Spying on players

Thenomain

@Thenomain said:

I think this kind of code is worth exploring, and since it's public I don't think it counts as "spying".

I concur that this is not spying, but for what reason was such code popular? I cannot wrap my head around why anyone would use it.

The people who played on and enjoyed Aether were very much writer types. To me, they're the kinds of people who take every log ever and post them to a wiki, or binge-read wiki logs for the experience. Many of them were students or desk-jockeys who can't always take time out to engage, so this allowed them to keep in touch without having to put their character out there.

These are largely educated guesses, but whatever the reason it worked.

Cobalt

@Thenomain said:

Supervising RP used to be okay until it became spying on players.

This didn't take very long in the hobby, either.

I started on a game with fully coded obfuscate (and auspex), and one with coded cameras for public places (like elysia). The idea of someone having a camera in a place on a doesn't really bother me. I'd prefer it if that didn't catch OOC comments as well, but again-- in public places such as Elysia or hangouts it doesn't bother me too much.

Nor does the idea of staff logging what goes on in say an OOC room. As long as staff aren't going out of their way to read player pages between each other, or go into private builds to watch private RP, I don't really care.

Arkandel

@Cobaltasaurus raises a good point. How do we feel about IC spying? Literally, a character sneaking into places while unseen OOC to witness what happens in them?

For the sake of argument let's assume that while using Obfuscate you can't see OOC comments, only poses and say's, and of course that if you are caught at it you can't say you were only present OOC.

Ganymede

@Arkandel

I'm ambivalent.

As staff, I should be able to ask a player what their PC is doing during the period on which another is spying on them, and expect to be given a truthful answer. As another player, if I choose to spy on someone, I would like to think they would do the same. Maybe we go through some rolls to see if I'm successful or not, or not if we can agree on it.

Thenomain

I feel that if we held people more accountable for their behaviors, we wouldn't be bothered by any amount of spying. The trusting/trustworthy thing again. I am an optimist, which explains my depression.

Arkandel

@Ganymede said:

As staff, I should be able to ask a player what their PC is doing during the period on which another is spying on them, and expect to be given a truthful answer. As another player, if I choose to spy on someone, I would like to think they would do the same. Maybe we go through some rolls to see if I'm successful or not, or not if we can agree on it.

One of the issues there is timing. When we're on the grid (theoretically) we're doing Important Things. It's when we play having those hush-hush plots to overthrow the Prince, make under the table political deals or whatever the hell. So if you're Obfuscated, following me around while I'm involved in such shennanigans that's what you'll get to spy upon.

If staff-you asks me "what were you doing between 1 am and 2 am yesterday?" I'm not ... honestly sure what I could say. Was my character plotting? Or was he in a taxi going downtown to catch a movie? Or just sitting in a room reading Twilight?

It's not necessarily cut and dried about being truthful. Now if we wanted to discuss players actually trusting their own staff to make their IC lives more interesting by actually giving them the tools to do so then I'd quite agree with you.

Roz

One of the things I don't understand: there's been a lot of talk of people liking staff being Dark to watch things for the purposes of spontaneous plot. But why exactly do they have to be Dark to do this?

Apos

@Arkandel said:

@Cobaltasaurus raises a good point. How do we feel about IC spying? Literally, a character sneaking into places while unseen OOC to witness what happens in them?

For the sake of argument let's assume that while using Obfuscate you can't see OOC comments, only poses and say's, and of course that if you are caught at it you can't say you were only present OOC.

I think you can avoid most abuse cases if you implement it with a significant chance to fail and also do not inform the spy that they have failed, where success just makes the person dark and they can't tell if they aren't dark. I saw that implementation and I never saw any abuse cases, though I did see some hilarious results from failures.

Apos

@Roz said:

One of the things I don't understand: there's been a lot of talk of people liking staff being Dark to watch things for the purposes of spontaneous plot. But why exactly do they have to be Dark to do this?

