Tweeting the Other

This week, for purely academic reasons, I found myself searching Twitter for Post Modern thinker action. Here are the results:

Deleuze (#deleuze) has Twitter form. I met a few friendly Deleuzians out there. Nice people!

Zizek (#zizek) is also trending (at least for a philosopher). Zizek has the advantage of being alive and so is still generating fresh content (eg lectures and articles) that can be tweeted by Zizekians. Zizek also has a sense of humour - a very Twitter-friendly attribute, almost as useful, in fact, as being alive. (Philosophers are not known for giving away free downloads, so humour helps).

Lacan (#lacan) - complex, serious (and dead) - only yielded one interesting tweet from an initial search.

Foucault (#foucault), despite being perhaps the trendiest Post Structuralist ever, is also not really twitter-interesting - just a lot of garlicky Europeans not speaking English (geez!) and undergrads complaining about having to study him late at night - as in “Bad coffee and a stomach ache - how much more fragging Foucault do I have to read???” (Ok that was me - but there were others!).

In terms of media analyses, #mmo and #mmorpg tend not to turn up much on Twitter: gaming news and fan-related links overload the feed. Searching for #mmo also results in a lot of Japanese and Korean tweets (in Japanese and Korean).

It’s easy to find tweets on Post Modernism and easy to find tweets on MMOs. Its not so easy to find tweets on both. Most tweets dealing with Postmodern topics include links to more substantial texts - 140 characters is not a lot of room to discuss, say, Derrida. (My favourite super-short Derrida tweet, though, would be “What's the différance? #derrida”).

What indeed?

MMOs, Desire, Deleuze and Guattari

What is the relationship between MMOs and desire?

That is probably more a subject for a thesis, not a blog post, but here anyway is a simple introduction for everyone that also introduces the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari .

Deleuze and Guattari’s classic text Anti-Oedipus (1972) maps out, among other things, a theory of desire which might shed some light on MMOs.

Desire in Anti-Oedipus starts as an alchemy of nature that rises up in our bodies. It is unthinking - it just happens and is played out as pure energy, pure physicality.

Later, according to D&G (yep, they are in many ways the Dolce & Gabbana of Post Modernism), desires are represented to us as “something”. In other words desire is identified, given meaning, as in - “Dude, I just totally ate that cookie ‘coz I was hungry *burp*”.

This representation can be influenced by many things, including society. A lot of Anti-Oedipus is about the way capitalism misrepresents desires to us.

For D&G, therefore, desire exists on two levels - the pre-conscious body where it originates and, later, the more insubstantial level of representation, influenced by such evil forces as society, capitalism, the family, or whatever else is around to provide meaning.

How might MMOs fit into this scheme?

Well, avatars are certainly not physical - if anything they are representations, as is their online environment.

So are MMOs representations of desire?

It’s certainly not hard to see them this way - and it explains a lot.

In Anti-Oedipus, representations of desire are seen not just as images but as conduits - they grab desire and direct it - often limiting its opportunities to find expression. And because desire is seen as a force independent of human consciousness - where it is lead is where humanity gets dragged along after it, for good or for ill.

Perhaps this an explanation for people getting so strangely involved in mass numbers with the crazy all-consuming pastime of MMO gaming.

Many activities in MMOs - perhaps all activities in MMOs - can be seen as driving desire, from building up power and reputation and possessions, to the outer edge of MMO behavior, where real romantic connections spring up between players.

Try reading accounts of people who have fallen in love through MMOs, describing how significant and authentic an MMO relationship can be (check out MMO Couples for more).

From all this an important question can be asked about MMOs - is this system of representation opening up creative possibilities for desire, or is it locking it down into regimes of repetitive, limited meanings and behaviours?

This relates to a lot of issues that MMOs are involved in at the moment, including design issues.

MMOs and desire, I would argue, are intimate bed-partners, and must be treated as such.

(Look out for other mini-intros in this Blog. Next fun intro: MMOs and Lacan)

Avatars Behaving Badly

Imagine this in the Lord of the Rings - Frodo corners Gandalf and barks "LOL dude - you’re pwned", then whacks him with a sword.

There can be a big difference between the idealised appearance of MMO worlds (magical forests and whimsical Baroque cities) and the frankly uncivilised behaviour of many avatars lurking about within them.

Perhaps its just an accurate portrayal of human history?

