Games within games

[Banderal]

"Why the no call at East?" I type in frustration as the six of us continue to hunt a single Operative at south.

 

LoL.

 

And to make it even better, the response comes back, "Scroll up!"

[Banderal]

So I guess in some ways I am a hypocrite defending number farmers in some regards.

 

Being hypocrites is what separates us from the animals.

[Lhancelot]

There are also cases where someone is trying to implement a strategy that no one else understands for one reason or another.

 

Right, I think sometimes people misconstrue what others are doing and this leads to false narratives and inaccurate conclusions. That's what I meant earlier when I said there's so many variables going on in a match, to judge what everyone else is doing and accurately know is hard.

[TrixxieTriss]

I am going to use an analogy since we both like them, and liken the type of player you present above as a psychopath in the real world. Someone that has absolutely no conscience regarding how their own behavior impacts others.

 

This type of person in the real world is extremely rare, and I surmise this type of player in swtor PVP is also extremely rare.

 

I grouped with tons of "pvpers" and really cannot think of one of them that played every match with zero objective in mind, only farming numbers doing nothing else.

 

I just think if we are going to be critical of how others play, it should be put in proper context which is typically it's rare for a player to always avoid all objectives and only seek numbers. This is highly uncommon.

 

Your post made me curious about how rare psychopaths are, so I did some research and read a bunch of stuff to find out. Without boring everyone to death (cause it’s pretty dry reading), psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the population.

What was really amazing is that 21% of CEO’s are psychopaths which is the same percentage as psychopaths who are incarcerated

Men are generally 4 times more likely to be psychopaths than women and it can be as high as 20:1 in some studies.

 

There are also sociopaths who exhibit the same sort of behaviour as psychopaths and have similar traits. They make up about 4% of the population. But unlike psychopaths, which is usually genetic, sociopaths are usually a product of their environment and are more prevalent online. Accordingly, anonymity allows sociopaths to thrive in an online game environment because there aren’t any real repercussions for their behaviour. Surprisingly, they often gravitate towards other sociopaths online, which is inconsistent with how sociopaths usually interact in normal offline society. It is theorised that they actually influence other people towards sociopathy who might already be inclined to be that way.

Anyway, just some random stuff I read after I read your post.

 

From my experiences in online games for the last 20+ years, I’ve observed some pretty horrendous behaviour. It would not surprise me if someone said 10% of online gamers were psychopaths or 20% were sociopaths. Obviously a study like that has not been published.

 

Things they can both have in common:

 

Both suffer from antisocial personality disorder.

Both lack empathy.

Both demonstrate complete disregard to social rules and behavioral standards.

Both fail to feel any remorse or guilt.

Both can be violent.

 

Differences between psychopaths and sociopaths:

 

While the origin of psychopathic condition is likely to be in psychopath’s innate condition, sociopathy is usually a result of environment and upbringing. According to Minnesota study of twins reared apart, psychopathy is an inherited condition in as many as 60 percent of cases. As for sociopathy, a research shows that there is significant association between early institutionalization and sociopathic behavior in later life.

A psychopath is likely to be well-educated and have a good career while a sociopath is often unable to keep a stable job.

Psychopath usually display controlled behavior while sociopath are often impulsive and angry.

Psychopaths can be highly manipulative while sociopaths are typically more spontaneous.

A typical psychopath is completely unable to form any personal attachments while a sociopath may get attached to a particular person or group.

A psychopath will usually take calculated risks (e.g., fraud schemes) and minimize evidence while a sociopath tends to leave clues and evidence because of spontaneous nature of their crimes.

[TrixxieTriss]

"If only you'd done your awesome DPS on their ball carrier."

 

Best statement ever 👏👏👏

 

I wish I had room in my signature to quote that

[Lhancelot]

Your post made me curious about how rare psychopaths are, so I did some research and read a bunch of stuff to find out. Without boring everyone to death (cause it’s pretty dry reading), psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the population.

What was really amazing is that 21% of CEO’s are psychopaths which is the same percentage as psychopaths who are incarcerated

Men are generally 4 times more likely to be psychopaths than women and it can be as high as 20:1 in some studies.

