Et tu, Mario?Murder, looting, pizza theft, and other hazards of cooperative video-gaming.
Posted Friday, Nov. 13, 2009, at 4:51 PM ET
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StumbleUponJesper Juul, a video-game researcher and professor at NYU's newly minted Game Center, argues that multiplayer games give us three things to balance. Players want to win and they want the game to be fair, but they also need to navigate whatever relationships they have outside the game—that is, if you shoot your friend in the head in Call of Duty, you'll have to answer for that in the offline world. My brother and the jerk from E3 were solely concerned with winning. I mostly cared about the game being fair. None of us, though, sat down and talked about the third factor—what we were planning to do during our journey as in-game teammates.
This planning comes up most frequently in massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. In that game, players create guilds and go on quests in pursuit of gold and weaponry. Defeating an enemy yields goodies that guilds must choose how to distribute. In a perfect world, everyone would work together to give the appropriate items to the most deserving players. There is a breed of WoW player, however, known as the "loot ninja" or "greeder," a scoundrel who steals items from fallen comrades or takes more than his share after a battle. (There are also more flagrant modes of sabotage. In the infamous Leeeroy Jenkins video, an overexcitable player decides to take on a difficult boss single-handedly, sabotaging his guild's meticulous plan. The results are predictably surreal.)
This type of stuff was happening long before World of Warcraft. In side-scrolling brawlers such as the early-1990s title Streets of Rage, power-ups appeared along the way that could heal your wounded party or give players special abilities. Bleeding-heart video-game liberals like myself would argue that health packs should always go to the weakest member of the party. This would often lead to discussions about who "deserved" the triage, which begot a lot of petty bickering, which begot fistfights. This Photoshopped box art for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II—which includes the tagline "It's My Turn to Get the Pizza You Asshole I Need it More!"—is a perfect encapsulation of the phenomenon.
Part of the problem (and the joy) of playing games is that such behavior isn't explicitly condoned or condemned. Looting and friendly fire aren't forbidden by most games, which leaves us to figure out our own rules. This is the right decision: Good game designers allow players to be whoever they want and trust they'll come to their own consensus about what constitutes "fair play." That's why the New Super Mario Bros. Wii was more enjoyable when I played it as God intended—with a good friend and copious amounts of beer. There was no back-stabbing, and no one's feelings were hurt.
Last month, Shigeru Miyamoto, the ebullient designer of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and the creator of the Mario franchise, came to New York to show off the game. I told him about my experience at E3 with that mean old man. He smiled. "I didn't really encounter any frustrating experiences like that," he said through a translator. Maybe Miyamoto has really nice friends, or perhaps the frantic scrambling to win didn't bother him. Either way, I'm happy to offer up my brother as a beta tester for Miyamoto's next game. Maybe then he'll understand what that little scoundrel has made me go through.
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It is this tendency to overcompete that drove me away from online play. The Internet brings out the worst traits in people by removing the barriers that force them to act civilly. Certain people just don't seem to realize that it's just a game and as such play as if every move was life and death - leaving no room for other's mistakes, less than perfect obedience, and otherwise obsessing over something as trivial as a game. It's just a minority too, but due to their drive for success, their thirst for dominance they immediately force everyone else to adopt their play style in order to have even a shred of hope of competing. Pretty soon people begin to forget that in the real world people who act like this are called assholes and treated as such. Personally I don't think it's because they don't have a life in the real world, but rather they live their life in two states - on/off. That's about as shallow as you can get.
I couldn't keep up after a while. I had to stop and say "hey guys I have a job to hold down - sorry I can't play 10 hours a day 7 days a week."
-- Eaigenvector
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People can be divided in 3 categories...
1. Those who will behave decent even in the absence af law (constructive society leaders).
2. Those who will follow the law out of fear of reprisals from leaders (society followers - majority) but otherwise are erratic / random and may behave badly if no punishment present.
3. Those who behave badly no matter what (destructive society leaders or criminals).
Video games are sort of like Wild Wild West - you can simply see who has a nature of a sheriff, a bandit, or a John the Farmer.
-- paxterminus
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My favorite game series, the Battlefield series, does add punishments for jerks and rewards for team players. Since the beginning, friendly fire was an option that could be turned on and off. Later, particularly in BF2, rewards were given for healing and resupplying team mates. Fraging friendlies or team killing just to get a jet or weapons pack draws negative points and on some servers, can get you kicked off quite quickly. It's not perfect and there are some loopholes but it's possible to develop a game that encourages team playing. In Battlefield, the best teams are ones that work together. Most first person team shooter games are like this.
Your conversation with Wii's creator sounds like it's the issue. He's use to friendly games where jerks don't troll looking to spoil others fun. Team play incentives can be put in the game if the developers want to work at it.
-- coldcut
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