Play II

As I mentioned here, and as you may clearly see on the right side of the page now, I am presently reading 'Homo Ludens' by Johan Huizinga. A recent comment by friend 'jesbacon' - someone I actually know and who knows me - got me thinking about something. He and I worked at the same place for about 6 months, and we drank lots of coffee during office hours (and lime vodka after hours). But we played games.

At the time, I was knee deep in Asheron's Call with some people from other departments. Another guy in our department was playing Everquest (he later got hired to work on it). 'jesbacon' was playing Diablo, as I recall... was it a necromancer? I don't remember that well, I was busy shoveling pizza at lunch and talking about the Asheron's Call guild that I had somehow become a... king of. Tar-un, as I recall.

So all of this came with that comment. Over the years, I have spent more time with things that mankind built than with my own species - the reasons have changed over the years, but I have spent a lot of my life not having to deal with people. 'Playing', as a young child, was social for a while but then not as social later on. There was more fun in a box of Legos if you didn't have to explain to people why they should use the same color of bricks to build a house.

Funny enough, I know that some people reading this may not understand how entertaining it was to sit in front of an Apple II and play Wizardry by Sir-Tech, or Galactic Adventures... or even to play the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy game by Infocom. But a funny thing happened when you played those games. You could meet other people who had played the same games and have something in common. You could share secrets.

Multi-User Dungeons came about with the internet, and the little 'magic circles' of play some of us had on machines were now shared environments. One of the liabilities of those shared environments was that magic circles collided: Some people didn't exactly play nice with others, and the collisions were never pretty. Online cultures of PK (Player Killer) formed. I didn't much like those things, so instead I went the path of Tradewars which allowed me to be away from most human idiocy. I wanted to play, not deal with idiots.

Fast forward to today. To date, I still appreciate good games that aren't 'shared experiences' because more often than not, you have to deal with idiots. On Your2ndPlace.com, my alter ego in Second Life (Nobody Fugazi, my 'pixel name') has written about how negative behavior continues to be rewarded in many of these new 'virtual worlds'.

But then, to balance that, I see it every day on the internet in different guises. Spam is probably the most obvious thing you can see out there were a negative behavior continues to be rewarded.

So, in Play II, my ending thought is this: What good are we if we have a bigger sandbox to play in if the kid next door keeps asking you for money so that he doesn't urinate in it?

Boy am I glad I didn't have that kid next door. I'd probably still be in prison for what I would have done to him.