Professor by day, griefer by night

[Sheepherder]

(without Godwinning this, which we totally could at this point)

I actually came back to this page to do exactly that.  I was going to put a Dr. Mengele spin on it.

I personally don't see why we should hit him with unethical banner to belittle his work, seems a bit didactic. With more research in how to draw people into games to create enjoyment, more research could be done to see how this drawing power might also have negative effects. I mean it's possible that a thirteen year old kid could have been doing this and if it indeed is the cause of such mental anguish, then surely it's the developers/designers who should be accountable for allowing it to proceed.

1. Useful conclusions cannot be drawn, because a) it didn't start with any critical thinking or controls and b) it really doesn't illustrate or explain any behaviour that you could not also observe by browsing the fucking WoW realm forums.  Really, the guy has contributed to the field what amounts to a picture with a "Dis kid is pist" caption.

2. I haven't seen any evidence that NCSoft was actually made aware of his "experiment" (the verbal abuse, however, was reported), so even accepting your "but you cannot get permission from the players!" objection which lands you securely in Godwin territory he's still failed to even notify the people who's sandbox he's shitting in.

3. The company is responsible for some random fucker being a cunt?  Uhh... No.

[Amarr HM]

1) I haven't read the paper, so you may be right.

2) Surely that's up to the players who are agrieved to report it not the griefer. Maybe part of his criteria was to see how the company would react?

3) Nope if you read a bit closer instead of jumping on the bandwagon, I think the company is responsible if some part of the game mechanics allow griefing as to cause distress such as mental anguish (this was discussed earlier I don't necessarily agree with it), I wasn't necessarily saying they were accountable in this particular instance.

On one hand people are saying he was an asshole cause he virtually caused literal pain and distress to people and this was unethical and then other people are saying noone took a blind bit of a notice, make up your minds peoples.

[amiable]

 then other people are saying noone took a blind bit of a notice

Really? Who said that in this thread?

In any event amarr it's pretty obvious you have an agenda, for the life of me I can't figure out what it is and why you are white knighting this douche other than you exhibit similar behavior and have taken affront at us calling it douchee.

Edit:

he was an asshole cause he virtually caused literal pain and distress

No one said this either.  We just said he was acting like a jerk. 

[Bzalthek]

When rebuttals can't be found, character assassination always works.

[Amarr HM]

When rebuttals can't be found, character assassination always works.

[amiable]

When rebuttals can't be found, character assassination always works.

Please, folks have tried to reason with you for 4 pages, you are obviously trolling at this point.  I know you must be deeply wounded.

[Amarr HM]

I'm not, I just don't agree with you on everything no need to call me a douchebag about it.

[amiable]

I'm not, I just don't agree with you on everything no need to call me a douchebag about it.

I never called you a douchebag.  I called certain behavior douchee.  Feeling guilty?

[Amarr HM]

Nope  

You should be though shame on you.

[Lantyssa]

I'm not I understand why it can be an unethical approach in a lot of circumstances, but I just think it produces less accurate results. What I am saying is that someone conducting an experiment within the confines of a virtual world albeit a quasi social one, is a whole lot different to performing medical tests on people in the real world. Also in that prison experiment they should have added real prisoners and dropped a few bars of soap to give those Stanford boys a feel for the real thing.

It does not matter if it produces less accurate results.  If informed consent does not happen, manipulating participants' is against all ethics.  Chosing to ignore it is not an option.

[Bzalthek]

That is incorrect.  There are many times in which Informed Consent can be modified or even waived completely. It is the norm for most research, but there are circumstances that research cannot be conducted with knowing subjects. To assume research conducted without it is unethical is ludicrous. 

The PHRC themselves will waive them as long as there is minimal risk to the subject, it will not adversely affect the rights or welfare of the subjects, the research cannot be conducted with informed consent, and whenever possible, full disclosure is given after such research.

[jakonovski]

Nope 

You should be though shame on you.

It's all just research to see how you'd respond.  

"Research diary:

Dear diary, forum poster tried to oppose me, but I was just too skilled in my arguments."

