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In the wake of “The Curious Case of the Poorly Behaved Professor” a discussion about social rules vs game rules have emerged. While Myers, the professor in question, still holds up that he was not griefing other players he is perhaps in a minority at this stage. However, as often before,  disagreeing with someone helps sharpen own opinions and understandings. What do I label as griefing?

This is an attempt to outline my understanding of different types of play that doesn’t confirm with established rules (that be game rules, meta rules, social rules or any other kind). It is mostly to put order in my own mind of what these concept holds, and in such not trying to reinvent the wheel, but I would love the opinion on others on this.

• Griefing: Play with the intention and goal of disrupting and lower other players experience. The emphasis is then put on the player doing the griefing, and the meaning that player gives to the game. Everyone will at one point or another have made the game less enjoyable for others (getting to a node first, training some mobs onto another player etc.), but unless it is done willfully and with the purpose of ruining the day for another player- it cannot be termed griefing. Griefing can happen within the rules of the game (referring here to EULAs, the code itself etc), or it can breach these. In such griefing is only about the social rules, the social conventions of the game, it is about knowing the social rules well enough to turn them against other players.
• Trolling: Even though trolling is perhaps best known from forums, blogs, discussiongroups etc, they also exist in game. Compared to griefing, trolling can only happen through communication while griefing is by and large about actions alone. Again, it is the social rules that are in focus. The goal of trolling is to take a stand that will cause disruption and have people waste their time arguing against a false presumption. To know what topics as suited for trolling, a “good troll” will also know the social rules well to know what topics to push.
• Exploiting: Using flaws in the code to gain benefits. The rules that are to be broken (or some will say, just bent a bit) are the rules of the code. Exploiting is about personal benefits, and little about affecting other peoples play. As mentioned, exploits can be used in griefing, but exploits in it self has nothing to do with griefing. In regards to social rules exploiting has a more ambiguous role. Some exploits get house warm, while others are labelled as cheating. A quick example: In WoW was seen as “cosher” to use the “unstuck” feature as a second hearthstone (teleport to home). This feature later got changed, but the way players were using it was a type of exploit. They were taking advantage of a weak point of the code, that it didnt understand if you were really stuck or just wanted a free ride. This example shows how exploits negotiate both social rules as well as game rules, and that individual exploits are given different meaning.
• Hacking: Breaking the rules of the game (both code and EULA) by bringing own rules in form of own code. Frowned upon by other players, I have personally a hard time understanding the players that hack. I often heard people talking about hacking, but in my many hours in MMOs in the last few years I have only witnessed a handful of events where hacking have been involved. All have been in PvP situations, often by using hacks to gain extra speed and in such win the game without giving the opponent a fair chance. Since it is not about getting a fair fight (or even good fight, fair fights are rare in MMOs) I presume the goal is winning over the code, not winning over other players. Based on other accounts of hacker activity, I theorize that meaning comes from being able to break the system, as well as breaking the rules.  Though hacking is generally seen as bad, there are still borderline cases. Some mods/addons give information that would normally not be available in game (a wonderful mod that would play Mortal Combat music if I was targeted in PvP comes to mind), but mods dont seem to undergo the same kind of scrutiny. Unless the game company labels the addon as illegal, it is seen as fair play.

To return to Myers and the case of Twixt, one of his major arguments was that the nature of MMOs was a conformist one. That the social pressure forces all players to game on the same premises, to adopt to similar types of playstyles regardless of intentions from designers and what the gamecode allows for. While I agree about social norms being strong in places such as MMOs, the conclusion I disagree with. By reflecting on different types of disruptive play, its already clear that while social rules are strong they are under constant negotiation. What is seen as “good play” is not given.

EDIT1: After comment from Myers I wish to emphasise that this is indeed only my own thoughts and reflections on the topic. It is not based on any particular type of data, or previous research (though ofcourse influenced by it). As Myers have proved himself, the lines between gamer, blogger and researcher can easily get blurred – and this is perhaps a time when such differences should be made clear. So with that in mind, feel free to treat this as just another piece of random “QQ on teh interwebz” ™, its only a blog