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Navegando por el foro llege a conocer al mejicano dabman.El escribio este extensísimo analisis sobre los goons.
No me ha dado tiempo de traducirlo, y no quiero una traduccion por ordenador de esta pieza de saber:

VOTADLO Y PASALO PARA QUE eESPAÑA LO CONOZCA

Much research has been undertaken under the behaviors of 'goons'. The current hypothesis is that the collective of goons known to actively play online games originated their trolling behavior from past single-player gaming experiences. In earlier single-player games, the gaming engine could be easily tampered and manipulated in ways the programmers did not originally intend. Many players actually found more enjoyment in breaking the rules of a game - or winning games of strategy in unique ways - rather than playing the game as intended. This in itself is a striking example of an origin for their behavior, but a closer connection exists still.

In many older games, programmers had incorporated role-playing elements with in-game characters that can communicate and interact with the player. For the same reasons, certain players found these artificial intelligences too simple to enjoy as intended, and this led to entertaining ways to abuse and manipulate in-game characters. This behavior amongst a number of players lead to the current situation that is now pondered.

In the awakening of the Internet, a variety of gamers became united through communication. The Internet also allowed for large numbers of players to play against each other (...) The hypothesis is the following: The entertaining experiences of manipulating and exploiting simulated characters and gaming environments united a group of gamers with a similar culture (goon membership). This mutual understanding about how to play games has resulted in their coordinated playing on the Internet to involve similar concepts. Goons are playing the game as if other players and playergroups are simple in-game characters that behave in the confines of the gaming world. As a result, the community of goon players have no morals or empathy that some expect to have in a social game. Additionally, their idea of 'winning the game' is far unlike what one may assume it to be.

(Walburg, SUNY IDb 2003)
(All emphasis are mine)
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If this is not enlightening, these conclusions will be: The goons are far more complex than one may be led to believe. When one deals with a goon gaming community, they must naturally assume all forms of interaction between them are part of the game, including that which takes place outside of the game. Their forum is by no means some insider source to understand their motives. In fact, it is one front among many used to confuse 'in-game characters', too simple to see that they are just pawns in the game. The term 'in-game character', or IGC, is a term used by many goons to describe the groups of players they manipulate for entertainment purposes. But you will not find them using this term on their forum, or their IRC, or their better-hidden reverse-audio youtube messages (still fake, though interesting for those skilled enough to find them). As already said, the true channels of communication lie outside the abilities for normal gamers and gamer groups attempting to infiltrate them.

In this respect, it is remarkable how far goons have gone to isolate themselves and their communications channels from their subjects. Because the Internet has essentially become the gaming world for any online game, many goons resort to postal mail as the most private channel of communication. It is absurd to think this is how all of their communication can be done though. Moderately-secret communication channels run through a system of IP-anonymous email relays. Their lowest and primary method of spreading information consists of 'Parallel-gaming' Cryptation.

Parallel-gaming Cryptation is complicated to explain, but it consists of switching encrypted message systems with a different goon gaming community playing a completely different game. Information is encrypted in a coded language, posted on a different game, and decoded by players accessing that different game. In this way, eArmenian (the language that sometimes shows up on eRepublik) is not encrypted information for the goons playing eRepublik, but information for goons playing an entirely different game instead. Goons were much more hesitant to give me access to this type of system, even though it is their primary and lowest-security communication channel. I suspect that www.nationstates.net/, a game very similar to eRepublik, may have been the sister game used for parallel-cryptation on eRepublik.

In summary, the goon community plays online games as if all interacting parties do not correspond to human intelligences. They recognize that these 'in-game characters' are more intelligent than the characters in their old single-player games, but they see this as an added challenge and not as a need to revise their perceptions about how to play appropriately. In order to achieve this separate reality and make the 'in-game characters' as miserably ignorant as Mario or Sephiroth are about 'the player', they use a variety of highly secure methods of communication. This makes it entirely uncertain what their motivations are.

There is some speculation (not mine) that goon higher-ups have been in league with developers in several different online games. These higher-ups lead the goon masses around to beta-test emerging games and pick apart all possible exploitations with a fine-tooth comb. It has been suggested that 7-8 weeks ago, one member of the eRepublik team might have contacted a high-ranking goon leader if they were interested in testing the structural strength of their online community against the actions of trollers. Trollers are not just limited to goons, and it is a very real threat that software developers want to feel safe about after they have invested millions of dollars into an online game. If this is so, the eRepublik development team may be testing the political, military, and economic mechanics of their system all simultaneously before releasing of V1 this Fall.

It is extremely hard to prove this speculation - I myself have not seen sufficient evidence - but there would be some validation for this theory if goons suddenly begun to disappear as the next version is released.



And this concludes the article. I hope I have really awakened everyone's minds to the origins and purposes of the goons. If you wish to thank someone, thank the emerging science of Informatics Anthropology. It is essentially the study of online communities and the behavior of the data/information they generate.

About the Author
The author is an Informatics undergraduate attempting to write a thesis on the interaction of online communities and its affects on systems processing. He has been accepted in the goon community - amongst others - much like an anthropologist becoming part of a tribe he/she studies.


FUENTE:http://www.erepublik.com/article-554392.html