Smith, Playing dirty-understanding conflicts in multiplayer games.

Smith, J. H. (2004). Playing dirty-understanding conflicts in multiplayer games. In 5Th annual conference of the association of internet researchers.

Smith's paper seeks to show that conflict in multiplayer video games extends outside the mechanics of the game. Games are systems built for conflict - however, some conflict is "extra-mechanical" rather than "intra-mechanical." He claims that some people find it strange that gamers would be "morally offended" by someone else's gameplay. Aren't games supposed to be no-holds-barred virtual contests? In explanation, Smith examines three types of conflict behavior: cheating, violating local norms, and griefing.

Gamers use "cheating" to describe behavior that give the cheater an "unfair advantage" or "runs contrary to the spirit of the game." Local norms are decided by players in concert, and are enforced by server administrators or guild leaders. Grief play directly attacks another player's enjoyment of the game, without consideration of the systemic "goals" of the game."

I did not find this distinction very helpful. It's not ethnographic enough to be a folk distinction, but not clear enough to be a worthwhile analytic distinction. Smith's example themselves bleed over into one another. Isn't the purpose of local norms in part to curb "unfair" behavior. Isn't griefing itself a violation of a norm? Can't cheating be griefing?

This article is mostly worthwhile as a response to the idea that conflict in games is inherently part of the system, or to the question "aren't gamers supposed to be in conflict"? It also provides some different examples of contentious behavior. One interesting example: cheating does not have to be confined to the game itself, but could also occur in systems related to the game, such as matchmaking software.