Player-banning is an extremely controversial issue in massively multiplayer online games, primarily because it's a clear case of a company defining limits on a realm they actively hype as "unlimited." Online role-playing games only succeed thanks to the creativity of the gamers, with the game itself being merely a tool to stimulate interaction. Sometimes, players cross the line in the name of "creativity" and ruin the experience for others with various forms of harassment. Considering the size and scope of games like Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron's Call, these instances are surprisingly rare, but always controversial.

Two cases of player-banning stand in sharp contrast to each other. The first is an older story concerning the MDK (Murder Death Kill) guild, banned from Ultima Online earlier this year. This guild was dedicated to being disruptive, and they preyed on a player named Angel Storm who wasn't going to put up with it. They had a little macro that displayed "Ass Rape" on the screen as they stood over corpses, and would take pictures of these screens and post them to their Web site. So not only were they hunting other players, they were being crass dillweeds about it. Origin got fed up, and banned the entire guild, proving that if you're a jerk long enough, someone will simply pull the plug.


The Mystere Controversy
On the other side of this issue is a more recent case of player-banning, this one from EverQuest. A gamer named Mystere, whose character is a dark elf, posted a story to an unofficial message board. Though it was a very graphic tale of torture, the story was completely in character and in the tone of the game. Remember: This is a gameworld sprinkled with dismembered corpses and heads on pikes. The story was clearly fictional and not a threat—implied or direct—to another gamer. It was not on a Sony or Verant board. Verant was alerted to the story by a hysterical parent, who saw it and began to madly contact parental boardwatch sites and services to get EverQuest sites flagged for pornographic content. Verant may indeed have found the content offensive, but moreover, they saw looming bad PR and decided to make a point.

I was unable to reach Mystere (all emails bounced), but I was able to read the story in question before it vanished from the boards. It was a Sadean account of torture written in-character, and seemed perfectly in keeping with the EverQuest gameworld. Yes, it was explicit, not to mention rather overwrought and pretty poorly written. But it was merely the textual equivalent of all those corpses seen in the game. Why is it fine when sprites are shown cutting each other to pieces, but when someone writes a story that describes the same thing, it suddenly becomes verboten?

Of course, any company has the right to ban whomever they want, whenever they want to. It's right there in the EULA you don't bother to read in your rush to click the "I Accept These Terms" button and get to playing the game. In the case of Sony/Verant, they clearly had visions of a nightly news story about some teen stalking and killing another with the incident used as proof of intent.

In a bizarre twist of anti-logic, however, General Counsel for Sony Online Entertainment Andrew S. Zaffron claimed that the player-banning was actually in response to the author's use of "our intellectual property—without license—to create what the law calls a 'derivative work.'" This must mean that all writers of EQ fan-fiction (which Verant encourages, by the way) can expect a cease-and-desist letter.

Smedley Speaks
"The simple fact," observed Verant CEO John Smedley in a statement to the press, "is that it's easy for folks to point at that story, point at EverQuest and link the two. It becomes our business, because it threatens our business by making us a huge target for all the folks out there that think we all are all a bunch of violent video-game players. This just gives them fuel for the fire."

While acknowledging that they handled the situation badly and apologizing for that, Smedley makes it abundantly clear that it was handled in that manner for PR reasons. He seems like a reasonable guy and was quick to try to mend fences with the community, but he's also unapologetic and remains vague about setting clear standards for behavior outside the actual game.

He understands what he calls the "big question: "Where's the line? And what right do we have to draw it outside the game? The answer is complicated and extremely subjective, so I'll just have to be honest and say we'll know it when it's over the line. We're going to discuss it in the upcoming few weeks and see if we can make it more clear, but I can't honestly say if we'll get anywhere, because none of us wants to stop people from writing awesome fan-fiction about EQ. But we aren't going to be looking at every fan site and becoming the Thought Police. We have neither the time nor the inclination to do that. However, we need to protect EverQuest's good image as best we can."

Protect it from whom? The people who enjoy it and make it work, such as Mystere? It seems to me that Smedley should be protecting it from the people who want to bring it down. Verant is fighting the wrong enemy, but then RPGers only number in the thousands, while lazy parents are found on every block.

I just happened to have borrowed the March 2001 issue of this mag and read most of it. Someone at work suggested I look at it, so I did. I've never read it before, not really being into game mags, but it was interesting to read about the history of computer games, albeit rather briefly. I thought the CGW in the above post was the person's initials, not the mag's, till I recognized the post was a repeat of a letter, word for word, in this issue, on the subject of this board.

I'm not really interested in getting EQ or its add-on, but if I were what would it be like, as far as the gaming experience and fun and so on? How many different types of characters or beings can I choose from and do I develop them myself, giving them whatever characteristics I wish or what? I know it's on online only RPG game, too. I've never tried an RPG game yet (that I can think of at least) and am just curious about what they're like.