gotta green before code

44 levels and five months later on Vazaelle, my little gnomish wizard Frotz Nitfol is doing just fine, thank you very much, and learning many ways to enjoy the time spent in the game rather than just grinding experience and gaining power and prestige, you know, piddling little goals. Though most recently he ran afoul of a most Stupid Night of playing, losing nearly a full level of experience due to three incredibly stupid acts. You can read about it if you'd like; I decided not to present it as front page material since the language is rather salty and it was originally written for those with full working knowledge of the game. As there's a lot of contextual references and injokes, here's a quick overview and primer:

1. "The Hole" is a wide-open pit by the city of Paineel. It's enormous and gaping. Kind of like the Goatse of Norrath. Falling into The Hole is something that is more or less easily avoidable -- but means Instant Death if you do it. I did it.
2. The "Nexus Scion" is a very high-level NPC (non-player character) who hangs around teleporting people up to a magical land called The Nexus. Being high-level, a Nexus Scion is not one to be messed with. I messed with one.
3. "Kerra Isle" is a low-level zone full of silly kitty monsters that are green to me, meaning I can kill one as easily as I can pick my nose. However, enough silly kitty monsters beating up on you can wear you down pretty easily. I think we had about 20 or 30 of them ganging up on one of me. I did the math.

Sprung fresh from the loins of The Sims, "the most popular game of the past eighty-five zillion years" or however it's been trumpeted by any number of gaming publications online and off, The Sims Online promises to be one of the most influential games of 2003. I feel pretty comfortable making such baseless, hyperbolic claims, because no matter what happens with this launch, only a major catastrophe is going to keep the game from going gangbusters. I only point to the insane crazy success that The Sims itself has done, spawning expansion pack after mind-numbing expansion pack (Sims On The Moon! Sims Go To The Mall! Sims Eat Tofu On The Roof! Sims In Lockup!) and grabbing the all-coveted male and female gaming market. All with this weird combination dollhouse-and-puppetmaster kind of game. Who knew? I mean, seriously. Who the hell knew?

I remember the original game's strange appeal. I played the Sims far too much back in 2000, doing such things as creating the Von Offenpantz castle and setting up a Sim trailer park, populating it with white trash, and leaving it on overnight -- only to come back the next morning to find the entire park empty, with all the inhabitants either dead, run off, or sent to military school. Yeah, that was amusing and fun. But as I played, I realized two inevitable truths which pretty much caused me to taper off and stop playing:

INEVITABLE TRUTH NUMBER ONE: Play too much of The Sims and you will find you are neglecting your own personal life necessities (sleeping, showering, eating, cleaning, going to work, interacting with others) because you are too busy having fun making your Sims accomplish these things themselves.

INEVITABLE TRUTH NUMBER TWO: After you've removed the pixellation over the naked people and made two Sims of the same sex kiss, you lose approximately 95% of your interest in the game.

At least, that's how it happened for me, but I only bought one expansion pack. I never delved too deeply into the mysteries of the House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, or Apocalyptic Nuclear Wasteland expansion packs because I valued my hard drive space and my free time. At least, I valued my free time then. Nowadays it's freely given out like so many Fun-Sized Tootsie Rolls.

My first opinions of TSO were rather critical, I must admit, but amazingly enough, after trying out the game for an evening, the damn experience grows on you. In fact, it grows you just as the original Sims did, through sneaky reversals of expectations and judgements. The entire concept looks so... so... lame on paper or in theory, but in practice, it becomes amusing, compelling, and downright addictive. I mean, put it this way. When I first heard about the online version of the game, I said "Oh, wow. You mean you do the same things as you did in the Sims? You run around, build houses, do stuff, and talk to people, but this time, the people talk back? Whatever. I'll go back to ToonTown and accomplish something."

After playing TSO, however, I thought "Oh, wow! I'm doing the same things as I did in the Sims -- running around, building houses, doing stuff, talking to people, but this time, the people are talking back! That's so cool!"

I also realize this devious and insiduous piece of timesuck is going to make the fine people at Maxis filthy rich. I'm not sure how much of a monthly cost I could justify throwing into the air in order to continue playing, but for now, we'll see how long the appeal lasts. But this much I know -- I only played one night and already I realize that this project is going to completely dominate the online games market, barring any unforeseen disasters like a complete and utter return to a Luddite society. I know this because ten years ago, I was completely immersed, head-first, into TSO's direct grandparents: The Multi-User System Environment.

Or the Multi-User Shared Hallucination.

Or the Multi-User I Can't Remember What But The Cute Anagram Is MUCK.

