Hey WG Community,

What do you all think of this scenario:

You are in the middle of an multiplayer, open game. A few players have been booted/eliminated and four remain (you being one of them). One player is clearly ahead of the others (but not insurmountably so). You're in second place. One of the players tied for third sends you this private message: "we did pretty good on both our turns there...you want to team-up until everyone is eliminated, and then the best man wins?" 

I think such an offer is unethical. What's being offered is not a temporary truce to keep the lead player from running away with the game (I have no problem with such truces, implicit or explicit). Instead it's an offer for an alliance to secretly transform a multi-player game into a 1v1 game (first, us vs. them; then finally, you vs. me).

Anyway, I publicly called the player out on his offer (so that the other players would be on notice). Then I was suicided by my wanna-be ally--that's another ethical breach in my book (although perhaps some of you would also consider calling someone out publicly to be an ethical violation in itself).

I'm curious to hear what the rest of you think the ethical issues (if any) in all this might be. Feel free to send me private responses if you don't wish to post them on the forum. I promise not to share them.

Have a Happy New Year,

-Nikolai   

Sounds like the real world to me.

Like you I have no problem with alliances when they are needed. I would have probably declined this one. But publicly declining it is the lamest move you could ever do... I think you can only blame yourself for what happened to you there.

You have the right to think this guy was out of line, but if i ever proposed an alliance and got this in response, i would take this as an insult or at least a lack of respect.

Ethics are relative. What you find unethical, others may not.

And really it's all a part of strategy, even if it seems unfair to the losing person.

Three Responses/Elaborations:

M57: What is this "real world" of which you speak and how does it pertain to the questions that I asked? I trying to discuss the range of ethical behavior in the context of playing games full of artifical constraints. For instance, in the "real world" generals/nations are not interested in sportsmanship or a strategic challenge, they're interested in winning their battles/wars. If they could do the "real world" equivalent of setting up dummy WG accounts and using them to win, they would. I should think that the majority of players on WG would think it unethical to win games by employing dummy accounts like that (not to mention sort of pointless).

ecko: I believe (though you and others may disagree) that there is a distinction between a short-term diplomatic arrangement to not attack another player and/or attack a third player (which I would tend to term a truce) and a diplomatic agreement to eliminate all the other players in a game then go 50/50 on who the ultimate victor will be. I have never and would never call out someone who offered me the former. I do not see calling such a person out as a grave insult to him. Rather I think it disrespectful to me and the other players in the game that he was willing to turn a multiplayer game into, essentially a two-player game. I see it comparable to a penny-ante poker game in which two of the players collude to beat the rest.

Valentorg: What do you mean "ethics are relative?" I'm not asking for a categorical imparative, I'm asking the WG Community what is and isn't ethical behavior. Obviously some people who join on-line gaming sites like WG have no misgivings about creating multiple accounts and using them to their advantage. The same would be true (I think) if instead, a real life person had a real life friend who set up an account, joined his games and always went 50/50 with him and then took a dive. The same would also be true if someone hacked the site and gave himself or herself an advantage.

When you say "it's all a part of strategy" that's presuposing that the gambit is permissable (as opposed to possible, like the multiple accounts). Part of the "strategy" of strategy games is working with pre-established rules. Chess would be a stupid game if players could, unilaterally, in the middle of the game, change how they were going to move their pieces, or rearranged the placement on the board then their opponent wasn't looking.

It's not about it seeming unfair or losing, it's about undermining the integrity of the game.

I think that you are taking this to be very serious offense where many of us find it be a little annoying at best.

If a player offered me such an alliance, I may or may not accept (most likely not), but if I did, I would have no believe that it would actually last since I or the offered ally would most likely break such a truce when it was seen to be advantageous to do so.

I almost never offer an alliance in a game and just as infrequently accept one.  They are part of the game, but long term offers such as the one you are reporting are annoying (better to be on the receiving end, then to be kill as a result).

