By RAMON ANTONIO VARGAS
The Times-Picayune

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Loyola University media professor David Myers palmed his computer mouse and zeroed in on his prey. He aimed the pointer at “Syphris,” his opponent in an online game of comic-book-style heroes and villains.

With a flick of his mouse-buttons, Myers, 55, of Slidell, put his opponent in front of a cartoon robot execution squad. In an instant, the squad pulverized the player.

Moments later, Syphris fired off an instant message: “If you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding.”

That incident, two years ago, shook Myers. It’s a telling detail for his continuing study of social customs in Internet gaming communities.

When he got that message, Myers was just three months into an in-depth behavioral study of the “City of Heroes/Villains’“’ online community. Already, someone had threatened to unearth his real identity and take his life.

As part of his experiment, Myers played strictly by the designers’ rules, disregarding any customs set by the players. His character soon became very unpopular.

At first, players tried to beat him in the game to make him quit. Myers was too skilled for that.

They then made him an outcast, a World Wide Web pariah.

Myers plans to soon publish a book drawn from his experiences with the game. The study’s results dismayed Myers, who in 1984 became one of the first university-level professors to study video games. He believes it proved that, even in a 21st century digital fantasyland, an ugly side of real-world human nature pervades, a side that oppresses strangers whose behavior strays from that of the mainstream.

In the online realms of “City of Heroes” and “City of Villains,” 150,000 or so players from around the world try to boost their skill ratings and popularity by defeating computer-controlled comic-book characters.

The game is designed so that players _ who can play as either heroes or villains _ gain access to an area where they should battle each other, to show which players are the most skilled.

Myers, who bought “City of Heroes” when it hit store shelves in 2004, quickly learned that players ignored the area’s stated purpose. Heroes chatted peacefully with villains in the combat zone, sparring with computer-controlled enemies rather than fighting each other.

Myers sensed a research opening. He created “Twixt,” a scrappy, high-leaping hero decked out in spandex suits and rocket boots. Twixt battled only villains.

He proved difficult to beat. From a distance, he could transport villains anywhere he wished. It was always the same place: a cartoon robot firing line. Another villain down.

During the first few sessions, other players gently informed Twixt that his method of play was unwelcome. Twixt kept on vanquishing villains his way.

Mobs of villains ambushed Twixt, hoping to defeat him so often that he would quit. Other heroes stood by, watching.

One by one, Twixt picked his opponents off. As play sessions passed, popular villains and heroes stepped up their attempts to change him.

One message on the game’s public message board read, “I know (how Twixt plays) is considered ‘legal’ but this person is getting really out of hand. This guy has got to go.”

But no one could beat Twixt.

Players turned to verbal abuse, hoping Myers would be offended and cancel his subscription.

When Twixt celebrated victories, lobbing messages like “Yay, heroes. Go good team. Vills lose again,” in the game’s chat box, responses included “I hope your mother gets cancer” and “EVERYONE HATES YOU.”

Myers was stunned, since he obeyed the game’s rules.

Contrary to some stereotypes, people who play online computer games like “City of Heroes” aren’t adolescent misfits. They tend to be what most would consider mainstream adults.

Research shows the average gamer is 24 years old. Three out of 10 are women. Most are college students or work in information technology departments. Only 2 percent are unemployed.

One study even indicated that developing skill in a “highly distributed, global, hypercompetitive” online gaming community can translate into a successful run as a business CEO.

But Myers stirred a different kind of response.

Jon Martin, a longtime “City of Heroes” gamer who befriended Twixt off and on, explained, “They didn’t like him or how he played, so they figured if there was enough of them, they could stop him and his evil.”

Twixt eventually asked his fellow heroes why they never came to his aid. One named “Cryo Burn” responded, “Who would disrespect them and their family enough to do that?”

Game community leaders only intensified their efforts as Twixt became more entrenched. They turned to out-of-game venues such as message boards to punish him.

“It started to not be fun,” said Myers, a video game aficionado. “I became the most hated, most reviled player.”

When Myers took a break from the virtual world and went on vacation for a couple of weeks with his wife and daughters, players noticed his absence.

One player started a discussion thread claiming Myers had been banned for using a racial slur. Another alleged that Twixt was a convicted pedophile.

Then, in another threatening tactic, people began working to discover and publish Myers’ real name and address.

Myers reported the abuse to officials at NCSoft, the game’s publisher and moderating entity. They acted appropriately, he felt. Players delivering extreme messages tended to do so just once, and Myers assumed it was because the company punished them. Company officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“But the abuse was so widespread they couldn’t completely stop it,” Myers said. The company, he noted, had no right to police out-of-game forums.

Though he worried that someone would show up at his Loyola office or home in Slidell and harass him or his family, no player ever succeeded in discovering Twixt was Myers.

Myers revealed his identity and his character’s purpose in “Play and Punishment: The Sad and Curious Case of Twixt,” an academic paper on his experiment. He published it in 2008 and presented the paper at a video-game conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Gamer Martin said that while many gamers treated Myers like a pariah, he doubted anyone wanted to hurt him in real life. And he insisted that Internet games like “City of Heroes” actually do “encourage originality,” allowing participants to design original costumes and script complex missions.

But Myers likened his journey as Twixt to a “bad high school experience,” especially the verbal abuse and rumor-mongering.

The professor was disturbed that rules encouraging competition and varied tactics hardly mattered to community members who wanted to preserve a deeply-rooted culture.

He said his experience demonstrated that modern-day social groups making use of modern-day technology can revert to “medieval and crude” methods in trying to manipulate and control others.

“If you aren’t a member of the tribe, you get whacked with a stick,” he said. “I look at social groups with dismay.”

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Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com