What is bullying in a social game

Bullying can only happen inside social networking games if there are message boards or chat capabilities in the games. It usually starts for two reasons. Either those involved know each other and bring existing disputes and dislikes to the game, or something goes really wrong in the game. Of the disputes that start in the games, there are often sore losers who say really bad things, and others pull in their allies and friends, and it escalates.

For instance, person A attacks person B as part of the game. Person B takes it personally. They may say something really mean like calling them a racial slur, or wishing really bad things on the person or their family. Person A forwards the post to their friends in the game if it is private, or their friends might already see it. Then the friends of the person who got verbally attacked because of an angering move they made in the game will join in and both attack the person who was mad they were attacked in the game (ie., proper play of the game) and say really mean, hateful things about them. And from that point on, the one who said the nasty things will get clobbered and have to put up with trash talk. While this might lead to suicide, it is more likely to lead to people quitting the game.

The games actually try to promote or encourage this sort of thing. Mafia Wars, for instance, makes money when people get so mad at being killed so many times that they pull out credit cards to purchase items to help settle the score. However, game bullying rarely happens in Mafia Wars because everyone expects it to be a hate-filled game full of beatings and killings. So they generally only lash out in tactical sorts of ways. But take nearly any of the fashion modeling games and everyone expects them to be these nice, sweet, "girly games". But they soon realize that they were baited to play a game that is nothing like what they expected. Adding message boards to that makes things really bad. The "girly games" tend to invite manipulation and networking, so if you make one person really mad, they tell all their friends, and their friends all come after you. Again, you can buy special outfits (which are really weapons) to improve your chances of winning the competitions (really fights), and the developers get rich at the expense of others.