Since you took offense to the offer, I think you should have responded as such privately and not publicly noted the offer.  If it were me that offered an alliance and it was publicly outed, I would respond vengefully as your offerer did.

For the record, of my nearly 1000 games here, I believe I have offered one alliance and been offered three (must be I am usually in the lead or not well liked).  I don't offer alliances since I believe players will do the right thing independent of the offer.

Alpha's added another interesting ethical issue (many thanks to him/her). What do you all think of truce-breaking? Assuming (as I do, though some do not) that short-term truces can be okay, how many of you think that it is ethical to break a truce before the term is up (assuming that the agreement was specified for, say, a three-turn truce or until Player XYZ was no longer in the lead)? Further question, how many of you consider it (almost) required, permissible or unethical to publicly call out truce-breakers?  

On a side note, how many of you consider truces to mean absolutely no attacks against any of another's territories (unless expressly permitted) or permission to attack territories within a likely continent (e.g. I make a truce with someone who owns half of North America, but I own Alaska)? I consider the default to be no attacks absolutely unless stipulated.  

Hey Nikolai,

First of all I think what M57 is referring to when he says the Real World is his particular job.... Absolutely viscous environment with people creating rumors, lying to bosses and throwing others under the bus constantly. They even create fake alliances to get information and then use it to make themselves look good with management. It's amazing the similarities to a tourney here. 

I think we can all agree that fake multiple accounts is plain and simple cheating. We can debate people who turn individual tourneys into team tourneys but there is probably a few people who won't say anything but think it is ok. I myself did it on a two people advance tourney on ToS starting in the third round and it wasn't until I had a lengthy conversation with a fellow player that I've decided to not do that again. 

I think it comes down to the fact that we are playing a game with other humans and as such it is intended that we will lie, make alliances, break alliances, and try to mislead and or distract each other.  If not then why have Private Messages. I expect alliances to last as long as it is beneficial to the other player. This could be a benefit in that game or trust in future games.

I've even made subtle hints during games that suggested that I was in an alliance with someone that I wasn't hoping to get the other player or players to act irrationally. Kind of like singing Kenny Rogers at the top of my lungs during paint ball to draw out the other team. 

Most important of all, don't take it too seriously. I don't take my job seriously why would I take my hobby serious. If I'm in a game with someone who really is annoying and being obnoxious then I do everything I can to take him out.

I generally try to be nice and friendly and keep my alliances not because of any rules but because it is IMO good long term strategy to not have enemies. 

Nikolai wrote:

Valentorg: What do you mean "ethics are relative?" I'm not asking for a categorical imparative, I'm asking the WG Community what is and isn't ethical behavior. Obviously some people who join on-line gaming sites like WG have no misgivings about creating multiple accounts and using them to their advantage. The same would be true (I think) if instead, a real life person had a real life friend who set up an account, joined his games and always went 50/50 with him and then took a dive. The same would also be true if someone hacked the site and gave himself or herself an advantage.

When you say "it's all a part of strategy" that's presuposing that the gambit is permissable (as opposed to possible, like the multiple accounts). Part of the "strategy" of strategy games is working with pre-established rules. Chess would be a stupid game if players could, unilaterally, in the middle of the game, change how they were going to move their pieces, or rearranged the placement on the board then their opponent wasn't looking.

It's not about it seeming unfair or losing, it's about undermining the integrity of the game.

 

 

Indeed, there may be people who think that creat dummy accounts is not unethical.

But if I'm not mistaken, that's against the rules of this website. Some players ight not find it unethical, but it is considered unethical by the rules of the game. These alliances you're talking about are not.

They might be unethical to you, but they're not to everyone and as long as the website has no rule against them then they aren't an objectively(as far as this website goes, anyway) unethical and they are working within the pre-estabished rules.

