ha. =) found a link to this off a pretty good comment thread over at jason santa maria’s website about what job titles designers use, and how it can get kinda confusing, especially when you state your irrelevant job title to a layperson and they haven’t a clue what it is you actually do. totally odd, this problem with being a designer. i mean, tell somebody you’re a “mailman” or “auto mechanic”, and there’s no question what it is you do.
i’ve now gotten a taste of why it’s called warcrack, for real.
i’ve played on a few different servers the two years or so i’ve been off and on playing warcrack, and been in about 5 or 6 guilds. i’ve got a list of things i like and don’t like about guilds, and know that to each person his/her own. for instance, i personally don’t like non-game related small talk in the guild channel, and think a separate channel should be established for that, but others positively delight in long, rambling conversations about what they had to eat and what baseball game is playing that take up the entire guild channel for hours at a time. if i find a guild like that, i’ll bow out, move on. certainly would be silly of me to criticize them, i mean, that’s who they are, it just means i need to find a guild with more people like me. direct, down to earth, talk about the game, keep small talk to separate channels, etc.
so a friend of mine went on and on about her awesome new guild on her awesome new server, said that in all the time she’s been playing it’s the most fun she’s had. when describing her guild (very friendly, small group of people) i knew that there were some things i wouldn’t like about it. (i’ve found most friendly, small groups of people guilds that ones who talk incessantly about non-game related stuff the most, very “hi how are you” and “how was your day” and “let’s chat for the next 6 hours about it”.) but my friend keeps moving servers, and i missed playing with her, and i’d never been on a roleplaying server before, so was interested to try it out. so i transferred my character over, applied to be in the guild, got accepted after almost a week, and was in the guild for 3 or 4 days.
yes, very helpful group of people, very nice. always up for helping each other out on whatever quests anybody needs. i was especially impressed when we had to wait for somebody for 45 minutes to show up for a quest, and we all sat at the entrance to the instance. patiently. all 5 people sat their characters at the instance entrance and waited the entire 45 minutes patiently. i’d NEVER known a guild capable of such a thing.
a few people helped me out on my big sunken temple rogue quest, for which i was grateful, and i sent the people who’d spent the most time helping 5 gold a piece as thanks. all but one returned them, saying glad to help, no problem. no one ever game me gear, and i’d never taken anything from the guild bank. we played together once, and the rest of the time i played on my own.
but there was other stuff. for instance, the whole cluttering up the guild chat channel with non-game related small talk. most people were in an earlier timezone than me which meant that by around 8/9pm, when i first start playing, everyone else in the guild had signed off. 2 days nobody was on, at all, and i spent over two hours in the looking for group channel trying to get help for an instance run, but no go. these are all basic things that’d have me looking elsewhere for a guild. i’d have nothing against a guild for such things, it’s just not the guild for me.
but there was other stuff i had bigger issues with. mostly heterosexual guild, with kids, married people, etc, and so blessedly free of the “fag” comments you find in younger guilds, and the chat was markedly much more educated and intelligent. however in the space of two days, i had one guy make reference to male masturbation that i found tasteless and unwarranted, specifically to me, another make a comment about one of his sexual fantasies to a 17 year old girl, and then there was the one instance that really got to me. one of the teenagers in the group, unprompted by anybody else, went on a lengthy diatribe about how people with terminal illnesses like cancer and such don’t deserve insurance, that insurance companies have every right to turn such people down, refuse to cover them, she insisted it was a moral, ethical right of theirs, justifying it, and then made the unconscionable statement that giving medical insurance to someone with a terminal disease was “like flushing money down the toilet.”
when she said that, it floored me. it usually takes me a while to figure stuff out in my head in response to what people have said, so after i’d scanned that in the endless chatter guild channel, i went on questing, but wheels in mind were rapidly turning. and i found myself getting more and more pissed off. the guild channel had gotten oddly quiet, or else i’d simply clicked the window closed and had been off on my own. i clicked back in and said, “no, it’s a matter of people with the basic human right to live their however short lives in dignity and without pain.” i could’ve said a number of things much more pissier, but that’s all i said. i then clicked out, knowing how i can be when someone’s pissed me off, and continued questing.
