For thoes of you who have played ONLINE games, mainly the role playing games: Diablo 2 Ultima Online Ever quest and other such games.... What really turns poeple into jerks on these games? These poeple go as far as killing your player to stealing your stuff to hacking you. What brings them to this? What is going on in thier head that cuases them to be total asses? This may be the smallest of the worlds problems, but what really makes poeple untrustable on the world wide web? Is it anger? Jealousy? Quest to be the best? Or are they just jerks? What really make someone change thier entire personaly over the internet? The fact that they will never be cuaght? Becuase it is so easy to do so? If we cannot trust each other in a simple online video game... how can any nation trust another nation? Is the world wide web a blessing or a deathwish for us all? You would think that global commication whould bring the world closer together.... but it is maily immature kids that rule the internet comminity. They learn this stuff as kids and teens... and it eventuly reaches out into the real world. The power of feeling like you got away with something evil.... it is uncontrolable. It starts with calling someone a rascit term over the internet and eventuly turns into you starting your own gang in the real world. OK, that may seem extream, but mabey not. People have killed themselfs over online games before.... it really does cross over to reality. Is there nothing we can do..... Why must our children be brought up into this cruel world? You let them on the internet at a young age... and it is clear they cannot handle the jerks, pricks, assholes, rasicts and whatnot in real life... why let them take it in over the net. If they arnt the one doing the damage to others, they are the having the damage done onto them. These internet friendships are crawling out of the wood work. Young Teens meeting for sex. Scams. Lies. Mistrust. A kid can have the best buddy in the whole world over the internet, then suddenly, he gets scammed on the game he plays.... and he feels he has hit rock bottem. We are talking about kids to teens here.... even the adult are being the biggest jerks out there... Really.... too many questions.... but are there any answears? You would think mankind has advanced over the years.... I feel it is going downhill. EDIT: even poeple have gone as far as paying real money for items and accounts over on online games.... how far is too far? really?
For them, much like this community here, this is as true a community as anything IRL. You're talking to real people, with real lives, but without the social contracts of obligation and honor.
boredom would be my guess. and, also, its a computer game - so its not as if you can see the person that you annoyed. im always a jerk on computer games, butchering innocents etc - and so maybe its for the best that i dont play online games
people do not change their personality when using online characters, they simply have anonanymity and therefore express more of their real personality because they wont have to live with the embarrasment of doing something stupid or unacceptable infront of their peers. also, peopel behave differently with different groups of friends, for example: when ur hangin around with your normal friends you talk about stuff that is happenig in everday life, and what your doing etc, but when you are with your more intelligent friends you ted to discuss the important issues like america and nuclear warfare. online there are simply different groups to associate with. i wouldnt talk about this sort of thing at all with real friends, but online, very few of you know who i am, and if i do something extremely embarrassing i can always come back with a different account or somenthing, but i wont have to put up with people laughnig at me for something stupid(im sure they probably do, but i cant hear it)
Well, I suppose some might take games, or "virtual reality" too serious, add to this the power to inflict harm on someone else without being exposed to dnger themself and you have a bad mixture. It corrupts people, not a new thing, it happened many times in the past. Anyway, you also have to take into account that most of them are kids, and kids can act somewhat imature and if they are not limited by their enviroment or parents, than they might well take it far over the limits of a mature human being. That of course is just a theory. But I agree that many people on the net, be they in games on or message boards, do not behave quiet rational. Maybe the net is a place for them to feel superior, a feeling they are denied in the real world for whatever reason. And when you hurt their imagined superiority, they want revenge. Whatever the reason, it really makes the online world an uncomfortable place from time to time.
Fun with out reprecaution as dreamwalker says. its pretty simple really. Imagin a world where you can beat "anyone" with out having to pay for it, while listing to there whining. A bonus could be if the target was someone stronger or part of a clan, a challenge Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!. People do change there personality online, and why not you can be anything you like, only skill and imagination sets the limits. personly i dont PK unless provoked or i the oppertunity is to unresistable, but i will say some of the better moments in MMOG are the PK encounters, even when im on the reciving
but how can you be doing it naturally if it is nat in your personality, you would nto force yourself to do something that wasnt part of your personality, you just may not realise your online behaviour is prat of your personality. i am more like myself online than in person
Online games will become slightly more odd when those VR headsets, gloves etc become widely distributed. I cant wait. Just yesterday on BF1942, EA Coral sea only server, I stepped in at the last moment to stop an American shooting a Japanese in the back while he was manning a flak gun. It would have been the perfect moment to wave thankyou.