They don't, it's just more immersive if they aren't. Same reason I dislike people ever discussing RP with me in advance, or ever talking to me in OOC to arrange a scene. I just don't do it if I can help it.

AmishRakeFight

@Roz said:

One of the things I don't understand: there's been a lot of talk of people liking staff being Dark to watch things for the purposes of spontaneous plot. But why exactly do they have to be Dark to do this?

One more innocuous reason is that player behavior does tend to change in front of staff members, in and out of character. As with all things, not everyone but a fair amount. And this is for a number of reasons, which most of the time, sort of boil down to feeling self-conscious or nervous about the content or quality of your RP.

It's weird because while RP with other PCs is essentially performative, everyone's participating. When staff are there and you know they're there, you've got an audience and for some, they start moderating their behavior. I think it's sorta similar to 'driving polite' when you suddenly find yourself with a cop tooling around behind you. He's not interested in you and you're not doing anything wrong, but you are suddenly more likely to use your turn signal, keeping both hands on the wheel, and avoiding reaching for your phone to scroll to the next podcast.

So for some staff who do this, they're just trying to keep it organic and un-self conscious.

And then there are some players who do absolutely, knowingly modify their PC actions and reactions because if they act the way they normally act, they're more bound to attract staff imposed IC consequences. So, they dial down their 'Being A Dick' factor to a 4 instead of their usual 9 to up the chances they'll slide under the radar, even though most of the time staff is pretty aware of it already.

Thenomain

@AmishRakeFight said:

One more innocuous reason is that player behavior does tend to change in front of staff members, in and out of character.

But why?

If this can be addressed, maybe the rest will seem more like a bandaid?

AmishRakeFight

@Thenomain said:

@AmishRakeFight said:

One more innocuous reason is that player behavior does tend to change in front of staff members, in and out of character.

But why?

If this can be addressed, maybe the rest will seem more like a bandaid?

Maybe?

I guess you first have to determine that you have an actual problem. If staff are monitoring @mailboxes, eaves dropping on pages, darkwatching private grid spaces on the off chance that they might see a savory bit of grist, and reading +jobs that they're not cc'ed on just to be inappropriate and creepy, that's an actual problem. That's a level of unacceptable we can all agree is deservedly extinction level event in terms of allowing that staff regime or maybe even the game to continue.

But much of the time, while nebulously strange and uncomfortable, its not really a problem. (ETA for clarity because otherwise this sounds like I'm advocating the above.) It's not really a problem, I mean, if its taking place on a public grid square. At least to me, its really not if there's an awareness of staff presence to observe something or not.

People as human animals moderate their behavior in front of authority figures . The way we behave in front of our boss is differently moderated than the way we behave with the people we hang out with at the bar on Friday nights. While some of this a conscious choice (like boss v. bar friends), for a lot of people there is not a lot of awareness that they're editing behavior based on who is present, most especially when this person is not a peer.

Put another way:

I currently play on a game where there's a dude who is in deep abiding love with his sword. I mean, not really, its not a character affectation that's meant to be twee or cooky. He just drags this damn sword all over the place, often into mundane and public IC spaces where walking into a bar with sword should rightfully make people freak the fuck out. Generally, when staff aren't around, he's pretty into pulling his sword everywhere and on everything regardless if its necessary or wise. Often its neither and other PCs sensibly tell him off IC for it.

If a staff member is not present for scenes, his normal response is to get super butthurt IC and bails. If staff are present, that sword gets pulled a lot less frequently and there's a whole lot less butthurt bolting. I'm pretty confident the player has no self-awareness of the degree to which his behavior moderates when staff is around.

Cirno

@AmishRakeFight said:

I currently play on a game where there's a dude who is in deep abiding love with his sword. I mean, not really, its not a character affectation that's meant to be twee or cooky. He just drags this damn sword all over the place, often into mundane and public IC spaces where walking into a bar with sword should rightfully make people freak the fuck out.

