Battling Bullies on the Web

The darkened Irvine apartment conveys all the warmth of a cave. No furniture, an empty refrigerator, a musty bathroom where the last shredded square of toilet paper clings to the roll.

The 18-year-old hacker who lives here says he doesn’t need much, only a fictional world within the glow of his computer screen.

He goes by the name Vengeance. Or Mr. Vengeance to strangers. He is a digital bounty hunter, a for-hire computer-game player who punishes bullies on the Internet.

He picked the name because it suits him better than the one his parents gave him. After all, who has ever heard of a vigilante named Tom Reginald?

“Someone beats you up in a computer game, you turn to Vengeance,” said Reginald, who constantly refers to himself in the third person. “Vengeance is a man, a mentor, a killer, a savior.”

Driven by ego and machismo, a legion of young men--most of them hackers and expert gamers--have become the digital sheriffs of the Internet’s Wild West. Young and inexperienced gamers who get pushed around online can turn to a bounty hunter’s Web site, submit a complaint and pay a fee--generally in software, but sometimes in cash.

Once the bounty is accepted, the hunt begins. The vigilantes seek out their foes and smash them electronically every time they log onto the Net to play a game. Proof of the grisly deed is required, usually a digital snapshot of the act.

“It only ends when we say it ends,” Vengeance bragged.

Part fantasy, part social evolution, the bounty hunter phenomenon has its roots in the Dungeons & Dragons craze of the 1970s and early ‘80s. On kitchen tables, in cluttered bedrooms, away from the confused looks of their parents, youths of all ages charted foreign lands with a pad of graph paper. With the roll of a 20-sided die, awkward teenagers became warriors or mystics on a noble quest played within their vivid imaginations.

The concept has carried over into high-tech culture. As graphics on the Net became more sophisticated, so did the look of action-adventure and role-playing computer games. By late 1996, a slew of novice computer game players began flocking to the Internet.

“This market is still in its infancy,” said Bill Zinsmeister, a multimedia analyst with the research group International Data Corp. “Right now, there are a few million people out there who play online games.”

The most successful titles are the fast-shooting, trash-talking, gore-splattering games that fascinate kids--the ones that inevitably lead to concerns about the erosion of family values.

In “Diablo” by Blizzard Entertainment, players chase after killer skeletons, eerie demons--and, often, one another. Fans build towns and wage war on nearby enemies in the medieval-themed Ultima Online by Electronic Arts. And in the Quake series by id Software, the underlying theme is simple--kill everything that moves.

But as the audience started to grow, say the people who created these games, something odd began to happen.

“We started seeing bullies popping up everywhere,” said Bill Roper, a game producer for Diablo. “We’d get mail from [new players] complaining that they got ambushed, or that someone had cheated and killed their character. It was funny, because people kept calling for some type of retribution.”

Fearful about the impact of violent games on children’s minds, family advocates criticize a medium where murder--though only electronic--is hailed as a noble act. But no one knows for sure what impact--if any--such role-playing has on young minds. Most academic research is based on anecdotal data because the technology is changing too fast to gather statistics accurately.

Instead, say psychologists, parents should hail the emergence of this heroic persona as a natural in a reality that is not, in fact, real.

“These youth are developing a code of ethics for their virtual life and developing a moral code for their violent behavior,” said Amy Jo Kim, an associate professor at Stanford University who studies virtual communities. “If that code is translated from the virtual world and into the real one, that would be a first for our society.”

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Russell Brant is one of those people who has spent hours shooting and exploring and bargaining in these digital worlds. About six months ago, co-workers introduced the 32-year-old marketing executive--and computer game novice--to Quake.

Brant installed the software and then, he said, logged on to the Internet and joined a game. Five minutes later, his character was dead.

“These three punks ganged up on me and blew me away,” grumbled Brant. “I went back and the same thing happened--again and again and again. These same three guys kept killing me and sending these mocking messages to me.”

Brant continued playing, always returning to the same computer server and usually facing the same people. He got better. So did his rivals. And the taunts--always juvenile, often profane--continued.

Then he received an e-mail from the trio, he said. Attached to the note was a screen capture of his character being shot.

“I snapped,” Brant said. “I sent [e-mail] to a couple of really good players I know and said I’d pay them whatever they wanted if they would go out and hunt down these guys. Any time they played, I wanted them to feel the frustration I felt.”