vslayer: its a game, an online game even where nothing is real, i know that many grow attached to there char and see it as a personal insult when they get killed/cheated and that is excatly what the PK/Griefer is after, for them its just a game, its has nothing to do with there real life person since that is left behind as the login in Btw. there are to kind of player killers, the 1st kill for the challenge because the NPC monster are to easy and boring, the 2nd kill to make people angry, he will try and hurt you as much as possible for the sole reason of watching you whine, his a griefer (aka asshole aka moron....) (im talking about mmogs)
Our personallities are the same in games and in real life, same person, same character. But the abilities are different and some i would goes do it becuase they can. It is a sense of power knowing that you are able to kill someone without concequences. Besides that i would say Boredom. Frankly i make it just fine killing the killers (Outlaws) in Mu
I think that what you are seeing in the games is in large part due to the very nature of the games. The rules and the milieu encourage people to free themselves from the bounds of real life and explore behaviors that they would or could never consider elsewhere. Before the Internet, people were complaining that flesh-and-blood D&D often brought out this type of behavior. People lose their center -- to put it in zen terms -- when they become disconnected from the things that define their life. Family, home, nation, school... civilization as a whole. That's just the way we are. Our spirits have never been honed to function well in a vacuum utterly devoid of reality because we've never had the opportunity to live in one before. Look at what happens to soldiers who spend many months not only away from home and everything familiar, but in a totally alien and opposite environment where the rules of behavior are completely different. They have a huge problem readjusting to "real life" when they get home. Hell, for a couple of years now I've been forced to spend six months at a time working away from home, but nonetheless in my native country, among people of own culture and in my own profession -- yet every time I go home I feel more and more like I've been through a portal to an alien planet. Add to that the fact that games by their very nature require us to adapt to their rules, and the fact that young gamers take a lot of pride in winning, and none of this is really very surprising. I play go on the internet, and go is a game from the "Oriental" culture in which competition and pride are downplayed. Because of the handicapping system you are always playing against your own best performance rather than truly against your opponent, and the goal of each game is to learn how to play better, as much as to win the individual game. In general, online go players behave very much like they do in a flesh-and-blood go club. As to the comment that the cyberworld in general causes us to be a little less like our "real" selves, or however you put it... It depends on which part of that world you frequent and what you want to accomplish. SciForums has its share of flamers and one-ups-manship gladiators, but in the 2 1/2 years I've been watching you folks, I'm mainly impressed by the fact that most of you, most of the time, conduct yourselves with amazing civility. When people write in with personal problems, you all rise to the occasion and do your best to help. When somebody gets carried away with himself, somebody else calls him on it. I think that this website serves as a very good example of how civilization can prosper without the heavy hand of government to protect us from ourselves and each other. Online games are only games, after all. They come with their own rules, and a major component of those rules is that you get to do anything you can get away with. Some people have fun simply trying to win the game; others get off on being able to get away with stuff they could never do in real life. Those who would have more fun playing with more rules about the general quality of behavior should simply create their own sites where they can add those rules. I'm sure you'd find a lot of people joining you. As for the comment that you can't do something that's not in your personality, you should catch up with your Jung. Everything is inside each of us. Some of it has been pushed down into our Shadow because we haven't been successful at taming it and finding a way to give it air occasionally. When we find ourselves in a situation where the normal rules of civilized behavior don't apply, the most natural thing to do is unlock our Shadow and let those feelings and urges that have been stifled for so long out into the open. This is really a very healthy thing to do. You wouldn't want to run into one of these kids in real life if he'd never had the opportunity to be nasty in an online game! We all need outlets for our Shadows. If you see someone walking his off the leash during an online game, consider it a gift to civilization that this is one less person who will go off the deep end some day and do real harm in the real world. Perhaps if you look at it that way it won't bother you so much. Meanwhile I'll stick to the civilized environments of go and SciForums. Peace, F.R.
Just to add to Fraggle Rocker's excellent answer, consider what would happen to our notion of "murder is wrong" if we suddenly were immortal (lets say, Highlander style). Between immortals, killing each other isn't nearly so grave an offense. Its just about as bad as punching the other in the guts. Its the same with games... there are simply no real consequences of betraying another guy's trust, for both parties concerned. So what, a dork somewhere loses a half hour of his life. If you're willing to spend your time playing video games, its probably not worth very much to begin with. Plus, its usually funny, even if you're on the receiving end of the mischeif.
yeah i reckon its because in Cyberworld most moral and social rules are thrown out the window. It's easy to hit on people, tell disgusting jokes, talk about morally and politically controversial topics, vent anger by pissing online people off and hell if you feel like going nuts over a stupid game then you can!
Peoples Personalities are not a large factor in online agames... ok for the underaged kids and teens... It may be........ but still.... even the most sane of human minds cannot be affected by ( such matters as name calling, pollital issues and even down right stupidness ) the smart poeple and the accpeted bunch thur online games and/or chatrooms.... Can They? Even today while playing diablo 2, i got threated...... I did nothing to offende this person... yet they come after me............. long story short.... I won... but this person would not even give me a single replay....... really, it makes one at a loss for words....... Well............ That post did not make sense.... but some may know what i mean. Even the older poeple play th online games... why do we still get threated, bugged and abused....... we try to be as sane and as mature as we can... but there is always someone who has something to say and/or to prove.... It is a game... why are poeple so cAUGHT UP IN IT.......? I swear.... I got half of the population of Diablo 2 on my ingor/suqelch list, becuase i get spammed by bots, that ask me to buy items with real money...... Ok the game is a outlet for some.... but why spend real money............... The concept bugs me...........
World of Warcraft are going to make a special roleplaying server with special rules, so that the gameworld isn't ruined by casual, non game (did you see the simpsons yesterday?) talk, etc.
Jealousy and boredom, only when i have my "valuable" gear on in Diablo do people try to kill me. Which is pretty stupid since I only allow friends to loot my cold dead body. Those are the formerly mentioned jealousy types but without the skill/items to kill someone else for the items.
