Some time ago we reported on a social experiment conducted by ComedyKnife. The experiment involved CK approaching random strangers playing GTA Online freemode, and greeting them. That's it. What were the results? Pretty much everyone attacked and killed his character immediately. The few people who didn't (one was Canadian because obviously), warned him that all the others would. The experiment was conducted on around 100 players, which admittedly is a very, very, very small percentage of the full player base of GTA V. But the numbers don't lie, with a total of, like, 6 people who didn't kill him instantly.
Someone has since decided to retry the experiment, except this time they would use a level one female character. Admit it guys, you all used the good old trick of having a low level female character in an MMO to get free stuff from those gullible idiots who are bound to be playing. As it turns out, the same effect can be witnessed in GTA Online, though while the player conducting the experiment, Yan 2295, didn't get any free stuff, they also didn't get a bullet to the face.
Throughout the experiment, 10 players killed Yan, while 18 let him/her live. While 28 is well off from the 100 players of the previous experiment, the averages and the trend speak for themselves. Clearly, GTA Online freemode players are more positively predisposed to female character models.
But why? When it comes to video games, you can never know who is really on the other side of the screen. Why do we automatically assume a player character is an accurate representation of the player themselves? Is it because we have no other information, and the character model is all that we have to go on?
Do you encounter immediately violent players in GTA Online often?
