Anomie in the Schoolyard (Assignment 5)
In trying to analyze the social dynamics of Sissy Fight through the lens of Bartle types, one runs into a fundamental problem – Sissy Fight is not really a MMO/MUD by most definitions of the term, mostly because it lacks several critical features that allow players to interact with the world and each other, thus limiting possibilities for players to differentiate themselves from one another.
If one were to look at Sissy Fight in MMO “virtual-world” terms, it would seem to be an anomic wasteland of brigands, where Killing is the only viable option available to players.
One critical missing factor is the representation of a true virtual space within which one can move and interact; instead, there is only a chat lobby, in which players exist as disembodied figures with no distinct avatar or game identity. Even in the game, the avatar options are miniscule, only consisting of a few faces and color variations – thus the game does not give the game players a true sense of individuality; everyone looks almost the same as everyone else. (Guild Wars, a game that is considered an MMO by some but not by many, suffers some of the same problems, albeit not as severely – their lack of apparel and avatar choices plus the game’s near-total reliance on personal instancing means the game quite possibly doesn’t reach a “virtual-world threshold.”)
The lack of these elements means that it is quite difficult to play the game as an Achiever, Explorer, or Socializer. There is no tangible reward or advancement structure besides a leaderboard that tracks scores, but this sole extra-ludic representation of player ability disassociates Achievement from the avatar and the player, thus rendering it meaningless – one aspect of being an Achiever is the ability to display the prowess of one’s avatar to the rest of the virtual world: that is, the “Holy Crap, he’s level 100 with Molten Shoulder Blades of the Eagle” effect. Sissy Fight doesn’t provide that outlet for achievers, nor does it provide a robust system in which the player feels like he is succeeding at increasingly more difficult challenges – there is not even a representation of player difficulty or class, thus making subsequent games a random process. This would induce a state of anomie in the Achiever, were he to try to play the game in the fashion he is accustomed to.
Similarly, the Explorer has little to look forward to. The “game world”, were one to examine it as such, consists of the chat lobby and a variable number of identically spawned game rooms. The lack of persistence or temporality to any part of Sissy Fight means that it is impossible to engage in any sort of Exploring activity; the game mechanic, while adequate for a Flash game, would hold no allure or intrigue to an Explorer – most games play out in a similar fashion.
Socializers also have a distinct lack of engagement with the game. The chat lobby, again having no physicality (virtual physicality at least), plus the sameness of the avatars, hampers the formation of any robust community and lacks the foundations for in-game socializing. Most of the chat in the lobby is expressly designed to set up games or talk specifically about non-game-related matters; because you’re going to end up being matched almost randomly with other players, discussing game details and strategies is self-defeating, and temporary alliances of convenience, rather than lasting connections, are encouraged.
However, the game mechanic is designed expressly for Killing. Because of the lack of variability in the outcomes of the game (there will always be a winner in a last-man-standing competition, an expressly zero-sum game scenario, except for the possibility that two people are declared winners), there is only one thing to do with Sissy Fight – play the game and win by defeating others. While some may propose that there is Socializing, Achieving, or Exploring going on in the chat lobby and the meta-game, I’ll contend that these various activities are merely means to an end, stratagems designed to reach the ultimate Killing goal.
This may sound like a disparagement of Sissy Fight, but in reality, it is not – the designers probably set out to make an entertaining, accessible multiplayer game, and on that note they most likely have succeeded. But, as according to the assignment, if we look at it as a “Browser-Based MMO,” we see how basic things - a persistent online identity and a world in which one’s avatar physically moves through - suddenly add more dimensions to the game, with an exponentially increasing amount of complexity as the result.. For example, if instead of a chat lobby, there were a school and schoolyard for your character to move to, suddenly the game becomes something else. Interaction suddenly requires (virtual) physical movement and contact. If the events of one game suddenly affect your character permanently, then the social interactions between people will change. For example, if the game tracked reputation, and you would get negative marks for continually backstabbing, other players would be less likely to trust you in future games.
Looking at Sissy Fight as if it were supposed to be an MMO brings up an interesting observation – most online multiplayer games are expressly designed to be shallow and cater to a specific type of player. It’s the MMO that is the exception – its persistence and complexity allow it to be different things to different people.