When Gaming Gets Personal

In my opinion personification of your adversaries or your character in game is not a good thing.

In my opinion it is the personification that leads into problems that AJ links in studies, players should not actually live the game but just play it. Therefore solution is not about making games healthy environment for living since game should not be your life in the first place. I have not read those studies (and I dont have time) but I'm pretty sure the results are not from casual players that have good life in general.

Belegar

"Ah, good to see you follow your own rules again, professor. Nice of you to demand respect from everyone else, but not hold yourself to the same lofty standard. "

I might suggest that if you wish to speak of how people in Illyriad treat each other and cases of mistakes being made, this is not the place to do it.  Do try to stay at least on topic.

And thanks for calling the standard lofty, I do believe it is and while I do fail to live up to it, as I assume you do as well, fortunately growth comes from admitting your errors and learning from them, don't you think?

AJ

Hyrdmoth wrote: The question that interests me is: What behaviours does Illyriad encourage compared to other similar games (whose names sound a bit like Peony)? Aggression in Illyriad is much more expensive, and the rewards for that aggression much lower, than in comparable games. Co-operation with other players is much more necessary. Planning, rather than purely weight of numbers, is called for. Patience and self-motivation are encouraged, as there is no victory condition. This naturally leads to the question of: Why is ajqtrz dissatisfied? Illyriad appears to me to be all the things that he would want a game to be, particularly in comparison to any other game.

What the studies have shown is that people react to games emotionally in much the same way the do to real life events, though at a lower level of of course.  The same brain chemicals are triggered in an imaginary attack as in a real one, except the conscious mind is able to put the imaginary attack into a safe context and thus to reduce the fight/flight response....though not eliminate it.  From my perspective it's not about the levels of aggression and how gaming might change them, but in how gaming might effect the overall personality of the individual.  Increased aggression is not the only thing which can be effected, perhaps cooperation (this has been measured as something which can happen in female subjects and highly introverted individuals), altruism, empathy and it's opposite. 

You are correct that planning the the weight of numbers is important in Illy, but only when the two sides are roughly equivalent in size and experience.  Once the experience level and size are taken into account it may be that the cost of aggression is much less, especially if the aggression is against an unarmed player or even a lightly armed player.

But of course, the real aggression in Illy isn't in the wars between warrior alliances because they are often pretty well matched and expect to endure aggression.  But what of the independent players, or the small peaceful alliances attacked without cause.  I do believe that the attacker is doing harm to themselves, though probably pretty minor, and that, once they develop the habit of attacking small players and "winning" they reinforce that attitude that says "I don't care about you I"m  here to have what's fun to me and you can just suffer."  That's not respectful and, if as I believe, is carried out into the offline world, decreases the respect the player will show to others who are, in fact, physically weaker.

Other forms of aggression are also present in how some players are treated verbally in GC or the forums.  Aggression need not be with armies, but sometimes is present when somebody says "shut up," or "nobody wants to listen to you" and things like those.  The highest form of punishment a group of people can meet out in a social group is ostracization.  It is one of the three forms of punishment, something of which I may include in another post some day.

Your comments are very much appreciated.

AJ 

The example most quoted is Call of Duty in it's various iterations.  I'll try to find out if there is a common definition. 

Thanks for pointing out the need to determine that.

AJ

Game is no different from real life. Its you what makes the difference and its your own personal decision.