What constitutes game throwing?

[Psyche]

the thing too is that something can be harmful regardless of intent. if you didn’t enjoy your games with someone, it only matters in the abstract whether they intended to degrade your experience or not. in most cases it’s better to just sidestep the question

[DragonEater70]

What’s your opinion on players (either starting or repping) that purposely and actively add nothing whatsoever to a game. No game related content. Players that basically act as a distraction and a hindrance to everyone else trying to solve the game. And should this be a more enforceable offense? If we prod players that haven’t posted in 2 days, what about players that add no game related content for a week? What is the difference?

With the disclaimer that in practice I might miss instances of this or err on the side of caution/lenience, my philosophy as a mod is if someone doesn't do anything in 3.5 real life days then even if they have posted they should be force replaced. In fact I should probably add it into my ruleset that players in the game should point such instances to me so that I can take action.

[KayJayQueue]

What’s your opinion on players (either starting or repping) that purposely and actively add nothing whatsoever to a game. No game related content. Players that basically act as a distraction and a hindrance to everyone else trying to solve the game. And should this be a more enforceable offense? If we prod players that haven’t posted in 2 days, what about players that add no game related content for a week? What is the difference?

With the disclaimer that in practice I might miss instances of this or err on the side of caution/lenience, my philosophy as a mod is if someone doesn't do anything in 3.5 real life days then even if they have posted they should be force replaced. In fact I should probably add it into my ruleset that players in the game should point such instances to me so that I can take action.

I think this a great policy.

[Ythan]

the thing too is that something can be harmful regardless of intent. if you didn’t enjoy your games with someone, it only matters in the abstract whether they intended to degrade your experience or not. in most cases it’s better to just sidestep the question

I agree. I wouldn't personally say game throwing unless I saw evidence but there are plenty of other ways to ruin games.

[Alianna]

What’s your opinion on players (either starting or repping) that purposely and actively add nothing whatsoever to a game. No game related content. Players that basically act as a distraction and a hindrance to everyone else trying to solve the game. And should this be a more enforceable offense? If we prod players that haven’t posted in 2 days, what about players that add no game related content for a week? What is the difference?

With the disclaimer that in practice I might miss instances of this or err on the side of caution/lenience, my philosophy as a mod is if someone doesn't do anything in 3.5 real life days then even if they have posted they should be force replaced. In fact I should probably add it into my ruleset that players in the game should point such instances to me so that I can take action.

I have the same policy, just allowing for a longer period of time. If someone doesn't post ANYTHING game-relevant for 5 days (votes, reads, etc.), they can be replaced. I picked 5 days because that's what I saw other mods doing at the time I first wrote my ruleset, but honestly 3.5 seems reasonable.

[Alianna]

game throwing is the action of playing to purposefully lose, that means that it all lies in the intent behind a player's actions, for instance, a lot of questionnable play wouldn't qualify as gamethrowing as it is done for understeandable reasons (risky gambit, playing to have fun, etc...)

And what about “not playing to your win condition” and how does that differ?

i think enforcing that would yield more bad than good

So as it stands, even though game mods put it in their rules, there is no real enforceable “play toward your win condition” going on? Why is it in game rules at all then?

"Play to win" is what's actually written in the site rules.

1. Play to win the game. If you feel you cannot do this for any reason, you should replace out in accordance with Mafia Player Prohibited Actions Rule 5.

Doing a quick search through the ban thread, though, it seems like most bans related to that rule*** have been for pretty blatant stuff like voting confirmed town as town in ELo, getting yourself modkilled on purpose, claiming scum and/or outing partners with serious intent, etc. So even then, it looks like the rule is enforced more as "don't play to lose."

***

disclaimer: not all of the bans linked the offending posts or described the violation, obviously I can only comment on the ones that did, so it's possible I misinterpreted how the rule is enforced because the details weren't always provided

[KayJayQueue]

Thank you Alianna

[ssbm_Kyouko]

I’m trying to understand what others believe would fall under game-throwing, not playing to your win condition, etc. I’d like this discussion to extend to repping out and repping in, in specific regards to this question. I do not want to be given names or specific examples as to not call out specific players and obviously no discussion of ongoing games. But I’d like this to be a conversation.

