I once played on a Minecraft on a rather bizarre server. This server was a communal server among friends
in the for-real-world. The server OP considered himself a generous OP since he
freely gave out a good deal of food and pick-axes and supplies to every person
on the server. And yet, there was one rule, only he could benefit from
god-powers. Only he and his projects could have unlimited resources. Only he
could fly. Only he could teleport. Only he could build without mining. If you
offered to help, and promised not to use your god-powers for any project but
his, you could have them until you were done helping him.
The players chafed under this restriction.
Some players like to have unlimited powers for building, some did not mind
mining to get resources, some of them, just liked messing with their friend the
OP. But they disliked the inequity.
Thus began Smugglecraft. A game in Minecraft.
---------
I read an article the other day by a Hendrix alumn, Malcolm McCrimmon, which for perhaps the
first time got me interested in the "game vs. not-game" discussion. The article
drew largely from the theory put forth in Chris DeLeon’s essay “Games Are Artificial. Videogames Art Not. Games Have Rules. Videogames Do Not,”
and defines games as a combination of the abstract—the artificial rules of play
called the “play space”—and the concrete—the immutable or physical elements
known as “props.” The play space of a game consists of arbitrary agreements and
limitations. Physical pieces in Chess have
only cosmetic differences but we agree that each piece has different movement
properties. Likewise, we agree that the goal is to checkmate the king. Props by
contrast are immutable factors of the game that do not need to be innumerate in
the rules, like the effects of gravity on a ball or that a single Chess piece cannot physically occupy two
separate places in space simultaneously. By this reasoning, Smugglecraft was a game established by
the rules the OP set and used Minecraft
as a prop.
The OP’s new rules were not coded
into Minecraft, the underlying system
of the game did not change but the OP’s impositions added arbitrary
rules onto the system. Minecraft was
no longer just about creating but about creating while deceiving.
---------
 |
| Pictured: Subtly. |
In order to get god powers, players
began offering to help the OP with his massive projects. When his back was
turned or he was away from the keyboard, the “helper” would fly back to their
base and fill their chests with whatever they wanted.
I said before that Smugglecraft had rules, and it did. The
OP would check players’ buildings for evidence of the abuse of his OP-given
god-powers and upon finding a stash he would reclaim the ill-gotten
resources, repair any damage he caused finding the stash, he never tried to reclaim chunks of our buildings which were built with stolen resources or god-powers, and there were never any reprisals beyond the reclamation of our chest-bound items. When items were
mistakenly reclaimed, the OP replaced the items and added some extra resources.
The game grew more complex when building
searches began. Players began hiding their stashes in the walls of their constructs.
And the OP began searching the walls and the floors. The players knew their
buildings would be searched so they made dummy stashes with notes for the OP or
stashes which were intentionally poorly hidden, in the hopes that he’d think he had found
everything they had to hide. They began hiding their stashes in remote areas
and the OP began randomly teleporting to people's location to see where they had gone.
So the players kept adapting, they would
hide stuff in the OP’s own buildings, where he would never look, or they would hide a single
chest full of stuff in an unassuming patch of ground, mark it with a flower,
and write down the co-ordinates.
 |
| Pictured: A far more badass version of our server OP |
Eventually, a player who had known
the OP for years spoofed his password, and gave everyone god powers. The players
toyed with the idea of removing the OP's god-powers, since he was actually an hour+
drive away from the computer running the server. The idea was rejected on the
grounds of being mean. The OP never suspected that his occasional connection hiccups
were the result of people logging in as him. Players took pains to make sure
they put his character back where it belonged after logging in as him.
Smugglecraft tapered off shortly
thereafter. If there was a win-state in Smugglecraft
it was: acquire as many resources as humanly possible without the OP finding
out, and by secretly acquiring god-powers, the players won, though perhaps not
in the way originally intended.
----------
The point the original article
ultimately raises is that we should be attempting to consider props as their
own medium, separate from games. And I do not object to that distinction. Games
like The Sims, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, and Gary’s Mod could arguably be considered tools or props rather than games.
They are simulation spaces which allow for the imposition of user generated
goals or rules. As a genre, that could be incredible! The whole point of the story of Smugglecraft is to show how useful such
a medium could be. And while I do not object to the evolution of interactive
software as a medium, I do feel that the acknowledgement of a game as a prop
could be too easily used to continue ghettoizing some games into the category
of “not really games” based on whether or not the game has a win-state or
complies with overly strict definition of “fun.”
No comments:
Post a Comment