@Rowain - My only question (and this is if Athlete really does attack slaze with his own gifted army) is whether you read anything into the personal morals, ethics, or values of Ron Artest, or Barry Bonds, or the kid who gets mad at the way the game is going and knocks the monopoly game on the floor?
The tendency to draw a hard line between "game" and "real life" or "online" and "real life" isn't always productive IMHO. Some ladder MP guys donate $5-10 a year to the league site to help pay for hosting fees. If I donated my $10 and then the site shut down the next day, that's a "real-life" scam right, because real dollars got spent? But what if I donate my time by helping direct tournaments, and then an admin maliciously deletes all my stored stats and rankings? To me that causes a lot more than $10 in damage.
We all give hundreds of hours to this game, and it's at least as "real" as a person playing competitive chess or poker or pokeman cards or whatever your nerdy non-sport hobby of choice is. Reputations in those games matter, past actions do IMHO reflect on peoples' character, and bad behavior can cause real harm.
I'm with Morgan - while it isn't my place as a game host to decide who may or may not play in my games (except in terms of being a quitter or cheater out-of-game) based on in-game behavior, it's certainly my prerogative to not choose to play in games with people based on their past behavior. The best argument against that is that "backstabbing is part of the game and you can choose to just not trade with ___." But if you're playing playground basketball and one guy passes to the other team intentionally every time he gets the ball, you don't just not pass to him, you stop playing with him.
The tendency to draw a hard line between "game" and "real life" or "online" and "real life" isn't always productive IMHO. Some ladder MP guys donate $5-10 a year to the league site to help pay for hosting fees. If I donated my $10 and then the site shut down the next day, that's a "real-life" scam right, because real dollars got spent? But what if I donate my time by helping direct tournaments, and then an admin maliciously deletes all my stored stats and rankings? To me that causes a lot more than $10 in damage.
We all give hundreds of hours to this game, and it's at least as "real" as a person playing competitive chess or poker or pokeman cards or whatever your nerdy non-sport hobby of choice is. Reputations in those games matter, past actions do IMHO reflect on peoples' character, and bad behavior can cause real harm.
I'm with Morgan - while it isn't my place as a game host to decide who may or may not play in my games (except in terms of being a quitter or cheater out-of-game) based on in-game behavior, it's certainly my prerogative to not choose to play in games with people based on their past behavior. The best argument against that is that "backstabbing is part of the game and you can choose to just not trade with ___." But if you're playing playground basketball and one guy passes to the other team intentionally every time he gets the ball, you don't just not pass to him, you stop playing with him.