Battle Pirates as a Social Experiment

“Sec­tor Wars” Sec­tors 276 & 275 go at it!

Let me start off by say­ing that I only have an AS degree (Santa Rosa Junior Col­lege) and that part of my hob­bies in my life has been the on/off study of psy­chol­ogy. I am a 49 year old woman who has always loved watch­ing ‘folks’ and has spent far too much time puz­zling over human behav­ior and what makes peo­ple tick.

Hav­ing said this– I’ve run into a game on Face­book. My hus­band begged me to play it. At first I refused. Mostly because I don’t see myself as a ‘pirate’ type. I did decide to play after I found out that my older kids were play­ing. I then saw it as a way to have some fun time “together” over a distance.

This game, of course is set in a two dimen­sional set­ting. It is a pirate game. There are basi­cally no rules to the game. I am find­ing it very inter­est­ing that folks are mak­ing groups to help them advance their cause, and to secure their ‘sec­tors’ and even to pro­voke ‘sec­tor wars’. There are clans of every sort: Fam­ily, Friends, bud­dies, etc. There is a real time chat there so folks can, if they wish, col­lab­o­rate, or  get to know oth­ers. This also allows folks to move these game based ‘rela­tion­ships’ beyond the game and into real or poten­tially real ‘world’ via Face­book com­mu­ni­ca­tion & friendships.

But, what I am find­ing is that there is some blur­ring between the ‘game’ and ‘real life’, prob­a­bly by those who play way too much!

But, I also have other con­cerns, as the anon­im­ity of the game allows peo­ple to ‘dehu­man­ize’ peo­ple in other sec­tors and label them ‘bad’ folks nearly imme­di­ately. I might add, that I find myself not so inno­cent, as I quickly jumped into label­ing play­ers ‘friends’ or ‘foes’, and failed to take into con­sid­er­a­tion that they were real peo­ple with real play­ing preferences.

I found it inter­est­ing that when peo­ple did ‘friend’ each other on the Face­book level, thereby hav­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion avail­able that han­dles (play names) were thrown to the wind within the game in an effort to bring in just enough real­ity to get some­one to con­form to the desired behav­ior (i.e. “Peggy,” (vs. SFF_TigerEyes)“if you’d just shut your mouth then the bully wouldn’t bully you”).

Some clans of peo­ple, will des­ig­nate them­selves enforcers of behav­ior within their sec­tor (The num­ber one rule seems to be no ‘hit­ting’ inside the sec­tor, but it’s ok to go out­side the sec­tor and “hit” other peo­ple there). I kind of see them as the Sec­tor Dons; The God­Fa­thers. Depend­ing on their own char­ac­ter (their per­sonal ‘real’ moral char­ac­ter) They may break their own rules, but oth­ers may not. If oth­ers do, not only are they attacked relent­lessly (i.e. bul­lied) on the play­ground (bash­ing of base, and min­ing fleets attacked) but, also in chat they are per­son­ally attacked. And, it gets in the way of real life friend­ships, and poten­tial friend­ships —because peo­ple use the ‘it’s just a game’ to jus­tify the bul­ly­ing, and to excuse the bul­ly­ing. (At this point, I will won­der, only because I have NO clue if I’m right, but does this reek of addic­tion??  When it gets in the way of REAL relationships?)

Alliances are formed between groups, much like alliances between coun­tries in the real world.  Alliances allow the God­fa­thers to con­tinue to dom­i­nate the game and enforce their rules (good or bad).  These alliances also give them a sense of cor­rect­ness because their peers are back­ing up what­ever stand they are tak­ing at the moment; right, wrong, or indif­fer­ent.  As in the real world, an alliance can be good, evil, or any­where in between.

I have told my two old­est daugh­ters, that I don’t see this as a game any­more. I’m sure they think I’m totally nuts. (Also note, the peo­ple within the game stated that I’m nuts.) Instead, I see it as a kind of test tube. A small slice of human behav­ior con­tained in a vir­tual world where behav­ior seems to be run ala “Lord of the Flies” style.

