The elusive yes-first game.
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@Arkandel If you can't read the specific things you wrote that I quoted in my response then I think we can hang it up here.
@Misadventure Players are never helpless, especially so in games. All it takes is clicking exit.
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@Alzie said:
@Misadventure Players are never helpless, especially so in games. All it takes is clicking exit.
This is still more than a bit overly simplistic.
It isn't really 'click exit', it's 'potentially scrap a character you may have been playing for years and otherwise have excellent experiences on because a specific individual can't behave maturely enough to leave you alone'.
If it was as simple as 'click exit', this hobby would have substantially less angst-ridden bullshit in it than it does.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said:
@Alzie said:
@Misadventure Players are never helpless, especially so in games. All it takes is clicking exit.
This is still more than a bit overly simplistic.
It isn't really 'click exit', it's 'potentially scrap a character you may have been playing for years and otherwise have excellent experiences on because a specific individual can't behave maturely enough to leave you alone'.
If it was as simple as 'click exit', this hobby would have substantially less angst-ridden bullshit in it than it does.
That's not entirely true. It is as simple as click an exit, or type quit and hit enter.
Nothing lasts forever and these are games not life and death. They're really not. If something is happening you simply cannot handle, then quit is an option.
There's also the option of talking to staff, page locking, leaving situations with the person who is the problem, or trying to resolve that problem.
There are /other/ options, but quit is most definitely one of them.
Sometimes it's the only one left when a game has stopped being fun or entertaining.
Does it suck? Sure, it can, but in the end we have to be willing to let go of a character or it leads to even /more/ asshattery. Nothing lasts forever and if the time spent on a 'game' is more frustrating than fun, it's time to go imho.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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@Lithium said:
@surreality said:
@Alzie said:
@Misadventure Players are never helpless, especially so in games. All it takes is clicking exit.
This is still more than a bit overly simplistic.
It isn't really 'click exit', it's 'potentially scrap a character you may have been playing for years and otherwise have excellent experiences on because a specific individual can't behave maturely enough to leave you alone'.
If it was as simple as 'click exit', this hobby would have substantially less angst-ridden bullshit in it than it does.
That's not entirely true. It is as simple as click an exit, or type quit and hit enter.
Nothing lasts forever and these are games not life and death. They're really not. If something is happening you simply cannot handle, then quit is an option.
There's also the option of talking to staff, page locking, leaving situations with the person who is the problem, or trying to resolve that problem.
There are /other/ options, but quit is most definitely one of them.
Sometimes it's the only one left when a game has stopped being fun or entertaining.
Does it suck? Sure, it can, but in the end we have to be willing to let go of a character or it leads to even /more/ asshattery. Nothing lasts forever and if the time spent on a 'game' is more frustrating than fun, it's time to go imho.
Quit is definitely one of them, yes.
It is not, however, a solution without complications or consequences, which means it isn't a simple or flawless, catch-all solution as it's presented to be by @Alzie's statement that's being addressed by the comment.
I'm not suggesting that anything should last forever... anywhere, unless you're reading the notion of someone having invested a fair amount of time into something (as a factor that someone will likely weigh in on their decisions on how to handle the situation) as that person necessarily having some delusion that they can't be harmed or that a character will live forever. People, by virtue of basic human nature, don't tend to invest much time in something that has null value to them, and 'quit/discard' is not always going to be a universally satisfactory solution if the consequences of it mean sacrificing the sum of those efforts as it is being presented by @Alzie.
I'm also not saying that if things are more frustrating than fun, someone shouldn't leave -- in fact, I stated the direct opposite of this in the example.
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This may sound "defeatist" but I think rather it is pragmatic.
No, you cannot expect that adults will act "grown up." You cannot expect that in any other collection of people (ask and teacher, school organization member, retail/service worker, any kind of situation where people have to work collaboratively with another human being). Why in the hell does anyone expect the MUSHing community, with the semi-anonymous veil of the Internet, to be more mature and even keeled than people who have to work with and deal with each other in the flesh, where if you are going to say your bitchy thing it has to come from your mouth and you will see the impact in another's face and body immediately?
This is why I'm a huge advocate for clear, enforced rules of ooc and IC behavior. Having that framework helps immensely. Being loosey goosey just do whatever until we decide it's too much I think hinders the ability of any organization or community to be able to create an environment of freedom and creativity, oddly enough.
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@mietze Pretty much that exactly.
Suggesting that anyone with an issue just scrap their character and move on the moment someone is unable to behave themselves is not the answer.
That drives away players good and bad and leaves the person unable to demonstrate respect for others in their place.
This can certainly happen between two reasonable players, but that tends to be staggeringly rare. More often, one poorly socialized player with little respect for others instead drives a number of characters into retirement, sometimes with the players leaving the game outright along with them, sometimes clearing out factions or ruining spheres as they go.
