Transcript Griefing in Virtual Worlds: Causes, Casualties and

Griefing in Virtual Worlds: Causes,
Casualties and Coping Strategies
Matthew Blakley
What is Griefing?
• A Griefer is a player in a multiplayer game who deliberately
irritates and harasses other players, using aspects of the game
in unintended ways
• This may include cursing, cheating, stealing, or unreasonable
killing
About the Author
• Thomas Chesney
– Professor at Nottingham University Business School
– His research examines peoples interaction with, and
reaction to, information systems
– BSc (Queen) PhD (Brunel) MSc (Edinburgh)
Griefing in Virtual Worlds
• Article focuses primarily on Second Life
• Main goals:
– To identify griefing behaviour in Second Life and examine similarities
and/or differences with behaviours seen in other contexts (school,
workplace, etc)
– Examine the perceptions of the victims on the impact of such
behaviour
– To assess why it happens and how to
combat it
– Look for who the likely
targets/perpetrators are
• Griefing in a virtual world differs from bullying or abuse because normally
the griefing is both not present and won’t know the identity of the victim
• The victim can end the grief at any time by disconnecting, going to
another room, playing privately
• However this means the victim won’t have access to the world, or that
part of the world
– May not have access to the avatar they’re using for fear of being victim
to the griefer
– Can hurt their reputation
• What’s considered griefing can vary from game to game,
many times determined by unwritten rules
• In some instances killing another player is allowed, whereas in
others it may be deemed unacceptable, despite being given
the option to by the developers
– Team killing, or friendly fire is an example of this
– Continuously killing the same player over and over can also be
considered Griefing
• Chesney uses the “Big Six” community rules from Second Life
as a somewhat broad example of what defines as griefing in
most games
– Intolerance: to belittle or deframe an individual or groups
– Harassment: communication offensively with threats, sexual advances,
etc.
– Assault: the equivalent of real world abuse in Second Life, to push
another player
– Disclosure: sharing information about a user
– Indecency: swearing, depiction of nudity in PG zone
– Disturbing the peace: examples include repetition of sound over
microphone, placing objects to intentionally slow servers down
• http://youtu.be/neTTQLbmhcA?list=LLzcV2zq7
gAAnxaZScNqEWNg
Casualties
• 13 year old Ryan Halligan took his own life after being
cyberbullied, a form of griefing
• 21 year old Shaun Woolley shot himself, some believe due to
events that occurred on Everquest
• Authorities in China have limited play time in virtual worlds
because of a murder over the theft of a virtual sword
Second Life Focus Group and
Observation Sessions
• With the help of his colleagues,
Chesney started both a focus group
to survey players and also observed
the Second Life community to try
and witness griefing
• During the observation sessions, all
of the “Big Six” were witnessed.
Examples being two residents with
swastikas on their chests talking
about how much other races
offend them, someone dressed up
as a monkey mocking Americans,
and an object was stuck to a user
which they couldn’t remove that
said “banana phone” every few
seconds
• During the focus group sessions a total of 14 participants were
surveyed
• When on the topic of griefer motivation, most found that they
do so because:
– Driven by need to assert power (victims to bullying in real life tend to
be weaker, here the weakness translate to their lack of knowledge of
the game, which griefers take advantage of)
– Mixed perceptions and attitudes to playing the game
– See it as a safe environment to grief; no consequences
Conclusion
• Chesney deems that there is a shared responsibility for combating griefing
between the developer, the community, and the individual
• All three focus groups felt Lindin Lab should take a lead in controlling
griefing
• The individual should apply coping strategies in the same way one would
in real life when dealing with bullying. Leaving the room, reporting the
user, etc.
• Acknowledges the limitation of the study due to only looking at Second
Life, not all virtual worlds can be represented this way