Kotaku
Thomas Malaby looks at ganking over on Terra Nova, and decides to dig around for just why it takes place:
I'm speculating that ganking happens when a player who does not want to be challenged to play a game (i.e., encounters where the outcome is contingent), instead opts to do something where the outcome is a foregone conclusion: kill a player that is vastly lower in capabilities. If meaning is found at the meeting point of inherited systems of interpretation (cultural expectations) and the performative demands of singular circumstances (something I talked about here), then ganking is a denial of that meaning. It is a retreat from the demands of the new, and it signals a disposition that does not want to be performatively challenged. Ganking lower level players is, then, a somewhat pathetic attempt to feel, well, something.
Well put, and definitely worthy of further investigation. If you gank, you're not really playing the game at all. And if you're not in a game to play it, just what exactly are you doing?
Ganking the Meaning out of Games [Terra Nova, via GameSetWatch]
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