Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Not quite at the end of the free trial period I decided the World of Warcraft was probably not singing to my better angels: the household entertainment budget seemed like something that was due for a stoic reevaluation rather than an impulsive expansion and in just over a week I had rediscovered in myself a caution-worthy inclination towards shoveling solitary hours into the Grind - that low level, light-skill playing towards the gradual but inexorable accumulation of treasure, levels, virtual skills (as opposed to the real kind whose acquisition is far from automatic regardless of the time you sink).
Much has been made of the dangers of immersion in these new virtual realms, and I tend to think it is pretty much all invented hysteria. Escape is always going to be an attraction in an epistemologically ambiguous and frequently egregiously unpleasant physical universe and there are always going to be people who ride escape to genuine ruin - whether the medium is sherry, bridge, novels or glue. Obsession over new media is just something to sell papers with, another bit of grist for the feuilletons. Nevertheless, I let my subscription lapse. I would hope perhaps that someday I will sort out my personal issues of money, time, and personal balance to the extent of allowing me to really enjoy the possibilities of one of these new social environments.
I left my dwarf in an Inn with the beast he’d just tamed (new “skill”) at his feet - I spent a few coins to buy him a drink, even. It is all a goof, narrative wrapped in technological moonshine, but we’d spent a good few hours together nonetheless. In some sense I think of him as being there still.
That wraps it up for Nine Nights in Azeroth, and I think for the 2011 edition of Phree as in Phreakshow unless something AMAZING happens. What’s next? No idea.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Nine Nights in Azeroth, Chapter 4: Country Mouse, City Mouse
Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
Right from the get go I had this social interaction problem in World of Warcraft. It gave me a strong Playground vibe: everyone is ignoring me and that’s cool, but at any minute someone bigger and meaner than me might wander by and pants me. A lot of this came out of not taking the time to learn how to properly socially navigate the world. I didn’t know any action commands not related to combat or quest negotiation, or even how to start a conversation with another player. WoW was the first multiplayer online game I’d played. The exemplar of this weird hangup was a moment when I saw some dude tussling with a bear and noticed I had a bead on the beast with my rifle-type weapon, so assisted him with a shot. He noticed where the help had come from and executed a neat little bow and made some innocuous comment like “nice, thanks.” I had no idea what to do with this so I ran off.
So I’m running around basically grinding (which was 90% of what I did in my brief sojourn through Azeroth) and suddenly a name I do not recognize is “whispering” to me and my immediate reaction is oh what now?! Am I about to be subjected to teasing? Invited to participate in some collective action in which I’ll embarrass myself through ineptitude? Subjected to the pitch for some scam? It wasn’t until the person whispering was inviting me to connect on Skype and I recognized their handle there that I realized I was in fact talking to the same friend who had introduced me to the game in the first place - they were just inhabiting an avatar I hadn’t encountered yet - and deduced that the “whispering” thing just meant they were communicating privately.
So we got connected on Skype and my friend invited me to run around with him a while and see the sights. I’m still ridiculously susceptible to these technological “holy Brave New World, Batman!” moments and interacting with someone across town in a virtual world while simultaneously talking to them via a phoneless, internet mediated, free communication protocol was reasonably mind-blowing.
At this point I was more or less the character I’d started as, this drab dwarf in dull leather clothes: I’d acquired a few indifferent pieces of marginally better gear. So my friend shows up as some sort of wizard, resplendent in all this sparkling attire and dire-looking magical stave, attended by arcane familiars, occasionally shooting off sparks or bursts of flame... it was all very Country Mouse, City Mouse. Immediately he is showing me all this amazing stuff I was not ready to get to yet at my lowly level, transgressing at least some of those invisible walls I’d noticed at the outset.
And so I finally figured out the real hook of this kind of game: ironically (and already clichéd) it was all about the social. At its heart World of Warcraft’s actual game is not all that damn much more sophisticated than Paper Mario; certainly it doesn’t bring a lot more innovation to gameplay. The radical expansion occurs with the introduction of other people in real time. This is one of the 21st century truths of technology, I think: friends are the killer app. My nine nights in Azeroth certainly gave me a lot to think about in terms of the philosophy of gaming, as evidenced by the fact that I’m wrapping up a series of essays about it after almost 3 years, but my favorite memory of it is that night, being a rube, getting shown the bright lights by my friend from the city.
Right from the get go I had this social interaction problem in World of Warcraft. It gave me a strong Playground vibe: everyone is ignoring me and that’s cool, but at any minute someone bigger and meaner than me might wander by and pants me. A lot of this came out of not taking the time to learn how to properly socially navigate the world. I didn’t know any action commands not related to combat or quest negotiation, or even how to start a conversation with another player. WoW was the first multiplayer online game I’d played. The exemplar of this weird hangup was a moment when I saw some dude tussling with a bear and noticed I had a bead on the beast with my rifle-type weapon, so assisted him with a shot. He noticed where the help had come from and executed a neat little bow and made some innocuous comment like “nice, thanks.” I had no idea what to do with this so I ran off.
