Keep up the good work!

Of course that’s the case. There is just the rudiments of a game of sorts, in that you are supposed to build skills, work on money lots, and make enough simoleons to build your BiG ChIlL cRiB, and that’s about it, after you and your cyber-bunny settle down to nest. Then you have a fight with her and a drama, and maybe fight some mafias or some government wannabees, and maybe max out one of your other skills, but I knew this game was in trouble when I found myself minimizing my skilling Sim or even my chatting Sim and playing Yahoo’s Bookworm in the other window.

The game that TSO designers devised is just too easy. It’s too cheatable, but it’s also too east to beat merely by legally buying a second or third account for 30 days.

All these insufferably cheerful and brave attempts to start mini-games are interesting for game wonks to study, but really sad. The people doing the contests and the move trivia games remind me of those obnoxious girls with clipboards who arrange scavenger hunts at Club Med — or that awful NPC in Vacation. They remind me of those terribly long boring car trips to Michigan with the relatives we used to take. Mom would struggle to get us to play some sort of license-plate game. Pop would try to get us to play complicated riddle games. The kids would poke each other in between bouts of throwing up their Burger Kings. That’s TSO. People trying to make the best of a very bad bargain. Sure, for about 17 minutes, trying to see who is on the “cow side” of the car, i.e. the farms with cows passed the road, the most often can be really riveting. Until it isn’t…(Why was my little sister ALWAYS on the cow side?????)

What I had hoped is that TSO might be a continuation of the Grand Human Story, the narrative, the Great National Conversation only with something more than just an AOL chat room interface or matchmaker.com I had hoped it was a theater, a living soap opera, a movie, with a firm proscenium arch. I thought the idea of making the characters and their lot worlds and doing role-playing would be challenging enough, and the drama and narrative devices would be compelling enough. The problem is that the RP is mainly just a meat rack, a pick-up device, and not a creative outlet for the higher-minded. I’ve seen some of the greatest minds of my Sim generation crawling naked in the angry dawn streets. People who make fabulous objects, programs, websites, reduced to petty squabbles and jealousies over roomies, or engrossed for hours in cybersex with people they don’t realize are married or who look like the Crypt-Keeper. Human nature, I guess…

You see, the problem is this: The game leaks. It leaks into the real world. And the RW leaks into it. You have the “Real Sims” phenom and all those come-hither Sim profiles. They are not interesting to me, because they are about leaving the simulated RP world and going to RL, which is not what some people come to the Sims for, people who have plenty of RL as it is.

TMOT, Craigslist is far, far more effective and custom-made for sex and romance in the city of your choice. Even matchmaker.com lets you screen better. (I don’t know why I keep getting some bisexual dentist in Long Island named Stanley when I put in all my search criteria for matchmaker.com but that’s another story…)

I think that this concept of randomizing the server access and preventing the giving out of RL info and any connections to outside websites might be a way of sealing the world in order to make it more credible for role-play, for those who want the RP game, and not all the annoying RL chatter of “Real Sims” who want to tell you all the boring details of their pathetic lives. If there was a little muscle to this RP world, if there was more an etiquette that you really do leave your RL at the door and you don’t go OOC as often, that might help. But it’s beyond hope now. There is a League of Role-Players I used to play with within TSO and they have struggled mightily but all kinds of things like mafias and Error 23 and boredom with attempting to get the skills and money have thwarted their imaginations. Maxis/EA never seemed to understand that they should do a simple thing like make size 8 lots with $100,000 immediately available for RL cash through their company, for those who wanted to build a RP fantasy and play it, rather than being trapped in the inanity of bubble versus IM pizza….

Randomizing server access might create the problem of defeating positive, creative societies, too. But if there was a really free message board not hobbled by mods, people would find each other and move to other servers.

I have found that the Virtual Reality type “game”, or “non-game” if you want to call it that, is more compelling because of the social aspects, which is really one of the principal advantages of an online game over a non-online game. I think that the “gamey” type of game is better in a non-online game where personal interaction isn’t on the menu (other than of the scripted variety), whereas the real fun part of an online game is the personal interaction. That interaction can come in the form of killing each other (which is often the case in online versions of non-online games because the non-online version has you killing AI characters in any case) or, in the case of VR games, speaking with each other and creating things. I guess I find the latter more compelling, but everyone’s taste is a little different I suppose.

Yeah, my therapist has been trying to answer that one for years. Basically it’s not about the killing or the enjoying. I’d have to argue that with out direct competative influence between participants (in this example, killing) you can’t even have a “game” let alone enjoy it. TSO as an activity is wonderfully interesting for some of us, but it’s not really a game at all in my mind, it is, much like the offline version, a digital toy.

Pretty much all of the Sim-series of games have been toys, complicated spreadsheet programs and rubix cubes with different skins. The only thing that TSO did was force you to share that toy with others. And thus, some would say, a society was born. But, I don’t think that that makes it a game. Certainly you can play games with it,you can even play mini-games in it, and you can game with other participants who inhabit it, but IT (the system itself, the code of TSO) isn’t a game. It’s a place to gather and play games, it’s merely a field.

At least that my analysis.

How is FFXI different? Well, in part thats one thing I hope to discover. Initially I’d argue that FFXI is a game because its players are in influential competition with each other, not simply to aquire the most or level the highest, but to, by doing the former, expand the influence of there nation (re: team) and reduce the influence of there opponents. I’d say that’s more game-like than TSO.

Why is that relevant? Well, because the comparision and counter-point will hopefully generate greater understanding of both systems. What do they share, how do they differ (not simply cosmetically but functionally and structurally) and how do these similarities and/or differences influence their respective participants.

In short, it’s not much like the offline game except in style, and is quite like EQ in structure. But, I’d rather bring it back to how these different styles of VR relate, and how they generate player interaction. So if there is a thing about FFXI that relates to this than I’m doing what I can to bring that to you.

And yes, I did mean to say ‘their’ rather than ‘there.’

Or we can look for it now right here on AV Herald — I couldn’t help retorting! BTW, I think you mean to say “their” instead of “there”.

Squirrel, why do you have to kill people to enjoy a game? And why is just selling stuff and killing stuff “a game”. Isn’t there anything else? You’re the geek getting a Gaming Ph.D. You tell me. Surely there must be. I suppose acquiring arcane knowledge about fake medieval worlds is also a good game, but a boring one IMHO. Tell us what you can DO in FF. Get together and kill monsters like in EQ? Is it like the offline game, only more so.