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Originally Posted by LordIllidan
That's a really interesting point. Some people only became triflers once they achieved their own personal goals. In a way, they created their own endgame to be pushed towards, and once that endgame was reached, they dropped the self-imposed agon and began to play aimlessly.
In a way, the biggest agon to these was to prove to oneself that you were worthy to be free of agon.
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Yes, exactly. The biggest struggle was to fulfill your own personal goals so that there was nothing more you wished to struggle against and you became a trifler. And the best part was you could switch back and forth between a trifler and a cheater at your own desire. It was that freedom to either fight to the top or play at the bottom.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LordIllidan
Another interesting point: There was no "Tutorial Island," as you put it, so discovery came not only from finding new places, but new features. "Oh, putting furniture like this creates the interesting illusion of a floating track." "Oh, this chair can be used as a hurdle during a race." "Oh, this magic pin can be used to create clones of oneself if you leave the room." Not only that, the lack of a "Tutorial" caused the player to create their own flow of the game (If they decided to follow some sort of flow at all.) The game didn't tell you "Wake up, go to stores, talk to Dimensional Gatekeeper when you're prepared, battle, enjoy cutscene, save at the end of the chapter, repeat." Instead, some people followed (Purely for example) the routine of "Log in, visit NPCs, ride monorail to Pirates ride, play until X amount of credits are obtained, buy items for ride in progress," while others followed "Log in, socialize for an hour, obtain top score in pirates, play Cute or Boot for the rest of the day", while others would just go wherever the wind happened to take them. This lead to an interesting little phenomenon where you could do the exact same thing every day, but it'd never be the same. You'd meet different people doing different things interacting with you and others in different ways every single day. It didn't at all feel like a game being run by some hidden algorithm, complex but predictable with enough brainpower, nor did it feel like the real world's slow but messy assimilation into a world of algorithms, either. It was a living, thriving world that was entirely unpredictable and never visibly restrained by any rules.
In other words, it was the way a living, thriving world should be, but rarely is.
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Absolutely. You had control when you played VMK. Sure, the VMK Values were in play, but those rules were common sense and their restrictions on gameplay were far outnumbered by the opportunities that came through gameplay. Like you said, no 2 days of VMK had to be similar. You made the decisions, you controlled your own destiny.
I think the main idea is that in VMK, you could choose whether or not to try to win. And winning was based on your own goals; therefore, there was no standard of winning. You couldn't beat the game, so there was no sense of permanent completion that leads gamers to boredom. In fact, VMK can hardly be classified as a "game." It's more like a world, a world where you are free to do everything or nothing at all.