Griefer

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A griefer is a player who plays a game simply to aggravate and harass other players. Griefing is a form of emergent gameplay.^[1]

1 Overview
2 Usage
3 Examples
4 Social aspects of griefing
5 Combatting griefers
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Overview

Griefers differ from typical players in that they do not play the game in order to achieve objectives defined by the game world. Instead, they seek to harass other players, causing grief. In particular, they may use tools such as stalking, hurling insults, and exploiting unintended game mechanics. Griefing as a gaming play style is not simply any action that may be considered morally incorrect. Though the staff of each online game defines griefing in a manner that best fits their game, certain criteria must be met for an action to be considered griefing. An act of griefing involves the following three types of actions to be considered grief play:^[2]

The use or abuse of a game mechanic that was not intended by the game's developers.
The inability of the victim to exact some means of retribution beyond utilizing similar unintended game mechanics.
The intended purpose of an act of griefing must be to negatively impact the game play of another person.

An act of griefing usually meets all these criteria as well as any game specific criteria set by the developers of the game.^[3]

Generally, for griefing to have occurred, the player in question must meet several, if not all, of the criteria listed above. More open definitions of the term suggest that the curbing of enjoyment in any way to be a form of griefing, whether it meets any of the listed criteria or not. These players will often consider the following actions to constitute griefing: kill stealing, player killing, spamming, team killing (or team wounding), door or path blocking, ninja looting, spawn camping, and corpse camping. These actions often meet one of the criteria but may fail to meet others.

Griefing shares much in common with laming, another term in online gaming, though the former tends to have stronger connotations. Although laming is less well-defined, fulfillment of the first criterion is often enough to classify an act as laming, thus, many of the above listed actions, while not accurately considered griefing, may legitimately fall under the category of laming. Though the two terms are very similar, griefing is typically more specific, particularly in regard to the second and especially the third criteria.

It is important to note that griefing methods differ from game to game depending on that game's mechanics. Changes and upgrades can sometimes prevent or lessen some acts of griefing, though the large player community of such games can sometimes find a way around it.

[edit] Usage

Griefer is the noun form used by victims to refer to the player causing grief using the previously mentioned methods.^[4]

It is important to remember that the term griefer does not refer to any player that causes grief to others. Rather, it refers to a player whose only objective in the game is to cause grief, and who cannot thus by deterred by penalties related to in-game goals, because they have no in-game goals other than to cause grief.

To grief is the infinitive form. It appears to be ambitransitive; however, no linguistic research has been done on usage variations to date.

Griefing is the noun form used to refer to a griefer's activity. It is the gerund form of to grief.

[edit] Examples

In MMORPGs that do not allow any player versus player combat, the act of attacking another player is prohibited. Training is a method of griefing where monsters (mobs) are manipulated to attack other players. The player character of the griefer first provokes monsters into attacking his/her own character, then lures the mobs to an area populated by many other players. The griefer then utilizes some technique, such as leaving the area, to lose interest of the mobs. The mobs then attack the other players in the vicinity. (This example might not be considered griefing in some contexts, such as in a player versus player environment.)

Another example is the practice of "crashing" in multiplayer racing games, such as Live for Speed. A crasher will often wait at a certain point at a track, ram other players that are in slower cars or braking, or drive in the wrong direction, attempting to collide with another player head-on, among other acts. Crashing is almost always frowned upon, as it disrupts the race of players who are attempting to run a clean race. There is often the option of kicking or banning the offending player, but sometimes such options are not available. Occasionally, rule-abiding players will have had enough, and collectively attack the offending player. Sometimes, servers of certain games will run third-party software which kicks crashers on the basis of movements unusual in a race, but sometimes, as in Live for Speed, the software works to the advantage of the crasher, as the attacked player will trip the software and be kicked, while the crasher will remain.

Another Example is that of myg0t and Rawrzorz(.com). This group is an online gaming organization and website dedicated to "raging" which in principle is very similar to griefing. They use many methods mainly in FPS (First Person Shooter) games in order to annoy and spoil the game for others. Such thinks as blocking doorways repeatedly team killing and use game exploits and hacks in order to annoy others.

The practice of Griefing has been the theme of a South Park episode.

[edit] Social aspects of griefing

While clear examples of griefing exist, much of the difference between griefing and non-griefing activities depends on individual player's understanding of the social norms of the in-game world. Activities one player considers griefing may be understood by another to be part of normal gameplay. While certain behaviors are generally recognized by the majority of players in a game as griefing, the ultimate classification of any single act as griefing rests on the intent of the perpetrator. Griefing may not occur if the perpetrator's intent is not to negatively impact the victims game play or if the victim is capable of exacting retribution at the present or in the future. The perpetrator must have an advantage that was not intended by the developers of the game to exist.

A number of gaming groups are believed to exist for the sole purpose of griefing (for instance the aforementioned MyG0t).^[5] Again, the classification of these groups as griefing groups is subject to individual analysis and the required criterion for actions that can be considered griefing. In some cases the perpetrator may claim to be a griefer but be acting in a completely developer intended manner. The perpetrator's intent may be to grief but if the victim has a clear means of reprisal that was intended by the developers of the game, the offensive acts are not griefing but merely a means of playing the game.

[edit] Combatting griefers

Many subscription-based games have taken steps to combat griefers as they reduce the amount of enjoyment non-griefers take in the game and thus driving away business.^[6] However, the opportunity to grief is present in the functional requirements of multiplayer games in general (spamming is an unavoidable given non-restrictive player to player communication). Also, some griefing activities are easier to curtail than others. While spamming can be prevented with an ignore function, preventing the use of exploits in the FPS genre requires altering game balance issues. This is not impossible, but would remove the strategy aspect of some team-based first-person shooters. Also, since all griefing involves manipulating exploits, only by eliminating all of them can programmers remove those opportunities from Player Versus Player oriented games and Non-Player Versus Player oriented games. Given the scope and complexity of most multiplayer games, preventing griefing in Non-Player Versus Player games can be next to impossible.

In light of this, most games allow either for server admins to reprimand offenders (up to and including banning certain IP address from logging onto a local server) or, as in the case of MMORPGs with persistent worlds, have a reporting process by which the activities of certain players can be brought to the attention of Game Masters. The GMs or Customer Service Representatives then decide on any disciplinary action (if appropriate). By some accounts, as many as 25% of customer support calls to companies operating online games deal specifically with griefing.^[7] But in some MMOs griefing is reportable only as an abuse or exploitation of unintended game mechanics, which is frustrating to the victim of such acts as the griefer may not be dealt with as the report will go directly to the developers to fix the abused code.

Notably, Guild Wars practically eliminates the major forms of grief in online games by having separate instances for areas between towns and outposts, meaning no one except the player and their party can be found in that area. This means that many aspects of griefing are impossible and a griefer could only grief another player by gaining entry into the party.