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“by running a spy network I am griefing”

If you’re an MMO designer, and you *still* don’t grok the griefer-mindset, or you somehow hope/believe that “one day, there will be no griefers”, then maybe this RPS interview with the always-fun-to-watch Goonswarm will help you:

MT: We are griefers. If nothing is going to happen then we’re going to try to find something that screams and bleeds and poke at it.

RPS: Griefing is something goons are known for doing, but now I’m talking to you it’s not something I can imagine you personally doing.

MT: Technically speaking, by running a spy network I am griefing.

RPS: But would you go out and aggravate other players for the Hell of it if you were a lower ranking member of Goonswarm?

MT: Well, most lower ranked Goons make their money by doing that. Scamming people is a very quick way of making money in Eve. Rather than making an honest buck, you take that buck from somebody else.

and, much further down, maybe this will help you see how griefers often serve just as positive and valuable a role as all your “preferred” player-types:

RPS: For my money, Eve might be the most fascinating game in existence today. But that doesn’t stop it from being interminably boring as well.

MT: Right. I mean most Eve players are stuck in high security space mining, and a lot of the core PvE in Eve has you sitting there are watching three grey bars slowly turn red.

Goonfleet is a socialist alliance. We give people ships so that rather than being forced to rat [fight low-powered AI NPCs] they can take part in PvP, we teach them how to scam so that they don’t have to mine, we teach them how to make ISK most effectively, we give them a lot of ISK and we reimburse their losses. This way they can focus on the fun aspects of the game, like griefing and warfare, so they’re not forced to endure derp-derp-ing around high sec.

If they play your game, you should be glad; if they grief, you should be asking yourself why – and if you’re a commercial operation, you should probably be asking:

“are they fixing a problem for us?

can we afford to leave them to it, part of our unpaid workforce?

and:

is it worth our time trying to fix the problem itself, or should we accept their help and move on down our never-ending list of pending fixes?”

2 replies on ““by running a spy network I am griefing””

As a non-player of EVE I always had fun reading those big scams stories. Never quite heard anything else fascinating about it though. It’s just part of the package and something would be missing otherwise.

I came to consider that griefers were part of the design of EVE Online. Maybe not by choice but this is what makes EVE what it is and this is its niche. Going against it would probably be bad for the future of the game.

It makes the game frustrating for “normal” players but then not all games can appeal to all gamers and “normal” players shouldn’t bother with it in the first place. I know I don’t and have way more fun being an outside observer. And it’s free!

“If they play your game, you should be glad;”

Nuts. They break things in so, so many ways. It’s easier to ban the lot – the amount of griefing and scamming they do is unreal.

My dividing line is, fyi, when they start doing things related to the game which are actual /crimes/. Goonfleet passed that rubicon long ago.

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