I’m a big fan of Tom Clancy games in general, but The Division really hit a chord with me. I don’t usually devote much time to MMO games, but I’ve remained steadily involved with the game since its release back in March. This is partially because I have good friends to play it with; friends make everything better.

But this is not a review. Instead, I want to talk about some of my observations in the game.

If you’re not familiar, the game has a place called the “Dark Zone”, a smallpox-contaminated part of Manhattan quarantined from the rest of New York City. The Dark Zone is the game’s PvP (Player versus Player) area. Some of the toughest computer-controlled bad guys are in the Dark Zone, as are some of the best rewards. To eliminate these bad guys and reap the rewards, one typically needs to form a group with other players. Once you’ve grabbed the loot, you have to go to a special area and call in a helicopter to extract the items before you “own” them. They are contaminated, after all.

Before you’ve extracted items, any other player can kill you and steal those items. Lone wanderer players make easy targets to teams of other players and—especially when you get the drop on them—are often easier to kill than the non-player character bad guys.

This is supposed to be part of the draw of the game—the cat and mouse of stalking and evading other players, the team-on-team direct combat against player opponents and, most of all, the tension the system creates. There are few people you can actually trust, and I’ve had more than a few encounters where, randomly encountering another player, we both have to scope each other out, not wanting to fight, but unsure of the other’s intentions. That nervousness is in some way satisfying because it is so immersive; it brings you into post-disaster New York in a personal and experiential way. I like that.

On the other hand, particularly because I’m introverted and often avoid linking up with random players (only joining teams of people I actually know in real life), I often find myself navigating the Dark Zone by myself. Consequently, I often find myself getting killed and my stuff ganked because I’m outnumbered, outgunned, or simply stabbed in the back by an opportunist while I’m trying to defeat the Zone’s tough computer-controlled hostiles.

My time playing has taught me that there are three groups of people when it comes to the Dark Zone. The first is where I find myself, reluctant to “go rogue” to kill and steal from other players even when I’m in a group and confident I can get away with it. I’ve encountered only a few other players with this view. The second group is probably largest. They understand that this is a game—there are winners and losers, and those who play have agreed to the rules that govern the game. This group probably enjoys the game the most because they fully play out the game’s possibilities—sometimes going rogue and killing other players in ambushes or pitched battles. But they don’t strike me as the type who would probably act that way were the game real life. They know the difference in the stakes and consequences of a game versus the real thing.

The last group is the one that I find so simultaneously fascinating and infuriating. These are the bullies, those whose primary joy in the game is picking on players less powerful than themselves. These are the ones who, having killed you in an unfair fight (usually extremely so—four to one odds and they strike when you’re otherwise occupied) come up and stand next to your body to laugh and mock you until you’re able to respawn. These are players with malice aforethought.

At the end of the day, it’s still a game, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to make a presumption about a stranger’s moral capacity in the real world based on behavior in a digitally-manufactured world. On the other hand, I’m a believer that the anonymity of the internet (including multiplayer games) allows people a release from the social conventions that normally restrain their baser selves.

When playing the game (admittedly, perhaps more to relieve my own frustration than any objective reality) I am constantly reminded that maybe there really is a fine line between social order and the chaos of those with more power and less restraint.