The Motivation: None
The Example:Crackdown
The Crime:
Pacific City needs your help. The citizens are in danger and only one hero can save them. Well, make that two. You and your supercharged sidekick leap into action, ready to rid the streets of the criminal element. He loads his rocket launcher. You heave a bus over your head and prepare to throw.
Oops. The resulting shrapnel and body-strewn explosion sends you both spinning over the opposites sides of a bridge and, just like that, the pair of you are standing lamely back at superhero HQ. You'd laugh and chalk it up to bad luck if this wasn't the sixteenth time today you'd ended up here together. With friends like these, who needs super villains?
The Justification:
You know, sometimes a team kill just isn't the team killer's fault. And that can be true even if he kills you 16 times in a row. Crackdown is a perfect instance of this - due to its super wonky targeting and highly frenzied gameplay, murdering your one and only ally in the cooperative multiplayer mode can be nearly as easy as killing Generic Thug #725 or Random Pedestrian #319.
The lesson for this motivation, or lack of motivation, is to give your so-called "griefer" the benefit of the doubt. Every one of us, at some point, has planted the occasional and accidental stray bullet in our unsuspecting mates. Maybe it was because of our poor targeting, maybe it was because of their poor position. Or maybe the blame lies with the design of the game itself. Don't complain and don't name call until your agitator's true intentions are clear.
Once they are, feel free to move on to our last motivation if necessary.
