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Old Unforgettable...

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  #1  
Old 08-22-2009, 07:09 PM
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Unforgettable...

I've been giving Gamer Theory another readthrough (I thought I swore off of that pretentious and depressing philosophy stuff? Ah, well), and the first few chapters (Agony [on The Cave] and Allegory [on The Sims]) really struck a chord with me, making me realize what exactly about VMK was so different.

For those that don't know, Gamer Theory is a book by McKenzie Wark describing the ways in which the "Real world" (Or "Gamespace," the space in which we play games, as he calls it) is becoming more like video games. "Work is a rat race. Politics is a horse race. The economy is a casino. Even the utopian justice to come in the afterlife is foreclosed: He who dies with the most toys wins."

So, if the world is becoming more like a game, why was VMK so different? Well... "Here is the guiding principle of a future utopia, now long past: 'To each according to his needs; from each according to his abilities.' In gamespace, what do we have? An atopia, a placeless, senseless realm, where quite a different maxim rules: 'From each according to their abilities — to each a rank and score.' Needs no longer enter into it. Not even desire matters. Uncritical gamers do not win what they desire; they desire what they win. The score is the thing. The rest is agony. The gamer as theorist at first sight seems to have acquired an ability that counts for nothing in gamespace. The gamer as theorist might begin with an indifference to distinction, to all that the gamespace prizes. You does not play the game to win (or not just to win). You trifle with it — playing with style to understand the game as a form. You trifle with the game to understand the nature of gamespace as a world — as the world. You trifle with the game to discover in what way gamespace falls short of its self-proclaimed perfection. The digital game plays up everything that gamespace merely pretends to be: a fair fight, a level playing field, free competition."

VMK was just that, the "Level playing field" that the world has always failed to be. Everyone starts the same: A stranger in a foreign land, with not a credit to his name, and with no clear objective. But, the difference between VMK and other games was just that: There was no clear objective other than what you set for yourself. Once again, desire has once entered the utopia. Wark often mentions the concept of "Agon" in his book: The spirit of competition, and the idea that "Everything only has value when ranked against something else, everyone only has value when ranked against something else. Every situation is win-lose, unless it is win-win -- A situation where players are free to collaborate only because the seek prizes in different games." However, VMK somehow managed to avoid placing agon in the center of it's al(le)gorithm without forsaking it entirely: Sure, you needed to fight pirates to get credits to buy items to make rooms to get that "Best Gust Room" award you've always wanted, but this agon was always self-inflicted, never something forced upon you by the game. For once, the score really was an arbitrary number, and rank was a self-assigned value based upon how good you were feeling that day. In a way, VMK wasn't an escape from the neverending algorithms and agon of both gamespace and other games, but instead a place in which you had control over it.

"In The Sims, things proliferate. Or rather, the skins of things. You can have many different kinds of sofa, or coffee table, or lamp shade, but the meter is running, so to speak. You have to make more money to buy more things. But some gamers who play The Sims trifle with the game rather than play it. These gamers are not interested in ‘winning’ the game, they are interested in details, in furniture, or telling stories, or creating interesting worlds. If a cheat is someone who ignores the space of a game to cut straight to its objective, then the trifler is someone who ignores the objective to linger within its space. Bernard Suits: “Triflers recognize rules but not goals, cheats recognize goals but not rules.” The Sims lends itself to play that transforms it from a world of number back to a world of meaning. Algorithm becomes a more stable platform than the vicissitudes of gamespace for creating a suburban world of pretty things. But in trifling with the game, the gamer struggles to escape boredom and produce difference — and finds that this too has limits." If this is true, then VMK became the perfect world for the trifler: A place in which there was no goal, no constant struggle against the flow of the river nor incessant pushing towards some eventual endgame, a type of freedom even sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto does not accomplish in attaining.. Yes, there were rules, but they only added to keep the cheats from rampaging in a world without a goal in which to move towards.

But the one thing that made VMK a "sealed deal," as it were, was the community. Agon is not only a struggle against obstacles that stand in the way of your goal, but a struggle against people trying to get there first. In VMK, however, this world where agon sits idly on the sidelines, a mere spectator to this sport, the other players no longer became hostiles. People no longer collaborated for the sake of attaining goals, but for the sake of collaboration. There was no such thing as a "stranger" in this world, much less an "opponent." Everyone was, at worst, a teammate, and at best, a close friend. The al(le)gorithm of the game no longer became the Lord of this Kingdom, always pushing you to put in an input so that it may fire back another output, there was no meter constantly running, keeping track of your stamina, your strength, your current state of mind, there was no timer quickly ticking down to your inevitable game over. The game was perfectly fine with you idling about, shooting the metaphorical bull with other teammates in a game in which everyone collaborated towards some mythical undefined goal. One could hardly say it was a game at all, rather, it was an incarnation of the topological itself, a world in which distance between two people were obsolete, a flat world on a level plane where all were equal.

