The recent china-shattering tempest in a teapot over The Subway Question is part of a general player ethos (at least in the forums, and to some extent on Global) which I think has a simple solution. It doesn’t require any additional coding, and would reconnect with the original game concept as it was framed in game narrations.
The solution is restoring Giant-based polytheism as an in-game feature through narrative, and reminding players of the underlying metaphysics of Ur. Because the role of the giants is currently vanishingly small (they’re really nothing but mechanisms to increase xp/energy/mood and to speed skill learning) in actual gameplay, I think players forgot a really crucial thing about the metaphysics of Ur: it is completely predicated on the idea of a world shaped by the Giants’ caprice. More on that comes later in this post. I should also mention that I *have* seen this done by staff, but only one: Lord Bacon-O frequently refers to the caprices of the Giants in Live Help to make bugs (or not-bugs) continuous with the game. "Why have I been dropped of in X location instead of where I was when I died on returning from Hell?" I asked once. "Sometimes the Giants forget where you started," says Bacon-O. And you know what? BEST ANSWER POSSIBLE. More of them maybe should be like that.
Anyway: players expect Ur to be stable; some seem to cleave desperately to this stability in a way that is so intensely felt that it leads to a lot of stormy discussions when change is proposed. I’m not a game psychologist, and Glitch is actually only my second MMO (I played LOTRO) so I don’t have a lot of exposure to the social mechanics of this stuff, but it seems like the real world is the wire mother and Glitch is the terrycloth mother in Harry Harlow’s old primate experiments. A good number of the loyal player base want the security of a world that doesn’t shift under their feet. Other players repeat the mantra that change is good and change is great, and to trust in TS; unfortunately, this ends up becoming a kind of internescine battle – the dutiful children who have filial piety out the whim-wham (to the point that sometimes they come across as residents of a digital Jonestown) and the rebellious children who want it their way, or goddamnit, they’re going to pitch an epic tantrum. The sense of entitlement is a little astonishing, but players direct their pleas to devs and stoot and often expect a majority rule outcome.
The reason for this is because of the abandonment of the giants and the mythic underpinning of Glitch in gameplay, and in game narrative. Instead of feeling like the Giants are responsible for changes (whether deliberate or mercurial), players have become monotheistic: Stoot is the god of Ur. Stoot and the devs are the ones responsible for change, and players try to propitiate or control outcomes by either crying and yelling at these individuals or slathering on a thick layer of smarmalade, as servile and worshipful as Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. There’s not much middle ground, and I imagine that both extremes are pretty annoying. I’m honestly not sure which one I’d find more vexing if I was working in TS. One accepts the smarmalade-slathered toast at one’s peril; I don’t think I need to explain why. On the other hand, nobody really likes it when people stomp around yelling. Or when they invite people over for dinner and instead of saying “This is delicious!” and talking pleasantly about things people do at dinner party and enjoying what’s in front of them, someone bangs on and on about how the chicken could have been better, how THEY would make the pilaf, WHY isn’t there any leafy green on the plate, etc. Sure, as a game in development, player ideas and feedback should have value, but when there aren’t some parameters on that, the inmates pretty quickly decide that they can take over the asylum. At that point, damage control becomes a time sink. A cultural change becomes the only fix.
“For a really long time eleven giants walked around… “ – the trailer makes it sound really super cute, right? They walked around and imagined things until they became real. It looks adorable. But damn, the Giants are scary-ass Lovecraftian nightmares in the face, right? And parts of Ur are creepycute. And there’s something darker in the backstory, which emerges when you get to the Rook Museum:
“Back in the early ages of Ur, when small islands formed spontaneously from the primordial chaos, only to be rendered unrecognizable moments later by the constant ebb and flow of imagination, the ancient Glitchian tribes suffered under constant threats to their very survival. There was the instability of the environment, the paucity of piggies—not to mention going to sleep every night without knowing what shapes or substances their meager huts might be when they awoke…”
OK, so *that* was the essential condition of life as a Glitch. Things have settled down some. Houses don’t change overnight. People don’t log in to discover all their glitches have become frog people because Grendaline kicked Tii’s ass at a game of tiddlywinks last night and THIS is what he did out of pique.
