No Grief

How to Manage Bullies in Games

By Anne Collier
January, 2006

The experts (gamers) will tell you that the best policy is to ignore griefers - just like Mom used to say about the old-fashioned kind of bully. It makes sense, because griefers, game bullies, whatever you want to call them are generally trying to get and keep everyone's attention. Ignore them, and they usually go away...after a while.

For the non-gamers reading this, here's what griefers do: taunt other players, especially people new to the game; get in other players' way; swear; cheat; ambush; form gangs to harass on a bigger scale; block virtual passageways; "or otherwise use the game merely to annoy a convenient target or to harass a particular player who has reacted to their ill will," adds a Microsoft At Home tipsheet on this issue.

David, a 16-year-old gamer in Washington State, says he hasn't experienced bullying, but offers an example in a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) called "Lineage II": "The way they bully is in a combat zone, where free killing is allowed without penalty. People your clan might have done something to, or who just feel like it, can kill you continously with no break, and during this time you cannot even log out of the game, nor can you leave even if you are dead. So they can definitely ruin the game and keep you from playing. The only thing you can do is stay dead for awhile, then quit the game and come back later hoping they aren't there."

"In games such as 'EverQuest' that include player-vs.-player combat," CNET reports, "griefers typically lure new players into hidden areas, then kill them and loot their corpses for valuable in-game goods. One of the most common griefer tactics is to camp out at 'spawn spots' - locations where characters enter the game world after dying or logging off - and attack arriving players the second they materialize." But even alternate-reality games like The Sims have griefers.

Solutions obviously depend on the game. Games with guilds or clubs in their worlds allow these groups to police activity among their members. Or the members do the policing - they look out for each other. Some game companies create games that just aren't useful environments for griefers to do their acting out. Other game companies actually try to educate players in how to work out issues among themselves, or self-police.

Microsoft's Xbox Live has a "Friends List" for players, so they can choose to play only with friends or people they know. That generally means there won't be any griefers. Xbox Live has also banned problem players when it gets enough complaints from other players about them.

Fortunately for gamers, griefers are a problem for game companies too, because they tend to drive away customers, so the companies have an incentive to minimize griefer hassles. The problem is, new "opportunities" are always popping up that are hard for companies hosting games with thousands, even tens of thousands of players, worldwide to keep up with. So companies also have an incentive to provide features and conditions supportive of players' finding solutions among themselves.

The good news for parents is, the bullying is pretty much virtual - it hurts game characters, not kids. About any real risks to gamers, 15-year-old gamer Ben says, "The potential for bullying? Yeah, it's there but unlikely it will be used anytime soon."

That's where street smarts come in - the kind that keep you on the alert whenever you're in an environment (real or virtual) where you're among strangers. That goes for game worlds too, now that they're populated by thousands of people you've never met.

"I know there are crazy people in online games", says Corey, a 14-year-old gamer in Connecticut, "but I know what to do and what not to do. I can tell to an extent who's not 100 percent. There's no way to guarantee kids' safety … but if you're smart enough, you can't be lured into a false sense of security. I know that I really can't afford to think, 'Oh, this [game] community's ok, we're fine.' It's not that simple and it's not that safe."