I know that I’m only touch­ing on the basics and not even all of that. I see behav­ior within the game as a mir­ror of the greater soci­ety, and I admit that I find the rela­tion­ships fas­ci­nat­ing. At this point, I play not to spend time with the kids, because my big mouth (I’m a very ver­bal girl, remem­ber this is how women got the right to vote!), and other’s bul­ly­ing has caused my hus­band and I to move to a dif­fer­ent sec­tor from my chil­dren. Instead I am there, read­ing the chat, and get­ting to know the folks so that I can under­stand what ever will hap­pen in this new sec­tor. Though, I’d ven­ture to say that prob­a­bly in the end, the same thing will hap­pen here as in the last one, and the last one. Bul­lies have a ten­dency to take over. Or at least peo­ple that I see as ‘bul­lies.’  Please, keep in mind, that these peo­ple are in fact, folks that oth­ers will vouch are fine peo­ple in real life.

Part of what caught my atten­tion to this ‘behav­ior study’ is that it brought up ‘old stuff’ for me.  My ex hus­band beat me nearly every night in our early mar­ried years.  Every night I ended up in tears, one night I ended up with a bro­ken tooth!  Everynight, I’d ask him he felt big­ger because of what he did, because yes, I got angry.  Everynight, he’d look at me like I was an idiot, and pro­claim his inno­cence.  “I’m just play­ing, what’s the mat­ter with you?”  Ques­tion: How many bruises did I recieve inside and out??  Answer: More than I’d ever want to count.

Peo­ple in the pirate game are basi­cally doing the same thing.  There are peo­ple who actu­ally prefeer to play in a peace­ful man­ner and once they voice that, they become a tar­get, and once they stand up for it, well, they are chided even in the chat! And yes, it’s a game, and one can quit. But, what if one’s fam­ily is there play­ing?? Then it becomes less a game, and more per­sonal, some­thing worth fight­ing for! Les­son learned: Keep big trap zipped!

This whole expe­ri­ence with this game, still ongo­ing, has taught me that when the “bul­lies” in the game got really per­sonal, and peo­ple started defriend­ing folks on the ‘real’ side, i.e. Face­book friend­ships out­side of the game. [note: I became the ‘inde­pen­dant’ i.e. the one who had to be forced to con­form; per­haps the ‘loose canon.’] this all just  really reminded me of THE Prison Exper­i­ment (1971, Philip Zim­bardo, Ph.D., San­ford University).

It’s not the same thing, but, oh it is.  And that is a sad state­ment for humans and the effect of gam­ing on human rela­tion­ships in gen­eral for this has affected could-have-been beau­ti­ful poten­tial friend­ships, and estab­lished fam­ily relationships.

For exam­ple, it was fasi­nat­ing to watch some­one who felt he’d be run out from the pre­vi­ous sec­tor by bul­lies turn on a woman who felt bul­lied and was try­ing to play by her con­scious. Not only did he side with the bul­lies, but he ‘attacked’ her as well, and defriended her on the Face­book side as well.  I can tell you, the woman was, incred­i­bly hurt by what felt like a betrayal, and by the loss of a poten­tial ‘beau­ti­ful’ friend. She holds her friend­ships dear to her heart.

And yet, there are won­der­ful peo­ple play­ing there as well.  Peo­ple who play peace­fully, and who are capa­ble of treat­ing their neigh­bor with cour­tesy and kind­ness. Civil­ity does not fall through all the cracks, or through all the cracked ones.

The chem­istry for me is just cap­ti­vat­ing, and yet too painful in real life to go back and try to talk to these peo­ple to under­stand their actions.  Instead, I’d love to take a researcher’s seat– to stand back and watch what is going on, and stay in the back­seat and watch as per­sonal rela­tion­ships grow and fall apart, because of rules in a ‘vir­tual world’ reign supreme even in real life relationships.

I’d like to thank Cpt­nDead­eye, and Green­bay for their kind­ness.  Thank you to Cap­tain­Death, DavidK, Pit­bull, WPD_Barry, Scor, Sir­Fer­ret, Paul_D, KillerD (for not hit­ting me back) and oth­ers for help­ing me to under­stand myself a lit­tle more.  Some of us were par­tic­u­larly kind.  Some of us were very unkind, and some of us were sim­ply try­ing to stand up for what was right, even in a ‘vir­tual world.’

“Legit­imi non carborundum”