But it could be, and that should be part of the game culture. The world of Ur, existing in the mind of these Giants who used to change EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME, is apt to be subject to the occasional dang change. Big ones and little ones. Because that’s just how the world *works* in the metaphysics of Ur. Maybe the Giants aren’t quite as frothy as they used to be, but if changes to gameplay at every level (from nerfing to geographical additions) were woven into the world-myth and given some narrative motivation/justification, using the mythology of the world that everyone is theoretically sharing – I think those changes would go down a lot easier.
The polytheism and chaos of a giant-created world needs to be reasserted at the narrative level in order to relieve Stoot of being the Glitchian God, and the subject of all restive importuning. “Tell it to Friendly.” You know how much Friendly would care about people screeking on about the subway? Hmmm, let’s see… So that’s just wrapping. That’s candycoating. It would be helpful. It would restore the metaphysics of Ur to being part of the actual game.
If TS wanted to implement a system of player-controlled worlding on a *coding* level (coz I know you need more dev ideas, amirite?), instead of using the forums to complain, perhaps the Giants and daily/weekly/monthly tithing could be jiggered as a counting system – but ONLY for changes that are negotiable. Some of these things are obviously not going to be negotiable at all. Alph has goddamn spoken. Or whatever.
So if it’s possible to see how much gets tithed to a given Giant (and I think that even already exists), tithing could be used as a “voting” system to indicate support or discontent. Example: “Tii has taken away Helga’s cocktail shaker and that of all mining vendors. Make your own damn cocktails. If you don’t like it, maybe Cosma will make them a new one.” Tithing to try to get the Giants to take various actions (for or against a change) could take the place of just, I dunno, frequent and epic forum-based shitstorms.
People might become devoted to the apparent long-term interests and strategies and hobbyhorses of a particular Giant. The Giants already have skill allegiances, this wouldn’t be hard to map out as far as attributing change to a particular Giant’s agency or interests. Maybe one Giant randomizes every damn tree in Ix because they are teasing the Giant who loves Spice. Players can fix that one by one, or propitiate the Giants. Etc.
Or hey, they could call a Rook (requires making Rook rolls effective at calling real Rooks):
“—but by far the most dangerous and terrifying of these was the Rook. The Rook, enemy of imagination, visited its wrath upon whatever the Giants’ minds created. It was the very manifestation of fear, doubt and uncertainty and it pecked and clawed relentlessly at the periphery of the Giants’ domain, black winter to the Giants’ spring of creativity. It was, if I can say so myself, most awful.”
See, in this scenario, the anti-change forum banshees are pretty much Rookolytes. Whatever the Giants mind creates, they want to undo. Maybe a Rook could roll back the most recent change if it attacked and there weren’t enough people to fight it off. This would be good for whimsy changes, not major non-negotiable/necessary game changes. Such as, hm, trees getting replaced on a certain street. Or whatever.
“Generations struggled to find a way to fight back against the Rook and end their destruction of creativity. No progress was made until the extraordinarily Pious Esquibeth of Inari discovered that her will alone could turn a normal shrine to a weapon, harnessing the direct conduit to the minds of the Giants to return fire instead of favor.”
There were some folks who were RPing at rook worship some months ago. I thought that was neat. I thought the idea of the Giants and the tendency of Ur to metamorphose was neat. Before the game even launched, some people thought that was exactly the core of the game, even:
“For the game itself, it’s set inside the minds of eleven giants. Your actions and the actions of others will affect and shape the world around you: which does seem to be something that we hear a lot. Perhaps this revolves around which giant you side with and which one gets to a set goal of points first will change the landscape, but this is based on speculation as I haven’t had a chance to try out the game yet… I’m on a waiting list.” (http://greatgamingcrusade.com/2011/09/28/glitchs-trailer-confuses-many/)
“And that’s what this game is. You’re inside their thoughts. Go and make them bigger, and we’ll play for a long while.”
RESTORE THE GIANTS!
Stoot is awesome, but this was never intended to be a world in which he was perceived as God. It’s not so much fair to him or the devs, or really the players – they’re reacting in the way in which they’ve been conditioned to act through the usual operant conditioning cycles. Make them play it out in the game instead of screaming it out in the forums.