 

There are also sociopaths who exhibit the same sort of behaviour as psychopaths and have similar traits. They make up about 4% of the population. But unlike psychopaths, which is usually genetic, sociopaths are usually a product of their environment and are more prevalent online. Accordingly, anonymity allows sociopaths to thrive in an online game environment because there aren’t any real repercussions for their behaviour. Surprisingly, they often gravitate towards other sociopaths online, which is inconsistent with how sociopaths usually interact in normal offline society. It is theorised that they actually influence other people towards sociopathy who might already be inclined to be that way.

Anyway, just some random stuff I read after I read your post.

 

From my experiences in online games for the last 20+ years, I’ve observed some pretty horrendous behaviour. It would not surprise me if someone said 10% of online gamers were psychopaths or 20% were sociopaths. Obviously a study like that has not been published.

 

Things they can both have in common:

 

Both suffer from antisocial personality disorder.

Both lack empathy.

Both demonstrate complete disregard to social rules and behavioral standards.

Both fail to feel any remorse or guilt.

Both can be violent.

 

Differences between psychopaths and sociopaths:

 

While the origin of psychopathic condition is likely to be in psychopath’s innate condition, sociopathy is usually a result of environment and upbringing. According to Minnesota study of twins reared apart, psychopathy is an inherited condition in as many as 60 percent of cases. As for sociopathy, a research shows that there is significant association between early institutionalization and sociopathic behavior in later life.

A psychopath is likely to be well-educated and have a good career while a sociopath is often unable to keep a stable job.

Psychopath usually display controlled behavior while sociopath are often impulsive and angry.

Psychopaths can be highly manipulative while sociopaths are typically more spontaneous.

A typical psychopath is completely unable to form any personal attachments while a sociopath may get attached to a particular person or group.

A psychopath will usually take calculated risks (e.g., fraud schemes) and minimize evidence while a sociopath tends to leave clues and evidence because of spontaneous nature of their crimes.

 

I got a book many years ago, called "Without Conscience," by Dr. Hare I found it pretty interesting. I always thought sociopath was just a newer name for psychopath.

 

Mental illnesses tend to overlap one another so some traits that are attributed as sociopathic or psychopathic can be seen in other mental illnesses.

 

Borderline Personality Disorder for instance. More recently recognized, sometimes misdiagnosed as Bipolar or other mental illnesses BPD often has a lack of conscience element to it.

 

Most people think living with zero regards to and for other living creatures are traits of a psychopath but my point is there are other mental illnesses that showcase a real lack of conscience too.

[TrixxieTriss]

I got a book many years ago, called "Without Conscience," by Dr. Hare I found it pretty interesting. I always thought sociopath was just a newer name for psychopath.

 

Mental illnesses tend to overlap one another so some traits that are attributed as sociopathic or psychopathic can be seen in other mental illnesses.

 

Borderline Personality Disorder for instance. More recently recognized, sometimes misdiagnosed as Bipolar or other mental illnesses BPD often has a lack of conscience element to it.

 

Most people think living with zero regards to and for other living creatures are traits of a psychopath but my point is there are other mental illnesses that showcase a real lack of conscience too.

 

Both are very similar, but are definitely 2 different disorders. There are many other types of antisocial disorders as well, but those two are the ones that affect those around them the most because they have no empathy or guilt and are often trying to manipulate people. Other disorders are less evasive to those around them. Most of them only affect themselves and not most people around them

 

You really shouldn’t associate Bipolar with them because it’s not even in the same ball park as those other two. People often misunderstand what bipolar is and that there are actually two forms of it, Bipolar 1 (mania/drepression) and Bipolar 2 (mainly depression). People with Bipolar are rarely any danger to anyone except themselves.

People with mania episode are like they are on a high, with lots of energy, creative, reckless, impulsive and their minds are racing. Everyone else around them seems to be running in the slow lane

People with a depression episode will close down and stop functioning.

In both cases, they aren’t thinking about hurting or manipulating other people and these aren’t the sort of people who toy with others feeling or upset people in pvp games.

 

Surprisingly, a large percentage of Bipolar people are extremely intelligent or creative and have lots of empathy for others.

When they are having a mania episode, they can be brilliant beyond measure. Lots of very famous and extremely successful and powerful people are starting to open up about being Bipolar. Psychotherapy historians have looked back at many famous, successful or powerful people through history and have identified quite a few brilliant figures as probably being bipolar.

