When I first put together a simple "Read Me" for the Star Wars: The Old Republic guild I was going to be leading, I wanted to be clear about who we were, as a group, and who we were not. I wanted it to be short but sum up the essence... This was how I expressed it to applicants:
Don't be a dick. That's pretty much it. We are sort of a home base where people can offer/ask for help, share advice, form ad hoc groups for flashpoints and questing, chat about whatever, or just hang out. In a group of any size you're going to find...what I'll charitably call "personality conflicts". I don't expect everyone to be bestest buddies with everyone else, but if you find that somebody annoys you, just tune them out. Ignore them. Don't insult or bait or harass them...just ignore them. Again...don't be a dick.
Actually, it's less about "don't be a dick", because most people are dicks from time to time. It's more about don't go out of your way to be a dick. In fact, pretend it's like your job where you go out of your way to not be a dick. Do that! Oh sure, your boss and certain co-workers are definitely dicks, but there's a given amount of non-dickness that everyone is expected to maintain. You don't have to respect people, but be respectful of them. Be polite, be civil...don't be a dick!
July 29th is Wil Wheaton's birthday. I know, this seems like a complete non-sequitor, but bear with me. Wil Wheaton, the child actor, was someone I loathed. Wil Wheaton the grown-up is a bad-ass geek icon with all the smart, funny, and cool that young Wil was so utterly lacking. And how did he celebrate his birthday this year?
To quote his website at dontbeadickday.com:
"Hi! I'm Wil Wheaton, and my birthday is July 29th. I can think of no better birthday gift than for my birthday to be known as Don't Be A Dick Day."
Wil Wheaton, you sir, are a god.
And he even included a handy flow chart: http://dontbeadickday.com/howtonotbeadick.jpg
IS THIS REALLY ABOUT GAMING?
Well, yes and no. It started out about gaming, then it went more real-worldy, now I'll take it back to gaming.
Every single MMO provides players with genuinely awful communication media. Look what they give us...text, emotes, maybe voice. That seems like a lot, right? I mean everyone from Shakespeare to Stephanie Meyer used just writing! He wrote in the 16th century and she wrote for 16 year-olds, it should be good enough for MMO players! Yeaaaaaahhhhh no.
According to Wikipedia (the Internet's Number One Source for pseudo-authoritative information!), up to 80% of all communication (presumably in face-to-face situations) is non-verbal. Evidently, one UCLA study pegged it at up to 93%. I think the researchers agree...a lot of percents are non-verbal.
We attempt to overcome this with smileys and the like, but you may find ;-) to be a smiling wink, while someone else may find that it smacks more of a superior smirk. In a text-only world, it's easy to lose context and be a dick no matter how many smileys we toss around.
Voice is better than text, certainly, but it too carries perils. One big advantage that text has is that it's slow. As we type, we often have a bit of time to process so that we are, inherently, less likely to be a kneejerk dick. With voice, you are only a push-to-talk from full-on being-a-dick-ness. The immediacy combined with the physical distance provided by this whole Internet thing makes it easy for some people to just pop off and be a dick in a way they would NEVER do face-to-face.
Voice in an MMO can be the worst of all possible worlds...a way for unfiltered dickness to be projected without the inherent self-censoring that occurs when getting fired or getting a fist in the face are very real possibilities.
Throw in a few CRALBs (cold refreshing adult leisure beverages) and guild voice chat can get very, very entertaining...and occasionally, very dicky. It's important for everyone to remember that...not only does voice make the other guy more likely to be a dick, it makes you more likely to be one too.
Along these lines is why I was saying a few days ago that SOEmote was, in the short term, a non-factor. If the facial animations aren't spot-on, then any improvement in communication is going to be lost...even in the unlikely circumstance that anyone can actually see them. So I commend SOE for doing something interesting, but I don't think it helps with people being dicks (and let's not even discuss other animation other than faces...although I'm certain there's a market amongst the MMO cyber-sex community for more options).
PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE
Some people are more likely to behave like dicks than others. Some people are more likely to assume that others are being dicks when they are not. Some people take affront easily. Some are immune to it. Some people find everything funny (even when it's not) and some never, ever get the joke.
All of these have the potential for creating sparks, and sparks can lead to conflagrations. I've seen guilds shed large portions of their player base over some of the stupidest "if only they hadn't been dicks" bullshit. I understand that people enjoying abusing other people...hell, I'm abusing you right now by making you read this tripe...but sometimes everybody suffers.
The guild is a shared resource, one that we all contribute to and benefit from. But much like the "tragedy of the commons" (look it up), it doesn't take much abuse for it to get screwed up for everybody. Everybody has the right to be a dick, but occasionally, somebody will abuse the privilege, and that can lead to dire consequences.
But it's not just the guild that this should apply to...allow me to paint with broader strokes...
THERE'S ONE IN EVERY CROWD
Let's examine MMO gaming as a whole...jeez there are a lot of dicks.
Forum dicks, global chat dicks, people who are dicks in groups, PvP dicks...more dicks than a convention of Richards. Almost without exception, all of these people are dicks in real life...but not in public.
For most of them (and us), the learned norms of civility prevent such deeply anti-social behavior from manifesting in public. With no method for lasting punishment or social exclusion, the environment more or less encourages these sorts of behaviors.
Certain types of circumstances also encourage people being dicks, such as having a large captive audience (WoW's "Barrens chat"), or more generally in an activity such as PvP which seems to bring out the worst behavior in those disposed to such awful levels of dickness.
The Internet in general promotes two contrary views of the world...the distance provided by faceless conversation allows for a feeling of openness, honesty, and contrarily, even intimacy. But the distance also allows for completely anti-social behaviors of the sort few people would tolerate in person. The classic case being the filthy-mouthed Xbox LIVE 12 year-old playing FPS games and screaming obscenities nonstop.
Some efforts have been made to find ways of adding consequences to being a dick. Blizzard floated the idea of putting real names on the forums before that blew up in their face and was removed as a possibility (and the evidence from real-name-required postings elsewhere on the Internet seems to be that it doesn't reduce dickishness). Some games have tried implementing a vote-to-shame type of model, unfortunately most of those sort of systems can be "gamed" leading to people being dicks and labelling others as dicks.
There are no easy answers to all the dicks being dicks.
CAN'T WE ALL GET ALONG?
Short answer: no, we can't get along. We prove this at the small and large scale. But at least in our guilds, we can choose, to a degree, who we associate with. We can thicken our skins and temper our words. We can embrace positive behavior and shun negative. If worse comes to worst, we can simply ignore the people we can't stand.
It's so simple...just don't be a dick!
If only it were that simple...
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