In light of our recent adventures in trash-talk, “gaming etiquette” might seem like a forgone conclusion: there is no such thing… right?  On the contrary, I feel like there is a distinct sense of etiquette in gaming culture.  The problem is that we all have trouble agreeing…

For future reference, I refer a lot to “gamer culture”.  Having spent the majority of my years of higher education studying anthropology, I think in terms of culture.  In fact, I taught two semesters worth of a class called “Anthropology of Online Gaming Communities” in which we explored basic anthropological concepts using online gamer culture as the case study.  It was fun.  We played MMO’s like Lineage and Shadowbane for class credit.  But the more I talked about the factors that shape online social interactions, the more fascinated I became.

“Etiquette”, theoretically, is a fairly basic concept.  In every social group (be it as small as a nuclear family unit or as large as all of humanity) there are certain social rules we agree upon.  For example, in my family it’s understood that reading at the table is rude, and in certain middle-eastern cultures, belching during a meal is an appreciated compliment to the chef.

It’s when you get down to the actual manifestation of these social rules that things get interesting.  Aside from the occassional book on etiquette, these rules aren’t written down anywhere, nor did we cast an official vote.  How are we supposed to know what’s polite or not?

Communication of various kinds helps determine these implicit rules for each situation.  If someone is behaving in a way that doesn’t fit into a social group’s norm, the members of that group will communicate their disapproval verbally, through body language, with direct action, etc.  In short, there are social consequences to our actions if we don’t observe the most basic rules of etiquette. 

But in online gaming, we have a strange set of circumstances to work with.  We’re not in close proximity and we can’t see one another.  Anonymity plays a huge part in the way people interact online.  You can (theoretically) get away with anything because you won’t be suffering any real-life consequences for your actions.  For this simple reason, you find people saying and doing things in online gaming that you see much less often outside of gaming (major understatement, huh?).

However, the online gaming environment isn’t so different that we don’t see the normal forces at work also.  Since online gaming can be such a pointedly social activity, groups are forming all over the place and in each of these, rules for behavior will form and if someone doesn’t agree they will find they’re not welcome. 

Another dynamic that plays into online gaming is that everyone is dealing with a piece of programming which outlines an inherent set of rules.  This gets wacky when there’s an error in the code or an unanticipated imbalance.  This big, fat gray area allows for some amusing discussions about how “the game was meant to be played”.

There was particular situation in Halo 2 that got me thinking about all of this recently.  I was playing Rumble Pit and found myself in an Oddball match.  My logic with this game is that you’re still trying to kill everyone else (they’re your competition afterall) but this is worked around the premise of getting and holding onto the ball.  When I employed this strategy I found that several people thought it improper that I shot at them even when they didn’t have the ball.  I then proceeded to have flashbacks to MMORPG experiences involving debates about whether or not corpse-camping was OK under any circumstances, or if kill-stealing could be justified, or if PKing should be a conditional tactic in a full PvP environment, etc. 

Ganking, griefing, kill stealing, spawn camping, glitching… it’s fascinating for me to see how these matters of etiquette apply to online console gaming as compared to online PC gaming, especially since consoles make voice communication much more common.  Studying this phenomenon in online gaming culture is more fun for me because even the strangest social misfit can usually find a group of people who share his gaming priorities and sense of “proper” behavior.

(Sorry for the long-winded ramble.  I lapse into academic geek mode occassionally.  *slaps self*)