Issue 50: Casual Friday - Flippage

[The Escapist Staff]

Laura Genender"Originally, Septonian hadn't even known that his companion was female. But it wasn't long into their friendship before he found out that the male mage was a girl in real life." Laura Genender tells the unnerving tale of two gamers whose in-game romance polarized an entire gaming community and exposed a very real problem plaguing many MMOs.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: steven

How malicious! It's a role-playing game. EVERYONE INVOLVED is pretending to be something that they are not. S should be very ashamed of his behavior. I certainly can't imagine how much more of a poor sport he could have been.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Mano Marks

I find it amazing that any breach of gender lines in game is acceptible, but any breach of gender lines in the "real world" is met with such intense hostility. Had this been a bar situation, he would risked physical violence. It's so sad and baffling that reactions are so strong.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: .

I had a similar (though non-gender-related) experience back in the pre-internet days. This was in a game called Falcon's Eye, a text-only strategy game that ran on the BBS packet networks. Each player ran a nation, allocating resources and directing civic projects, a la SimCity with a generally medieval / historical theme. The only roleplaying was through email-like messages that could be sent between players, used primarily to form alliances. I put my evil diplomat hat on and after successfully building an alliance among a number of smaller nations and leading the charge to take down some big guys who were in my way, I blindsided and blitzkrieged my former allies, sacked their cities, and rode off with the loot...
That was just too much for someone. Like Flippage, my account was hacked and hari-kiried. I never had the satisfaction of finding out who did it. It's amazing that people can react in real life this way to something that happens in a game. (Or maybe, are we just being too narrow in our definition of the game? Perhaps hacking and other forms of cheating should just be regarded as part of the rules...)
In any case, this isn't really anything new. It's the same thing as a cowboy who got bluffed in a poker game pushing back his chair and leaping up to start a bar fight. I for one am glad to get a shredded gaming account instead of a mouthful of knuckles.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Chas Blackwell

Here's the question I have; the blurb for the article says that this event "exposed a very real problem plaguing many MMOs." Of course, things like this have been happening for ages, at least since the advent of MUDs and IRC, but that's not the quibble I have -- the question is, what is the actual problem here? Is it the misrepresentation of Flippage's actual sex? The fact that people tend to go a little overboard thinking there's a connection between two people who really, in the grand scheme of things, barely know each other? Or is it Septonian's reprisal after he found out? Honestly, I'm not really sure, although the last is the only one of the three which is really beyond the pale. I suppose the bigger question is, what exactly was Flippage's intent with what he did? That's never really answered unfortunately, and it's what I'm most curious about.

Having played MUDs since the late 80s, including Armageddon (Cat Rambo's article in issue 43 actually mentioned at least one incident I had personal involvement in), I've seen this time and time again, and it rarely ends well -- yet I'd agree that it is not fair to simply condemn anyone who crosses gender lines with their characters, or even someone who claims to be the opposite gender in real life. For me, the line is crossed when you are using that to gain an advantage over the people you are lying to -- at least in the case of lying about the player's gender. In terms of the game itself, it should not matter, in character, whether or not the player is male, female, or anything in between -- it is the blurring of the line between in character and out of character that causes the problem. Unfortunately, I think this is a bigger problem in games which are not roleplaying-heavy. Unlike Armageddon, for instance, where OOC talk is kept to the bare minimum, in most MMOs OOC and IC (what little there usually is) talk is intermingled and the line between player and character is blurred. That's something that isn't likely to change anytime soon either, because the hardcore roleplayer is a niche market that no one seems to want to cater to, at least with a big commercial product.

Hrm....am I rambling there?

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Niallo

I find the writer disingenuous. 'Meta-gaming'? No, the person lied. Playing a character with a different gender is hardly a big deal, but lying about your true gender, especially when the other person starts to have feelings for you, is. If you want to play games a lot, especially RPGs, then you have to maintain a VERY clear line between the game and real life. If I sit with friends playing a board game and backstab or betray, I should make it completely clear that is just the game, and check they are OK with it. In an online game with strangers (as in the example above) it makes no sense to do that and assume that the other players will accept it. And all of the rest of the internet - BBSs, chatsites, Myspace etc......

Not a game.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: bishop

Sometimes I forget that the phenomenon of online gaming is still very young. Some kind of analogy can be drawn between it and the task of growing up. I wish that when I first got online that there was more ...guidance.

In life we have parents or some kind of guidance influence. Someone with good intentions that keep us from the darker things in life. It seems that online, we lack that. Games come with a little blurb that reads: Online experiences may vary (or something along those lines), and before you know it, you're catapulted into an overwhelming world of anonymity, elitism, bigotry, capitalism. However, just like in life; sometimes you find great good amongst the dark. Isolated communities of sane, rationale gamers. I've been online for about 12 years now, my advise is: Err on the side of caution.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Jon

I agree with Niallo's comment. This should just fall into the category of "common sense". It's not roleplaying, it's not part of gaming, we're just talking about Flipp building a web of lies and having it predictably crash down when someone found out the truth.

It's entertaining how this relates to the article about "there are no girls on the internet". The stereotypical "lonely male gamer" does exist, as much as the high-level games media might want people to forget about them. The whole reaction of disbelief to any claim of being female isn't terribly polite to actual girls, but acts as a defense mechanism as well.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: dosboot

Having been on the victim side of both gender impersonation and MMO account hacking I firmly feel that the latter is much worse to go through. Just like in real life, stealing is worse than lying. I really don't see how there could be any confusion about this. In my MUD days if you admitted you hacked into someone's account that would be it, you were banned.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Myk

I have a bad habbit of befreinding almost anybody I meet online. I dont care what or who you are, you're playing the game; and as long you play it with a level of courtesy to other players, the more you play the better. I recently dabbled into the MMO world with a game called Planetside, I heard it was not as popular so I saw my chance to experiment without too much to worry about. I'm on for about an hour or so and I finally work up the nerve to seek a squad. After about 3 mins of being in this squad (which quickly became a platoon) I'm on what I consider to be good terms with a few players. One in particular, the name will be spared, who seemed to be very flirtacious(is that how you spell it?) and I returned the favor. as I am winding down to sleep I ask the player the good ol' A/S/L. the reply:

18/Male baby/anywhere you want me, you wanna meet somewhere and cyber?

this ended that relationship rather quickly (that kinda thing is not my deal), my point being: MMo's should stay a fantasy world, and VERY rarely be taken any further. otherwise people will be hurt. or insanely humiliated...

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Elek

A lot of Transgendered people role play online (in games or other social environments) in their chosen gender/sex before they start exploring IRL. It's considered a safe environment to live out one's true self, when one's physical body could lead to things like, oh, someone beating a trans person to death once they find out they're not "really" a woman.

Not surprisingly, a person finds out that someone is not physically a female, and acts out their rage by annihilating them. If Flippage was a trans person, or questioning their gender identity, I wonder just how they'd feel now to go out in the world, when one tiny interaction leads to so much pain.