[amiable]

That is incorrect.  There are many times in which Informed Consent can be modified or even waived completely. It is the norm for most research, but there are circumstances that research cannot be conducted with knowing subjects. To assume research conducted without it is unethical is ludicrous.  

The PHRC themselves will waive them as long as there is minimal risk to the subject, it will not adversely affect the rights or welfare of the subjects, the research cannot be conducted with informed consent, and whenever possible, full disclosure is given after such research.

Sure, but that still requires approval by an IRB/some type of review board.  You as the researcher do not get to decide when it is or isn't appropriate to waive informed consent.  As I stated originally there are examples especially in psych studies, where the subjects do not have complete informed consent (they are misled because it is necessary to the experiment), but those types of experiments (at lest in my experience) ALWAYS require approval from a review board.   If you find this isn't the case please cite examples.  Edit:  Last line isn't a slam I'm genuinely curious since the only studies I am involved with involve putting a foreign substance into a human being there is never an instance when informed consent is not required, I'm basing my psych knowledge off of friends in Psych programs in graduate school who sometimes had difficulty getting human subject experiments through their IRB.

[Triforcer]

Could someone in the industry answer my question about why it was impossible to either (1) fix the exploit, or (2) have an intern take 15 seconds to post on the boards saying it is not allowed? 

A couple people have implied that Cryptic was busy and couldn't possibly have done (1) ever, but (2) takes 15 seconds of intern manpower. 

Again:  as we weep over the poor victims, why aren't we blaming Cryptic?  Why aren't they the villain here? 

[Amarr HM]

It's all just research to see how you'd respond.  

"Research diary:

Dear diary, forum poster tried to oppose me, but I was just too skilled in my arguments."

More like lack of.

[Amarr HM]

It does not matter if it produces less accurate results.  If informed consent does not happen, manipulating participants' is against all ethics.  Chosing to ignore it is not an option.

You've said this multiple times before it doesn't make it any more palatable, no matter which way you word it. We're talking computer games here not a real world scenario, I don't believe for a minute any real anguish could be caused. In other words I ain't buying it stop with this ridiculous line of reasoning.

[rattran]

We're talking computer games here not a real world scenario, I don't believe for a minute any real anguish could be caused.

I think this is the best summing of the griefer mentality I've seen.

[Amarr HM]

I'm just gonna paraphrase my angle on this as some of you seem to think I'm siding with him which I ain't.
Do I think he's taking a cheapshot at the gaming community, yes I agree with that part to some extent. Was it worth outlining the death threats he received and bringing it to media, also yes gotta make sure developers take a hardline on this sort of behaviour we don't become desensitized, brush it under the carpet "oh it happens" don't worry about it. Did he start acting like a douchebag and then say hey I'll turn this into a paper for those cheeky Scandinavians, I would say unlikely but he seemed to take more enjoyment out of it than he should have. Should we care that it was unethical, nope we are a gaming community not a review board.

[Lantyssa]

You've said this multiple times before it doesn't make it any more palatable, no matter which way you word it. We're talking computer games here not a real world scenario, I don't believe for a minute any real anguish could be caused. In other words I ain't buying it stop with this ridiculous line of reasoning.

Psychologists would disagree with you.

[Amarr HM]

I also think they would say people who feel genuine pain and loss from a computer game are compensating, but that's a whole different debate.

[Bzalthek]

That is incorrect.  There are many times in which Informed Consent can be modified or even waived completely. It is the norm for most research, but there are circumstances that research cannot be conducted with knowing subjects. To assume research conducted without it is unethical is ludicrous. 

The PHRC themselves will waive them as long as there is minimal risk to the subject, it will not adversely affect the rights or welfare of the subjects, the research cannot be conducted with informed consent, and whenever possible, full disclosure is given after such research.

