News Flash: Griefing People Makes Them Angry

I read with some surprise about the professor who joined an MMO only to grief people to no end, and observe how they reacted to it. Fine, cruel way to treat people I guess since they had no choice of opting out of his “experiment”, but I’d accept that if he had some kind of point to make… so that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is the conclusions he comes to from this “work”.

Taste these:

“He 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.”

“Myers was stunned by the reaction, since he obeyed the game’s rules.”

“It started to not be fun,” said Myers, a video game aficionado. “I became the most hated, most reviled player.”

“He said his experience demonstrated that modern-day social groups making use of modern-day technology can revert to “medieval and crude” methods in trying to manipulate and control others.”

Someone actually grants funds for this nutcase? Hell, I could have told you all of those things at once, without the need to be a total dick to people for two years: There are social systems in any context that go above and beyond that of the rules and laws of the context. Yes, this goes for online communities as well. No, you wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that to someone if you weren’t online and anonymous.

I’d urge Mr. Myers to try it out AFK sometime. A subway train could be a good place, for instance (though I’m certainly open for other suggestions, these things are common). Place yourself in the middle of the doorway. Stand in the way of peolpe trying to enter or exit the train. If they move to sidestep you, follow to block the movement.

This is not illegal or against subway rules, but it will still make people really fucking angry. The social context tells you “don’t do that”, not because it causes people to become “medieval and crude” when they force their way past you violently, but because you’re being a real dick to people if you do.

People started out by asking kindly, but then stepped up their efforts to change his behavior as he ignored them. Like people under threat from abuse AFK, they first tried all the normal, appropriate ways of dealing with normal, reasonably sane people, but then had to go to extremes when this didn’t work.

This has nothing to do with him being a “stranger” (hint: everyone’s a stranger in an MMO), but with the fact that he was making their lives miserable to the best of his abilities.

In any game there will be things that are possible according to game rules, but forbidden due to social context. In Battlefield and other shooters, it’s spawn camping. In golf, it’s crossing another player’s line of putt on the green. In World of Warcraft, it’s ninjaing a target or piece of loot from other players. I could go on for a long time.

In the end, we come down to the simple fact that this guy gets paid for being a twat to people for two years, and tries to interpret it scientifically as some sort of bullying on their behalf.

There are plenty of interesting areas to research when it comes to games… games are still a young medium, and especially the social effects and interactions of MMOs are fascinating. So picking an area with slightly more relevance could be nice. Better teach this guy the basics of human psychology before letting him near another study, though.

The Classics

I spent last weekend at a LAN party. Some of my friends regularly arrange small LAN parties with 10-15 people, and this one was a good one with maybe 12 people who stayed there most of the weekend. Over the years, we’ve accumulated a bunch of games we always play, to the point where we play mostly the same (old) games every time. It’s a bit weird, really, and I’ve given it some thought.

I think one of the reasons is that there simply aren’t as many great LAN games being made any more. Most multi-player games tend to be aligned for Internet play, and as a result don’t work all that well locally. We played some Left 4 Dead this time, which is an awesome game for LAN as well as online (if you don’t have it — seriously, get it), but with the cap of 4 people for a campaign game that was sort of limited to the times where we had only a few people around, with most people choosing to go to bed or off to find a snack or whatever.

Another of the reasons I think causes this is, strangely, we buy more games. This seems counter-intuitive, as buying more games should mean having more games to play, but seeing as most games don’t play well together with pirated versions that means we can’t play games not everyone has. The result is that in general only one game will be a smash hit enough to have coverage at one of our LAN parties (The Orange Box did it for Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead did this time around as I mentioned).

Some older games came with functionality that countered this — Total Annihilation could be installed as a Multi-player Spawn version, and when you started a game only a certain number of people needed to play the “full version” (with the CD in the drive) — one CD for every 3 players I believe. Really, more games should do this for LAN play.

There’s also a number of classic games that are just outdated but still best in their genre — even some games that are hardly known, and some forgotten with time. The first game that caused this was Carmageddon II. We played that game through countless nights of hysterical laughter for a huge number of LAN parties, until at one point the game’s outdated code simply wouldn’t work with newer computers and operating systems (not a huge surprise, as it was IPX-based for multi-player). We’ve mourned the game since, to the point of trying to set up a dedicated network with dedicated computers only to play that game (which failed).

Another game that stuck around was Rune, which chances are you’ve never heard about. When I first played it at a LAN party it was already an aging game, and then later I managed to dig up a single online store that still sold it and the multiplayer version, Halls of Valhalla. We bought a stack of copies of both games, and we’re still playing it every party. No other melee fighting game has come close to the same kind of frenetic fighting feeling.