See: Jeurg@HM; Rex@Reno for examples of the type.
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That being said (sorry for spelling/grammatical errors, I'm on my phone with a sick toddler laying on me, yay stomach flu), one doesn't have to be paternalistic about it either.
Simple, no-nonsense, and enforced. If you have the ooc down, then honestly I think a game runs better, regardless of possibility freedoms. Without it, you have the same old same old.
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I don't agree with @Arkandel in this whole thing to begin with. I think if we all could play together nicely, we would have done it by now. People become to invested, unwilling to back down, unwilling to compromise, and /that/ is why there needs to be rules.
Society has laws, not necessarily because they are good, but because they provide boundaries of what is acceptable, and what is not. Without those boundaries things quickly devolve into Lord of the Flies type situations.
Humans are cruel, we are vicious, we are wicked, and we care about ourselves more than others when taken as a whole. There are outliers, but really, Human Nature is pretty much the same as wild beasts (Look at Otters and Sea Lion pups, Sea Lions and Penguins, Dolphins, Killer Whales, etc).
Civilization, Society, all rules we have put into place to try and stem the tide of destruction that happens when humans meet other humans.
It doesn't work that well given the amount of murder and worse that is ongoing even today.
So why would anyone think this would be a utopia in a mush format? I have no idea. It's like a big hands of sign by the staff saying 'Do what you will.' and eventually people will be asshats enough that Staff will have to place down rules, they'll have to enforce them, and it'll end up just like every other mu* with enforced rules and staff interactions...
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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My games these days are pretty permissive. Not quite the yes-first utopia described in the opening, but what I've found through the years is that trying to list a billion rules to govern behavior just doesn't work. The good players feel constricted, and the bad players ignore and/or don't read the rules and have to be dealt with anyway.
That said, I think it's important to set limits on several key points. Others have outlined several already in terms of consent / FTB. Alts is another good example. The utopian view is "let people play what they want and it'll sort itself out". I thought that way myself until I saw how the departure of a once-active player with 4+ alts gutted my small game because so many characters had key relationships with theirs.
Chargen apps is another. I played on / ran a couple games where chars were allowed to hit the grid provisionally and were audited after the fact. Man what a disaster that was. Never again. I keep my chargen/app process VERY lightweight and ultra fast, but I've found that it's an essential gate for filtering out people who can't even clear the smallest thematic bar.
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My current idea re-chargen is to allow pretty much instant approval for 'side kick' level characters, or people just brand spanking new to their powers. Regular starter characters will require approval and backgrounds at least to an extent (Bullet points of important things or the like) but it'll mostly be a code thing if I get chargen going right.
Of course in the game I want to build/am building slowly I expect PK to be a thing and ICA=ICC to be enforced not just by staff, but by the players.
It'll be interesting to see how it works out.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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@Surreality If you are so attached to something intangible that you would rather put up with abuse than simply move on to another intangible thing then that's another problem all together. Amusingly, every time we have these arguments people always say that it's not as simple as hitting quit. The thing is, it legitimately is. Being abused online is not the same as being abused by another person physically face to face. Those situations are heads over hands different and when you say 'It's not as simple as leaving,' then you're right it isn't. However, in the case of an intangible thing on a game represented by nothing more than a line of text, there is no excuse. It IS as simple as never connecting again. You may not want to give up your investment, maybe you feel like you're getting the short end of the stick, but that's a cost-value decision you have to make yourself. Is the investment worth more than the abuse or is avoiding the abuse worth more than the investment? Nobody can make that decision for you, but don't give me that shit about it not being as simple as clicking exit, nobody is physically abusing you, there is no legitimate reason that you can't just leave.
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@Alzie said:
@Surreality If you are so attached to something intangible that you would rather put up with abuse than simply move on to another intangible thing then that's another problem all together. Amusingly, every time we have these arguments people always say that it's not as simple as hitting quit. The thing is, it legitimately is. Being abused online is not the same as being abused by another person physically face to face. Those situations are heads over hands different and when you say 'It's not as simple as leaving,' then you're right it isn't. However, in the case of an intangible thing on a game represented by nothing more than a line of text, there is no excuse. It IS as simple as never connecting again. You may not want to give up your investment, maybe you feel like you're getting the short end of the stick, but that's a cost-value decision you have to make yourself. Is the investment worth more than the abuse or is avoiding the abuse worth more than the investment? Nobody can make that decision for you, but don't give me that shit about it not being as simple as clicking exit, nobody is physically abusing you, there is no legitimate reason that you can't just leave.
The fact that games are smaller and the population has shrunk somewhat increases the turbidity of your proposal.
Perhaps it is just pessimistic on my part. Someone will probably mention the furry games and Shang and the MLP games; I'm not talking about them or their respective fandoms, all of which could power an indefinite number of MU* s.
