Two months ago, I changed the “Month in Review” category to a monthly review called “Looking Back, Moving Forward,” and at the time I promised all of you that I would explain my reasons at a later date. As at least one person has pointed out, the legacy “Month in review” articles have been completely wiped from MMO Fallout, and I feel I have some obligation to explain why. As some of you know, it takes about five seconds to figure out my information by doing a who-is search on this website, and although the articles themselves were supposed to be a lighthearted joke, they were discovered by a potential employer, one who saw MMOs as a “waste of time,” and promptly lost any hope I had of getting the job.
Although video games have lost many of the stereotypes that once ran rampant, our particular genre has been held back multiple times from graduating with the class. Go on to your MMO of choice and start asking people if they admit or talk about said MMO in real life, and see just how many of them will respond with either “I don’t talk about it” or “I don’t even say I play this game.” For a lot of people, admitting they play World of Warcraft is like hanging a big sign that says “I have no life,” around their neck, an idea that could not be further from the truth. In fact, companies like Blizzard and Sony Online Entertainment just proved to the rest of the world that “normal” people do populate MMOs, and that the basement-dwellers that people often associate with the genre are such a tiny minority.
The sheer double standard of a lot of people is what frustrates me the most. For example, there is a Starbucks right in my place of work, and it sickens me to no end that someone will tell me that I spend too much on MMOs (I spend $20-$35 a month, if I’m playing more than one MMO, and virtually never buy anything from the cash shops) where they themselves spend $4 a day on one medium frappucino (that amounts to over $100 a month on a 5 day workweek). Or when that same person tells me MMOs are “childish,” right before they complain that they wanted whipped cream and chocolate shavings on their drink. The people who play games like Modern Warfare 2 or social networking games also seem oblivious to their own double standards. The same person who boasts about his all-nighter grinding towards the next level of prestige on Modern Warfare 2 will turn around and point to your two and a half hour raid in Gnomeregan and say “what a time-sink! You just grind and get no real life benefit.” Don’t even get me started on people playing Farmville who think MMOs are a waste of time.
This is part of the reason I started MMO Fallout in the first place, and that is to break down the barrier of entry into the genre. To have someone searching for Steam sales, for example, and come across “Oh look, Champions Online is on sale for $6 (Christmas sale), maybe I’ll try it out and see what all the fuss is about.” That person plonks down six bucks, and suddenly he is hooked. He goes to his friends and tells them about this great superhero MMO that costs $15 bucks but is “totally worth it, and there’s a trial!” They try out the unlimited demo and some people like it, and others don’t. Those who don’t like it might try to look for another superhero MMO, and find City of Heroes, and the whole cycle starts over again spreading to new companies, new genres, and new games. It’s like the crack in your windshield that spiderwebs out and eventually becomes a gigantic mess.
I don’t blame the people who have this stereotypes, because this always happens throughout the history of humanity outside of gaming. Those of you who early-adopted Guitar Hero will likely remember getting labeled as “losers who think they can play guitar because they play a video game.” Anyone who played Guitar Hero knows that no one plays it because they think it’ll make them good at guitars, and that stereotype is almost out the door now that Guitar Hero and Rock Band have brought rhythm games into the mainstream.
I hope World of Warcraft continues getting bigger, because the more people play it, the more they will realize that it can be played without completely sucking your life away. I hope Darkfall and Mortal Online get bigger, so people will realize that neither game is populated by sociopaths, bullies, or people who are bullied in their normal lives. I hope Runescape gets bigger so people will realize that not just children play it. I hope Eve Online gets so more people enjoy the idea of a spreadsheet simulator (I kid, I kid).
We cannot focus on the outsider’s stereotypes of us until we start removing our stereotypes of each other, and get rid of this in-fighting and elitism that plagues our gaming experiences. We need to sit back and lay some assumptions to rest:
- STOP calling each other fat losers. Every time you do this, you are only perpetuating a stereotype.
- Not everyone who likes PvP is a masochist/bully victim/little kid.
- Not everyone who dislikes full PvP is a care bear/kid/casual gamer.
- Not everyone who disagrees with you is trolling. That goes the same for someone who doesn’t like a game.
- Likewise, not everyone who is loyal to a company is a fanboy, or an employee in disguise.
- World of Warcraft is not just for casual gamers.
- John Smedley/Bill Roper/Jack Emmert/etc are not Satan incarnate.
I’ve been in countless guilds/clans over the past decade, and I can say without a doubt that the MMO genre takes all kinds, and you cannot single out one group and make them the poster child. I’ve dealt with every type of player you can come across, from the kid who ragequits the guild because no one will power level his character while he is offline at school, to the authoritarian guild leader who, despite billing the guild as “mature,” won’t let you say “ass” in voice chat, to the little kid who knows far too many expletives to his age, and back up to guildmates who are on retirement and have to log off for a while because their grandchildren are coming over to visit. I’ve guilded with the prude, the overly flirtatious, the guys who pretend to be girls, the girls who pretend to be guys, the children who pretend to be adults, the guy who steals a guild member’s account and pretends to be him, the insomniac, the whiner, the guy who falls asleep at his keyboard in the middle of a raid because he is pooped out from working almost sixteen hours a day, the girl who is a girl gamer and won’t stop reminding us that she does in fact have lady parts, to the guy gamer who reminds us that he has man parts.
World of Warcraft is what really started breaking down the wall, and although I know a lot of gamers who scream bloody murder every time Blizzard does something that can be seen as catering to the casual masses. But while companies like Cryptic, Turbine, and Sony are off handing out free sweets in the form of unlimited trials and free to play games, we’ll find ourselves speeding towards the same conclusion that befell Dungeons and Dragons players in the 80’s: That no, we’re not freaks, and what we enjoy is a hobby, not a way of life. We don’t have delusions nor do we have our own separate realities. We don’t believe that the games are real, or realistic, and we’re not about to go Pardu and start stabbing random strangers in New York under the belief that they are wandering Goblins.
We as a community can only do so much to tear down the boundaries, and we need help from our corporate masters if we’re going to succeed. So I’m calling on Blizzard, Sony, Turbine, Cryptic, NCSoft, Square Enix, Quest Online, Funcom, Jagex, Bioware, Gala-Net and all the other developers and publishers to come out and make the public informed, so that you and I will not have to be “embarrassed” that we play this game, or that game, because of the social stereotypes we might face if we did.
This rant has gone on a lot longer than I anticipated, so I will end it on this note: I don’t talk about social online games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and the others that you’d find on Facebook, but I support them greatly. They may be casual, they may be mindless, but they are addictive, and they are an integral part in breaking down the barrier between gamers and non-gamers, to integrate us into “normal” forms of entertainment.
As for why I picked Steam for the logo: no reason.
MMO Fallout 