Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote that Hell is other people — and he didn’t even have a Gamertag. Of course, if the French existentialist philosopher had played Halo 2 on Xbox Live, all it would have taken was one vulgar teabagging at the hands of an anonymous 14-year-old for him to exclaim: “See? That’s what I’m on about.” Because for all of the great opportunities that Microsoft’s online gaming service affords, all the wonderful ways to connect with fellow gamers and share a communal gaming experience, the only real problem with Xbox Live is everyone who uses it.

And let’s face it — the freedom of Live is also its curse. Because you’re able to frag as you please, un-moderated and uncensored, it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually be taunted, mocked, insulted, or worst of all, subjected to a close-up video feed of some dude’s twig and berries. Sure, there’s a player-feedback system in place so you can report sore losers and abusers. But does anybody read those reports? What’s to stop the inmates from running the asylum?

May this be the worst you encounter on Xbox Live!

THE MAN
The answer is Chris — and that’s all you’re allowed to know. A five-year veteran of Microsoft and a member of the Live team since a few months after its debut, Chris runs the team of undercover agents that patrols Live and responds to those complaints about problematic users. And even though you never see him doing his job, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get done every single day. “A lot of people say ‘I’ve never been banned, I’ve never seen it,’” explains Chris, who prefers that his full identity remain concealed for security reasons. “And that’s because it’s an extremely small percentage of people who are actually the bad eggs. There’s a lot of repeat offenders, but percentage-wise across the service, it’s actually a really, really small percentage that is really problematic.” To deal with that small percentage, Microsoft has created an internal team of gamers dedicated to monitoring behavior and laying down the smack when it’s necessary. And naturally, if you can’t know Chris’ identity, he’s not offering up those of his agents in the field, either — or even how many are online at any given time. “The authorized group is pretty large,” he tells us cryptically. “I don’t give out the exact number, but it’s actually apretty big group. You never know who you’re playing with…so you should play nice.”

BAD REPUTATION
Then again, the same rude comment that might send one person into a blind rage could send another into fits of laughter. The challenge, then, is to let every gamer make up their own mind as to what they personally deem appropriate — and that’s why two separate player-feedback systems are in place on Xbox Live. The first is Rep, a simple prefer/avoid system that lets you give your blessing to players who fit your idea of fun. “We wanted to allow users to affect their matchmaking, so you didn’t come across the same jerk over and over again,” explains Chris. “Matchmaking works off that preferred-players list, so we wanted to make that a little more transparent to users.”

Check your own rep rating for a detailed breakdown of your sins. You may be surprised at what other gamers find offensive.

If someone does something that bugs you, you can use the same system to anonymously tell them why you’ll never seek out their company again. Any player can see their Rep at any time, with a breakdown of what they’ve done in the past that other people didn’t like. “It’s a pretty natural thing,” says Chris. “You play a lot of sessions, your Rep goes up. You play a lot of sessions and piss people off, your Rep goes down.” Be warned: Once you have a dark stain on your Rep, there’s nothing you can do to remove it; you’ve simply got to bury the bad ratings with an overwhelming amount of good. “I was in a session with a girl a couple of weeks ago,” recalls Chris. “In one night, she said her Rep went from great to terrible. She said, ‘Can you prefer me?’ I asked,‘Why’s that?’ ‘Well, a lot of people said I was a bad player.’ And I asked, ‘Why’s that ?’ ‘I was kind of beingstupid, and making jokes about the KKK, and I think people really didn’t like it.’ And I told her, ‘You’re probably right.’ My suggestion was, play with your friends, play with more people, and start being a cool person, and your Rep will go back up.”

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY
All the bad Rep in the world, however, won’t get you booted off Xbox Live because it’s not connected to any sort of disciplinary system. “The player review really just affects the reputation and matchmaking; it never comes to us to look at,” explains Chris. “Complaints do come to us, and we look at all those. If you’re upsetting or offending a lot of people — whether it’s through voice, video, text, or gameplay — we look at all those different types of complaints and we will take action on your account.” When it comes to those complaints, players have more power than they may actually realize. “The complaints that come in are hearsay,” describes Chris. “We don’t have actual proof, so if there is a consensus in the community, we take action on it. Obviously, if we see it or hear it directly, it’s like the officer on the street — if you see someone do something bad, it’s a done deal. You don’t have to do it three times in front of the officer for him to go, ‘Oh, well, I guess I need to take care of that.’ We see it once, we take care of it. If we hear about it, we wait until there’s a consensus from the community. We look at the complaint log very frequently and it doesn’t take long to get on our radar.” Somebody’s definitely listening.

Registering a complaint carries more weight than a Rep report.

