Exactly why most teammates are polite, patient, and helpful in a game that is violent and wildly popular is not easily answered, but I have some good ideas. The players seem older, and this may be because of its predecessor, Team Fortress Classic, which predates TF 2 by 10 years. Someone who is 24 may remember TFC, but someone who is 15 will not. I’m not saying it’s devoid of teenagers—but there are a lot more people in their 20s and there are a lot more women on voice chat online as well, signs of a more mature audience and community.

Or maybe it's the medic class. Or the critical hits? Or the team atmosphere ....

Steve at PlayNoEvil had an interesting take on the article, pulling out the critical issue as "the topic of griefing and how Valve's Team Fortress 2 seems to have less 'annoying griefing' because the game provides structured 'official griefing'."

Since a lot of griefing and abuse on Xbox Live and elsewhere comes from the rather inarticulate swearing of teenagers, perhaps the simple fact of giving players powerful, fun, but non-obscene, racially insensitive, or other insults makes the need to swear ... less.

Perhaps there's something to the idea. Hopefully there will be more interesting 'anthropological' explorations of games from this relatively new column in the future.

The Game Anthropologist: Team Fortress 2: Radical Departures [GameSetWatch via PlayNoEvil]

Here is a response from someone more senior than the GM who pleaded with the Goons to play nice. According to the Funcom customer service lead, that GM "made the honest mistake of giving out his personal opinion that maybe keeping a lower profile might be handy in avoiding a negative reputation."

Like SA ever gone out of its way to avoid a negative rep.

Anyway, here's the clarified position on what is and ain't OK.

PvP is acceptable in all shapes or forms. We have built-in mechanics that allow the player being killed to find a way out of it.. When those mechanics fail or do not function as intended we will step in. Until then we will be as hands off as possible.

Now, we have a lot of players, a lot of servers, and a lot of petitions, as you may know. We do get a lot of petitions on Deathwhisper about "griefing". When do we take action? When it crosses the line. You can camp someone until the next day if you want. More power to you.

What you cannot do is verbally threaten them or use inappropriate language. You cannot use exploits or bugs to kill other players, or for any reason, for that matter. The game is rated M, but that does not mean you can use racial slurs or issue personal attacks.

In this case, the GM was seeing a lot of reports of griefing with regards to SA's guild. He didn't say you couldn't pvp. He made the honest mistake of giving out his personal opinion that maybe keeping a lower profile might be handy in avoiding a negative reputation. Obviously, it was a mistake. If you feel like it, bring all 300 of your friends, enemies, or whatever and beat each other senseless.

It seems that our policies are not clear cut enough, and we will make every effort to clarify them so that there is absolutely no question as to what is appropriate and what is not.

Wow, that's such an after-school special denouement. I feel like we all learned something today. Knowing is half the battle, and that's one to grow on.

Funcom Responds to PvP Issue on AoC [Age of Conan Forums, via reader Allison]

Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov was recently subjected to a NSFW attack from a much more realistic looking, but still fake, airborne phallus. This one was given the smackdown by a Russian karate chop after mere seconds, unlike the 15 minute long penis storm previously reported. Coincidence? We think not! But we've already stopped thinking.

Flying Penis [Sharenator via n0wak]

Neither man, nor woman, nor furries, nor Wagner James Au is safe from terrorism, even when digitally ensconced in the Metaverse, as wild-eyed Warren Ellis describes a terrorist attack that took place in Second Life.

Materialising on the Integral Castle grounds, I found myself in the middle of a rain of small boxes, all of which were trying to load themselves into my inventory (where the objects in SL that I choose to hold on to are kept) while looping some Biblical jabber through the chat circuit, filling the entire screen.

Well, terrorist attack might be a tad hyperbolic on Warren's part. Instead of insidious agents of Al Qaeda, think pustule-faced teenage dorks hyurking in their computer labs. This isn't a purposeful attack targeting a civilian population to enact political change: this is just a bunch of griefers. Florian Eckhardt

Second Life Sketches [Warren Ellis]