly opposed to them (insert Garfinkeling and Ethnomethodology gibberish here).
Or, alternately, if a given neighborhood decides that the curbs (marked for parallel parking but not enforced by the city) are better used for turn-in parking rather than parellel — or as a place for a street vendor to set up that’s not on the sidewalk — they would get ticked off if someone insisted on parallel parking nonetheless.
I’ll be interested in hearing more about the book. I think there’s some value here if it is actually solidly framed as sociological research. If it’s just a bitch session about “how I played this really cool character, but the Internets were against me,” then it’s no more useful than, say, Sarah Palin.
That was a pretty good representation of one of the more lucid comments against Myers at the Nola site, Jae. I don’t think it addresses what Myers was trying to research or what he found, but it’s better than some of the other, less pleasant notes there.
And thanks for the invite, Jae — we tend to be sporadic and ad hoc enough about our gameplay that we don’t end up doing very much teaming up with others any more (just ask the equally inviting Arty), but it’s good to see a polite invitation that isn’t “BOSS FARM TEAM LFM INTRSTD PST?”
Prof Myers discusses the reaction to the article ( http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/hmmm-a-doodle/ ). He says …
… and links here. Woot!
Of course, I didn’t write what I did to curry Dr Myers’ favor, but I’m glad I’m not completely off-base in my understanding of his study.
I would love to see what would have happened on Virtue.
Interestingly enough, the latest entry in Prof. Myers’s blog that ***Dave links to above says that he did play, at least some, on Virtue:
Twixt visited a total of four servers. While the total time of observation was approximately 14 months, Twixt spent only about 50-150 hours inside RV on each server. The rest of the time was spent, after his initial activity on the Champion server, leveling and preparing and transferring (when available) similar Twixt characters. The least amount time was spent on Virtue, then Infinity, then Champion, and the most amount of time was spent playing on Freedom, the most populous server.
http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/twixt-stressing-it-further/
I started my CoX career by soloing almost exclusively while I learned the game, then I branched out to more teaming for a while, but as the various social rules of teams began to wear on me (as they were contrary to some of my perferred play styles; most notably my use of Knockback which CoX teams are notoriously unfriendly towards) I started to solo almost exclusively again.
I do some PvP as well, but probably less than 10% of the time. I find the social rules of the PvP zones (especially RV) to be very tiresome. I simply want to defeat my opponents, and it’s incredible how much social pressure there is to mitigate or even abandon that goal in a variety of situations (especially “duels”, badge hunters and pillbox farmers).
That sounds very much like that Twixt found in RV.
Myers lists me as “More Neutral” on the overall kerfuffle. http://dmyersloyola.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/just-some-twixt-related-links/
There is an update on this gentleman’s situation.
Apparently a few well-placed words, both to Loyola University and to NCSoft stopped this person’s book deal cold. Denying him the fruits of his unethical labors.
Ah. Very cool update. Thanks.