Nikolai wrote:

M57: What is this "real world" of which you speak and how does it pertain to the questions that I asked? I trying to discuss the range of ethical behavior in the context of playing games full of artifical constraints. 

Yet despite these constraints, somehow there still seems to exist the full range of ethical behavior.

For instance, in the "real world" generals/nations are not interested in sportsmanship or a strategic challenge, they're interested in winning their battles/wars. 

Huh?  You might want to bone up a bit on your military history.

There are many historical examples of generals on both sides of a shared battle line who embraced a complex code of ethical behavior.

Generals don't just march their forces around with no politically related concerns.

I suspect that generals don't win battles without first having developed a talent for (and love of) strategic planning.  This is after all, their job.

 If they could do the "real world" equivalent of setting up dummy WG accounts and using them to win, they would. I should think that the majority of players on WG would think it unethical to win games by employing dummy accounts like that (not to mention sort of pointless).

In the real world of warfare there exists alliances implied and explicit, secret and announced, and the act of seeking out alliances is generally achieved using conventional diplomatic techniques. In my analogy, the above situations all fall under the category of what you call sportsmanship.

I would note that in the real world, most alliances are sought after using secure diplomatic channels and their details are hammered out all behind closed doors. Analogously speaking, in your game, one of your opponents chose to seek an alliance with you using a secure diplomatic channel (a private post).  You chose to pull an Assange and publish its details to the entire world (both literally and figuratively if you were playing on a world map).

In the real world there are various codes of war.  The use of nuclear weapons is not to be used and the Geneva convention forbids the torture, the slaughter of civilians and other atrocities.  Spying on your allies is frowned upon. Most countries adhere to the spirit of these codes just as most players on WG choose not to use dummy accounts.  Yet, we all know (or at least suspect) that there are people in the real world as well as on WG who engage in behaviors that fall outside the realm of propriety.

Analogies abound.  I stand behind all seven words of my initial response.

AdamN wrote:

Hey Nikolai,

First of all I think what M57 is referring to when he says the Real World is his particular job.... Absolutely viscous environment with people creating rumors, lying to bosses and throwing others under the bus constantly. They even create fake alliances to get information and then use it to make themselves look good with management. It's amazing the similarities to a tourney here. 

Of course, if that were true I probably wouldn't be playing here on WG, where I can act out on all of my repressed back-stabbing double-crossing rumor-mongering underbus-throwing urges.

Nikolai wrote:

ecko: I believe (though you and others may disagree) that there is a distinction between a short-term diplomatic arrangement to not attack another player and/or attack a third player (which I would tend to term a truce) and a diplomatic agreement to eliminate all the other players in a game then go 50/50 on who the ultimate victor will be. I have never and would never call out someone who offered me the former. I do not see calling such a person out as a grave insult to him. Rather I think it disrespectful to me and the other players in the game that he was willing to turn a multiplayer game into, essentially a two-player game. I see it comparable to a penny-ante poker game in which two of the players collude to beat the rest.

Calling someone out is OK. Calling someone out publicly when one asked you for an alliance in private is LAME!

How did you feel when you were in ninth grade with your friend saying "Hey, don't you think Jenny here is hot?" and then he goes "Hey Jenny, Nikolai thinks you're hot." in front of everybody?

Wouldn't you feel ashamed and betrayed? I would, and this guy that turned on you and eliminated you did.

Then, I don't think offering an alliance to someone in a game is a lack of respect to him or the other players. It's part of the game, and most of us played risk before and learnt that.

Last, alliances in risk are different than colluding in poker. Because in poker all kinds of conversation or explicit plans to try to get some sort of edge vs the chipleader or the other players at the table are strictly forbidden. In risk they're not.

Great points, all.

AdamN: Thanks for pointing out that I was being too narrow in my reading of M57.