Sure, but that still requires approval by an IRB/some type of review board.  You as the researcher do not get to decide when it is or isn't appropriate to waive informed consent.  As I stated originally there are examples especially in psych studies, where the subjects do not have complete informed consent (they are misled because it is necessary to the experiment), but those types of experiments (at lest in my experience) ALWAYS require approval from a review board.   If you find this isn't the case please cite examples.  Edit:  Last line isn't a slam I'm genuinely curious since the only studies I am involved with involve putting a foreign substance into a human being there is never an instance when informed consent is not required, I'm basing my psych knowledge off of friends in Psych programs in graduate school who sometimes had difficulty getting human subject experiments through their IRB.

I agree, and from what I can find, every time someone asks Myers about an IRB, he snubs them. (At one time he became a grammar nazi, and spent a large paragraph insulting the questioner.)  My statement wasn't in any way a defense of this prick, it was more a counter to a blanket statement.  To be honest, I really don't know whether online participant/observational research needs an IRB but from the way he dodges the question, I suspect it might.

[Musashi]

It's not real research if it's retarded.  This 'study' only targets (as we understand them on this board) a niche demographic of internet nerds that aren't really representative of the world at large - or even the mmo playing world.  Part of doing research is having a large sample and a control.  There's also no control.  Therefore, this 'study' is just a journalistic anecdote which, in no way can be considered scientific.  The fact that he presents it as such is douche-a-rific.

This guy's just pwning noobs and then publishing something - anything - for his resume.

[tmp]

http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=340

[Amarr HM]

Does sound like his research is pretty lame. Though I think the idea of how players create their own subset of rules within a game is an interesting topic and something we are actually dealing with in certain other games, especially when this construct is flawed.

[UnSub]

Could someone in the industry answer my question about why it was impossible to either (1) fix the exploit, or (2) have an intern take 15 seconds to post on the boards saying it is not allowed? 

A couple people have implied that Cryptic was busy and couldn't possibly have done (1) ever, but (2) takes 15 seconds of intern manpower. 

Again:  as we weep over the poor victims, why aren't we blaming Cryptic?  Why aren't they the villain here? 

1) Fixing the exploit wasn't done because a) it wasn't seen as a high priority, b) CoH/V teleport functionality only works in a binary (off or on) state in maps and for entities afaik and c) it's PvP in CoH/V, which was a micro-community anyway who were left in the wilderness a lot of the time anyway.

2) There's been some mixed messages about whether or not this was allowed, but the devs / CMs have said previously that if you go into a PvP zone, expect to get PvPed and that it might not be fair.

Cryptic Paragon Studios / NCsoft could have banned him. They didn't. He was a minor griefer in a micro-community that is getting 15 minutes of fame. The most incredible thing has been seeing the general CoH/V community getting worked up about anything PvP related, because most of the time it's LOL PvP.

[Khaldun]

It's not real research if it's retarded.  This 'study' only targets (as we understand them on this board) a niche demographic of internet nerds that aren't really representative of the world at large - or even the mmo playing world.  Part of doing research is having a large sample and a control.  There's also no control.  Therefore, this 'study' is just a journalistic anecdote which, in no way can be considered scientific.  The fact that he presents it as such is douche-a-rific.

This guy's just pwning noobs and then publishing something - anything - for his resume.

Look, again, not all scholarship is scientific in its aims. If an academic wants to write a memoir, or an interpretation of a literary work, or a philosophical argument, it doesn't have to conform to science. Even ethnography as a method can be quite rigorous without being "scientific".  In fact, some social science is kind of a parody of natural science at times, striving for a degree of certainty that a good deal of natural science doesn't aspire to. There are branches of natural science that don't involve experimentation, even branches which are largely theoretical or abstract; many experimental studies in natural science rest on probablistic or approximate evidence.

You can study one person and write an interesting account of their life or experience. Historians call that biography  . Of course even a biographer needs an intelligent, knowledgeable understanding of how typical or representative the person they're writing about might be. But anything can be interesting or important if the right person is thinking about it, even "griefers in City of Heroes". If you were going to define "good research" as "the most typical, widespread or representative social phenomena", then all social science would be about norms: you wouldn't want to study drug addiction (it's not typical); you wouldn't want to study minority populations (they're not typical); etc. You wouldn't want to study experiences or practices that aren't densely documented (you can't have a good 'scientific' sample size), and so on.

