Professor Studies Social Customs in Video Games - Becomes Most Hated Player

Re:Professor Studies Social Customs in Video Games - Becomes... by GavinB on Monday July 06, 2009 @08:48PM (#690722)

In meatspace there are police officers and judges who will interpret the law to stop people from causing trouble. There's also the threat of physical violence.

Prof Myers found an environment where he was safe from punishment, and started griefing. People got mad.

Wow, annoy people and they get mad. Great study. You've really advanced science with this one!

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Re:Professor Studies Social Customs in Video Games - Becomes... by frossie on Monday July 06, 2009 @11:34PM (#690853)

Well of course it is defensible to study what happens when you get people mad. For example I read a great account of a social anthropologist who queue-jumped on purpose to study how (English) people dealt with it. But the scientist queue jumping knew she was doing something wrong (and felt terrible doing it too).

The strange thing is that in this account (which I hope is misrepresented) the researcher seems surprised that violating the social norm got him a hostile reaction.

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Re:Professor Studies Social Customs in Video Games - Becomes... by mstevens on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @10:41AM (#691537)

The queue jumping sounds like Kate Fox, she talks about it in _Watching the English_ but I wouldn't be surprised to see it written up elsewhere too.

http://archive.thenorthernecho.co.uk/2004/5/3/53732.html is the best link I could find quickly.

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Re:Professor Studies Social Customs in Video Games - Becomes... by frossie on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @01:57PM (#692001)

It was Kate Fox. I would have plugged the book (which is funny and thought-provoking reading) but I don't know how many people here are interested in the English tribe :-)

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