Valentorg: Thanks for clarifying. I guess I see the question I'm asking to be just that: if there's no "black letter" (or white letter, as the case may be...) prohibition on the site against a certain behavior, are there still additional ethical constraints that many/most WG players abide by. For example, on ToS, players (especially before the creation of the vacation function) would announce in games, "Going on Vaction/traveling for work until x/x. Please don't boot." Most players would not boot those people (although some would--and some would boot them and then say, "Don't blame me, it's the system's fault that it allows me to do so!") 

M57: Yeah, I did/do know all that stuff about generals, laws of war and statecraft (and I had a sense that my using those analogies might derail the conversation). I'll just say that in the Risk-type games operate in a world completely different than our own (especially post-WWII). Namely, every actor is a would-be Napoleon, every interaction is ultimately a zero-sum calculation and there is only one winner.

ecko: Do you think that any and all in-game diplomatic actions are permissible? For instance, if I were playing in a non-team tournament that permits two players to advance from one game bracket to the next, is it okay for me to privately message another player and offer him/her a partnership through the entire tournament? I, personally, don't think that such an offer/arrangement is ethical and I see that sort of arrangement as indistinguishable from the one offered made to me in the game I started this off with.  

As for disclosing non-public interactions, I think there's a distinction between breaking a confidence or trying to embarrass someone, and disclosing wrong-doing. Now obviously if someone doesn't think something is wrong (nor could be wrong) then there's no grounds for disclosure. If you are of the opinion that all diplomatic agreements are permissible, then obviously there's no grounds for disclosure. 

Of course this raises an interesting wrinkle: if all diplomatic agreements are permissible, is it okay to double-cross someone, but not okay to announce that you've been double-crossed?

Lastly, do you (and others, of course) think that even if it was unethical of me to call this guy out in public, it was also unethical of him to suicide me the way that he did? I ask because in addition to him and I, there were two other players. As a result of his suiciding me, one of the players is almost certainly going to win, while the other is almost certainly going to lose. Had he not suicided me, the latter player would still have been in a competitive game.

Anyway, thank you all for your thoughtful comments.

M57: Yeah, I did/do know all that stuff about generals, laws of war and statecraft (and I had a sense that my using those analogies might derail the conversation). I'll just say that in the Risk-type games operate in a world completely different than our own (especially post-WWII). Namely, every actor is a would-be Napoleon, every interaction is ultimately a zero-sum calculation and there is only one winner.

I respect your belief that the world of WG is not real.  Perhaps you also don't believe that I live in a different part of the galaxy than you. Realities collide all the time.

Your point about there being only one winner is well taken in that it does impact on the calculus of ethics in a way that differs from what you think of as the real world.

As to the doublecross, I think that they are fine and part of the game (of course this is a problem for you in the future if you double cross and expect alliances), but as in the real world most of us care about winning now and will deal with the consequences later.  Once a double cross has occured, I see no reason to not disclose this to the table: "Hey this guy is a back-stabbing a-hole".  Of course, this lets the board know that you were in an alliance and may make other players unhappy with both of you.

In the elimination tournament with two advancing, it is spelled out in the rules of the site that pre-arranged alliances are forbidden (at least so I have heard).  That is, no alliance can be formed prior to the start of a game (this applies to all games).  This of couse is very hard to detect and harder still to prove, but it is forbidden here.

Lastly, I think that you are fine to disclose any and all private conversations to the board, but you must accept that there are possible consequences for doing so.  People are emotional and may not like a private conversation public and may act irrational after it has been outed.  For the two other players, it does suck to have one player go suicidal on another and ruin the game, but that is why there is the create game tab, make a new game and put the suicidal player on your enemies list and move on to a better game.  This is why the site is fantasy, problems can be ignored, and fresh starts are possible.

M57 wrote:

I would note that in the real world, most alliances are sought after using secure diplomatic channels and their details are hammered out all behind closed doors. Analogously speaking, in your game, one of your opponents chose to seek an alliance with you using a secure diplomatic channel (a private post).  You chose to pull an Assange and publish its details to the entire world (both literally and figuratively if you were playing on a world map).

