Week 12 reflections

From CTIN482

(Part Two of my posts on griefing in MMOs) Griefing is evidently seen as a major threat in Second Life. Even a simple Google search for “griefing in second life” turned up over half a million results. Evidently, griefers find ways to cause mischief even when damage to players’ avatars is turned off. Accounts of griefing I managed to find included cases of griefers setting off massive “nuclear bombs” that graphically disrupted large gatherings, swarming players with thousands of prims (causing system failure), and even launching people into negative coordinates (which apparently disables all movement). The problem’s becoming pretty significant – apparently the FBI is now involved. (http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/04/01/rosedale-discloses-fbi-griefing-probe-to-congress/). Is the problem really that great? I know that in all my forays into the wondrous lands outside the IML island, the most annoying thing I encountered was the fact that everyone I met was a lifeless robot. I, for one, was never a victim of griefing, and this was surprising because I was usually targeted by griefers within minutes of logging on to most of the MMOs I’ve played. And somehow, it’s kind of boring that there aren’t lunatics trying to kill my avatar every single minute I spend in Second Life. Part of the thrill of being in an online space is the unpredictability of other people, and griefing, annoying as it is, is symptomatic of that unpredictability. Second Life is, at least to me, pretty staid and repetitive in terms the ways people can interact with each other, despite some examples to the contrary (like the stuff we read about early in the semester). If Second Life was an exciting and free enough place that complicated interactions like that between the griefer and the griefee were common, I’d probably sign up in a heartbeat. -Akshai