Game-throwing: imo this is like, the action of intentionally trying to lose the game. I've read the thread and, as discussed, it's difficult to prove intent. I would say actual cases of game-throwing are few and far between, and you know them when you see them. For an egregious example, saying "I'm scum and these are my partners. I want to replace out because I dont like scum but it's against site rules to replace out for not liking scum, and I don't want to play, so instead just kill me and my buddies so I can roll town in my next game".

Voting for someone you know is town (as town) in ELO/MELO because you don't like something they did and want them to lose is also gamethrowing. But then think about this. You're a Town Hider and are in 3p ELO, with an Innocent Child and the last Mafia member. You think the IC is going to vote you out and cause town to lose the game. It's not gamethrowing to vote them, because you can force a draw by hiding behind the Mafia every Night and they can never kill you. "Happy ending" or "Draw" (some moderators specify mafia wins by default in No Kill/No Lim loops). Don't ask me how you make it to this magical land of 3p ELO with a confirmed townie, but if you did there are cases where you

can

lim the townie as town and the point I'm making is that context matters, and you normally won't have all of the context as a player in the game.

Not playing to your win condition - I think Python said it well when they basically said, it's hard to enforce, and it basically means "don't play

against

your win condition" - again people can be gambiting or trying alternative strategies to win. Sometimes as Town you want to be mislimmed sooner rather than later so that Town can reset before ELO. There might be times, where as scum you want to be eliminated so your buddies can get towncred. So unless you can really see that someone is intentionally trying to lose the game, they're not breaking the rules. If you don't want to play with certain players due to their actions, that's perfectly reasonable. You can avoid joining games with them and ask them not to join games with you - you just can't do that in an ongoing game because it gets into OGI territory which is against site rules and is usually listed in mod rules also. After game over though you're welcome to bring that stuff up and sometimes it can be worked out in post-game and no blacklisting happens.

Repping out - site rules are clear on this. You can't replace out tactically and if you have a pattern of replacing out of games you may be restricted to joining only one or two games at a time for a while to show you can play games completely without flaking. We're kind of on an honor system with tactical replacements I feel because naturally if the game is going one way (town or scum favored) and then a replacement happens and the game swings the other way, it really sucks for the team that

was

winning before the replacement happened, and it can feel tactical to the team that gets screwed over because we're not allowed to discuss replacements in games. So when someone replaces out, you don't know why, and so your brain comes up with a reason that makes sense. And "tactical" is an easy thing to attribute as the cause when you see the effect is positive for the replacement's team. Obviously if someone has a pattern of going silent and getting force replaced only when they're scum that is about to get caught, it's clear there's something tactical going on. Without establishing a pattern though it's hard to prove intent, which is why I say we're on an honor system. Sort of.

Repping in - I'm not so sure. I think if you're going to replace in you should know what you're getting into. Sometimes a game can go a long time without a replacement though because replacing in looks daunting. Think like, 200+ page large theme game on D7 or something. Mod has been searching for a replacement for like 5 days or something, and someone finally decides "fine I'll replace in so people can play their game still, but I'm not going to read 200 pages. I'll start game from when I replace in and take the cliff notes". That's totally respectable. Some people like to do that regardless of the length of the game. I think players should be appreciative that someone comes to replace into the game and keep it going regardless of the effort they spend on the game. I know we said not to name names but this is a positive example, when Party Boat replaced into a caught scum slot and just vibed as the game's DJ for a couple of in-game Days, that was really cool of them (him? sorry party I don't remember your pronouns) to do. I think the scum ended up winning that game too. I guess what I'm getting at, is sometimes we need replacements, because Mafia can be an emotionally and sometimes even physically stressful experience, and people shouldn't have to feel bad about needing a quick and clean break from time to time. And we as players should appreciate the replace-ins all the time, because for most of us, we need to replace out at some point. And we can't always expect the replacements to care as much as we do about a game we've played from D1.

[KayJayQueue]

Thank you Kyo


I’m very appreciative of all the answers I’m getting.