[-Bob-]

Both are very similar, but are definitely 2 different disorders. There are many other types of antisocial disorders as well, but those two are the ones that affect those around them the most because they have no empathy or guilt and are often trying to manipulate people. Other disorders are less evasive to those around them. Most of them only affect themselves and not most people around them

 

You really shouldn’t associate Bipolar with them because it’s not even in the same ball park as those other two. People often misunderstand what bipolar is and that there are actually two forms of it, Bipolar 1 (mania/drepression) and Bipolar 2 (mainly depression). People with Bipolar are rarely any danger to anyone except themselves.

People with mania episode are like they are on a high, with lots of energy, creative, reckless, impulsive and their minds are racing. Everyone else around them seems to be running in the slow lane

People with a depression episode will close down and stop functioning.

In both cases, they aren’t thinking about hurting or manipulating other people and these aren’t the sort of people who toy with others feeling or upset people in pvp games.

 

Surprisingly, a large percentage of Bipolar people are extremely intelligent or creative and have lots of empathy for others.

When they are having a mania episode, they can be brilliant beyond measure. Lots of very famous and extremely successful and powerful people are starting to open up about being Bipolar. Psychotherapy historians have looked back at many famous, successful or powerful people through history and have identified quite a few brilliant figures as probably being bipolar.

 

Way to kill the conversation.

[RACATW]

Your post made me curious about how rare psychopaths are, so I did some research and read a bunch of stuff to find out. Without boring everyone to death (cause it’s pretty dry reading), psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the population.

What was really amazing is that 21% of CEO’s are psychopaths which is the same percentage as psychopaths who are incarcerated

Men are generally 4 times more likely to be psychopaths than women and it can be as high as 20:1 in some studies.

 

There are also sociopaths who exhibit the same sort of behaviour as psychopaths and have similar traits. They make up about 4% of the population. But unlike psychopaths, which is usually genetic, sociopaths are usually a product of their environment and are more prevalent online. Accordingly, anonymity allows sociopaths to thrive in an online game environment because there aren’t any real repercussions for their behaviour. Surprisingly, they often gravitate towards other sociopaths online, which is inconsistent with how sociopaths usually interact in normal offline society. It is theorised that they actually influence other people towards sociopathy who might already be inclined to be that way.

Anyway, just some random stuff I read after I read your post.

 

From my experiences in online games for the last 20+ years, I’ve observed some pretty horrendous behaviour. It would not surprise me if someone said 10% of online gamers were psychopaths or 20% were sociopaths. Obviously a study like that has not been published.

 

Things they can both have in common:

 

Both suffer from antisocial personality disorder.

Both lack empathy.

Both demonstrate complete disregard to social rules and behavioral standards.

Both fail to feel any remorse or guilt.

Both can be violent.

 

Differences between psychopaths and sociopaths:

 

While the origin of psychopathic condition is likely to be in psychopath’s innate condition, sociopathy is usually a result of environment and upbringing. According to Minnesota study of twins reared apart, psychopathy is an inherited condition in as many as 60 percent of cases. As for sociopathy, a research shows that there is significant association between early institutionalization and sociopathic behavior in later life.

A psychopath is likely to be well-educated and have a good career while a sociopath is often unable to keep a stable job.

Psychopath usually display controlled behavior while sociopath are often impulsive and angry.

Psychopaths can be highly manipulative while sociopaths are typically more spontaneous.

A typical psychopath is completely unable to form any personal attachments while a sociopath may get attached to a particular person or group.

A psychopath will usually take calculated risks (e.g., fraud schemes) and minimize evidence while a sociopath tends to leave clues and evidence because of spontaneous nature of their crimes.

 

Too much generalization Completely unable is a little over the top, usually they are attached to their mother. And sometimes their wives (but you'd have to look up the neuroscientist who discovered he was one). Usually there are more horror stories

 

Plus they can feel empathy if they really try and they have a minor amount of emotion comparably to other people. But that is all they ever knew so they are still people and when they feel emotion I'd imagine it is as much as they ever knew.

Edited May 17, 2018 by RACATW

[TrixxieTriss]

Too much generalization Completely unable is a little over the top, usually they are attached to their mother. And sometimes their wives (but you'd have to look up the neuroscientist who discovered he was one). Usually there are more horror stories

 

Plus they can feel empathy if they really try and they have a minor amount of emotion comparably to other people. But that is all they ever knew so they are still people and when they feel emotion I'd imagine it is as much as they ever knew.

