@Derp Someone claims to be a catgirl in an emote, staff notices in the scroll-by of emotes, drops her an @mail that there's no catgirls so please cease & desist. Simple. I'm not proposing something far-fetched, plenty of games have staff watching the IC RP without any issues.
@L-B-Heuschkel Where's the complication in not approving catgirl apps in a Victorian setting? Like, if there are no hybrids in your setting, why approve one?
In terms of privacy, if you mean people RPing being a catgirl in private RP, that seems to be more of an argument for staff oversight than against it.
@Derp said in Privacy in gaming:
This seems like a discussion that could be spun off into another thing, rather than cluttering up here. @Arkandel! Do your thing and thready-splitty por favor!
To be fair, it's not actually a thread of conversation I'd like to continue outside of the aspect of whether or not privacy in terms of staff being able to see/monitor RP is a 'right' worth more than the benefits of such visibility.
@Derp I don't know where that came from so I didn't respond to it. I'd said 'making up theme on Discord and applying it to their characters, teaching it to newbies, who then make it part of their backstory because they don't know any better, and these misinformed newbies are now in-game spouting the nonsense they learned in your blind spot'.
@Derp said in Privacy in gaming:
Realistically? They're gonna do this one way or another. I can't police what someone wants to do in their private Discord sandbox. All I can do is make sure that when on the game itself, they adhere to the policies.
Actually, they're not. Not unless you've decided to let them. I've never seen any sort of egregious thematic breach on a game where staff is openly watching. This can likely be attributed to any number of factors, but one of them is certainly the idea that people care more about your theme, your rules, your expectations, and impressing you when they know you're watching and actually care about the story they are telling.
I know plenty of people love the idea of sandboxing in their little corner of a game, but a lot more like the idea of being seen and mattering, which is why people swarm staff characters and metaplot hooks, etc. Imagine if, to make people feel included and as if they matter, rather than having to hump staff's leg for a pat on the head, staff could just see their thematic conversation with a newbie in that bar that one time, and appreciate them for it.
"Do what you want in your own little corner without oversight."
Seems nice in theory, til you have a group of <insert special race/class/faction here> or whatever over there making up their own elaborate alternative history via Discord with the caveat 'this is just backstory stuff for our own interest' but then the group grows and they pull in new people and the line blurs and a year down the line you have an established <whatever> stating emphatically that they're the first person in their long family tree to speak <insert language every character speaks>. At that point, the mess is much bigger than smacking Bob and Jane's wrists for their dumb incest plot, it's a whole theme breach you had no idea about.
@Sunny I overreacted a bit as well, it's easy for a thread to lose the plot over small misunderstandings.
@Tinuviel said in Privacy in gaming:
"Just because" is a perfectly reasonable argument when it comes to how people feel. People will feel violated, just because. People will feel insulted, just because.
Totally, I just mean my own stance will never be changed via an argument of 'just because', even if it's well within your rights to feel the way you do.
@Sunny said in Privacy in gaming:
I was debating this as length last night with my partner (because of course I was), and what we came back to on this one is that it really boils down to a consent. I consented to let someone else read X; I did not consent for a different person to do so.
@Tinuviel said in Privacy in gaming:
@Sunny How the fuck did I forget the word consent?
@Pandora said in Privacy in gaming:
That is in essence my opinion, that staff having a policy of watching everything & doing so would not, in theory, be problematic for anyone with nothing to hide.
Emphasis mine; I am talking about staff watching everything while having informed everyone that this is in fact their policy to keep things in line or what have you.
@Sunny said in Privacy in gaming:
I guess that would make me wary of staff reading my stuff as well, if I was up to no good.
My apologies if this wasn't intended to imply that the objection is because people were up to no good.
Me. I was saying that, considering my lack of concern currently with being spied on by staff, I would likely not have that same lack of concern were I to engage in bad behavior. I'm not saying no one else is entitled to feel the way they feel, just being self-centered and talking about myself.
@Tinuviel said in Privacy in gaming:
@Pandora That does seem to read in a vein of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
That is in essence my opinion, that staff having a policy of watching everything & doing so would not, in theory, be problematic for anyone with nothing to hide. I'm perfectly aware that plenty of people who presumably have nothing to hide are more concerned with the principle of the thing; I don't understand why and haven't read any argument for it other than 'just because'.
