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=LLzcV2zq7gAAnxaZScNqEWNg

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