[AniX]

Part of the difficulty in adjudicating accusations/allusions to game-throwing is it carries with it an implication of game-relevant reads. What would be game-throwing (and against the rules) for a Town player is game-playing (and well within the rules) for Mafia, whose goal is to hinder and frustrate the Town. And since most town players do not know for sure the alignment of any other player, most times when a player says "Your actions look like game-throwing/not playing to wincon" they are not actually accusing the player of breaking the rules (as they do not know the wincon of the accused player to know if it is actually against the rules or not) but responding to a Town claim by going "You are claiming to be Town but the only Town explanation for your behavior, which I find does not benefit Town at all, is game-throwing. As most players would not game-throw, I doubt your claim you are Town." (A Mafia player might use the same tactic in the inverse, trying to make it seem like a Town player is scummy). This makes it difficult to adjudicate since identifying deliberate poor play on the part of other players is a critical part of scumhunting. That said, if you actually believe a player is legitimately engaging in game-throwing/not playing to wincon (you have some reasonably confirmed knowledge of alignment, such as Mason, Cop with no method of obfuscation, or Mafia Buddy), the proper way to handle that is to report the post in question, not legislate it in thread.

The opposite side of that is we rarely actually sanction for game-throwing/not playing to wincon because, as others have identified, playing poorly is not against the rules, only playing poorly deliberately is. I don't think we've actually sanctioned anyone for game-throwing in the time I've been mod because there really isn't a way to determine 1. if a player is playing poorly (just because a strategy fails doesn't mean it is always a bad strategy) and 2. Even if it is a bad strategy, whether it was deliberately done. Most of the time, people who we suspect might be game-throwing do so alongside other anti-social activities that are more clearcut to sanction for and we just do that instead and I suspect that, absent an outright confession ("Fuck this game I'm going to gamethrow" in a Mafia thread, for example), sanctions for game-throwing will continue to be exceptionally rare.

[KayJayQueue]

Thank you Anix

[T3]

IMO players who don't do anything productive in-game for several IRL days but still continue to make meaningless posts should be force replaced and banned

[Ythan]

That's certainly a stance, but are you saying so here because you think that constitutes throwing?

[DragonEater70]

Probably because several game mods discussed this policy in this thread, I think

[T3]

That's certainly a stance, but are you saying so here because you think that constitutes throwing?

Yes

[Ythan]

I'm sure we can think of instances where these behaviors were practiced in order to throw a game but there are other reasons a player might do those things surely.

[AniX]

Mafia doing it may be something we wish to discourage, even punish, as a tactic, but it seems well-aligned with their goals, at the very least.

[Ythan]

And players of all alignments can lose motivation for all kinds of reasons. One could say they ought to replace out at that point but that doesn't really address whether they're throwing.

[Jake from State Farm]

Lurking is game throwing/not playing towards your win condition and nobody can convince me otherwise. If you sign up to play, then play.

[Jake from State Farm]

IMO players who don't do anything productive in-game for several IRL days but still continue to make meaningless posts should be force replaced and banned

Agreed.

[Jake from State Farm]

And players of all alignments can lose motivation for all kinds of reasons. One could say they ought to replace out at that point but that doesn't really address whether they're throwing.

If a player gives up trying. They are throwing. You can easily tell when a player is trying to play and when they aren’t.

[Ythan]

I mean that's not how most people use the word throw but if you can't be convinced then I'm not going to try very hard.

[Jake from State Farm]

Fine maybe it isn’t always game throwing but in some situations I feel it is. There are players who sign up and never contribute to help fine scum. Maybe not throwing but not playing to their wincon. I can think of a handful of players who are notorious for it and never seem to get punished.

[Ythan]

It absolutely sometimes is I agree.

[Jake from State Farm]

So as it stands, even though game mods put it in their rules, there is no real enforceable “play toward your win condition” going on? Why is it in game rules at all then?

We'd assume it's because people implicitly read it as "Don't intentionally play against your win condition" and it hasn't come up. Actively enforcing it as "Play towards your win condition" sounds like a terrible idea since it'd ban stuff like gambits and just chilling and we'd most likely blacklist any mod that tried to enforce it that way.

What gambits would you consider as acceptable?

I don’t see any gambits that are reliable enough and most end up backfiring which end up hurting their team in some way. Would those not be considered game throwing?

Say a townie fakes a guilty on another townie and town loses the game. It’s a gambit but it’s also in some way cost town the game. Is that game throwing?