 

So does this make him the wiki leaks of WG for publishing the secure diplomatic conversations.

Nikolai wrote:

Lastly, do you (and others, of course) think that even if it was unethical of me to call this guy out in public, it was also unethical of him to suicide me the way that he did? I ask because in addition to him and I, there were two other players. As a result of his suiciding me, one of the players is almost certainly going to win, while the other is almost certainly going to lose. Had he not suicided me, the latter player would still have been in a competitive game.

Anyway, thank you all for your thoughtful comments.

I don't know about everyone else here but personally, I don't think it was unethical for you to call him out. I think he had every right to offer the alliance, you had every right to call him out, and he had every right to suicide you.

I agree with Valentorg. All those rights are part of the game. 

In the gozillion games of risk I've played here or on Warfish, or in surrieal life, I've probably had less than ten alliances. (I've had many truces though.) There is a small wonderful beauty in the fact that breakable alliances/treaties are part of the game. They aren't part of the rules, they happen, and they suck when it happens not in your favor, but there is nothing unethical about having them.

As a matter of fact, it is probably a fault of mine for not utilizing alliances. They are a powerful part of the game strategy. 

But, this is how I learned the game when I was a kid. 25 years on, I still feel the same. 

In short, alliances and treaties are all good in the hood. So is breaking them. but then, so is losing all trust for the guy that broke them, in the game or surreal life too.

Wargear's actually a great place to play out all of this stuff--The risks of forming an alliance tend to balance out the advantage of forming them.  Am I really going to leave myself with just 2 defending my only continent against Red so that I can throw all 10 of my troops at Blue?  What if that Red mofo decides to just gut my soft underbelly?  What if Red and Blue are secret allies too? OH MY GOD, the possibilities are ENDLESS.

For me anyway, this results in an ethical code that determines whether I form an alliance and how I behave within that system.  Because we're playing multiple iterations, a long-term strategy is called for--you want to win this game, but you also want to win tons of future games.

For example: You think alliances are unethical.  You call a guy out, then post about it on the forums.  Pretty sure nobody's going to be offering you alliances in the future.

Meanwhile, the guy who offers an alliance gets called out, and retaliates by taking you out of the game.  Pretty sure that next time you won't call the guy out. 

Some folks I know form alliances, ride pretty far, then betray at their best advantage.  I absolutely will punish them for betrayal within that game, and absolutely will betray future alliances with that player whenever the hell I feel like it, and generally will go a bit out of my way to make sure you lose the next couple games I play with you.

I like alliances with terms that end swiftly and clearly: 3 turns? You get exactly 3 turns.  Till blue is out? I'll take that sucker down.  Till card cash hits 20?  Sure.  Till we're the last two?  That turns out to be a pretty stupid agreement, cause either the other player keeps it, wipes out the last player and then cripples or eliminates you right away, or he sees that you're about to do that to him, betrays you, and then you're in a three-way standoff.

If you want alliances that last, play a team game, in tournaments like the one I am shamelessly trying to fill up so that it can start: http://www.wargear.net/tournaments/view/220

BTdubs wrote:

I like alliances with terms that end swiftly and clearly: 3 turns? You get exactly 3 turns.  Till blue is out? I'll take that sucker down.  Till card cash hits 20?  Sure.  Till we're the last two?  That turns out to be a pretty stupid agreement, cause either the other player keeps it, wipes out the last player and then cripples or eliminates you right away, or he sees that you're about to do that to him, betrays you, and then you're in a three-way standoff.

This is something I have been thinking about also.  I don't want to derail this conversation, so I posted a new thread about a related idea I had to more closely integrate truces/treaties into wargear (and stole some of your treaty conditions):

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1301p1

I think treaties can be a fun part of wargear, but not many players participate because it is complicated to try and setup clear conditions especially when if it is with a stranger.