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Old 04-30-2008, 02:04 AM
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Flappy Twiddlesticks Flappy Twiddlesticks is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Boston/MA/USA
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A griefer is a slang term used to describe a player in a multiplayer video game who plays the game simply to cause grief to other players through harassment. Griefing is a malignant form of emergent gameplay.

Griefers differ from typical players in that they do not play the game in order to achieve objectives defined by the game world. Instead, they seek to harass other players, causing grief. In particular, they may use tools such as stalking, hurling insults, and exploiting unintended game mechanics. Griefing as a gaming play style is not simply any action that may be considered morally incorrect. Though the staff of each online game defines griefing in a manner that best fits their game, certain criteria must be met for an action to be considered griefing. An act of griefing involves the following three types of actions to be considered grief play....

1.The unfair use or abuse of a game mechanic that was not intended by the game's developers.
2.The inability of the victim to exact some means of retribution beyond utilizing similar unintended game mechanics.
3.The intended purpose of an act of griefing must be to negatively impact the game play of another person.

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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