Operation Flashpoint has also stayed with us, regardless of the “sequel” Armed Assault which didn’t really add much to the game, but had significantly higher requirements. Flashpoint is the one and only game we play as a sort of large-scale co-op experience. The game engine is slow and looks sort of bad but the game play is unmatched anywhere else. The built-in map editor (despite all its quirks) has kept the game going. Far-out mods like LEGO models also help provide endless amounts of wicked fun.

One more game is actually the indie game Soldat. It’s a highly addictive, frenetic 2D side scrolling infantry combat game controlled simply with the mouse and WASD to move around.

I could go on for a long time. Total Annihilation held for so long I thought we’d never stop playing it, but eventually we did. Some of the Age of Empires games really rocked (we actually played AoE II this time as well). Flatout and then Flatout 2 are some of the nicest aggressive driving games out there (pale, in comparison to Carmageddon II, but still). We played  the Trackmania games for a long long long time, though now I seem to be the only one who still loves it. We played Battlefield 1942, Desert combat, Galactic Conquest, BF: Vietnam, Battlefield 2, and Battlefield 2142 for a number of LAN parties.

The new stuff this time around came mainly from mods. I found this wonderfully wicked steam mod called D.I.P.R.I.P. Warm Up which is another version of the whole “Car with guns” theme, extremely well implemented with the wonderfully entertaining Uranium Run and Destruction (bombing) game modes. It seems to lack a following currently — it was a blast to play, but the most I ever saw was two servers up.

Of course, Battlefield Heroes is coming along nicely, but without the ability to easily play with friends it isn’t ready for a LAN party… yet. Still, it’s a great game for all those little periods of time where there was nothing in specific going on, and I think some of the guys got seriously hooked.

I wish some of those games were still available for people to try them out. Regardless of the lack of fancy graphics, some games are still the best games around. Also, suggestions for more games and mods to try appreciated!

A Peek

It’s been a busy week preparing for some presentations at work, so I haven’t had much time to post here… and now I’m at a LAN party, so I’m not going to spend much time writing — need to get back to fragging.

Anyway, the debut trailer is up for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. What do you think?

Give Me Some Emotion, Maestro

I left work today after a very long day (crunch time), hit play on my iPod and was rewarded with the soundtrack from The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian. It’s kind of interesting to walk around the world listening to a soundtrack. Sometimes it doesn’t fit together with what you’re doing, but sometimes things just click together to amplify the emotional response of what you’re doing immensely. Music is incredibly powerful that way, and getting a triumphant section of The Kings and Queens of Old playing just as I found what I needed in an aisle in the grocery store can make a tired heart soar over such a mundane thing.

Skilled movie makers quickly understood the power music has in conveying and guiding emotions. Watching any movie would be rather flat and boring if you didn’t have the powerful background music to the fights, the dramatic music to the partings and the eerie music building up to something grand. The best movies with the most powerful music have composers be a part of the movie-making process, tailoring the score to the pictures shown, matching and enhancing the drama of the scenes.

Games developers don’t seem to have understood. Music is usually an afterthought, and even when it’s an integral part of the identity of a product, it’s still something that’s a separate entity from the game itself. Even the games with much heralded “dynamic music” generally only have a simple “fade in music when action starts” or “fade between two soundtracks when action level changes”.

I applaud the effort of identifying the action and making the music somewhat respond to that, but the music itself is still a separate entity from the game. The games I’ve seen the most with dynamic music have been strategy games, which is something of a genre that otherwise struggles with emotional content, since it’s by nature far removed from the actual humans or creatures involved. Zelda: The Wind Waker is supposedly good with it, but I actually haven’t played it due to lack of hardware.

I think this is one big reason that games are seen as lacking the emotional power of movies. In its current form, game music conveys not much else than “excitement” and “non-excitement” corresponding directly to “action” and “calm”, causing a rather flat level of emotion. We lack the various degrees of joy, sadness, fear, buildup, triumph and disaster.

Some would claim that this is because we focus so heavily on war as a subject… but anyone who says so clearly hasn’t seen Band of Brothers.

I believe we need invite the musicians and composers in. It’s time for composers to become first-class citizens of the gaming world, to adapt the concept of music to the games just like soundtracks are an adaptation of music to movies. Games are not linear, and as such the music can’t be linear either, and that requires us to take on composers not only to write a soundtrack or theme to the game as if it was a movie, but to work in development of actual in-game music, taking shape as the game takes shape.

It’s up to us as game developers to identify the mood of the game — but we need to get composers on-board to actually make musical pieces that fit that mood. The first truly emotional, triumphant computer game battle victory can only happen once that is in place.