The ‘White-eyed’ Player Culture: Grief Play and Construction of Deviance in MMORPGs

Abstract

This study explores the social process governing the nature, emergence, application, and consequences of labeling the ‘white-eyed’ or grief players in massively multiplayer online role playing games in Taiwan. We found that two types of ‘white-eyed’ players exist in MMORPGs. The explicit type, who come out and organize themselves into griefer pledges, can be understood as players who rebel against game rules. Most of the common players are actually the second type, or implicit griefers. They play grief in an unidentifiable way with weak self-awareness, and put the griefer stigma on other age-groups to alleviate their anxiety in a cross-age co-playing era.