Tailor Archive

The psychological makeup of hundreds of thousands of players could be broken down into any number of groupings and categories to help explain behavior and objectives.
For the purposes of this book, we'll simplify and break it into three broad categories.

Players who don't fall into one of these three areas are usually considered "general" players. General players are fairly neutral. They obey the rules, play the game, and might help out when they see someone who needs help. They aren't nasty and they aren't pillars of your community. They're regular "Joes." It's important to note that there is gray area between these types. The categories that follow are generalizations. Please don't expect all your players to neatly line up into the areas we've listed. It won't happen that neatly, we promise.

Barbarians

The barbarians are the "problem children" of online gaming. Their objectives vary, but one thing is consistent: They don't care what you or anyone else thinks.

Barbarians don't care about your intricately conceived game mechanics or your well thought-out player justice and accountability systems, or whether or not exploiting a bug is cheating. These are the "griefers," players who love the anonymity of the Internet and whose main enjoyment comes from ruining other players' experiences.

They are the bug exploiters who don't care if duplicating gold, weapons, armor, or whatever requires them to flood attack your routers and crash a server. It doesn't bother them that thousands of others have their game interrupted.

Barbarians are the cheaters, script kiddies, account hackers, client hackers, and "k&wl d00ds," whose objectives are not socialization with friends in a game, but making sure they and their small group of other social misfits can giggle behind their hands as they stare at the monitor, happy to have caused heartache and pain to someone else.

Identifying barbarians is a critical task, one easier said than done. PWs, or those with servers under company control, have the advantage of logging activity. Problems can be verified and dealt with at a later time. In free-play peer-to-peer games, such as Diablo II or Age of Empires, it is almost impossible. The collective intelligence of client hackers and the anonymity of the Internet make it difficult for a developer to take action. This is why peer-to-peer games have such poor attendance online compared to sales; when the client hacks show up, the honest players give up in disgust. The same is true for PWs when bad behavior goes unchecked.

For some, the raw intensity of the "virtual psychopath" that many barbarians represent can be refreshing in its novelty. At first, some who encounter them react as though they are cute online versions of Hannibal Lecter. Soon after meeting barbarians, they notice what is missing from the comparison: education, erudition, and the ability to function in society. In fiction, Dr. Lecter's victims had some reason for becoming his entrees. Barbarians will eat your customers without any provocation or remorse. They are more akin to the mass murderer in the Richard Pryor movie who, when asked why he murdered all those people, replied, "They was home." Barbarians are a statistically small group. However, they do a lot of damage to games.

Reroute them or get them out of the game. It's that simple. The only players who will shed a tear at the banishment of griefers are other griefers.

The bottom line: Barbarians will drive customers away faster than Attila could jump on his horse.

The citizen is the crown jewel of any online game. Think of these players as the good people you know in the real world. In a game setting, these are the people most likely to take new players under their wing, take part in role-playing events, lend their in-game cash and resources to a greater cause, and always have a civil word for passersby.

Moreover, they are willing to obey the rules and play the game "realistically" (according to your vision) and in-character and encourage others to do so as well. Their objectives are to create a legend for themselves, but not at the expense of the game or other players. They want the whole game and all the players to survive and thrive within the world you've created.

The citizen usually strives to become a community leader. If there is no political or diplomatic portion to the game, they'll create one from whole cloth and convince others to participate. They become player advocates, game advocates, and at times, can create around themselves a cult of personality that becomes more vibrant and important than the game itself.

Citizens are pure gold. They keep others in the game. Please remember that the citizens deserve your attention. They aren't your squeaky wheels (like your problem children), and it's easy to overlook them. Attention given to the citizens has a huge impact on the world. It benefits the entire community. Do not fall into the trap we've faced before where you spend so much time responding to the fires caused by your problem players that your good players feel neglected. Over time, the neglected good players become barbarians themselves.

We've been there and we've done it. It hurts the game. Learn from our mistakes.