Griefing

Griefer - grief·er

Noun

A griefer is a slang term used to describe a player in a multiplayer video game who plays the game simply to cause grief to other players through harassment. Griefing is a malignant form of emergent gameplay.

What is a Griefer

Griefers, are really people that are generally out to have fun by refusing to play the game as it was designed and having fun the expense of others, now that is not true of all griefers, some have political agendas. I am not going to answer if it is right or wrong or the agendas are real, or correct, that is not the point of this article. Based on my observation there are several types of griefers that come to the sandbox, below is my description of them. These are very generalized observations.

Professional / Group Griefing

We see this group, the professional griefers, the least. These are groups like PN, DiSSENTiON, Justice League, SL Police forces, etc. These are organized groups that have an actual agenda in the game. I know your thinking wait, dude just lumped griefing organization with protection organizations. I know it may seem strange to lump PN and Justice League in the same group, however, they both have an agenda, and the use many of the same tools and tactics, and they do things that are contrary to what many land owners want.

Spammers

We have them in postal mail, email, web sites, etc, in Second Life™ these are just nitwits that come in and spam a place with advertisement, I really hate these assholes the most, just because how rude is it to come spam a bunch of people you have a lame ass club, spamming isn’t going to fix that. Perhaps the hatred of spammers is just personal, but I hope there is a special place in hell for them where people yell in their ear advertising messages like “MOST AWSOME CLUB EVER!”, “HOT NAKED CHICKS”, and any Viva Viagra song they can find, forever, 24/7. (This goes for the RL people doing it too)

Land Griefers

I have not dealt with these people, but they are the whale poo at the bottom of the ocean that put up ban lines, or parcel up 16m squares for ad farms to try and force land owners to buy the land to get rid of the eye sore. They charge way over the top prices, its extortion, and the lindens should do something about it.

Morons

Last is the average moron, they come in cage, do it for the lulz, they manage to cage 2 or 3 people before they are ejected or banned, and then claim you were pwned. The best part of these they are the funniest to deal with. These individuals claim hundreds of alts, and claim that they are going to destroy a sim, or that they are a linden and that they will just unban themselves. They create none of their own things; usually screw up the scripts and weapons they are using. Now admittedly some come along and orbit an entire club or sandbox, or whatever, but in the end, they come and go.

How to handle griefers

In all cases the best thing to do is limit the damage, find the objects, return them and ban people. Using weapons is generally not a good deal, if they have ½ a brain they have the same shields you do, but they are just using a free version. You can stop scripts from running for non-group members which may or may not work. Most importantly, use the right tools and strategies. This is not all encompassing, just a few items that have worked well for us in the sandbox

· Object finders (lets you find any object near you)

· Scanners (not effective against well prepared individuals, but most are not well prepared)

· Listeners, channels 1 to 25, 45 to 55 and 90 to 110 are prime listening channels for scripts and freebies

· Non-Physical chairs and sitting down on things work very well

· Know your opponents weapons, have a problem with the web cagers, get one, figure out how it works, how to work around it.

· Edit objects moving you, they will stop for a while

· Turn push and damage off on your land unless you really need it. If you own a sim you can turn off physics, but that breaks a lot of fun toys.

Staff is a good way to minimize the effect of griefers. Yes, that’s right, minimize! If you are big enough, or unlucky you will get griefed, the goal is to minimize their affect, and remove the problem with a minimal disturbance. Staff will allow you, provided they are prepared, to get the griefers removed from the area, and objects returned. There is no magic to this; it is just plain and simple cleanup of a problem.

Some of them will interact, saying you are being too serious, and they are doing it to piss you off, that you suck, etc. There are two approaches, one is to resort to calling them names and getting angry, it doesn’t work, that is what they want. The other is to ignore them, or laugh at them. If you keep laughing at them with everything they say, the loose their power, they get angry, and in the end just go away.

As for the professional groups, there isn’t much you can do, if you are a target, you live with it, or figure out how to stop it, which is easier said than done. To some extent I think it is kind of like what Martin Blank said in Grosse Pointe Blank – “If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.” Right or wrong, the professional groups have an agenda; you just don’t want to be it.

How does Fermi Sandbox handle Griefers?

At Fermi sandbox we have about 20 sandbox managers, they are from around the world, and there is generally one or two in the sandbox at any given time. We have strict clearly defined rules that all the managers understand. Assuming it is just someone shooting others (push is not enabled) we ask them to stop. If this doesn’t work they are ejected, sent home, or banned depending on the response. Our sandbox members know to IM the Fermi Sandbox & University group if there is griefing, and to not try and stop it, we always ask for any information we can. As we have probably banned 2 or 3 thousand people, we now give away t-shirts that say banned at Fermi Sandbox :) This is just for our entertainment, though it usually pisses off the average griefer. We do what we can, and know that it is going to happen, live, learn, minimize, and accept.

Recent changes

I have noticed, and I could be wrong that griefing is on a downward trend. I know we hear about it all the time on things like SecondLifeHerald.com, but the truth is, it seems to over all be down. The sandbox traffic is about double, but griefing isn’t. More importantly the quality of the griefer has gone down. We used to get hit with some nasty weapons, but it doesn’t happen as often, its generally n00bs that come in cage, particle spam with marios and leave. I’m not entirely sure of the cause of the decline, but I have a few ideas.

· Large grid, more targets, less likely to be hit

· Griefers tend to focus on the trendy, SL is most likely not the current hip trendy place to grief

· Linden updates, perhaps they are having an effect

· Griefing has largely evolved in to a social statement for groups, so they focus their energy on those statements

· Several open weapons sandboxes that are a free for all

Final Thoughts

In the griefers are going to be around no matter the game, and in an open ended virtual worlds more so. While some of us build, others club, some shop, some grief, it is how they want their world. I don’t know why they do it, maybe they were picked on and now they have their chance to return the favor, maybe its just for the lolz, but they do. In their world, griefing is their get away from RL. Have a plan, relax, don’t let the bastards ruin your game, minimize their effect, and enjoy your world, it is after all yours.