I would like to hear the thoughts and opinions of the Tremulous community regarding the issue of the use of real first names in game.
There are many players who openly have their Tremulous identities linked with their irl (in real life) identities and are comfortable with it. There are other players who like to keep their Tremulous identities completely separate from their irl identities, and don’t even want their first name to be used in game. Then there are others who prefer some degree of separation that falls somewhere in between these two extremes, having some in-game friends that they share various degrees of personal information with, and other players who they don’t.
Tremulous identities can be more than a string of characters and a set of aliases, many people have in-game friends associated with their Tremulous identities that they don’t want to know their real identities, as well as a reputation connected with their Tremulous identities. That reputation is even considered if they decide to apply as an admin on a server. If a player wants to maintain separation between their Tremulous identities and their irl identities, and that separation is compromised, they would then have to make a choice to continue having that compramised identity, or create a new identity leaving the value of their own identity (whatever that value means to them), or leave the game completely.
We have a rule for GrangerHub’s servers that addresses the sharing of Personally Identifiable Information, which is rule number 6:
It can be argued that the first name only isn’t technically personally identifiable information, as it is not enough information to “to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context.” However, for players who feel most comfortable not having their first name associated with their in-game name, having their first name used repeatedly publicly in-game associated with them can be very distressful for the above mentioned reasons. This brings us to rule number 4:
I have the following polls I would like the community to vote on to help shed light on this issue. Feel free to elaborate on your views in a reply to this post.
What is your preferred relationship between your in real life identity and your Tremulous Identity?
I don’t mind if everyone on Tremulous knew my real identity
I don’t mind if all of my friends on Tremulous knew my real identity, but I don’t want other players to know my real identity
I have some friends on Tremulous who know my real identity, but other friends who don’t know, and I want to keep it that way
My Tremulous identity is completely separate from my irl identity, and no one on Tremulous knows what my irl identity is, not even my
friends on Tremulous.
Other
0voters
Is it important to you that you don’t lose your Tremulous identity?
I don’t mind losing my Tremulous identity, it just involves a name
change.
It would be inconvenient to lose my Tremulous identity, but I still
don’t mind
I value my Tremulous identity, and it would be distressing to lose it.
0voters
How would you feel about your real first name being used in public chat on a Tremulous server?
I don’t mind if my real first name would be used regularly in public game chat
I don’t mind if my real first name was used occasionally in public game
chat
I would prefer my real first name to not be used in public game chat, but
would tolerate its occasional use if need be.
I never want my real first name to be used in-game, and if it was I would change my Tremulous identity, and/or stop playing on a server that used my name, or stop playing Tremulous completely.
Other (Please explain in a post)
0voters
Should a server address the use of real first names in public chat?
The use of real first names should always be permissible even if a
player doesn’t want their real first name used to reference them. It
is the player’s responsibility to keep their real first names private
if they don’t want it to be used, and if it leaks that is their
personal problem that the server should not address.
Using someone’s real first name in-game without their express
condition should be addressed to some degree.
It should not be permissible to use someone’s first name only if that
person complains, and those situations should be addressed by the
server to some degree.
Real first names should never be used in the public chat in a game
server, even if a player doens’t mind that their real first name is
used.
If you feel that the server should address using real first names in some way, please share your view on how the server should address such an issue, and to what severity.
Just knowing your real first name is not enough to know your real identity, as it is not enough to contact you, and/or locate you, and or identify the “real you”. People don’t have to know everything about you to identify you, but just your real first name is not enough.
Only a select few tremulous players know my real full name. which are the ones I have added to my facebook. These people i have known for a long time and trust knowing my identity especially since i occasionally talk about stuff on tremulous that could get me fired from my job. ( i know not the smartest idea) but with online gaming comes a certain degree of anonymity. And while some people who know me use my “first name only” sometimes i do not make a big deal about it if its only used on occasion like a good friend logging on and greeting me using my first name and while use of my first name isn’t a huge deal for me i still feel we should respect it and that players should get consent first before publicly using it. if the player asks someone not to use it but they continue to use it then admin action should be taken in accordance of rules #4.
As Tremulous players we have an identity in the game, represented by one or more player names/aliases. This identity (depending on how long/often we play, and how sociable we are in game) has attached, its own history, its own reputation, as well as in-game friends. We might even behave differently (for better or for worse) with this other identity depending on how separate we keep this identity from our irl identity. Because of having a certain degree of anonymity, in some respects we may show more of ourselves with this other kind of identity than we would with our real life identities, and in which case we might have a healthy outlet that the mask of our irl identities would hinder.
For some players they give very little distinction between this Tremulous identity and their irl identity, and there is very little difference. For others they keep them completely separate. Then the rest have different degrees of separation.
It’s the job of the name holder to personally express his displeasure in you using his real first name. People shouldn’t have to go out of their way to ask if they need to use just a first name in passing.
If the name holder has specifically stated not to use their name directed at their in-game name within tremulous it should then be under protection of rule #4
how can this topic be so long lol. it’s simple if u r upset then u can ask an admin like effect says!!!
“Never share any sensitive personal identifiable information about yourself nor about others, including but not limited to: phone numbers, mailing/physical addresses, financial information, legal information, and so on.”
if i want to give someone my phone # this won’t stop me lol… and r u writing server rules or an EULA. this is too detailed to be useful just use common sense u can’t cover every possibility