In Video Games, a team-killer (Verb: teamkill, or team-kill) is a player who purposely kills another player on the same team as his or hers. It happens mainly in First-person shooters (FPSs) and any game where players have the ability to kill either players on a different team, or Artificial intelligence. Generally, if a player is found to be team-killing often, an administrator may kick or ban the player. Also, the game in use may employ an automatic incentive not to team-kill, such as a longer respawn time or negative points. Team-kill is often abbreviated as TK, the person being "TKer".

[edit] Discouraging Team Killing

Most games which support friendly fire use some method to discourage intentional friendly fire, aka "team-killing". Simply, many games allow an option to disable friendly fire, preventing most TKs from being possible. However this is not always a preferred option as the reduced realism can be undesirable. Other systems involve deducting points from players for TKs or forcibly logging them off of the server.

Sample anti-TK system from Planetside:

• Damaging friendly players results in the accumulation of "Grief Points".
• Grief Points accumulate faster if many separate instances of friendly fire occur back to back -- someone who does 500 points of friendly fire damage in 1 minute suffers more than someone who does 500 points of friendly fire damage over 2 hours.
• Once grief points exceed a certain threshold, the player will no longer be able to shoot or drive lethal speeds in a vehicle.
• Grief points slowly dissipate over time.

This type of system is intended to create a chilling effect on intentional or clumsy episodes of friendly fire damage without overly punishing the occasional accident^[1].

In addition to this system, usually, the one who is found to be intentionally killing his teammates will usually be kicked or banned from the game. This is a common practice of FPS games.

A more straightforward method of handling team killing can be found in the Halo series. A player who kills a member of their own team has committed a 'Betrayal'. The player who was killed is then given the option of whether or not to immediately kick the traitor out of the game. Unfortunately, this has led to a unique form of griefing in which maladjusted players attack teammates without killing them, in the hope of goading their victims into killing them. Since this will technically count as a betrayal, the griefer is then given the option, and chooses to kick their victim out of the game^[2].

The Xbox Live player review system also allows players to negatively review and submit complaints on the grounds of disruptive game behaviour. Players can also set specific players to be avoided when matchmaking in online games.

A solution from Counter-Strike was killing TKers prior to the next round starting, however this option can be turned off.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

Troll (Internet) Griefer Friendly Fire