There's plenty to dislike about Myers' work without holding him accountable to a potted and unrealistic standard for "good social science".

[Lantyssa]

Does sound like his research is pretty lame. Though I think the idea of how players create their own subset of rules within a game is an interesting topic and something we are actually dealing with in certain other games, especially when this construct is flawed.

Studying the social rules which develop in games is absolutely fascinating.  Studying 'griefing' behavior is interesting in itself.

It's purely his methods, and trying to claim them as research, which infuriates me.  If he had said he was doing it as a private citizen 'cause he liked to fuck with people and is now writing a book I'd say he's an asshole, shrug my shoulders, and move on.

[Ingmar]

It's not real research if it's retarded.  This 'study' only targets (as we understand them on this board) a niche demographic of internet nerds that aren't really representative of the world at large - or even the mmo playing world.  Part of doing research is having a large sample and a control.  There's also no control.  Therefore, this 'study' is just a journalistic anecdote which, in no way can be considered scientific.  The fact that he presents it as such is douche-a-rific.

This guy's just pwning noobs and then publishing something - anything - for his resume.

Look, again, not all scholarship is scientific in its aims. If an academic wants to write a memoir, or an interpretation of a literary work, or a philosophical argument, it doesn't have to conform to science. Even ethnography as a method can be quite rigorous without being "scientific".  In fact, some social science is kind of a parody of natural science at times, striving for a degree of certainty that a good deal of natural science doesn't aspire to. There are branches of natural science that don't involve experimentation, even branches which are largely theoretical or abstract; many experimental studies in natural science rest on probablistic or approximate evidence.

You can study one person and write an interesting account of their life or experience. Historians call that biography  . Of course even a biographer needs an intelligent, knowledgeable understanding of how typical or representative the person they're writing about might be. But anything can be interesting or important if the right person is thinking about it, even "griefers in City of Heroes". If you were going to define "good research" as "the most typical, widespread or representative social phenomena", then all social science would be about norms: you wouldn't want to study drug addiction (it's not typical); you wouldn't want to study minority populations (they're not typical); etc. You wouldn't want to study experiences or practices that aren't densely documented (you can't have a good 'scientific' sample size), and so on.

There's plenty to dislike about Myers' work without holding him accountable to a potted and unrealistic standard for "good social science".

All that is fine, but he's presenting it as if it were science.

[Triforcer]

2) There's been some mixed messages about whether or not this was allowed, but the devs / CMs have said previously that if you go into a PvP zone, expect to get PvPed and that it might not be fair.

BOOM.  This should have been the second post in the thread, and then thread closed. 

[amiable]

2) There's been some mixed messages about whether or not this was allowed, but the devs / CMs have said previously that if you go into a PvP zone, expect to get PvPed and that it might not be fair.

BOOM.  This should have been the second post in the thread, and then thread closed. 

And if this thread were discussing the appropriateness of PvP in a PvP zone then that point would be relevant.  Had you bothered to read the thread that is not what we are discussing, what we are discussing are his claims that this was a "scientific experiment."

But I guess every PvP discussion has a certain group of people who will scream "DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!!!!!!" whether or not it is the topic of conversation. 

[Musashi]

It's not real research if it's retarded.  This 'study' only targets (as we understand them on this board) a niche demographic of internet nerds that aren't really representative of the world at large - or even the mmo playing world.  Part of doing research is having a large sample and a control.  There's also no control.  Therefore, this 'study' is just a journalistic anecdote which, in no way can be considered scientific.  The fact that he presents it as such is douche-a-rific.

This guy's just pwning noobs and then publishing something - anything - for his resume.

Look, again, not all scholarship is scientific in its aims. If an academic wants to write a memoir, or an interpretation of a literary work, or a philosophical argument, it doesn't have to conform to science. Even ethnography as a method can be quite rigorous without being "scientific".  In fact, some social science is kind of a parody of natural science at times, striving for a degree of certainty that a good deal of natural science doesn't aspire to. There are branches of natural science that don't involve experimentation, even branches which are largely theoretical or abstract; many experimental studies in natural science rest on probablistic or approximate evidence.