5-10 minutes later, everyone who’d been on the guild channel when the person had made the hateful political comment (which is a big no-no in most guilds, and also against this one guild’s written rules) were back talking again, to the person who thinks people with terminal illnesses are toilets that money is wasted on, as if nothing had happened. clearly either agreeing with what she’d said, or making no motion to check her on it.
i clicked the chat window closed, and got more and more pissed off. an hour later, i sent a polite message via ingame mail to the guild leader, asking if that specific chat topic was standard guild chat, and if so, that’d be very sad, because i’d met some good people in the guild but personally found this specific guild chat offensive, and would unfortunately have to find another guild if this was indeed standard game chat.
i waited another hour, and no response. wasn’t expecting one that quickly. but on my own i just found myself getting more and more annoyed with the heterosexual male comments about masturbation and sexual fantasies, combined with the republican east coast mentality. despite they help each other out, not people i want to hang out with in the game. so i clicked on my character in the guild pane, chose “leave guild” and that was it. i continued playing, chat window closed, for the rest of the night.
or so i THOUGHT that was it. i got a huge email from my friend the next day, very unlike her, telling me that she was very hurt and angry about me leaving the guild, and why i did it, and the huge issue it caused, and all the drama it’d caused.
i found myself looking at that email, my friend, who i’ve known over 2 years, never having sent me an email remotely like that, and it was about a *video game*. not a video game itself, but to a almost non-existing incident in a game, in which no harsh words were traded, no arguments were had, no insults were made, just one person left quietly. what i wanted to say to my friend, who is a really awesome person, was, “ummm, you understand that this is something that took place in a video game that you’re talking about, right? PLEASE don’t turn into one of those warcraft people. step away from the light. =)” i fantasized, good humoredly, about having some sort of intervention for her.
i didn’t want to discount my friends’ feelings, though, and so made myself think about it for quite a few hours. and i found myself tugged between two sides of this parallel reality: those who think that what happens within warcraft is real life, just as real as real life, since it’s real people playing the game, and then those who say it’s just a game, don’t take it so seriously. i’m the second type. my friend, with this email of hers, was seeming to be the first type. was either side right, was either side wrong? if i insist that it’s just a game, am i unduly hurting my friend’s feelings, not taking seriously something that’s important to her?
so i said, okay, let’s pretend this is an incident that happened in real life. the most relevant real-life metaphor i can think of is my friend having been really excited at, let’s see, a martial arts collective she’d become a part of. she’d gone on and on about how great they were. so i paid the $25 entrance fee to attend one of their sessions, and found they indeed, in some ways were pretty awesome people. but in small talk in and around the session, i find several members talking about things i either don’t ethically agree with, find distasteful, or frankly pisses me off. them going on about how people with terminal illnesses deserve to die, heterosexual guys in her collective talking about them masturbating with their hands in their pockets. offhand references, but i’m a literal person, and the words you say are real to me. i’m not one of those people who can just shrug off stupid things people say.
so i’d find that i didn’t want to be around people talking like that, even though they were good people otherwise. we simply didn’t share the same beliefs. and so rather than me getting all irate with them and bringing it, full attention, taking command of the session and saying to everybody how shitty they were and how much i didn’t appreciate what they were saying, i simply, while they were all occupied in the session, left quietly.
now, we’re following real life. my friend hadn’t been online at the time this guild chat stuff had gone down. she’d logged in after i’d quit the guild. which means she’d caught up with her martial arts collective afterwards.
and this is what happens, and understand that we’re speaking about a real life, happened in the real world incident. this entire collective had a charged emotional conversation with my friend about why i’d left, causing my friend grief, my friend gets very annoyed and upset, sends me text messages asking me what’s up, but i have my phone turned off, as i always do, and don’t find out that she’d messaged me til the nest day. and when i do i also found a very long email from her saying how hurt and angry she was about me leaving the martial arts session the way i did, and all the drama it’d caused.