Adam Hildreth’s article Moderation by Machine in Edge makes some interesting points on this subject:

" ...MMOGs create more kinds of issues than blogs, Twitter or Facebook. ... it’s the gap between the collective ‘rules’ and human behaviour present in an MMOG that is the cause of so much pain and frustration for game companies.”

Hildreth is president of Crisp Thinking, which develops “behavioural analysis technology, internet safety, management and control” software for MMOs.

They sell technology based on natural language processing and machine learning aimed at spying on avatar interractions.

Hildreth’s article is, in part, a plug for his services:

“Even when you’ve cracked the conversational data, you’re still left with Real Money Traders ... spamming, gold farming, kill stealing and theft. Griefing, spam, power levelling, blocking, camping, botting, and most insidious - and dangerous of all - the growth of cyber-bullying, grooming and online predation.”

So much for Middle Earth.

In a familiar line, Hildreth is all about increased monitoring (using AI) to police the encroaching chaos of humanity. At the same time there is a despairing sense of doom in his article so common to law enforcement officials everywhere. What can you do? There’s just too much weird stuff going on out there for things to ever be truly safe.

As a player of MMOs (and a fan of fantasy books), I have to agree on one thing - once you pack a magical kingdom full of “normal” people, there’s precious little “fear not fair Elf I shall assist Thee” going on.

Maybe it's the gap between artifice and common human madness. It's the risk you take including the public in the painting - of having the art gallery and the art merged into one - the “peanut-crunching crowd” (as Sylvia Plath described them) stomping about inside Da Vinci’s Last Supper, ruining the effect.

And then there’s the issue of privacy. People tend to see their avatar as a freedom-loving and devilish version of themselves. Yet how free is your adventuring hero going to be in this growing paradigm of surveillance?

See you next time!

MMORPGs, reality and everything

The physical world has been fully explored. You can see the whole thing on Discovery Chanel. There’s nowhere new to go.

No wonder humanity is becoming ever more inward-looking, ever more narcissistic.

But with Massively Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Games (MMORPGs), we get an armchair experience of what inspired Elizabethan adventurers to escape whatever prosaic all-knowing suburban banality they felt constrained by and trek madly into the tropics.

MMORPGs attract people in a way that is new - and yet in a way that we all recognise - something familiar from dreams, from desires, from literature, from art and history. In MMORPGs we too can encounter strange environments, and meet stranger inhabitants - ourselves in fact, unencumbered by consequence, circumstance, or identity. Brand new creatures.

Meanwhile in China there are MMORPGs where the risk is toned down - the game difficulty is minimal and the emphasis is purely on socialising (for instance Battle of the Immortals). Monsters are not aggressive. Purchase the right “weapon” and you can dispose of them quickly.

That way your avatar has plenty of time to flirt and generally hang out.

In the West there is a more unforgiving tradition. It's dangerous and you have to fight hard to get anywhere. Adventure persists.

Will the future favour social platforms over biffing contests? Will the mainstream turn Middle Earth into a holiday in Miami?

Fascination with in-game socialising extends to academics. If you play MMORPGs there’s always the chance you’ll run across a wandering researcher questing for a PHD. You may be be asked questions like, do you feel that your gender performance in this game has freed you from patriarchal systems of identity??

MMORPGs are very thesis-friendly. They tick so many boxes - postulations about identity, the body and social organisation have been fashionable on campus for more semesters than departmental heads can remember.

I personally believe the arcane technical game play in MMORPGs (despite what is happening in China) is also a form of activity with philosophical resonances.

Which brings me to Postmodernism.

Continental theorists practically invented MMORPGs simply by thinking about society as a "text" or a "simulation". As the world sinks into a banality of social networking and endless “apps” (never mind virtual gaming), those crazy continentals may never be so necessary as now for the health of your brain cells.

Look out for them in this blog also!

Until next time....

The theory of MMe

When it comes to Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), I'm more an RPG guy than an MMO guy. That means I started out playing non-online Roll Playing Games, before the Massively Multiplayer Online part - the socialising part - became as big as it is today.

For me it all started in the early 90s with the PlayStation One and Japanese games like Wild Arms and Suikoden. The simple graphics of those games of yore belied a serious commitment from the player to get through them. It was a lot of nerdyness in front of the cathode ray tube - pretty hard on the eyes. As for girlfriend magnetism - well....

The only social networking then was the phone and whoever happened to drop over - maybe for a beer and a meal (cooking is another one of my hobbies).

