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Professor griefs City of Heroes, writes report on response


When you try to imagine the real-life personas behind online gaming scoundrels, you probably wouldn't picture the wizened face of a collegiate scholar as the responsible party. However, griefing seems to be the cup of tea of Loyola University media professor David Myers -- he's been bothering folks for a while now with his mauve-tinted crimefighter in City of Heroes as part of a behavioral study on the people controlling the game's power-endowed inhabitants.

The study's findings are predictably grim: players' reactions to Myers' (or rather, his character Twixt's) dirty fighting styles have been pretty volatile, ranging from character defamation, cursing, rumor-mongering and even death threats. That seems a little overboard -- if only four kids from a small-town in Colorado could have teamed up to teach him a lesson the old fashioned way.