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@Alzie said:
@Surreality If you are so attached to something intangible that you would rather put up with abuse than simply move on to another intangible thing then that's another problem all together. Amusingly, every time we have these arguments people always say that it's not as simple as hitting quit. The thing is, it legitimately is. Being abused online is not the same as being abused by another person physically face to face. Those situations are heads over hands different and when you say 'It's not as simple as leaving,' then you're right it isn't. However, in the case of an intangible thing on a game represented by nothing more than a line of text, there is no excuse. It IS as simple as never connecting again. You may not want to give up your investment, maybe you feel like you're getting the short end of the stick, but that's a cost-value decision you have to make yourself. Is the investment worth more than the abuse or is avoiding the abuse worth more than the investment? Nobody can make that decision for you, but don't give me that shit about it not being as simple as clicking exit, nobody is physically abusing you, there is no legitimate reason that you can't just leave.
You really just... utterly fail to see the real flaws in this logic.
Someone doing nothing wrong should not have to trash their efforts -- in any respect -- because someone else is doing something inappropriate.
You're also seemingly blind as to how this actually encourages and fosters abusive behavior on games, as what you're saying is that the target of inappropriate behaviors should simply go away, and nothing should be done to the person who is actually behaving inappropriately.
It sends the following message: if you behave wretchedly enough to someone you dislike, you can force them off the game, and if they don't leave, it is entirely OK to continue to behave abusively toward them, and abusive behavior is totally acceptable.
That is simply beyond astonishingly stupid and damaging to a game on the whole, and sooner or later, you're left with nothing but abusive assholes on your game.
If that's not what you want your game environment to be? You do, actually, need some basic codes of behavior on a game, and authority figures to enforce them.
It is the abusive behavior that is not OK, here, ffs.
Oh fucking well.
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http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
Ignore the awkwardly 1990's phrasing (cyberspace [wince]). It's a fundamental part of what is being discussed here, I think.
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@Cirno said:
There's actually a whole book on that now, I think. I half recall hearing about it many moons ago, anyway.
But the situations I'm talking about aren't what I would at least personally consider to be abusive on the part of the target -- as in, "I just don't feel like my character should have to be intimidated no matter how big the other guy's dice are" or "but I wanted that position, too, and it's not fair he won the vote and not me!"
The situations I'm talking about are more like this:
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Z takes a look at B's wiki page, and decides the PB is hot, they want TS. Z starts using +where and other OOC means to constantly show up wherever B is and push this agenda out of the blue. B is not into this and is already leaving scenes wherever possible to avoid Z, who simply will not stop and has escalated to creepy pages and OOC comments, and won't stop doing that either after being told it's unwelcome. Once B pagelocks, Z continues the pursuit with another alt -- repeatedly.
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Q is new to the game, and her ambitions are to become Prince. C is already Prince, and has been around for a long time and invested time and effort organizing the faction and puts in time to make sure they create RP for others, STs often, and has always played fair. C is generally well-liked and considered fair and a benefit to the sphere. Q decides to start a whisper campaign OOC, making a number of false claims about C in hopes that OOC anger and upset over their crazy stories will get C ousted from the spot so she can claim it.
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D is constantly abusive on channels, and drives people off of them in droves. They pursue anyone leaving the channel in pages to continue to mock and deride them for leaving the channel and not listening to their crazy ranting. Newbie Y asks if this is the norm for the game channels, and starts getting the worst of it, and is pursued to further the OOC harassment through any means D has available.
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H's girlfriend, N, breaks up with him IC. H promptly goes to the wiki and defaces the wiki pages of N and everyone on her contacts list.
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J pages every female character on the game with explicit and lewd propositions and won't stop when told no, and continues this behavior with his alts if pagelocked. If they ever are in OOC areas, he insults them and calls them whores.
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M really hates that one splat. She cannot ever shut the fuck up about how much that splat is full of cheaters and horrible people and you'd have to be terrible to ever play in that splat. Any time she comes across a player in that splat on grid, her OOC dislike of the character type causes her to behave in an aggressive manner toward the other character until it is unplayable or her OOC negativity makes the players miserable. She has driven half the splat sphere off of their characters already with this behavior, and since she's been thus far successful, chooses to redouble her efforts to wipe out the rest.
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V is the prima donna of Public Faction. She does not want any other female characters to steal away her attention in Public Faction, so any time another female character joins, she goes out of her way to sabotage the other player's experience OOC through rumor-mongering and bullying.
Other than the wiki example, I've seen all of this shit go down first hand. Every bit of it is actively damaging to a game, and none of it is 'fair play'. All of it is deliberate and the people doing it know damned well it's at the very least, Not The Right Thing To Do.
If you want your games made up entirely out of these people, yes, absolutely, 'If somebody does something you don't like, leave the game and never come back' is the perfect solution for you to suggest for the players who are the targets of these behaviors.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said:
@Cirno said:
There's actually a whole book on that now, I think. I half recall hearing about it many moons ago, anyway.
