Grief Play Management

Millions of players today participate in Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games, or MMORPGs, spending upwards of dozens of hours a week in these online games. A number of players engage in a range of play styles that intentionally disrupt the gaming experience of other players. This behavior has been termed grief play. There has to date been little scholarly work on this behavior. This book explores perceptions and attitudes towards grief play including what it means, what motivates players to engage in it, how it affects the game, player expectations of management, and grief play management itself. The book draws upon research on computer-mediated communication and virtual communities to contextualize the qualitative data. Reference is also made to behavioral literature, including teasing and bullying. This book will be of interest to two groups of readers. Its exploration of social disruption and conflict management will be useful to social and computer-mediated communication researchers. Its investigation of in-game player behavior and game management will also be of interest to players, developers and operators of MMORPGs.