You should tell me where this game is so I can roll Zastaraya there. She would get along splendidly with him.

And by 'get along splendidly', I mean she would probably try to kill him.

http://musoapbox.net/topic/672/characters-what-keeps-you/21

She is the last character at the bottom of this post. The one in the sling-style swimsuit.

AmishRakeFight

He'll die literally humping your PC's leg, @Cirno

Cirno

@AmishRakeFight said:

He'll die literally humping your PC's leg, @Cirno

That's exactly what I'm aiming for.

Arkandel

@Thenomain said:

@AmishRakeFight said:

One more innocuous reason is that player behavior does tend to change in front of staff members, in and out of character.

But why?

I think it's closer to how we behave in front of a camera. Even things we do very naturally on our own are done differently when we are being observed.

Ganymede

@Arkandel

I don't see any timing issue, unless players are limited to spying via an Obfuscate Code.

I find little difference between a request for information via spying and a request for information via investigation into a PC's background. I see no burden in asking the target PC's player for that information, and, if there is an impasse, seeking staff intervention to, as you put it, make everyone's IC lives a little more interesting.

We want to be able to trust staff to handle conflicts, but if we cannot trust fellow players to be trustworthy and cooperative then we have other, deeper issues to contend with.

Arkandel

@Ganymede said:

@Arkandel

I don't see any timing issue, unless players are limited to spying via an Obfuscate Code.

I don't see how you don't see the timing issue. I explained it above, how did it fail to meet your criteria?

To give an actual example, back on HM I had a couple of players spying on me. I don't know - to this day - just what means they were using but staff asked me a couple of times to detail what my character was doing "between 4 am and 5 am last night". I had no honest idea, so I erred on the side of caution and assumed a scene I actually had two days earlier happened in that time frame so that my answer wouldn't sound like a cop out ('Theo was watching cartoons on the TV').

Spying on a character in real time - i.e. while scenes are actually taking place - doesn't have that issue. I'm not saying it's hands down the best way to go at it, since for instance you should be able to spy on me even if our RL timezones don't match, but it's still a thing.

We want to be able to trust staff to handle conflicts, but if we cannot trust fellow players to be trustworthy and cooperative then we have other, deeper issues to contend with.

We do other, deeper issues to contend with. Neither Obfuscate code nor staff +jobs can fix those, unfortunately.

Ganymede

@Arkandel said:

I don't see how you don't see the timing issue. I explained it above, how did it fail to meet your criteria?

You could meet the criterion of actually raising a timing issue to start with.

To give an actual example, back on HM I had a couple of players spying on me. I don't know - to this day - just what means they were using but staff asked me a couple of times to detail what my character was doing "between 4 am and 5 am last night". I had no honest idea, so I erred on the side of caution and assumed a scene I actually had two days earlier happened in that time frame so that my answer wouldn't sound like a cop out ('Theo was watching cartoons on the TV').

First, "I'm not sure" is an answer, and a reasonable one. Second, most methods of spying have some sort of resistance or contested roll. Third, the players could have, and should have, come to you first.

In fact, that would have been my approach as staff. Like this:

Spy: I want to spy on Arkandel. I'm using my Goggles of Google to do it. What do I roll?
Me: Did you tell Arkandel that you intended to do so?
Spy: No. I don't want him to know I'm doing it.
Me: Well, not knowing what Arkandel has been doing or what protections he might have against spying, I cannot advise you as to what to roll. Maybe you should talk to him about it first?
Spy: But I don't want him to know!
Me: Too bad. His PC won't know, but you could save yourself time by just going to the source.
Spy: You're missing the point.
Me: No, I'm not. I understand your point. If you don't trust Arkandel to not mix OOC and IC awareness, then what makes you think you can believe anything he tells me about his PC's activities?
Spy: Uhh ...

Like that.

Arkandel

@Ganymede Alright, fair point.