Wednesday 27 February 2002

Pic of the day: A picture of me and my friends on a hunting trip to Salisbury Plains. Oh, yes, this is all in the game Dark Age of Camelot.

Virtuality rules

One of my characters accidentally joined a really cool guild. She was meant to be a temporary charcter, to check out a class of character and see what their advantages and disadvantages were. She grouped with this other low-level character in a dungeon, and he asked her if she wanted to join his guild. On a whim, I said yes, on the condition that the guild was fun. It was.

It is a guild large enough that there is almost always some activity in the guild chat channel, and often some group activities too. Yet it is small enough that I have met many of the players, and know others from the chat. Mostly quite friendly. It is organized, with a hierarchy. The idea is that the most experienced players are responsible for helping the newer. In practice, formalities are ignored, and people just help each other. I give quite a bit of advice myself on the guild chat, since I know Camelot and the surroundings quite well. Others roam further afield and know places I don't. It works out quite well.

***

I have mentioned before that I tend to use a male persona for charactes I identify strongly with, and female for those I feel more distanced from. But in this case, the female character has become a primary, because of the guild. And once again, I have simply neglected to inform anybody that I'm actually a middle-aged fundamentalist man. And once agan, I evidently roleplay my female character so well that no one can really believe I'm not real. I guess that is pretty impressive in such a war-oriented game as this. No "hug" command here. (I have told you the secret to roleplaying a female on MUDs, have I not? Females hug both males and females equally, while males playing females only hug females.) Of course, there is still the ultimate feminine recourse left: Stop and ask for directions! ^_^*

Actually I have not consciously got out of my way to project a feminine persona this time. My character is as tough as a male of the same class - there are no intrinsic gender differences in character stats, like there are in real life. Yet today, somewhat to my surprise, there was a funny episode. I was in a group with two other people, one of which was a guildie and had fought alongside me before. The other yelled at me (and understandably so, he died because I did not get a monster off him in time). My guildie reproached him and told him to show respect for women. The guy who did not know me pointed out that women characters were often played by men, but the other would not listen. I guess I should be flattered or something. On the other hand, I don't really need computer problems to be classified as women problems.

Anyway, it's no biggie. It's not like they are trying to get a date or feel me up or something. As I said, this game is quite war-oriented. They can't even stare at my butt, thanks to the capes that are fairly common; I secured one such at level 2 and has worn it since. I guess they could still stare at my boobs, but in chain mail it is probably not the most fascinating sight around ... You be the judge.

***

As you can see, this game has a level of detail that could only be dreamt of a few years ago. Indeed, I did daydream about such games, featuring what I dubbed "Near Photo Quality" and a huge, expanding game world.

Intriguingly, however, the social commands are less developed than in the MUDs I used to play. Of course, it is harder to make socials now because you have to consider the graphcis. When you give a "bow" or "curtsey" command, the characters are actually seen moving. This means it would be a nightmare to code for instance the full set of socials from the Weave, a favorite mud of mine in its time, based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. You had socials with transitive and intransitive forms, like "bounce": If you just bounced, you bounced around the room. But if you bounced someone, you bounced into their lap. This would not be easy code in a graphics-heavy game. Or "flip": If you just flipped, you flipped head over heels. But if you flipped someone, you flipped them over your shoulder. There were also a heap of humor related commands.

Perhaps in the future, these graphical games will have as rich a set of social commands as the text-based ones used to have. Then again, perhaps not. The rules are subtly different. People hardly even use all the commands there are. And you almost never see anyone use the /EM command, emote, corresponding to /ME on IRC, even though it could replace socials. (For instance: "/em shrugs" would produce the message <Porcupette shrugs>.) Instead, people try to communicate with their words, often adding "hehe" and "lol" in order to sound friendly.

There is, of course, the occasional misunderstanding (even apart from the gender confusion). Then again, there are misunderstandings even in real life. What is the saying? "Words are what we use to hide what we really mean"?