next »

[FARTRON]

Actually, Bruce Sterling sent an intern back in time from 2043 to deliver his keynote for him.

Except for three kinds of people. They’re not fun people. They’re not even users. They’re abusers, you might say, because they don’t obey your rules.

First, gold farmers. Rip-off artists. The excluded. The black market. The pirates. Those are all the same guys. Same crowd. Invisible to you. They don’t want you to see them. And you don’t want to see them, either. Because they’re ugly, threatening parasites. But always there, always, from the very first days. They’re not accidents. They’re something important that you did not let yourselves recognize.

Second, griefers. Griefers have a game. They have entertainment. But it’s not your game. It’s their game, which is hate. Hatred and pain and sorrow and treachery and vandalism. Emotional involvement. The thrill of raw conflict. Grief. There are swarms of ‘em. Armies. They never travel alone.

Third—and these are the weird ones—the convergence culture people. They will play your game all right, but they play it while using six or seven other kinds of media. They don’t make any distinction between the media they use. They use the networks as a meta-medium. They don’t play the roles in your role-playing games.
...

 They’re not fun, these three kinds of people. Gold farmers are into greed, not fun. Griefers are into anti-fun. And metamedia are into meta-fun. They all exist outside your definitional box.

 And that’s why they ambush you and they beat on you. They’re not exactly your enemies, but they’re deeply alien to your chosen paradigm. So they have a kind of control over your destiny that you do not allow yourselves to have.

The only way to get ahead of them is to redefine yourselves as something that is not “computer entertainment.” Because their fun isn’t fun and their computers aren’t computers. They are cultural. They are more cultural than you. You’re an industry. They’re a culture. That’s why they kick your ass.

[Zaphos]

Man, Bruce Sterling is such a poor author and thinker.  It makes me sad.

What is he even going on about.  He is just rambling and trying to sound cool.

[Inane]

I disagree with you on the basis that I hate the same people as him :D

[Farbs]

[Don Andy]

I am not even sure what exactly he's talking about. MMOs? Games in general? Online games in general? It seems so out of context.

Doesn't this rant only apply for you when you make a game that can actually be farmed/griefed in? Which is like only the case for maybe 5% of the people here?

And for those Meta-fun types God invented casual games.

[Gainsworthy]

Agreeing with Inane here. Come on, we all bump into griefers occasionally. Even me, and I tend to stay away from this new fangled online stuff. And the fact that someone, somewhere is having their fun ruined by someone else's? Nasty.

Plus, Gold Farming is such a horrid concept. People are so freaking lazy they pay people to play their game for them? Not that I've ever played an MMO, 'cause it sounds like a chore to me.

As for the Meta-Gamers? Noooooooooo idea what they are. Someone care to explain?

[Don Andy]

As for the Meta-Gamers? Noooooooooo idea what they are. Someone care to explain?

They don’t play the roles in your role-playing games.

From his viewpoint apparently people that don't play the game like you want them to play it.

[Gainsworthy]

As in not going "FORSOOTH" at the end of your sentence? Or using radio-alphabet and military jargon whilst planning how next to shoot the Tango? Or would that be... the exact opposite? 

Get outta here!

[agj]

No, more like killing your allies if it will give you a strategic advantage, for instance, despite it being the incorrect choice within the game world's ethic. Basically, playing with the system instead of within it.

I don't know what the griefers are, though. Can anyone explain?

[Noyb]

No, more like killing your allies if it will give you a strategic advantage, for instance, despite it being the incorrect choice within the game world's ethic. Basically, playing with the system instead of within it.

I don't know what the griefers are, though. Can anyone explain?

Griefers are a type of meta-gamer whose goal is to piss off (cause grief to) as many people as possible in the game for their own enjoyment, winning and losing be damned. Like team-killers who do it just for a laugh, people who repeatedly kill and camp a low-level corpse in WoW or that one clan in TF2 that abused a glitch to trap their team in their spawn point until they answered a certain number of trivia questions correctly.

[agj]

that one clan in TF2 that abused a glitch to trap their team in their spawn point until they answered a certain number of trivia questions correctly.

That's awesome.

[dEnamed]

Yeah. That TF2 Stunt was griefing but oh dear I admit, I laughed my ass off seeing those two Videos.

@Topic:
I must admit, I didn't really get his point and didn't enjoy his style of writing. I read large parts of his "performance" and in the end just gave up. Yeah Griefers and Goldfarmers are bad so uh, thanks captain obvious? And Metagamers are usually called Exploiters or in a more friendly term "pro guilds and clans".
All three occurances are also logical reactions to certain factors of online games. Griefers are there because it is in the human nature to be a complete jerk. It's also human nature to thrive for Power. You pull certain strings and get instant reactions, you can control people through their own anger, albeit a bit limited but it's still power.
The other two things are both mostly caused by one thing: Competition. The Goldfarming is as rampant as it is because of the general thought that everyone can be as good as anyone else if only they invested enough time. Goldfarmers come with the promise of cutting that time short.
"Hey buy some gold, you can get the newest armor and be just as awesome as that guy is" or "Hey let me Powerlevel you for a price, you'll be top level just like that other guy". It's about being the best, sitting on that Olymp of Achievement and looking down on others but more importantly, have the others look up.
The Metagamer is also a result of competition. The problem with Skill is that it becomes progressively harder to get better once you've reached a certain threshold. So to progress further, you start abusing every little gamemechanic you can find. And in the end it's for the same reason as above, to be the best.
Now competition is hardcoded (duh) into our social system and removing it would require a global world revolution, completely changing everything, from education up to how Jobs are defined. Not gonna happen.

[Powergloved Andy]

*just shakes my head and moves on*

[Alex May]

Disregarding the future context, these are very real people who exist in all MMO games and do need to be accounted for in the game design. He is not talking crap. What he's saying is that this is a human problem and should be dealt with in a social context instead of mechanically in the game design.

edit: What I'm saying is you can't just design game mechanics and expect these problems to go away. You need a social structure in your MMO that mitigates the activities of these people or redirects it. In the end you will never get rid of them unless you have no currency to speak of in the case of goldfarmers, or no player-to-player interaction in the case of griefers.

[FARTRON]

As for his writing style, this is clearly not meant to be read, but rather seen as a performance.

If you can delve through the layers of presentation, he's got some great insights I think. He doesn't just say griefers, et al, suck, he explains why they've been a problem from the beginning and will continue to be a problem. He points the way to ubiquitous gaming and the tearing down of the walls of "computer" and "games".

I know he's not for everybody, but the dude blows my mind regularly.