The hunters, a couple of college students from the East Coast, asked for $300. Brant paid.

“Look, I’m not proud of what I did,” admitted Brant, who refuses to give out his online moniker, the names of the bounty hunters he paid or those of his rivals.

“My friends would think I’m nuts. So would my wife.”

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The villains turned out to be a trio of 16-year-olds.

In general, these player-killers tend to be young--usually teenagers--and male. As in any playground, there are bullies. In the online world, these player-killers feed their young egos by trouncing a live person rather than a cold machine.

“You don’t get the adrenaline rush beating the computer that you get off another player,” said Andrew Alfonso, 17, a player-killer who lives in Toronto, Canada. “If I get killed, the only thing that really dies is my pride.”

It’s also a way for young males to feel powerful, said Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At a time when they have little control over their environment, these teens get a taste--no matter how fleeting--of having power over others as an adult.

Bounty hunters, on the other hand, tend to be older than the player-killers they pursue. But they share the love of fantasy and role-playing. Hunters often explain the joys of roving around online with a single simple phrase: “When I was a kid, I used to play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons.”

When the computer is turned off, the game disappears. But the emotional connection--or conflict--between the players remains.

“Newer players don’t realize how serious people take this stuff,” said bounty hunter “CudaPrime,” the online name of a 31-year-old computer systems administrator who works in Sunnyvale. “Everyone always says, ‘Oh, it’s just a game.’ But that’s [wrong]. After running around and chasing someone for five or six hours, I turn off the computer. But I don’t turn off my emotions and I don’t turn off my brain. There’s a good chance that the next morning, I’ll still be thinking about the game.”

The power and allure of these games comes from the player’s ability to create alternative identities, say industry experts. Networked games serve as a fertile landscape for the young and imaginative, and allow people to transcend their surroundings and foster the creation of an ethereal reality.

The nuances born from the players’ own daydreams wield more sway than the game’s actual graphic details, said Stanford’s Kim.

“It’s indicative of how men evolve and communicate,” said Kim, author of the forthcoming book “Community Building on the Web.” “There’s an underlying theme of morality to all this and a question of identity that’s being played out by these people, almost unconsciously: In an online community, what makes a man?”

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American-boy culture has always been violent, a never-ending series of competitions and combat. It marks a crucial time when boys and teenagers alike explore their masculinity and test themselves, Jenkins said.

Like Tom Sawyer throwing clods of dirt at the school bully, traditional youngsters played improvised games of war, carved out imaginary lands and launched attacks. Friendship was expressed in physical ways, through contact sports and slaps on the back. Young men dreamed of an adventurous future, of someday becoming policemen or firemen or soldiers--not white-collar workers toiling at a desk.

With the emergence of the Information Age, the young male culture’s attitude of “affection through mayhem” still exists. But whereas youths once ventured outside to escape adult supervision, many of them now turn to the computer and the Internet to find that same sense of freedom, Jenkins said.

Computer games transport young men across lakes of fire, down shadowy dungeons and through seedy towns. They offer visceral thrills to the homebound, a place where cunning and technical savvy are more important than physical prowess.

“There is less free space, particularly in urban areas, for boys to go outside and play,” Jenkins said. “So they’re playing indoors, in the den or the living room, in front of their mothers. And their mothers are appalled at the violence of these games. But their fathers understand this is nothing more than a modern schoolyard.”

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As they grow older, and as they play more often, many of the player-killers say they become bored with being the lone warrior. They tire of people calling them names, of rivals creating new software to break the rules of the game and cheat.

And, what’s more important, they understand that their online actions can hurt another’s feelings. Many switch sides, becoming bounty hunters.

“Personally, I think there’s something hopeful and tremendously charming about these players adopting the role of lone justice,” said Amy Bruckman, an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology who studies virtual communities. “Of course, it’s all fantasy. The concern is that there are very real emotional responses happening here, and not everyone realizes that.”

Player-killer Alfonso acknowledges that there is a code of honor among the players and that sometimes he gets a twinge of remorse when he kills a competitor.

“Sometimes I feel sympathy. Something clicks and I think, ‘This guy has done no wrong,’ especially if he gave me a run for my money.”

But don’t expect Alfonso to become a bounty hunter. He says he loves chasing humans too much to switch sides.

“There’s a vast difference between computer-controlled monsters and human-controlled players,” he said. “Humans are so unpredictable. That’s the challenge.”