When the Tribunal first launched, I was pretty impressed with the whole system. The reports were and still remain easy to read, easy to understand, and it was novel enough to keep me coming back, for a time anyway. Well, that time has passed, but I’ve lost interest in the Tribunal for another reason – I’m not sure I have the same standards as many of the people both reporting and judging cases.

I logged into the Tribunal last week to find a case of reported Verbal Abuse. The chat log was three lines long, with only one word from the player in question. Yes, the reported player said one word that match – “shitbags” – seemingly unrelated to the other chat in game. Without any context, it was impossible for me to punish the guy.

That’s exactly the situation that likely prompted Riot to include multiple matches in each Tribunal case, but what about the players with just a couple matches. I had an Alistar the other day with 3 matches in his case. Now granted, sometimes three cases is plenty to merit a punishment, but those players also typically rack up far more than three cases. I pardoned the guy, but it made me wonder why he was in the Tribunal in the first place. I also had a few cases that were less than clear for punishment. I pardoned, and later found out that I wrongly judged a couple cases. Most of my punish cases are so clear that I can only imagine it was the pardons.

The Tribunal is definitely a cool idea – giving the community a chance to weigh in on behavior management is pretty fascinating – but without a focused, clear definition of what is acceptable and what isn’t, Tribunal cases can take a decent amount of time to judge. Intentional feeding and blatant racism are obviously punishable, but someone saying “shitbags?” There’s a language filter and an ignore function, and I don’t think doling out a ban for something a player can easily avoid makes much sense.

The biggest news to come out of Culver City this week has to be the bans Riot issued to several thousand offending players. I have to admit, I was a little worried when Pendragon made the initial post. I’ve been a bit more ragey than usual in my ranked games. My rating has plummeted from the high 1500s to mid 1300s over the past couple weeks, a frustration I’ve leveled at whatever feeder/afker/incompetent-boob is closest. I’m still in the clear and I’ve refocused most of my frustration into attempts to climb the ELO ladder. Other players were apparently a bit more liberal with their insults, but surprisingly, few players understood why they were banned.

Pendragon made a post offering to explain to the first five respondents, all of whom must have been banned for a week or more, the reasons they had been banned. The reasons? Racism, afking, intentional feeding, reporting other players’ positions through fog-of-war, real-life threats, claiming to be/know a Riot employee, Teemo shroom art (that one made me laugh). It’s a hell of a list, especially considering that chat logs are recorded.

Honestly, I have to wonder why these guys think they could get away with it. Some of the players seemed genuinely surprised to get banned. And to think, I was worried. I make aggressive use of words like “moron,” “idiot,” and occasionally “mongoloid” if I’m feeling extra emo. I swear profusely. But none of this is even close to racism or the kind of game-wrecking crap like fog-of-war revealing. The funny thing is, I’m a really nice guy on an average day. I don’t belittle people. In fact, I even try to avoid fraternal diminutives like “bud” or “bro” lest they be misconstrued. I’m typically friendly to a fault.

When I’m online, though, and all I want is an enjoyable game with skilled players, I’m like a toddler. I don’t get my way and something ugly starts to bubble up. Obviously, anonymity exacerbates the problem. The fact that I don’t have to see the targets of my aggression make it that much easier to unleash. It’s a strange phenomenon, and something I’ve been making a concerted effort against since I first logged into a competitive video game. I still slip and freak out here and there, but it’s gotten better over the years. I figure by the time I’m 50 I should be a zen master of cool composure, even when my son is whooping my ass at Soul Caliber 34.

What about you? Is your online personality dramatically different than you behave offline? Just a little more ragey? Or have you already achieved enlightenment?

If you’re interested in what it feels like to get a temp ban on Xbox Live, go do a little suicide bombing in Modern Warfare 2. As Microsoft’s Stephen Toulouse tweets it: “While IW works on getting the MW2 glitch fixed, people we catch using it will recieve suspensions from LIVE. Play fair everyone.”

Now I understand the idea to an extent – bans because of game ruining – but banning players for something that game developers missed seems a little ridiculous. There are far easier ways to ruin games, like throwing them in your opponents favor, that won’t get you banned (I’m not talking about boosting here). And really, who hasn’t gotten a little tipsy/slaphappy/what-have-you and had a little fun.

I won’t say the glitch isn’t a game breaker. It is. But temp bans on a paid service for a glitch that almost everyone in the game is now aware of? One that really isn’t that hard to stop (how bout you don’t shoot the guy running around with a javy)? This kind of thing makes me want to go eat a glass apple.

Xbox Live GM Marc Whitten had an interview with Venture Beat this week in which he talked a lot about policing the network’s 20 million subscribers. Whitten calls the banning process “a cat and mouse game,” and denied a recent rumor that Microsoft had banned a million users for playing on consoles that had been modified to play pirated software.

I cannot explain to you why people would think it was a million people. It wasn’t a million people. Check the veracity of that claim. It was one news source. I think we do a really good job understanding what people are doing on the system. That applies to intellectual property (piracy) and how we treat the community in terms of harassment. We are committed to making it better and better.

You hear that, pirates? Whitten is watching you. The rest of the interview is some boring talk about Facebook and Twitter integration. As for playing Facebook games on your Xbox, that’s probably not coming any time soon. Whitten said things will continue to mesh more and more closely, so it’s possible we’ll see full integration in the future. For the time being, Microsoft seems more than content just giving us access to social media over the console.

Source: Venture Beat