Tuesday, December 26, 2006
The giant winged guy in the back
My younger and more informed cousin will occasionally indulge me in the gossip loop surronding those very interesting online communities built over cult favorite games like unreal tournament, halo, etc. Basically folks who don't give a second thought to understanding a group of capital letters like: 'MMORPG'. World of Warcraft being one of the closer ones to mainstream (i suspect Coke is commisioning a commercial as i type. (1, 2) I unfortunatley have no immediate friends who play- which is why i'm only hearing about this now.
Emergent gaming is an emerging concept discussed within the circles of these Internet communities- it's where the mass culture of the gamers begins to intereact within and with that world in an unexpected way- surprising even the designers. The classic example of this would be the above video showing the result of a few trickster players working for 45 minutes to lure a near invincible boss to the nearby town of Stormwind- hence inviting a sort of Godzilla scenario and a tremendous group response for all the townsfolk, all of whom died (in game) and ultimatley causing a real life server crash. If you don't kill Kazzak in under 3 minutes, he enters supreme mode and is of course, invincible. The event for sure headlined all the fan sites.
I was fascinated with the collective stir it caused among that community- how it forced many people to work unexpectedly work together during a serious chrisis- what that virtual behavior sets up for folk who will likely never unite with strangers against an obvious foe. They're town was under attack and being basically super heroes in training, they were going to damn well do something about it. If WoW was smart they'd have monsters attacking Stormwind as regulalry as they attack Agrabah.
Also the event occuring within the system itself- which invited a patch to solve the unforseen problem. Argueably by being updated or taught further, the game is learning.
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