Sure, I mean it semi-seriously. You have (until Thursday, anyway) 24 avatars, and you have millions of people performing their one move, trying to move their token past a particular hurdle; the tokens have a degree of free will — at least, as much as the producers will allow — but ultimately, I don’t think that they are the ones playing the game, I think the audience is. Over the next few weeks, we’ll see lobbying, we’ll see cheat codes posted on forums, we’ll see walkthroughs of performances, and we’ll see “guilds” forming…
This sort of participatory television is far more passive than a typical MMORPG, and yet it still results in impressive levels of emotional investment. And we end up with player types: the aloof critic-wannabe who tries to judge performances impartially; the ones who fall for the sexy contestants; the rabid followers of a given musical style, who manage to push mediocre singers further with their voting bloc…
It’s surprising, in a way, how little collective action matters in most MMOs. Here’s a medium that allows it better than any other game type, and yet we still see fairly little collective action — and when we do, it’s raids — arguably, exactly the wrong sort of collective action to really play to the strengths of what virtual spaces can do, precisely because what MMOs offer is spaces with thousands in them, not spaces with a few dozen.
Just some random, perhaps fever-addled thoughts on a night when I really need to take some meds.
Oh, and among the girls, the clear standouts were jazz singer Paris, sixteen-year-old Lisa, and Catherine McPhee. I predict the opera singer and Brenna (already dubbed the “diva brat” at my house) among the first eliminations.
16 Responses to “American Idol: the world’s most popular MMO?”
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I am so glad being at a dorm denies me access to both Internet and Television at once. (If I try hard enough, I can get both, but why make my life worse?) I know nothing of this strange thing of which you speak.
That aside, I vehemently protest the use of the parts “RP”. There is no attempt to make an identification between the player (audience members) and avatar (the would-be idol on stage). Unless you want to bring in vicarious participation, in which case I’m not entirely sure I want to believe it happens…
But I’m a bit disconnected from pop culture. ^_^ And I like it.
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Brenna (known as “Michaela Jr. at my house) needs to go. Like two weeks ago.
I predict that the young woman who claims opera as her forte (sorry) will be the first to go.
(Wondering how Michael posts comments without internet access ;-P )
Sorry for double-post … wanted to share my friend’s comment about the “discount diva”:
Hurray! Only how many years to get here? Temporally and spacially displaced yet cooperative.
I find it funny how, when I discuss posts like this with others, about half say that Raph “thinks outside of the box,” while the other half says “he’s insane.”
I think there’s little difference between the two. It’s what the way of thinking produces that leads people to use one term or the other. š
By extension, voting in a presidential election is an MMORPG? Not really. I think you’re generalizing concepts a bit too much to where the lines just don’t have much meaning anymore. American Idol seems mostly an extension of fanatical devotion to celebrities that allows people to feel involved in the creation of “celebrity”. It is just a natural next step for “fandom”. Extreme fans of sports, sci-fi, comics, music stars, etc., all think that they should be able to involved in the creative process. American Idol lets them think that they are for the case of musical celebrity.
I think perhaps you need another term to use instead of “MMORPG” because that just doesn’t seem to be what you mean here at all. The core of what you are interested in seems to be cases where the viewer of a medium becomes involved in the content of that medium, i.e. player/viewer-created content. “MMORPG” doesn’t mean that, at most they are an example of that. Editorials aren’t MMORPG’s even though they are cases of readers of newspapers creating newspaper content. I think you’ll be able to be a lot more clear if you start coining some new words instead of continuing to misuse old words.
I didn’t call AI an MMORPG; I just said “MMO,” which to me (and, I think, most everyone?) means not specifying the sort of massively multiplayer game it is: MMORTS, MMOFPS, MMO*. I quite agree it’s not an RPG.
I do think a very fruitful analogy can be drawn to voting in the American system as being like playing a game (the American system in particular because of all the quirky, arcane rules that have piled up). I think that probably fails the “magic circle” test, though, in a way that I don’t know whether American Idol does or not.
Didn’t you once state that you felt that some representation of physical space is required to qualify as an MMO? I don’t see that at all here.
–matt
Yeah, I’ve stated that several times, but in the context of “mud” or “online world” or “virtual world.” I did say “semi-seriously.” š
I really hate the term MMO, though, despite using it all the time. I can conceive of many “massively multiplayer” games that have no representation of space… not virtual worlds, though.
FWIW, among the guys, it’s clearly all about Taylor-Joe-Cocker guy, Ace, and Chris-the-rocker-dude.
I was also pleased to see that the bookies agree with my top six picks. š Wisdom of crowds ftw!
The outcome of American Idol is trivial (just like a game). The outcome of a presidential election however, is very much the opposite (unlike a game).
That’s exactly what I meant by the “magic circle” test. š
Unless the winner decides to leverage his newfound fame to shift national opinion and push personal agendas. Oh, wait… they do do that, or so I’ve heard.. =)
My favorite MMO is Wikipedia. I’m not sure if it is as popular as American Idol, which is apparently twice as popular as the Olympics here in the USA, but it has an international player base that is far more involved with the creation of the āworldā and its content.
Bah, my Wikipedia entry sucks, compared to Lum’s or Gordon Walton’s or even Brad McQuaid‘s. š