Fur, I think you're missing the point. Games are games. They are not real life. The whole point of games is to be able to do things you can't or won't do in real life. If you start bring in real life consecuences into a game, well then it's not a game any more. It becomes an extencion of real life, and thats just not as fun.

Furball, I might also point out that from a "view from the law," Vendetta is a private institution, run by Guild Software, and they have the rights to do whatever they want. Consider the Boy Scouts. The Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could exclude homosexuals based on the "freedom of association." This meant that the Boy Scouts, as a private organization, had the right to exclude and let in whomever they wish. The same with Guild Software.

I would also point out that you have the attitude of playing for pleasure. You want to have a "fun" time, and that "untrained pilots" are worth protecting. Let me reiterate, this is a test! We play to help Guild Software better their game engine. They have taken strides to make the game as "fun" as possible (caps), but at the heart it really is a test. Because it has such a polished feel, you can easily forget that it is such a test, but at its heart, it still is.

I agree with genka, games are places where you can do things you can't do in real life. Why play games if the cops are going to bust down your door for shoving a rocket up someone's exhaust? Any issues you may have you should take up with the devs. But realize the game is a COMBAT SPACE SIMULATOR. Notice the word "combat." The end-solution for everything thus far is combat. Realize it, live it, or die crying. You have to be prepared to fight for your life in this game, and repeatedly.

You want consequences? Well then, push for an accountability/reputation system to be implemented. But realize this game _needs_ some really, really bad bad-guys, like UncleDave said. They are roleplaying. Please do the same.

Well, game makers want as many people to play as possible, if people begin to drive more then one person away from the game thats not good, a two person or more sacrifice to just keep one person happy is not acceptable, that person has to be punished for there actions or else they will continue to drive more people away.

Very few people, if any are being driven away over griefers. Those that have stopped playing do so out of protest over an issue.

Wow... I opened a can of worms with that post. I guess it wouldn't be fair to throw that hot potato into the forum and not say something about it myself, so:

In response to: "Games are meant as ways to LET YOu do stuff you couldn't or wouldn't do in RL."
...and...
"I think you're missing the point. Games are games. They are not real life. The whole point of games is to be able to do things you can't or won't do in real life."

That's true... to a degree. The problem is that there are real-live people playing the not-real-life-game. It is possible to cross that line in-game, by directly attacking, slandering, sexually/verbally abusing, or otherwise harassing an individual player on a personal level to the point where it is no longer an in-game action but a personal assault. I think that's what the article is pointing at when real-world litigation is mentioned.

IMHO, games simply can't be allowed to become a 100% safe haven for "those who want to do something that they can't do in real life"... if they were, they would quickly become populated by all of the child-porn weirdoes who have been litigated out of "real-world" Internet chat rooms or wherever, and now have to stalk the game trying to find little boys to kidnap.

But with proper moderation it shouldn't really be an issue. And I think those cases are rare. There's many degrees of griefing. Some should be tolerated (if not well liked) but some are just too much.

/me hides again

":I would also point out that you have the attitude of playing for pleasure. You want to have a "fun" time, and that "untrained pilots" are worth protecting. Let me reiterate, this is a test! We play to help Guild Software better their game engine. They have taken strides to make the game as "fun" as possible (caps), but at the heart it really is a test. Because it has such a polished feel, you can easily forget that it is such a test, but at its heart, it still is."

I think Furball's _point_ is that people can't test the damn thing _because_ of all the griefers. I would agree. How are we supposed to test the game when we have to direct our attentions to tri-flareing, valk-jockeying pirates who won't leave you alone because they're "Playing the 'game'"?

Tell me that Urza. And if you tell me to learn to fly I will throw you out an airlock. Flight skills have nothing to do with it. I'd love to learn but my ISP is all futzed up so I can't dogfight well.

[Quote SirCamps: "We do, in America, have the right to "happiness,""]

Actually, we do NOT have a right "TO" happiness per the US Bill of Rights, but the right to the "PURSUIT" of happiness. This "happiness" was most likely referring to one's chosen profession at time that the Bill of Rights was penned with little bearing to what we now regard the word happiness to mean.

~Paedric

Ok... So furball wants to make existing laws applicable ingame. Therefore, if I kill you and you don't like it, you go tell the cops and get me arrested. Or what if I swear at you? Since that would be illegal if I were to persist, you could get me fined in real-life money. Or how about if I were to spam you? Would you apply the anti-fax-machine-spam laws? Really FB. That is a silly idea. Let's go make a false environment where you can't do anything you wouldn't do in the real world. I much prefer the ingame court to that, and I think that if such a law did exist, I would get in my car and drive down to mexico, where such a law did not exist. And in that, I am serious.

Straying off topic with this post but...

That was made clear in a dilbert strip, he made a juice concotion that would make you happy, but then the Feds confiscated it.

how about if you started using ethnical slurs and homosexual bashs?