Why do Griefers Grief?
by Alphaville Herald on 28/05/04 at 6:59 pm
There is a really interesting discussion of this topic over on Terra Nova. Can’t say I agree with most of it, but there was a really nice taxonomy of motivations for griefing by Chek Yang Foo, which follows.
“The discussion here is really meaningful. One of the objectives of my 4 year study is to investigate how grief is being managed right now, and if it can be better managed at all – e.g. through player justice.
After reading through the posts here, I decided to go back to some of the data I’ve accumulated in the study. The below are selected notes from a first series of semi-structured interviews I did with a group of several dozen respondents (comprising players, griefers and developers) over Sep 2003 to Jan 2004, with the theme on “why players grief”. Data from discussion room postings, and my field observation are not included below as they’re (at the moment) in a separate part of my study. Here’s a (disorganised!) sample of what the data says:
- griefers grief because they have no power in real life (e.g. kids vs. parents). In the game, they have power, so they impose that power on others.
- In the real world, they lack some physical characteristic ? e.g. looks, money, girl friend ? so they grief in the virtual world as a harmless way of replacing what they lack.
- “Idle hands, idle minds” – they grief because they have nothing else better to do, as another player puts it. This sentiment is disputed by a developer respondent though, who said players will grief only if they’re bored AND it’s easy to grief. If they’re bored but it’s hard to grief, they’d typically just move to some other game.
- Reputation, as one griefer put it, just so that they can brag about it to their peers, e.g. how many times they got banned or suspended.
- Another explained this incident in which some reluctant fellows joined in by way of getting accepted into a group and ‘brotherhood’.
- Frontier justice: one reason cited by a griefer was that he wanted to put down “the high and mighty” players, and specifically the role-playing ones who say that “they are more mature players, and the pvpers are immature little brats.”
- Another griefer said he griefs Trammel players in UO because he hated the cowardness of many players, and the feeling of favouritism given to them by OSI that led to their smugness.
- Making a statement to game management: a bug or class misbalance that a player feels has been ignored by developers for a long time. So he decided to take it out on the player base to provoke a response.
- Anger – someone griefed because his (real world) dog took a crap on the rug, and he got mad.
CY
Posted by: Chek Yang Foo at May 26, 2004 09:44 PM”
Docosa
May 28th, 2004
Could someone explain the significance of this article? Because as I see it currently, if you add up all those points, you get, “Griefers grief for any and every reason”. How does that answer help to prevent griefers? Or is the point that there is no stopping them?
Urizenus
May 28th, 2004
It might be that because griefers grief for different reasons there is no single solution, and that each category must be dealt with differently.
TBT
May 28th, 2004
Simple answer – because they can
answer most often given – because they can
why ask why lol no j/k the significance is “filler”… gotta put something up for the readers..
Urizenus
May 29th, 2004
I think that understanding griefing helps us to understand socially problematic individuals in r/l too. It’s important to see that there are not two kinds of people (good and bad) and that the motives for griefers can be complex, that in some cases griefing can be dealt with by engineering, in others by counseling, and in still others by termination. Understanding different kinds of griefers may help us to understand who to waste our time on. EA/Maxis wasn’t interested in these questions and it shows.
Maria LaVeaux
May 29th, 2004
I read, and reread the explanations given above for griefing.
If one breaks it down properly, there would seem to be only Two reasons here.
Boredome, and feelings of personal inadequacy.
As i Interpret it, Two of the above findings can be classed as Bordom, and seven as One expression or another of personal inadequacy.
I wonder if this is more or less a proportional reasoning behind griefing?
If so, Roughly 77.7% of grifers are attempting to compensate for some form of shortcoming in their lives.
The above article is hardly a scientific breakdown as it only sampled “Several Dozen” respondants and the authors catagorizations of reasoning seem to be a little hazey.
A better defined study would classify responses according ro “Root” Motivations and wouls involve interviews with perhaps 500 to 1000 respondants to give a more accurate statistical breakdown.
(One should also consider the authors own experiences woth griefing in game scenarios to account for any possible bias to the results.)
Comments?
Maria.
Urizenus
May 29th, 2004
I think we need to read teh actual study before we draw conclusions about it.
And while one can lump different kinds of personal inadequacy together, it doesn’t mean that each kind demands the same response. I’m guessing that at this point we just don’t know the proper responses in each case.
I LOVE TO GRIEF
May 30th, 2004
YOU CANT STOP SCAMMERS/GRIEFS/STEALS EVER. YOU CANT STOP WHAT YOU DONT KNOW. AND I WILL NEVER STOP IT IS FUN FOR ME. I LIKE TO STEAL/SCAM/GRIEF PEOPLE JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO GO A PROBLEM WITH IT. GUESS WHAT I DONT CARE ROFL.