So I’m running around basically grinding (which was 90% of what I did in my brief sojourn through Azeroth) and suddenly a name I do not recognize is “whispering” to me and my immediate reaction is oh what now?! Am I about to be subjected to teasing? Invited to participate in some collective action in which I’ll embarrass myself through ineptitude? Subjected to the pitch for some scam? It wasn’t until the person whispering was inviting me to connect on Skype and I recognized their handle there that I realized I was in fact talking to the same friend who had introduced me to the game in the first place - they were just inhabiting an avatar I hadn’t encountered yet - and deduced that the “whispering” thing just meant they were communicating privately.
So we got connected on Skype and my friend invited me to run around with him a while and see the sights. I’m still ridiculously susceptible to these technological “holy Brave New World, Batman!” moments and interacting with someone across town in a virtual world while simultaneously talking to them via a phoneless, internet mediated, free communication protocol was reasonably mind-blowing.
At this point I was more or less the character I’d started as, this drab dwarf in dull leather clothes: I’d acquired a few indifferent pieces of marginally better gear. So my friend shows up as some sort of wizard, resplendent in all this sparkling attire and dire-looking magical stave, attended by arcane familiars, occasionally shooting off sparks or bursts of flame... it was all very Country Mouse, City Mouse. Immediately he is showing me all this amazing stuff I was not ready to get to yet at my lowly level, transgressing at least some of those invisible walls I’d noticed at the outset.
And so I finally figured out the real hook of this kind of game: ironically (and already clichéd) it was all about the social. At its heart World of Warcraft’s actual game is not all that damn much more sophisticated than Paper Mario; certainly it doesn’t bring a lot more innovation to gameplay. The radical expansion occurs with the introduction of other people in real time. This is one of the 21st century truths of technology, I think: friends are the killer app. My nine nights in Azeroth certainly gave me a lot to think about in terms of the philosophy of gaming, as evidenced by the fact that I’m wrapping up a series of essays about it after almost 3 years, but my favorite memory of it is that night, being a rube, getting shown the bright lights by my friend from the city.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Welcoming the latest addition to our bandwagon
SECOND UPDATE: $1,006,996.17
This is the Paypal balance shown on a screen cap Louis C.K. posted in his latest update. I don't mean to be a suck up but I'm fairly impressed by how he is handling this. Making people feel good about having spent their money might also just be the smartest game there is in this wild west of pure digital distribution.
UPDATE: Louis C.K. posted a lengthy and interesting follow-up discussing the economics and results of his experiment. It's a good inside look at taking the reins of a creative project with a significant budget. I won't give away the ending but I can say I saw a lot of online commentary suggesting that this probably didn't represent much of an investment or much of a risk for him, which is clearly untrue.
You know: no snark, in fact. It's true, people like Louis C.K. do tend to be a little "look at this amazing idea I invented" when they embrace the paradigm of self-publishing in the digital realm. But you know, so what. It's still significant, and very positive, for an A list performer whose star is distinctly rising to go this direction, and to do it right - offering his latest performance recording as a high quality, unencumbered file, a straight download in a versatile format, for a modest price.
There's nothing really to complain about: you can moan about Paypal but you know, seriously: Paypal won. They have just simply won at internet. Yes they occasionally unleash their hounds on cringing bundles of fuzzy kittens and bunny rabbits for no particular reason. You want to complain about Paypal, at this point your only recourse would be to start a service that actually competes. I suppose you could point a finger at the price point as well, five bucks is cheap but it isn't necessarily stellar for an hour of entertainment. But this starts to get into quibbling that puts me in mind of this Penny Arcade cartoon about Braid: or as it was succinctly put nearby: "You’re mad about five dollars? What? Shove your five dollars up your stupid ass."
I thought C.K.'s statement asking people not to torrent it was pretty reasonable, all things considered. I've always said that J.R.R. Tolkien's comments in the first authorized Ballantine paperback edition of his trilogy was a good model for this sort of thing, and bears repeating:
It seems to me a grave discourtesy, to say no more, to issue my book without even a polite note informing me of the project... However that may be, this paperback edition and no other has been published with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it, and no other. And if the many kind readers who have encouraged me with their letters will add to their courtesy by referring friends or enquirers to Ballantine Books, I shall be very grateful.
I think if content industries in general and individual creators in particular had focused on this message from the beginning, this message of courtesy, of gratitude, and of enlisting one's partisans in the service of recommending others to the "authorized edition" of whatever work, there's little question it would have done much more good at little cost compared to the Keystone Kops slapstick of their ongoing attempts to stuff the digital genie back in the bottle via legal sword rattling, and useless DRM. Louis C.K.'s appeal certainly falls more to the former end of the spectrum.