When I play MMORPGS these days I see many elements of those old games in the new games. The big difference now, of course, is that there are other players in the game world with you. Maybe you are not so isolated this way. Maybe you are. Either way the result will probably still not impress your girlfriend (or boyfriend).

Maybe that is changing also?

For me, being an old-school RPG guy, I’m fascinated by the mechanical elements - all those menus and dialogue boxes, statistics and levels. I’m pretty slack at social stuff like forming parties (except perhaps at my place - er my real place that is).

How these complex mechanics might resonate with forms of Postmodernism is one thing I’d like to think about in this blog.

My interest in Postmodernism, by the way, started with Foucault's The History of Sexuality - An Introduction (1976). Not exactly a MMORPG classic. Still, it was an eye opener. At the time I read it - the 80s - continental philosophers were routinely name-dropped in trendy magazines like The Face. They were cool. You could discuss them wearing Ray Bans. Check out old Hal Hartley movies if you don’t believe me. However those books struck a chord with me that was not just about lattes and wearing black. Not that I am against doing either!

Now, nearly twenty years later, I’m wondering what this form of thinking might say about MMORPGs as I play them. Hard to figure that out right right away. Will have to think about it.

As to what my girlfriend thinks of all this - well we’re getting married! Maybe times have changed.

The Jane Austin MMORPG concept

Well I must have been drinking too much coffee because I just wrote an initial idea for a Jane Austin style romance oriented MMORPG. Its a fairly rough treatment - not sure of the historical accuracy!

Concept

The focus of this online game is romance - meeting that special someone(s) in a world based on Jane Austin - old houses - tea parties - and hot romance

The game itself involves social climbing, property ownership and personal advancement and quests (fighting is not major). Romance will be the most catered to in the game.

The game’s image will be hot and heavy love rather than squeaky clean - more adult and female oriented than literary - hot passion, vampires (why not?) all things racy and Victorian.

Starting

All new players start out in the city of London (Victorian era).

You can live there but the idea is to get out into the country where there are wealthy families in big houses - and tea parties, dinner parties, all kinds of parties - and get it on with someone rich!

Who are these rich people? They will initially be game characters (NPCs) - but players can become rich too and own a big house out there, in time.

System

Parties and social gatherings involving groups of players and NPCs - and a lot of social strategy - are the key to this game. Getting invited to a party requires that you complete quests.

Game characters give you missions to do. Succeeding in missions gets you closer to being invited to a party, or actually gets you invited. Missions will have a Victorian flavour to them

Parties are the best places to meet other players and form liaisons and get items of power and influence. Parties essentially replace battles as the focus of success in this game.

Once invited, you can invite another player to a party (ie a date).

Going on a date is one way of attending parties without needing to complete quests to get invited. You just have to convince another player to take you. So flirting and persuading are also skills that are useful in this game.

People can go alone to a party though - which is just as good - as you might meet someone!

Some parties may require that you have a partner though.

Other parties will have other requirements.

There may be a lot of players in the game - but there will only be so many parties. Competition is therefore going to be high to get invited or to qualify - at least to go to the good ones.

There are low level parties - like dance halls. These are easy to get into and a good place to start. The more exclusive parties require more work to get an invite.

As you rise in the game you will be able to throw parties yourself - you need a decent abode for this though. Property ownership is another task in the game. There will be exclusive events that only property owners at various levels get to attend. However you can go if someone takes you on a date.

Social climbing is a big part of the game - as is snobbery.

You can remain in the city, not climb that much and just get nicer rooms - and still be OK. The country is for higher level people - you can visit it and explore and do quests - but to get into a house you need an invite (unless you are a thief or spy)

Well thats it for now

if you are a programmer or a writer of bodice ripping Victorian romances maybe drop me a line!

Amorous encounters

Surfing the net last night I cam across this great blog, mmo couples, by Gabi. It features stories of amorous adventures - often leading to real relationships - in MMO game worlds.

I hesitate to write "leading to real relationships" because relationships in game worlds can be just as real as material world ones. If there is honest communication and respect shown, there is reality, in my opinion. Besides its up to people to decide what a relationship they are in means. And there is no shortage of unreality in material world relationships, especially where things like honesty are an issue (excuse my cynicism but look at the divorce rate guys).

Mmo couples shows the potential in MMO interfaces. The fact some players are finding true love in these worlds shows the power of humans to adapt themselves, and whatever world they find themselves in. It is perhaps a sign of things to come.