From what I understand, the author now teaches classes about it and is a certified degree-wielder.
@surreality said:
- Z takes a look at B's wiki page, and decides the PB is hot, they want TS. Z starts using +where and other OOC means to constantly show up wherever B is and push this agenda out of the blue. B is not into this and is already leaving scenes wherever possible to avoid Z, who simply will not stop and has escalated to creepy pages and OOC comments, and won't stop doing that either after being told it's unwelcome. Once B pagelocks, Z continues the pursuit with another alt -- repeatedly.
- J pages every female character on the game with explicit and lewd propositions and won't stop when told no, and continues this behavior with his alts if pagelocked. If they ever are in OOC areas, he insults them and calls them whores.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't get these people.
I have never had a raging passion to TS on games that aren't TS games. It never even occurs to me. I've had people giggle at me for being strict about it, especially when the wizzes allow TS on a game that isn't a TS game, but even if the wizzes turn a blind eye, I don't really like doing that sort of thing on Non-TS games.
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@surreality No one is suggesting that the person being abused did anything wrong. Nor is anyone suggesting that the abuser is doing anything right or that they shouldn't be the ones leaving. What I am suggesting is that if you are being abused, in this medium, you have the power to stop that abuse. As I said, it's a cost value decision you yourself have to make. The fact of the matter is that if we could eliminate abusive assholes from our hobby then they wouldn't exist, because nobody wants abusive assholes. There isn't anyone out there that goes 'You know what this needs, some abusive assholes.'
The only message anyone is sending here, myself included, is that you can complain about the abuse or you can leave, because unlike those facing abuse from real people they see every day, you actually hold the power to systematically sever all ties to the abuse by doing nothing more than clicking a button.
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History has shown that the more times a female player cries harassment, the more she is distanced from, even if the harassment was valid. I know plenty of female players who keep quiet about the people who are harassing them, as they have no want to seem like they're causing drama. If they can't game while dealing with it, they move on, or somehow find a way to tolerate it.
I think @Lithium is right. If we were really all going to get along and played fair, we would have found a way to do it by now.
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@Ghost said:
History has shown that the more times a female player cries harassment, the more she is distanced from, even if the harassment was valid. I know plenty of female players who keep quiet about the people who are harassing them, as they have no want to seem like they're causing drama. If they can't game while dealing with it, they move on, or somehow find a way to tolerate it.
I think @Lithium is right. If we were really all going to get along and played fair, we would have found a way to do it by now.
It's easy enough to deal with obvious harassers, the ones who write all sorts of filth that's easy to log and send in to staff as proof. The situation that's commonly recurring and really hard to deal with is when the harasser is being deliberately manipulative against the victim in a way that's difficult to prove which leads to the victim becoming emotionally distraught and starts talking crap about the harasser all over the game.
That leaves the Staff of the game forced to deal with a situation where shitty rumors being spread and the game atmosphere being poisoned and the only obvious solution is to boot the victim because they're the one making everyone feel miserable.
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@Lithium said:
Nothing lasts forever and these are games not life and death. They're really not. If something is happening you simply cannot handle, then quit is an option.
Of course leaving is the ultimate option but it's hardly a solution from a game-runner's perspective. If you were a Storyteller, you had some people at your table having fun and one of them was an asshat causing another player to leave just to not be the target of that obnoxiousness, you just lost a good person and still have a crappy one in your hands. That's a lose/lose proposition right there.
@Lithium said:
I don't agree with @Arkandel in this whole thing to begin with. I think if we all could play together nicely, we would have done it by now. People become to invested, unwilling to back down, unwilling to compromise, and /that/ is why there needs to be rules.
But we have. Just because the asshattery is so easy to notice - there are upset people, angry threads, etc - it doesn't mean it happens often. I frequently play for months before an iota of drama hits, it's not like games are packed with bad people. They are not, it's the occasional player who's either just bad at being around others or is caught under the wrong circumstances which cause the stupid to come out of them which makes things awkward.
I refuse to believe most players can't get along with each other. That we're all here barely able to function in a game and we're just waiting for a chance to ruin each other's fun. What makes things bad and compounds the issue is that when something iffy flares up staff historically try to stay away from it (it's a human response, trying to protect their own funtimes from being splattered with drama) instead of stomping on it early, to both make it stop when it's somewhat easy and to set an example before the behavior spreads and becomes a cultural issue. But this isn't by any means limited to the kind of game being discussed here - staff would have the same mandate and authority to intervene.
Do I disagree some people being abused may be worried about reporting it - for whatever reason - and we should figure out a better way to encourage them to seek assistance than a +policy entry or a wiki page? Of course not, I would love it if we could come up with a better system for it.
