Dibbell once again opens our eyes to a new concepts in the online gaming world; griefers. We have discussed many different attacks on people in such worlds as Second Life and LamdaMOO, but we really have not touched on what these people are referred to. Dibbell, in her Wired article, defines griefers as, “as online version of the spoilsport – someone who takes please in shattering the world of play itself.” She then goes into saying that just because these griefers look to ruin your online experience, this does not necessarily mean that they hate the online world; they are just looking to get a rise out of the user and piss them off enough to accomplish their task.
Dibbell talks how griefing was started in the early 90s when it was used in such games as Counter-Strike. Teammates would kill each other with fragmentation grenades and kill other players that were much weaker than them. This goes to show that this type of behavior in the gaming world has been around for almost two decades now. It reminds me a bit of playing Halo with my roommates and neighbors. We usually attack those players that our weak, and when we are pissed off at a teammate for playing like crap, we turn on them and kill them, even if it means hurting the teams overall performance.
I believe this is where the discussion can be made on when griefing is going to far. The Patriotic Nigras, or the PN, have notoriously been known to cause havoc in Second Life. We watched some videos in class and the Dibbell article also talks about some of their attacks. A great video on YouTube shows some of these attacks in the past. I mean I understand that some of these attacks are meant to be funny, but when you are ruining the game play for other users then you are just being annoying and abusing your powers. In the example of my roommates and me playing Halo, when we go after each other for being weaker or killing our own players it is all in good fun, we all start a new game and continue playing like nothing happened. What PN and other groups are doing is creating an environment where others can’t enjoy their Second Life experience. I don’t know how far I can take my point or clarify it, because I myself have never been targeted in one of these attacks, nor have I even played Second Life. When you are causing servers to crash and accounts to be messed up I believe that you are taking things too far, and in some cases causing real life monetary damages (i.e. in the case of a server crashing). When you grief just to have some fun and be a “spoilsport” all within a reasonable limit, I believe this is just fine, but when it goes beyond this and into the realm of just being annoying, you have crossed the line.
1 comment:
I completely agree with your post. There is a fine line that needs to be drawn when griefing is being taken too far. Causing monetary damages and crashing servers is definitely taking things too far. At this point it’s going past being obnoxious. It’s going past the internet is serious business. I found an article that showed an incident that took griefing too far. In this, griefers attacked an epilepsy foundation, posting flashing GIFS and links with flashing patterns and lights. This caused people with epilepsy to have migraines and seizures. At this point, griefers took things too far. It is not fun and games anymore when they cause serious harm to people. It is much different to goof around and do small attacks, but when it comes to actually inflicting harm on someone, that is disgusting and needs to be stopped.
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