@Sunny said in Privacy in gaming:
Privacy is valuable in and of itself. It might not have value to you, but to pretend that it only is valuable to anyone if they are misbehaving is inaccurate. Recognizing when other people have different values than you without immediately assuming those values are lesser is really helpful when having these sorts of conversations.
I'm sorry, but at what point did I say or insinuate that it doesn't have value to anyone? I was very clear that I was speaking my own opinion & asking for clarification of the opinions and stances of others, and I even deleted a post I made that read to me as if I was casting doubt on someone's perfectly valid personal preferences.
@mietze said in Privacy in gaming:
As a staffer I've had to deal with someone threatening to in essence blackmail someone with information/screenshots that looked as if they had been pulled by some sort of staff access (since the person was trying to threaten both parties and wasny involved).
But was this situation a result of staff being able to see the conversation, or was the third-party a non-staffer? Because if it was a non-staffer, then staff being allowed to see it wouldn't have changed the situation in any way.
But I get it, people are using PMs for conversations where it'd be much more intelligent to have off-game via a platform where you can erase your messages. I guess that would make me wary of staff reading my stuff as well, if I was up to no good.
What privacy is it that people are looking for?
The first one is the one that I would consider important, this is why I use a VPN, disposable email, etc. The second one I prefer if staff has access to, in no small part because theme creep annoys the ever-loving shit out of me and I find that nipping shit in the bud is so much more effective than having to steer the whole damn ship back on course after hitting the iceberg of bullshit. The third one I couldn't care less about because they're more for administrative purposes like arranging scene times/dates or filling people in on what they missed or talking about how the first episode of The Mandalorian was trash except for the last 10 seconds.
If it's not too much trouble, can someone give me an example from either the second or third category (or both if something comes to mind) of something you imagine that you or another hypothetical player would feel violated about if you found out staff had read it?
I don't expect privacy on a game. I expect staff to use the information gleaned ethically. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not doing anything on a telnet server that I'm ashamed of; my RP is fair, I'm not gaslighting anyone, my TS is bomb, my desire to create RP for others is genuine, and I damn sure am not the friendliest person so it's good in my opinion if staff can see I'm a good player despite loathing most other players. I think we've gotten so entrenched in 'PROTECTIN' MAH RIGHTS!' that people aren't really giving any thought to how (not)useful this so-called right is in the context of a GAME as opposed to real life.
Firan staff spied on people IC/OOC and used/abused the info they gleaned on their characters, as well as sharing 'funny' snippets of IC/OOC conversations with others. That's gross imo, crossing the line from watching-to-make-things-better to watching-to-make-things-worse.
Well, when I say spy, I mean 'watch what you're doing without being in the same grid space as you', not 'watch you without your knowledge'. I think in this day and age, it's not a huge leap to say that the owners of online spaces where people interact are taking on much more liability. Spying (with everyone's knowledge and consent) just seems to make good sense, cutting down on settling the entire burden of proof on victims' heads, or stopping cyberbullying in its tracks. If you want to rage against the machine (staff) do it on Discord. Or yenno, MSB. Not the server someone is gracious enough to allow you to log into for free.
I would love to know what people are doing on MUSHes that require such privacy. The worst I can think of is like, scandalously hot TS or something, but even then it's just erotic fiction, we've all been there, seen that. I'm not opining that it's bad to want privacy, not to worry. I'm just saying I find it curious and amusing & I know that when I'm SRing and people ask me to watch their RP, they tend to go above and beyond with their writing, storytelling, and player cooperation.
Many moons ago when I was a friendly, OOCly chatty rp-newbie, I had a roleplay partner that said if my character cheated on his with a specific character, they'd be over. I agreed. Time passed, my character fell more and more in love with this specific character. One thing led to another, she kissed her. I told my roleplay partner OOCly, he said he understood, quit the game and never spoke to me again.
This doesn't have to mean anything, I'm just saying I could still have a friend if I'd just kept it IC.