PEEP SHOW
When the Xbox Live Vision camera was released — with the mild-mannered Uno as its first killer app — some players felt it was an accident waiting to happen. After all, if poor sports can’t watch their mouths, what’s to stop them from using other body parts? “We actually have people who are playing undercover and they’re watching for that,” Chris says. “If we see one, you’re gone. Gone as in account gone. Gone as in your-console-may-never-connect-to-Live again gone. We don’t put up with it at all.” Indeed, sometimes the ban hammer strikes with such swift vengeance, there’s no time for the mildly innocent to get out of the way. “When the Vision camera launched, one of the PR guys wanted to show what it looked like to get a complaint filed against you for a Vision-camera incident,” Chris recalls. “Because the camera had just launched, I took a really hard line and I just nailed everybody who had complaints during that time, and he just happened to be in there. He called me up and said, ‘I just got banned!’ And I replied: ‘Yep — you did! I’m sending a message to the community!’”

When using the Vision camera, keep your hands to yourself.

YOUR MOTHER
That brings up a good question: What if you are wrongfully accused? What if your little brother signs in with your Gamertag and makes you a bunch of enemies? Microsoft’s answer is simple: He’s your little brother — you deal with him. “You are responsible for your account,” says Chris. “We give you a passcode so you can protect it. If you’re in a college dorm room and you leave your account open on Live and a bunch of your friends come in and do a bunch of really stupid things on your account, you’re liable. There’s no way to plead the case, because if 300 people told me you were a jerk, and you come tell me ‘I’m not a jerk,’ I’m likely to believe the 300 people. The community has spoken. Go be nice, go play with your friends, and don’t piss people off.”

Then there are those instances where the little brother is his own worst enemy. And in cases like that, Chris has been known, on rare occasions, to personally bring the war straight to your door. “My all-time favorite was when I was playing in a session and a kid was saying the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard on Live,” describes Chris with great detail. “I noticed that his mom’s information was on the account. So I decided to make a phone call. I said, ‘My name is Chris, I work for Microsoft on the Xbox Live team, and last night I played in a game sessionagainst somebody with the Gamertag such-and-such,’ and she said, ‘Oh, that’s my son!’ ‘Well, I just would like to let you know that he won’t be playing on Xbox Live for a little while because he was being extremely foul with his language.’ And she asked, ‘What exactly did he say?’ ‘Well, ma’am, I’d really appreciate not having to say that.’ ‘No, I would really like to know what he said.’ ‘Well, ma’am, in quotes, he said this.’ And she said, ‘Oh dear…oh, my son won’t be playing for quite some time!’ We don’t do that very often — it takes a pretty egregious thing for us to respond like that.”

CHEATERS NEVER PROSPER
It may be easy to doubt the effectiveness of the program, as bannings are private affairs and even the reporting party never knows if or when anything happens to the person they ratted on. But Aaron Greenberg, group product marketing manager for Xbox Live, figures the number of users banned to date is in the “thousands and thousands — over 10,000.” When compared to a 4-million-person user base, “it’s not that big of a number,” he acknowledges, “but we do take a lot of action.” Interestingly, the No. 1 complaint levied against Xbox Live members isn’t hate speech or pornography; it’s cheating. Wait — it’s possible to cheat on Live? Yes, but only briefly, explains Aaron. “There’s a window of a couple days or a week when a new game comes out and some players say, ‘I figured out in this mode in this place I can do this thing.’ There are always people looking to do that. So we catch them, bust them, and adjust the title so it can’t be done again.”

THE DARK SIDE
Ultimately, you can’t offer gamers this much freedom without it tempting some players into bad behavior. “Anonymity breeds anarchy,” says Chris. “When nobody knows who you are, you get this freedom to do whatever it is that you wouldn’t normally do. So that guy who would never, ever approach a girl and say ‘Hi, my name is Chris, I’d like to talk to you’ because he’s too afraid, all of a sudden, he gets into a Live room where there’s a girl and he says ‘Hey, show me your tits.’ A lot of common sense goes by the wayside when you introduce anonymity. We need to encourage people: ‘Act like you would act if you were in public; act like you would act if people knew who you were.’ But unfortunately, not everybody does that because people like to have that dark side, if you will.”

Ironically, Chris uses Microsoft’s swift might to fight for the forces of light, even though his own job must remain shrouded in darkness. “The more information that you give out — the number of people watching, when they’re watching, what games they’re watching — any time you give them any hint of what you’re doing, you give them an opportunity to get around you,” he admits. “That’s why there’s a curtain there. We don’t want people to know exactly what we’re doing, what the thresholds are, and when we start looking at your account, because people get really smart and figure out ways to fly under the radar, and we don’t want them to. We change things on a regular basis; we try to keep things moving so we can keep ahead of them.”

The Code of Conduct is easy to find. Read it and be prepared.

Ultimately, Xbox Live is whatever its users make of it; Chris and his team are just there to steer it in the direction that the majority of players have said they prefer. “It’s our right as a service to make sure that it’s appropriate,” declares Chris. “We need to realize that it’s not just 20-year-old guys who don’t care about swearing. There are 10-year-olds and 45-year-old housewives on the service. It’s really a community — and we need to respect other people in that community.”

We tested Chris and his team of social ninjas by creating a new account then creating a nuisance. How long do you have to be a jerk on Xbox LIve before you get kicked off? Read for yourself.