Of Virtual Worlds

Ling was asking the other night whether the RPG I was playing on the computer was a single or multiplayer game.

Here’s the deal: ironically, while my major and life ‘defining’ work has been in multiplayer virtual worlds, since marriage I no longer spend as much time in those worlds as I once did. The same applies to Matt, and both our reasons are pretty much the same: those things are life-suckers. It’s not merely a question about being able to resist addictive games: it’s that multiplayer games invariably require commitment to the communities you join.

For too many times while the both of us were running our guild in the 90s and then on my own from 2003 to 2005, we were frequently faced with the difficulty of trying to get good participation rates for our events, and at the same time reminding our guild members that whatever we were doing was ultimately leisure that should not supersede real world needs and obligations.

For those of us not in the know; here’s a bit of context. Community events – especially of the high-level sort typically involve several dozens of persons working and collaborating together real-time where reflexes, timing and coordination are everything to the event’s success. And events aren’t an hour or two long – in some settings, they can last between 20 to 30 hours. Just imagine for a minute tying yourself to a computer for that long a time!

Ironically, these high-stake events are conscious parts of game content included on the part of designers. It’s a complicated sort of thing, but it involves providing content for high Achievement-centric players who typically participate in these events for the big rewards they provide, which in turn provide them bragging rights among their peers.

I remember one of the early occasions on such an event in 1999 when Matt and I were ‘camped’ in a dungeon waiting for this very rare frog to show up on the small chance he’d drop a rare sword. That was a thirty-seven hour camp, one whom we would in the next year write humorous entries for our guild web site then.

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Things have changed considerably, especially after game designers and critics started realizing that some of the high level content was coming at social cost to players, i.e. families were getting broken up, spouses were getting divorced, and – sadly in a few instances – players were committing suicide, or so neglecting their families that deaths ensued. But there remains a body of players who can responsibly afford the time and commitment necessary for them to continue accessing these content, so there’re still games which cater to this ‘hard core’ crowd.

Myself though, I can’t see myself ever again spending the kind of hours I still recently did up till the end of my Ph.D years (at the height of research in 2005, I spent about 90 to 100 hours a week in game). For starters, I have a day job. And secondly, these virtual worlds are real-time. When Hannah needs attention, I can reach for the ‘pause button’ in a single-player game. No such facility exists in multiplayer virtual worlds.

But it’s still fun to think and remember though, and too often, I’ll catch Matt online and we’ll remember one or two incidents during those years. Wait till he tells you about this Australian player we had in our midst… :)