A utopia, if you will.
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  #2  
Old 08-22-2009, 07:14 PM
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Yea, a lot of online games are becoming more like video games and I don't care too much for that. I like the freedom of VMK.
  #3  
Old 08-23-2009, 02:37 AM
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VMK did have a goal: to have the most impressive appearance. Pins, clothing, and furniture were all assigned value by the players based on their release date, duration of availabilty, and supply. The avatar with the "rarest" lanyard, clothing, badges, and furniture pieces would give the most recognition to its owner. The "rich" people that one can remember from VMK were the real winners, but, of course, the game was never given a limit so the stage of winning cannot be defined. So, while a goal to VMK did exist, that goal could never be reached simply because Disney defined no end to the game.

VMK was perfect for both triflers and cheaters. Triflers could explore the map and create relationships while successfully ignoring competition, as competition is never forced upon a player. At the same, cheaters could compete by, in fact, creating their own standards. VMK never assigned levels to players, it was up to the players to assign value to themselves based on comparison. This comparison was voluntary. Because one was given the choice on how to approach the game, as VMK started as an empty world waiting for citizens to create the social structure, and this social structure could not be enforced physically but rather mentally, players could control their experience based on their satisfaction levels. If one felt satisfied with their value, they could play VMK aimlessly. If, however, one felt insecure with their virtual value, they could play VMK to top others in appearance.

It was truly the freedom to choose whether or not to play by the player-created structure that set VMK apart. Upon entering VMK Esplanade for the first time one was not assigned "Level One," but assigned, "Guest1234567" and an empty lanyard. One could either fill that lanyard and make a name for themselves, or click that dude with the cowboy hat and add him as a friend. The decision was not made for you. You were not thrown on "Tutorial Island" and forced to work your way up. You were not given the title "Newbie" and post count: 0. There was no feeling of hopelessness of being able to fit in, but a magical feeling of opportunity. Like a real visit to the parks, the choice was yours.
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  #4  
Old 08-25-2009, 05:55 AM
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LordIllidan LordIllidan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SoccerRyan View Post
VMK was perfect for both triflers and cheaters. Triflers could explore the map and create relationships while successfully ignoring competition, as competition is never forced upon a player. At the same, cheaters could compete by, in fact, creating their own standards. VMK never assigned levels to players, it was up to the players to assign value to themselves based on comparison. This comparison was voluntary. Because one was given the choice on how to approach the game, as VMK started as an empty world waiting for citizens to create the social structure, and this social structure could not be enforced physically but rather mentally, players could control their experience based on their satisfaction levels. If one felt satisfied with their value, they could play VMK aimlessly. If, however, one felt insecure with their virtual value, they could play VMK to top others in appearance.
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.

Quote:
It was truly the freedom to choose whether or not to play by the player-created structure that set VMK apart. Upon entering VMK Esplanade for the first time one was not assigned "Level One," but assigned, "Guest1234567" and an empty lanyard. One could either fill that lanyard and make a name for themselves, or click that dude with the cowboy hat and add him as a friend. The decision was not made for you. You were not thrown on "Tutorial Island" and forced to work your way up. You were not given the title "Newbie" and post count: 0. There was no feeling of hopelessness of being able to fit in, but a magical feeling of opportunity. Like a real visit to the parks, the choice was yours.
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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  #5  
Old 09-01-2009, 04:22 AM
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Originally Posted by LordIllidan View Post
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.
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 View Post
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.
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.
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Old 09-03-2009, 07:12 AM
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Quote:
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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.
I think this quote really sums it all up in a nutshell.

VMK was a place to escape. A place that you shaped to your needs and desires. A place where you could decide what each day would be for you. A place where you decided what to accomplish, not a predetermined conclusion or goal.
Meet and hang out with friends, conquer quests, excel at games, participate in events. Create rooms, collect items, lead a game.
Nothing out there comes close to what VMK was with the diverse ages and people playing it.
I still remember the excitement of the new releases each week, and dancing at close with friends and others all gathering to say goodnight to a game.
Yes a game.
And it was all pretend..
Except for the community that was the driving force of the game.

And that is something that was overlooked by the Disney online team.
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Old 09-14-2009, 10:16 PM
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This was one thing that made me wonder where I am going in VMK, but at the same time the freedom was quite unique. In Toon Town it is almost the same way, except the structure is not same as VMK just close.
 

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