“Good” Grief: Subversion, Praxis, and the Unmasked Ethics of Griefing Guides

ABSTRACT

This article uses genre-field analysis (GFA) to examine Minecraft griefing guides: user-generated documentation that operationalizes destructive approaches to gameplay. Griefing guides promote subversive praxis while forwarding a utilitarian ethical system that alues hedonistic schadenfreude, running counter to morals of cooperation championed by most Minecraft players. Published in online forums where debates over conflicting praxis continue, these guides explicitly address, rather than mask, the negotiation of ideological values and ethical systems within a community.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• digital technologies
• documentation
• ethics
• help systems

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the editors of this special issue, our anonymous reviewers, and Kevin Moberly for their insightful feedback. We also thank Joshua and Caleb Reaves for sharing their knowledge of Minecraft.

Notes

1. These are a few techniques used by griefers. See the following Gamepedia page on Minecraft for a full table on griefing tactics and strategies for prevention: http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Griefing.

2. Wark (2007) used play theorist Bernard Suits’ concept of the trifler to draw a line between player and griefer, stating that a trifler is “someone who ignores the [game’s] objective to linger within its space” and engages in “unimportant” activities (para. 40). Citing Suits, Wark (2007) wrote, “‘triflers recognize rules but not goals, cheats recognize goals but not rules’” (para. 40).

3. Snider et al. (2012) wrote “Strategies set the terms of engagement and establish their own spaces whereas tactics must work within the constraints of those terms of engagement and operate on and with the terrains established by strategies. Strategies ‘produce, tabulate, and impose,’ while tactics ‘use, manipulate, and divert’ (as cited in de Certeau, 1984, p. 30). Tactics are fragmentary, situational, and contingent. Tactics are simultaneously uses of a system and operations performed on that system. Perhaps most strikingly, tactics are unexpected; de Certeau eloquently calls a tactic “a guileful ruse” (Snider et al., 2012, p. 287).

4. Squeaker is a term used among griefers to describe prepubescent boys who react with high-pitched screams of anger and frustration when they become the victims of griefing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew Beale

Matthew Beale is a doctoral candidate at Old Dominion University. His research focuses on technical communication, computer games, and play.

Megan McKittrick

Megan McKittrick is an instructor of English and a doctoral candidate at Old Dominion University. She teaches composition, scientific, and technical writing, while researching technical communication, game studies, and pedagogy.

Daniel Richards

Daniel Richards is an assistant professor of technical and professional writing at Old Dominion University. His research centers on risk communication and environmental rhetoric.