lonely

  Kitty Horrorshow is the latest in a group of indie developers who's prime focus seems to be crafting exploration based, lonely worlds.
not lonely in the sense of the feeling you get when a long time friend removes you on Facebook over your opinion that their battle for ethics in games journalism is misguided, but lonely like coming to a fairy tale world after the fairy tale has been finished for two centuries.
  These are profoundly places where a society has moved on either of its own volition or because they were forced to. Primarily these spaces tend to act clear cut goals as most videogames do, and ever so often they have no regard for giving the player any method of interacting with the world besides looking at places.
  A description of these spaces might be "Anor Londo sans weight." and maybe that that description implies is that these spaces are any less games than the one where people rave about it's dark imagery when really you're beset by the same glowing eyed skeletons as you are in other games.

  When I started thinking about my own feelings of loneliness in digital spaces and how I'm more likely to play something like Saints Row III than any of these walk around games when I'm craving loneliness it made me consider just what "loneliness" really means to a player.
   Is loneliness being put in a situation without backup? I don't think of the Resident Evil Remake as a super lonely game. Despite the fact that you're in the spencer mansion by yourself, it still falls back on the feelings of peace you get meet another character. It has some of the same action setpieces later in the game that modern titles tend to be so fond of. Sure, the Tyrant is a boss, but he and the arena he's fought in exploding after I shoot them with a rocket launcher kind of muddles the tone the game had been going for up to that point!
   Where do we go to be alone as players then, if not decaying fantasy worlds? If not mildew and mold filled mansions (the mildew and the mold is on gross undead men) Not "as people" as "players" as people who primarily engage with digital spaces by actively playing them. If I want to be alone as a person I can go to my room or I can go out into the woods. I know this is a luxury that isn't afforded to everyone.
   Where do I go to actively be forgotten and ignored? What kind of spaces cultivate loneliness like how Skyrim's developers worked hard on trying to wow the player every ten seconds?
   Are there any? The logical conclusion to this train of thought takes me back to the same place no matter how many times we go through it. We are alone when we're somewhere surrounded by people we don't know. Strangers that invisiblize us either on our own part or a part of the system they belong to.

  Even saying what the acronym MMOG means out loud fills you with a certain kind of promise.
"Massively Multiplayer Online Game." It's multiplayer so we imagine that moment where someone beats us in Mortal Kombat III on the Sega Genesis when we're teenagers on a dusty couch in a basement or that time we got all of our graduating class together for one last round of Halo multiplied by a few thousand. That moment, repeated over and over again, with every player interaction.
  That's not true! not even close to true, even. If you've never played an MMO it's very easy to become a "fringe" player that only surfaces in raids, or even has their own small little group of friends they play with. Don't group up for that first quest with strangers. Avoid the main landmarks.
  In real life, this would be advice on how to stay on the run from police. In Azeroth or Eorzea or wherever it's an almost unspoken lifestyle that's adopted by many players.
   A peculiar thing: When I first started playing MMO(RPGS) I  remembered the names of almost every player I interacted with. Over time, this feeling of community diminished. Now I don't remember your name even if I beat you in PVP because I don't want to fight you.
  If anything, I go to Eorza trying to fully escape. In an odd turn of phrase I get this feeling when I'm there that I'm not the only one. Especially for people who live in more urban areas than I do who have very few chances of actually getting away from society and the rest of the world - the MMORPG offers a common and easy to find retreat.
Well, I can imagine that for some it certainly beats hiking.

What I've found most funny in my travels through many disparate MMO worlds is that a lot of players that tended to hold to their own also tended to be married. Most of these people were actually women trying to get away from the constant presence of their significant others, but a handful of men I know in real life also were in the same boat.
   It's no coincidence that the married players I've met also had the tendency to, if not being a solo player - belong to groups mostly if not completely comprised of people that were the same gender.
Returning to Eorza now for the hundredth time I am met by a sense of familiarity with a recent update that adds Final Fantasy VII's ever popular Gold Saucer location with an added bonus of including the proceeding titles Triple Triad card game.
   It's funny to me that ontop of all of the mechanics that Final Fantasy XIV features, it takes a pretty rudimentary card game to make me come out of my social shell and actively start seeking and interfacing with other players.
  So far, in a simple forced interaction, the developers of Final Fantasy XIV managed to do the one thing no MMORPG has so far: be around other people




-skeletons