I will say it would be nice, though, to see more creators engage this question in a more nuanced way, because it's actually a damn interesting grey area that really lights up the difference in most people's mind between the law and ethics and where both - but particularly ethics - are very slippery indeed. I'd like to hear someone owning up and engaging the fact that they are copyright cheats, because EVERYBODY is a copyright cheat. Everybody makes mix CDs, rips CDs they check out from the library and decide they really like, and watches or listens to what basically amount to bootlegs on YouTube and the like. Don't tell me there's any comedian out there between the ages of 35 and 55 who never wore out a bootleg cassette of some friend's comedy album when they were a teenager. It would be nice to see someone with significant skin in the game take on the question of advocating the ethical right of the creator to realize the benefit of an exclusive right to copy their own production without merely invoking the simplistic analogy of theft. It would be nice to see someone wrestle with the unquestionable benefits of things like the proliferation of old, often out of print intellectual property finding its way online by the agency of fan curators. I don't expect to hear it from Louis C.K. but it would be nice to hear it from someone.
This is the Paypal balance shown on a screen cap Louis C.K. posted in his latest update. I don't mean to be a suck up but I'm fairly impressed by how he is handling this. Making people feel good about having spent their money might also just be the smartest game there is in this wild west of pure digital distribution.
UPDATE: Louis C.K. posted a lengthy and interesting follow-up discussing the economics and results of his experiment. It's a good inside look at taking the reins of a creative project with a significant budget. I won't give away the ending but I can say I saw a lot of online commentary suggesting that this probably didn't represent much of an investment or much of a risk for him, which is clearly untrue.
You know: no snark, in fact. It's true, people like Louis C.K. do tend to be a little "look at this amazing idea I invented" when they embrace the paradigm of self-publishing in the digital realm. But you know, so what. It's still significant, and very positive, for an A list performer whose star is distinctly rising to go this direction, and to do it right - offering his latest performance recording as a high quality, unencumbered file, a straight download in a versatile format, for a modest price.
There's nothing really to complain about: you can moan about Paypal but you know, seriously: Paypal won. They have just simply won at internet. Yes they occasionally unleash their hounds on cringing bundles of fuzzy kittens and bunny rabbits for no particular reason. You want to complain about Paypal, at this point your only recourse would be to start a service that actually competes. I suppose you could point a finger at the price point as well, five bucks is cheap but it isn't necessarily stellar for an hour of entertainment. But this starts to get into quibbling that puts me in mind of this Penny Arcade cartoon about Braid: or as it was succinctly put nearby: "You’re mad about five dollars? What? Shove your five dollars up your stupid ass."
I thought C.K.'s statement asking people not to torrent it was pretty reasonable, all things considered. I've always said that J.R.R. Tolkien's comments in the first authorized Ballantine paperback edition of his trilogy was a good model for this sort of thing, and bears repeating:
It seems to me a grave discourtesy, to say no more, to issue my book without even a polite note informing me of the project... However that may be, this paperback edition and no other has been published with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it, and no other. And if the many kind readers who have encouraged me with their letters will add to their courtesy by referring friends or enquirers to Ballantine Books, I shall be very grateful.
I think if content industries in general and individual creators in particular had focused on this message from the beginning, this message of courtesy, of gratitude, and of enlisting one's partisans in the service of recommending others to the "authorized edition" of whatever work, there's little question it would have done much more good at little cost compared to the Keystone Kops slapstick of their ongoing attempts to stuff the digital genie back in the bottle via legal sword rattling, and useless DRM. Louis C.K.'s appeal certainly falls more to the former end of the spectrum.
I will say it would be nice, though, to see more creators engage this question in a more nuanced way, because it's actually a damn interesting grey area that really lights up the difference in most people's mind between the law and ethics and where both - but particularly ethics - are very slippery indeed. I'd like to hear someone owning up and engaging the fact that they are copyright cheats, because EVERYBODY is a copyright cheat. Everybody makes mix CDs, rips CDs they check out from the library and decide they really like, and watches or listens to what basically amount to bootlegs on YouTube and the like. Don't tell me there's any comedian out there between the ages of 35 and 55 who never wore out a bootleg cassette of some friend's comedy album when they were a teenager. It would be nice to see someone with significant skin in the game take on the question of advocating the ethical right of the creator to realize the benefit of an exclusive right to copy their own production without merely invoking the simplistic analogy of theft. It would be nice to see someone wrestle with the unquestionable benefits of things like the proliferation of old, often out of print intellectual property finding its way online by the agency of fan curators. I don't expect to hear it from Louis C.K. but it would be nice to hear it from someone.
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