 

I quoted/copied some of that directly from another source. It was generalised so as to not make people fall asleep reading a medical journal.

I’m sure there are exceptions to every rule or situation, but in “general”, what I posted is correct for a large majority of them.

Edited May 17, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

Way to kill the conversation.

 

I think the convo was already dead... but I didn’t mean to bury it

[TacoClaw]

Awesome, but totally unexpected turn in the conversation! But I'll chime in with this: Jordan Peterson has been talking a lot about psychopaths recently and interestingly also talking about the value of gaming for providing insights into social organization. So these comments are topical while also being completely off the original topic!!

 

Peterson's idea is that concepts of justice and rightness as espoused in the popular pc culture are hopeless biased and that a better way to uncover essential truths of human psychology and social organization is to study games, specifically to see which games people will continue to play. The degree to which a game attracts or stops attracting players tell us something important about the way humans (or individual humans) are fundamentally built on a psychological level. In other words, how and what we choose to play is more revealing than what we profess to believe or think. Kind of a cool idea, I think.

 

Anyway, back to the main topic: I'm not sure I would call some of the behavior number farming. I think of number farming as caring only about getting a certain solo metric and nothing else. A competition is about getting a bigger number than the opposition. The idea of a "game with a game" could include number farmers, but this doesn't interest me very much. What I was referring to was players actually competing against each other, but on the same team and with totally different objectives than the stated ones. Maybe for some this is a distinction without a difference, but to me the social competition is meaningful. Because with the former (solo number questers) I just feel weird being around it, but with the latter I feel down right used.

[ALaggyGrunt]

Back on topic, we all play games within games to a degree.

 

There is only one best, but quite a lot of us try to beat a certain high score. The more measures you can consider high score (medals, killing blows, assists, objective points, consecutive), the more we can play this game. I'd say this is one of the less harmful ways we keep ourselves amused, and beneficial to people actually playing, because your personal high score is a lot easier to beat than the best [insert class here] in the game, or that thread. It's also how we as players keep ourselves from getting bored when the game doesn't really present any primary objectives. It hooks into the psychopath/sociopath thing because people who tend to play PvP for fun tend not to care about the other team's fun.

 

Also the hard-to-define "did I play better than last time?" question. Eventually that one gets answered "no" enough times and that usually means it's time to at least take a break.

 

Tangent: Psychopaths have a serious advantage as CEOs because corporations exist first and foremost to make money. Decisions which screw a lot of people over (ruin lives or even outright kill) to make still more money are much easier to make if you don't care about people in general, and the shareholders do love it when you make them more money (and tend not to look much past the next quarterly report).

 

And edit: they've got a serious advantage in PvP because they're not above doing... well, anything to win.

Edited May 17, 2018 by ALaggyGrunt

[TrixxieTriss]

and the shareholders do love it when you make them more money (and tend not to look much past the next quarterly report).

 

It makes you wonder what sort of people run EA

[Rafiknoll]

I wasn't able to follow this thread for the last couple of days, but I think it sums up to:

 

People who rationally rather be in the main turret than guarding a node are acceptable. When it comes to the point when they cap but not guard, kill but not cap, or ignore ball carriers AND the ball spawn completely, this is getting out of hand and these people are doing things simply wrong.

 

The conversation at this point seems to discuss how many people of the exaggerated type exists and why do they exist. I think it is less relevant. When you encounter them, call them out or leave the match. If you have too many of the first type (those who rather contribute to victory through numbers), go be the node guard or you are to blame just as them, or (if you play an improper class/spec for that) ask someone to do it. If they truly are the normal type, one will comply.

[Lhancelot]

It makes you wonder what sort of people run EA

 

I thought about Shark Tank on TV and wondered which sharks are actually psychopaths and which ones are not.

[RACATW]

I quoted/copied some of that directly from another source. It was generalised so as to not make people fall asleep reading a medical journal.

I’m sure there are exceptions to every rule or situation, but in “general”, what I posted is correct for a large majority of them.

 

Well I suppose its also not pointing out the fact that violent crime (which is on the checklist) is a mitigating factor for the number of female psychopaths there are.

 

As females are not predisposed toward violent crime and tend to be able to empathize better. This reduces the chances of them being classified correctly...

 

but I get your point

Edited May 17, 2018 by RACATW