UPDATE: the video referenced is sadly no longer online.
The story goes like this: my twelve year-old son Oliver builds a spectacular tower in Minecraft (Olly is a Minecraft ninja and runs his own server). Then, an anti-social twerp demolishes the whole thing. This kind of large-scale vandalism is called ‘griefing’ in Minecraft and is frowned upon (terrific explanation on the Minecraft wiki).
Unfortunately for said twerp, though, the rozzers are on hand: a Minecraft admin is online and sees the whole thing. Dishing out the kind of blocky summary justice that’s only possible in a kind of blocky virtual world, the admin incarcerates our twerp in a special Minecraft jail built for the purpose (for how long I’m not sure).
Here’s the best bit. Oliver visits our twerp in his very public nick (there’s some blocky banter), captures a video of his visit, adds informative captions and a soundtrack (Jailhouse Rock, what else?) and publishes it on YouTube. I’m so proud (I’ll have a word about his spelling of of ‘griefer’, though).
Of course, I find myself wondering if I should encourage this kind of naming and shaming but, since this is essentially an extension of Minecraft’s in-game sanction and since it doesn’t seem to be possible to reconstruct the twerp’s real identity from the video (and since he is a troll), I’m OK with it. Gamer justice: tough but fair.