Great article from Jamais Cascio, which describes Griefing, and as I recall Second Life has had its share of Griefers who have disrupted events, damaged and defaced in-world builds and developed & deployed massive code attacks.
Read more on APLINK
Do you think Griefing will become a major concern for gaming & virtual Worlds ?
let me check with my oxford pocket dictionary first.
this fits extra one.
Griefing has been around forever, not just in online games, but in real life as well. It's just that in online games, you're less accountable and punishable by law (or by gangster friends of the victim looking to beat you up), so you grief others more.
In Ultima Online, the 1st MMORPG (released 10 years ago, and still running strong today on both official EA servers as well as non-official private run servers), there have been griefers since 10 years ago. Griefers and PKs are two groups that overlap/intersect, but are neither mutually inclusive or mutually exclusive. One can be the former but not necessarily the latter, and vice-versa. But griefers are universally hated more than PKs.
Griefing in real life also exists, for sure, in every strata of society. From a power abusing boss bullying a subordinate he doesn't like, to underworld gangsterism/mafia/yakuza, to a family member deliberately making life grevious/miserable for another (usually re-acting out issues of an inter-karmic prison that cuts across lifetimes, unwittingly and unconsciously), to political powers griefing political victims, etc.
Online, in games, on forums, griefing is altogether more common because it is easily done, and most pple who don't dare to do it in rl, but have the griefing urge within them, will use the opportunities online to do so. Games present even more opportunities than forums, because in games, you can kill each other, and do stuff (within the game mechanics or rules) that can make life miserable (or grievious) for other players, without much penalty, if any at all.
online terrorists