Can you grief a top-down fully competitive racing game?
Would anyone?

Both are trick questions of course. You can grief (practically) everything and someone always wants to.
But how do you grief this one?

Well, playing the game I thought it was a lot of fun to bump into other cars. But the thing was that at one point my car would be disabled with a reference to the "pro rules". So I was wondering why on Earth the designers would instate this rule against bumping into other cars. But of course: Anti-griefing. Turns out that an earlier version of the game had huge problems caused by some players driving in the wrong direction to wreak havoc. As one player puts it:

"The main reason is to prevent backward driving. It was unbelieveably popular in version 0.86. There were times where one couldn't find a server where there wouldn't be 1-2 jerks driving backwards and destroying everyone else's fun. "

These players did not respect the "spirit of the game" but found it more appealing to go against expectations, found pleasure in causing displeasure or whatever.
The present rules, on the other hand, cause great deals of discussion as they also inhibit playing styles that are not actually meant to be grief (newbies, for instance, find it hard not to bump). On the whole, the solution is quite a good example of unelegant grief control (not that I have any alternative suggestion ready).

posted by Jonas Heide Smith  # 28.1.05