I LOVE TO GRIEF
May 30th, 2004
YOU CANT STOP SCAMMERS/GRIEFS/STEALS EVER. YOU CANT STOP WHAT YOU DONT KNOW. AND I WILL NEVER STOP IT IS FUN FOR ME. I LIKE TO STEAL/SCAM/GRIEF PEOPLE JUST BECAUSE I WANT TO GOT A PROBLEM WITH IT. GUESS WHAT I DONT CARE ROFL.
Funky
May 30th, 2004
At school, a big bully pesters little children because he can. Nobody is stopping him
During riots, people start breaking into stores because they can. Nobody is stopping them
In war, soldiers rape women because they can. Nobody is stopping them
Griefers grief because they can. Period. Nobody is stopping them
Not every human has the same moral principles on which he acts on. Many of humankind only follow rules because there are boundaries in place to stop them from doing harmful things. When these boundaries disappear they show their true selves.
Urizenus
May 30th, 2004
That’s like saying rocks fall to the ground because they can. True, but not very illuminating. What we want to know is why some kinds of people become griefers and and others don’t, what kinds of people are apt to become griefers, what conditions make people more apt to grief, what can be done to change the conditions that lead these people to grief, and what controls are more apt to be effective against different kinds of griefers. Why is this hard?
Docosa
May 30th, 2004
Uri, I think you just stated why I questioned the significance of the article. Sounds to me like the study isn’t focusing on a key aspect; the quesion of why some do not grief. Because, as I see it, the reasons why they do are “not very illuminating”.
Urizenus
May 30th, 2004
well, first of all, have you read the study? Or even seen it? Asked for it? Know how to get it?
Docosa
May 30th, 2004
Other than the trail of links I could follow from this article and Tera Nova, no. Care to provide other links where they looked at all sides of the issue? I could only find unsupported facts (we are talking about human motivation, so it would be nice if I saw some statistically sound surveys, rather than people just flapping their mouths of what one person perceives) of why griefer do it. I found nothing approaching it from all angles, such as why the other side doesn’t grief.
Urizenus
May 30th, 2004
You should follow the Terra Nova links to Chek Yang Foo.
Docosa
May 31st, 2004
Yes, I followed the links from Tera Nova, as I stated earlier, but even Chek Yang Foo’s phD website only gave some abstracts about his research, not the full study (as expected, since it appears he’s not quite done yet). And based on that, I came to the conclusion that it focused mainly on why people become griefers, not why some don’t.
But since you don’t know where to find the study online either, or even to a spot that discusses the side of why some don’t become griefers, I guess I should probably just ask Chek Yang Foo himself, if I’m that interested.
Urizenus
May 31st, 2004
Sorry, I guess I meant you should email the guy and see what he has.
On the question of why non-griefers don’t grief, I think this is really part of a more general question about the emergence of cooperative behavior, and there *is* a lot of research on this using Game Theory (in the Von Neuman/Nash sense of game theory). There are models in which you do a spatialized prisoners dilemma and then see which strategies are successful over numerous iterations. In many models the cooperative behavior is the most successful.
Another factor, which I’ve seen in game theory work by Joe Epstein at the Brookings Institution is simply that the strategy employed by most people is immitative, so that if the people around them behave they do to. It might be as simple as that.
Didn’t mean to be dismissive of your questin earlier. It really is very interesting.
bob
Jun 10th, 2007
Why I grief? Because there are people out there who pay more attention to this than their real lives. They need to switch off the computer and go back to their families and friends.
Anon
Aug 3rd, 2008
What’s funny is almost all of those reasons are why people play video games in the first place. And you left out entertainment. As for fixing the problem, it can’t be done unless the very mechanics of the game are restricted to that which cannot be used to grief. As for who griefs is as follows: anyone who already, or has a moment of either not caring about in game reputation, or lack of a serious attitude toward the game. Seriously, lighten up and laugh at it, it happens to EVERYONE.
Lurdan Huszar
Aug 3rd, 2008
Ask the Alliance Navy why they grief and then accuse US of griefing. No, go ahead, ask them.
vegna fouroux
Aug 3rd, 2008
for the lulz.
are you retarded?
Connor Edwards
Dec 9th, 2013
I grief b/c it`s damn funny to watch idiots rage about how “IT TOOK MAH HURS TA BILD DAT AN YOU JSUT GRIFED IT!!!!!!!!!! WAAAAAAAA!” (On some games, the griefed player spells it THAT badly) Also, I sometimes do it just because I need materials, and people build their houses and junk out of INCREDIBLY valuable things sometimes.