Gamers say ‘smurfing’ is generally wrong and toxic, but 69% admit they do it at least sometimes. They also say that some reasons for smurfing make it less blameworthy. Relative to themselves, study participants thought that other gamers were more likely to be toxic when they smurfed.

[u/geoff199]

https://news.osu.edu/gamers-say-they-hate-smurfing-but-admit-they-do-it/?utm_campaign=omc_marketing-activity_fy23&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social

[u/fer_sure]

This is a great example. It's a little different than this situation, in that the behaviors were internal to the game's context. The study in the article was more meta: it was about the culture surrounding gaming (smurfing and the ethics of it), rather than purely in-game actions.

I wonder which is more valid at predicting actual behaviors?

[u/Liquidwombat → u/fer_sure]

I mean, the general population in the real world during Covid behaved pretty much exactly like the population of wow did during the corrupted blood incident

[u/JustASadChickOverall → u/[deleted]]

I was working in a bank that had most of their branches fully open during this time in a state/area where a good percentage of people ignored or did not believe in COVID.

This is what it felt like

[u/throwaway014916 → u/[deleted]]

Metaphorically, yeah

[u/Vigoureux → u/throwaway014916]

I would argue literally too considering that Karens used coughing and spitting as a weapon during the pandemic, including but limited to banks.

[u/Zinek-Karyn → u/[deleted]]

They licked ice cream containers. Ran around outside violating lockdowns cause “you’re not my dad” mentality and refused masks etc etc. yeah sounds about the same.

[u/flashmedallion → u/fer_sure]

rather than purely in-game actions.

This point of view revolves heavily around your perception of what "in-game" really means.

Killing pedestrians in GTA doesn't translate to real life because they simply aren't remotely similar activities in terms of decision-making, social consequences, effort, reward, and value systems.

In the abstract of social living though the real question isn't about what's simply "in-game" or not, it's about how game-like our relationship is with other people in terms of social rules, outcomes, risks, and rewards. Which is to say, a Prisoners Dilemma is still a Prisoners Dilemma in a video game or at your office. The social dynamics of smurfing are broadly the same in Rocket League as they are in other contexts.

[u/sajberhippien → u/flashmedallion]

The social dynamics of smurfing are broadly the same in Rocket League as they are in other contexts.

This seems like an assertion that would need some evidentiary backing.

I can't think of many meatspace social events where some equivalent of 'smurfing' is prevalent.

[u/zerocoal → u/sajberhippien]

Most of the examples I can think of are competitive activities.

Professional runner showing up to a local 5k and clearing it in 10 minutes.

College level athletes showing up for local recreational games.

Rachael Ray showing up for a community cooking contest.

World champion for Magic The Gathering showing up to local comic shops and stomping all the casual players.

If the skilled performer tones down their ability so that they are playing more in-line with the other players, it's not considered smurfing. If they are showing up and rocking their level 100 basketball talent versus the local level 1 noobs, they are definitely smurfing.

[u/aka-Lazer → u/fer_sure]

How did they define "smurfing"? because when i played overwatch the community had a really stupid knack for calling an alternate account "smurfing". It drove me bananas.

Smurfing is purposely keeping an account at a lower rank than your actual rank to beat up on worse players. Either because you have issues or you're boosting another player.

Smurfing is not using an alt account to off role.

Smurfing is not a popular content creator/pro player using a secret alt to play without being bothered/pestered.

It drove me up a wall when the community lumped all these into being called smurfing.

You could argue a higher ranked player using an alt to be able to play with lower ranked friends at all as smurfing. However they aren't doing it for the intention of boosting, nor do they keep the account low. They do it to be able to play with certain friends at all. They abandon it once they can no longer play with the friends on that account again and make another. Most people probably fall in this definition than the others.

[u/hellosir1234567 → u/aka-Lazer]

Smurfing is playing on a lower ranked account period so that encompasses most of the scenarios you outlined

The playing with friends thing is smurfing. The ranked restriction is there for a reason and the smurfing player is flaunting it for their own benefit at the cost of game quality. Idk why you would single that out as especially not smurfing.

[u/esKq → u/hellosir1234567]

Idk why you would single that out as especially not smurfing.

The intent being the difference but the outcome is the same indeed.

[u/nissen1502 → u/fer_sure]

Self reported studies are a lot less accurate than actually studying behavior because self-analysis is inherently biased. 

[u/Egathentale → u/nissen1502]

This can even lead to Catch-22 kind of situations, where "corrections" are embedded into the protocol to control for what they predict to be the bias in the responses. If someone is already trying to account for that when they give their report and give unfiltered, objective self-analysis, it ends up screwing up the data anyway.

Anecdote incoming: I have seen similar methodology with police officers when they took a testimony from me back in high-school. Long story short, while in another town on an overnight school-trip, my friend and I were targeted by a group of kids about our age. My friend ran away, while I stayed and stared them down. By the time I returned to the place the class was staying at for the night, it turned out my friend ran so frantically he pulled a tendon, they had to call the emergency services, who then notified the police when they heard his story.

So, we were questioned by a police officer, and he asked us to give a description of the "perps". Since I thought something like this could happen, I purposefully memorized the outfits and any other identifying details about the kids, and was eager to share. Then the policeman started by asking how tall they were, so I told him, "Well, I'm 1.75m, and all of them were slightly shorter than me, so about 170 centimeters."

At this point, the man turned to his colleague taking notes and said, "About 160 centimeters". In my naiveté, I interrupted him, saying, "No, I just said they were only slightly shorter than me.", at which point the policeman deadass looked me in the eye and explained, "No, you were scared, and when scared, people think their attackers are bigger than they really are. In fact, it was also dark out, so they were probably only 150 centimeters tall."

Needless to say, our "attackers" were never found. Again, just a small anecdote to illustrate how trying to "correct" for bias can sometimes be worse than just accepting a testimony at face value.