You can study one person and write an interesting account of their life or experience. Historians call that biography  . Of course even a biographer needs an intelligent, knowledgeable understanding of how typical or representative the person they're writing about might be. But anything can be interesting or important if the right person is thinking about it, even "griefers in City of Heroes". If you were going to define "good research" as "the most typical, widespread or representative social phenomena", then all social science would be about norms: you wouldn't want to study drug addiction (it's not typical); you wouldn't want to study minority populations (they're not typical); etc. You wouldn't want to study experiences or practices that aren't densely documented (you can't have a good 'scientific' sample size), and so on.

There's plenty to dislike about Myers' work without holding him accountable to a potted and unrealistic standard for "good social science".

What the fuck are you talking about.

Fake science isn't science.  I don't think any of the things you describe are science.  The fact that some academic fuckwit gets away with publishing it because he's 'from a university' means dick.

Be honest.  You just felt like contradicting someone on the internet.

[Lum]

Could someone in the industry answer my question about why it was impossible to either (1) fix the exploit, or (2) have an intern take 15 seconds to post on the boards saying it is not allowed?  

A couple people have implied that Cryptic was busy and couldn't possibly have done (1) ever, but (2) takes 15 seconds of intern manpower.  

Again:  as we weep over the poor victims, why aren't we blaming Cryptic?  Why aren't they the villain here?  

Because Paragon (not Cryptic, who no longer has anything to do with CoH) considered it not an exploit, as it was theoretically possible to use skill choices or temporary buffs to counteract TP foe.

The point isn't that it was an exploit, it was that it was 'griefy'. The two are not always the same thing.

BOOM.  This should have been the second post in the thread, and then thread closed.  

Normally, it would be. However, the subject of his paper wasn't "CoH players complaining about how evil PvP player PKed them", it was "CoH players turned me into an outcast and threatened me in real life because I didn't play by their community's rules". Sorry to interrupt your RespondToPvPThread.macro script.

[Ratman_tf]

I also think they would say people who feel genuine pain and loss from a computer game are compensating, but that's a whole different debate.

People feel pain and loss when their football team loses.  Everyone has something in their lives they care about. Knock over their sand castle and they get upset. It's not rocket surgery to understand this.

[Amarr HM]

People feel pain and loss when their football team loses.  Everyone has something in their lives they care about. Knock over their sand castle and they get upset. It's not rocket surgery to understand this.

Yes people usually go to see their psychologist because their football team just lost or some insane maniac went wild on their carefully constructed sandcastles.

Studying the social rules which develop in games is absolutely fascinating.  Studying 'griefing' behavior is interesting in itself.

It's purely his methods, and trying to claim them as research, which infuriates me.  If he had said he was doing it as a private citizen 'cause he liked to fuck with people and is now writing a book I'd say he's an asshole, shrug my shoulders, and move on.

I don't think he feels particularly indebted to anyone. MMO's are designed that the minute you stop playing for good you aren't part of the world anymore, so anything you did in said world is also left behind. In some way his book forced him to break his anonymity unless of course he wrote under a different name, but I guess he values his work. Also no point in getting worked up about some academic schmuck he ain't worth it and if he was a true griefer that's what he'd really want.

[Kail]

Yes people usually go to see their psychologist because their football team just lost or some insane maniac went wild on their carefully constructed sandcastles.

We're talking computer games here not a real world scenario, I don't believe for a minute any real anguish could be caused.

There's a pretty wide gulf between "I feel some anguish over X" and "X has caused me to become such a demented psychotic that I now require psychiatric treatment."  Plenty of people are a bit pissed off when their football team loses or they die in HALO or whatever, but still not in gibbering maniac territory.

Part of the issue with ethics in psych experiments is, obviously, "don't be a dick," but you also don't want to poison the well.  If you start pissing on the people who are showing up for your tests, soon the only people who show up are the ones who enjoy being pissed on, and that opens up a whole ton of selection biases.  Psych experiments are already suffering from problems with people showing up trying to figure out what the "trick" is, it doesn't really help the field to have this kind of image floating around.