now, please understand that we’re still talking about a real life incident.
is that how things would’ve gone down if this would’ve happened in real life? no. it seems to me that i would’ve left quietly, while the session was still going on. a couple afterwards would’ve noticed i’d left. maybe send me an email the next day, say, “hey, i noticed you left, just wanted to check if everything was okay.” and i would’ve waited a day or two to respond, wanting to wait til i could send a friendly, okay response. and my friend would’ve probably sent me an email that would’ve said, “hey, i noticed you’d left the session, was everything okay?” and i probably would’ve done the same thing, waited a day or two, then sent her an email that said something to the effect, sorry, you were right, really good group of people, but i just didn’t like some of the stuff that was said, so i probably won’t be going back, but i think it’s awesome you found a collective that worked for you.
that’s how it would’ve gone down in real life. instead, in the context of this video game, this hyper impatient, immediate satiation based world, what happened, in a real game alternative, was that, on finding me gone, the entire collective had gone into a frenzely, holding long drama-wrought sessions, right there, 20 minutes after i’d left, about why i’d gone, and when my friend showed up that dragged her into this huge emotional issue thing questioning her on why i’d left, and she gets frustrated and confused and text messages and then next day sends me a very long email explaining how angry and hurt she was that i’d left the session.
which is quite obviously something that’s not okay to happen in real life. people simply don’t act like that in real life. but i find that things happen like that in online mmorpgs. and i spent more time thinking, especially thinking about, again, my friend is an incredibly awesome person, is extremely intelligent, mature, rational, level-headed. i’m thinking no evil whatsoever about her, no bad thoughts. but why would such a thing, that never would’ve happend between her and i in the real world, happen in a video game?
and why do i notice that such things happen a lot in online mmorpgs? it seems to be for a number of reasons. one, an mmorpg like world of warcraft is a virtual reality. it is a virtual reality that has been hyper-compressed to that its virtual existence is hyper-rapid, instantaneous. to journey from one continent to another by foot would normally take months. in this game, it takes minutes. to gather a group of people who have the skills, time and desire to go on a mythical journey to kill several supernatural dragons in a faroff cavern would taken aeons. in warcraft, it takes place within a day, sometimes half an hour. people expect what they want now.
but it also seems to promote lack of emotional accountability. it tends to harbor what i notice in a lot of online chat, that people seem to feel it’s okay to spout off whatever hateful, offensive garbage they want, like you’re such a fag and slapping people and killing each other, cuz it’s a game, and they can get away with it.
but there’s something that’s a bit more difficult to pinpoint, and it’s the source of why an incident that would’ve been a non-incident in real life turned into a hyper, instantaneous issue within the context of this virtual world. i can’t quite figure it out, and i think it may have something to do with physical dexterity/assumptions, hand eye coordination, neurophysiology, social conditioning. the impulses of the mass being subtly controlled and governed by the system within which the mass/herd is contained. you put rats in a maze, change the controls, and their personality and even basic physiology will change according to the constraints you’ve put on it. so what changes are wrought in a human being immersed in a virtual world? how does that human being’s expectations, behavior change?
what especially concerns me is that the human world, more and more, seems to be falling more under the sway of online communications, virtual worlds. twitter, email, blogs, warcraft, im, other online games. we date via the internet now, we build friendships thru bytes and light pixels in a monitor. so if we are in the rats in a maze, how is our reality and our very behavior being shaped by how our world is changing? what kind of creature will we become?
i’m having a no good, horrible, very bad day, and this video about fonts assembled at a conference made me laugh. the dingbats one… my gods, hilarious. it had never occurred to me to wonder what language dingbats would speak if it were turned into a person.
i am so trying to resist the urge to email this video right now to everyone i work with at my job who i do design jobs for. i have had to deal with absolutely EVERYthing in this video.
very well done. i’d love to see this made into a real book.
also on twitter
