MySpace Roleplaying and testing identities
A week or so ago, The Razor published a pair of articles on MySpace Roleplaying. The first described the phenomenon of MySpace profiles that are fictive renderings of celebrities or of the characters they play on TV. The second is an interview with a MySpace roleplayer, which contains the following gem of a quote:
It’s very popular. And let’s not go to say that all people who do this are fat ugly losers. Because I thought that, and looked in the mirror, and was all, “wait, i’m a model” aha. I’ve seen RL pics of Roleplayers and some are gorgeous as well!
Do you play any other sorts of game or similar thing online?
Pssh no. Online games are for dorks. :]
A bit of self-aware irony there in that last reply?
We do tend to forget how much roleplaying — not in the gaming sense, but in the literal sense — is a major part of adolescent life. Much of maturation is about trying on different personae in different contexts trying to figure out which one is really you. From teenage girls posing in the mirror to guys acting tough with their buds, all the way over to the dorky teen playing an Amazonian barbarian princess… it’s about identity formation. Arguably, it something that we don’t stop doing just because we grow up, either.
This is why Bartle says that the core player journey through an MMO is about identity construction. We’ve seen enough Fakesters and MySpace roleplayer types come and go that perhaps we should be reaching for that core fact more in our designs; what would an MMO that was centrally about trying out personae look like?
I envision a world of shapeshifters, where we would learn quickly that you cannot trust appearances; where you advance by mastering a wide array of masks. Perhaps the mechanic is based somehow on “passing” in different areas. A tentative design might have a ton of themed rooms, and the current people present get to vote on every newcomer as they enter to see if their name and look “matches.” Add a liberal dose of wardrobe art and a scoring system that relies on both a wide array of votes in diverse rooms, and on consistent votes from a narrow set of rooms, and you might have something that both encourages tribes to form and also encourages branching out.
Would we get the teen queens to visit the dork online gamer room? Maybe, but probably only to score points with the other teen queens back home. The squick factor is probably too high for them to actually, like, stay. 🙂 On the other hand, I can see the geeks revelling in the opportunity to quiz the teen queen on the non-Star Wars ouevre of Barbara Hambly for bonus points.
10 Responses to “MySpace Roleplaying and testing identities”
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…about people today is statements like the “era of 8 and 16 bit games”[1]. It connotes a sense of, “In the beginning.” Well, no. Remind me to write a textbook on games someday. This is becoming aggravating. Granted, I am not all that well-versed in the history of ludology, but fuck, even I know that chess existed before the
Interestingpost from Raph Koster on role playing in MySpace something that I’ve often written about. Quoted from a MySpace Role player: “It’s very popular. And let’s not go to say that all people who do this are fat ugly losers. Because I thought that, and
world. There are people on there you start talking to and they are really cool, some have awesome personalities. And there are others who are assholes. But ya, i dont completely know how to feel about this whole thing. If your intruiged go here (More Info).
and ensure that certain lines are not crossed OR what if other real life person’s picture is being used just to be hip RPers? Apparently RPing is very popular (at least from the postings I read of which were made mid last year – read here, here and here), After reading these articles especially the interview with the RL (read “real life”) RP – gawd….they are indeed using other ppl’s pics to post on their RP stats….Hey your pic may be flying around in myspace for all you know – that’s scary!
Personally, I’d say that identity construction is peripheral to online gaming. Sure, it’s fun, but it’s only part of the fun.
My EQ personae were a (male) gnomish rogue (two extra tradeskills, wahoo 😉 ) and a (female) dark elf necromancer (soloing, fast-moving invis, gating, such a relief.) The only similarity is they’re both damage-dealers. IRL I’m male, 6’3″, and my wife thinks I clean up nice (which is enough for me).
I admit, a lot of the people I’ve played with usually play characters who are somewhat idealized versions of themselves; the thing is, the vast majority of the time they’re not self-conscious about the role after they’re done with the character generation… so I don’t know if it would be compelling enough to power a whole game.
Well, not a hardcore long-term game anyway. But web quizzes are very popular; maybe a casual game / somewhat durable world built off of those?
Reading through these commentaries about mySpace classified as games, and role-playing vs. action discussions, I see a bit of divergence between genres.
Looking back at era of 8 and 16 bit games, when they just started entering the wider and more mainstream markets out of arcades, lots of new hybrid genres evolved. At that time they weren’t even hybrid, they were merely a new attempt at gameplay. Some created whole new specialized genres (graphic adventures, RTS, tile-based strategy), others failed, for various reasons.
Games offer much more than they used to, especially regarding gameplay options, and flexibility when aproaching the content.
But could the wise move at this point be to focus on polish, while waiting for specialized genres to form. Instead of blending very diverse concepts from role-playing , raids, questing and pvp into a single game, offer worlds that are focused on one of these, but with plenty of polish. In today’s market, even labels play a major role, as heated debates over what a certain game is MMORPG, CRPG, MMORTS, MMOFPS show.
Let each of these evolve and specialize. Only after that generation is done, new knowledge will be gained about how to best present these concepts, and only then merge them.
After all, the ultimate purpose is entertainment, and with regard to VW, MUDs have tried just about everything anyone could think of. And it was from those that today’s crop of MMOs evolved, with only the limited set of “best” features. The core concept has remained almost the same, but it’s presented in a single product.
Why not skip one generation, watch SecondLife, mySpace, There and especially all small projects, just to see what works with users. In the mean time, polishing existing concepts could probably sell well enough. This should generate a great deal of new concepts, which perhaps cannot be effectively realized with today’s technology. For example, mySpace authoring tools and content hosting is well above capacities of MMOs, and SL’s content creation tools heavily favor actual artists.
Is there any benefit to be gained from taking a side-step in evolution, while the next missing link forms – not out of thin air, but through best-of aproach? Coming up with inovative apeal is becoming almost impossible in recent flood of almost identical MMOs, when users have very clear cut vision of what they should offer.
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I admit, a lot of the people I’ve played with usually play characters who are somewhat idealized versions of themselves
A friend of mine, in advising less experienced roleplayers on a forum where you roleplay by creative writing, had this to say:
It might be worthwhile to power a game by actively encouraging identity construction and educating people on how to do so. It would definitely teach them how to look past appearances much better. With adolescents, it may even be an excellent conduit to explore what kind of effect they want to have on others. I don’t really know.
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