It's always been well-documented that the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG genre is a direct, evolved descendant of the text-based Multi-User Dungeons that has sucked more time out of undergrads than Grafix and Phish bootlegs. Give the idea graphics, give the players a reason to hang out, let them progress and give them better and better gear, keep 'em happy and paying. Fair enough, but all the updated MU* conversions so far have been primarily combat-oriented. The social MU*s, the MUSEs and MUSHes, MOOs and MUCKs have been given short shrift in the "modernization' craze. ("MU*" here stands for a catch-all term for most of the social Multi-User online programs, so that I don't have to keep typing MUSE/MUCK/MUSH/MOO/etc over and over again.)

Oh, sure, there've been graphical chat programs galore -- The Palace comes to mind immediately, after a crazy night back in 1995 of smiley-faced newbies stacking football helmets in every room with manic glee -- but the focus of those programs were on the chat, and not on the creation, as MU* advocates know full well. In fact, most programs just let you create a customized picture for an avatar and dumped you into a chat channel with a graphical background. Oh, sure, maybe you could do some customized emotes, and move your avatar around the 'environment', but forget actually trying to do something interactive with anybody other than the 21-year-old CS major who is pretending he is a hot lesbian named "Tiffany." Where these graphical chat programs failed, the text-based MU*s succeeded. Where Voodoo video cards cried, imaginations rejoiced.

MU*s let the user create, via descriptive text and an object-based coding language, their own intriguing characters and avatars. My first MUSE character, created 10 years ago on HoloMUCK was RiffRaff, who bore more than just a passing resemblance to everybody's faithful handyman from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. RiffRaff also showed up on MicroMUSE and still exists, though I only log in once in a blue moon just to ensure the character stays active. Later incarnations included Beckett, a time-travelling scientist appropriately created to help run the TimeMUSE project and Snuffleupagus, created specifically on another, nefarious MU* to avoid idiot roleplaying netsexers.

Once a persona is established, the MU* systems lets you create virtual environments as well, such as the interior of the Alpha Spina Bifida fraternity house or an exact replica of Alcatraz, or maybe a mansion hidden in a magical bubble of air 20,000 leagues under the sea. Objects can be created and programs attached to the objects, so a pair of dice, say, could be rolled to generate random numbers. A bottle can be spun and end up pointing at a character in the room. You could even set puppets up in a room and operate them from afar, spying on conversations or using them for the purposes of roleplaying. But no matter what you did, the ultimate strength and character of your creations depended wholly on your command of the language. For all the creative impulses did for you, in the end, it was all words on a screen.

I mean, there's a world of difference in MU* land between:

Beckett enters the room.
Beckett says, "sup"

and

Beckett suddenly with a flash of light, the smell of fire and brimstone, 
and the sound of a hundred angels heralding his arrival in perfect, 
beautiful, celestial harmony.
Beckett says, "Someone put towels under the ladies, for I have arrived!"

(Of course, if you have a message and a greeting like the above purple prose every single time you move to a new location, folks are going to get mighty sick of it mighty quick. Perhaps the lesson here is be creative, but don't be repetitive. Or horribly unwieldy.)

Two of my most popular TimeMUSE objects were the Happy Fun Ball and the Lego Catapult. You could throw the HFB to any connected user, no matter where you were or where they were. It'd then swoop down from the sky (basically travel from the room you were in to the room your target was in) and that person would go on to throw it at someone else and annoy them further. Most every MU* has an object like this, be it a Frisbee, or a Koosh ball, or a heat-seeking Stinger missile. I explored the remote-annoyance theme further with the Lego Catapult, a large object I built in the middle of TimeMUSE's Town Square, one of the more popular hangout spots. For a small fee (to help prevent abuse but honestly, there wasn't much in TimeMUSE that wasn't abused) you could fire a Lego brick at someone all the way across the MUSE, and there was an actual chance of the brick hitting them and causing much merriment and mirth all around. You even received a percentage of your fee back if the brick missed. Then, abusing power in a major way, I added in a special proviso that'd prevent folks from hitting me with my own Lego bricks. (It's good to be the King.) Players could, however, run up to the top of the Clock Tower in the town square and lean over, spitting on a random object or player hanging out below. I got hit frequently. You got used to that.

Eventually the MUSE coders turned to more sophisticated projects, such as virtual videotape: I coded a camera object that recorded all that went on in a room and then could play back the log when the tape object was inserted into a VCR object. Of course, with any technology's advent, some of the first uses were prurient: it wasn't long before copied VCR tapes of certain netsex sessions made their way 'round the MUSE like crazy wildfire.

I worked on a gigantic, life-sized Monopoly board. Each room in the area represented a square on the board, and players themselves were the tokens. The project was never fully completed, but at the time, you were transported around the board by rolling the dice, you could buy and sell property as well as charge rent and take money.

We weird folk also implemented spaceflight, so we could have fun in spaceships flying around blowing stuff up. There were actual spaceship objects travelling zillions of virtual miles between planets. (Half the fun was trying to implement a scope so vast it made you cry.) Someone made virtual Disneyland. There were museums, opera houses, bars, and highways. I created the downtown section of my hometown, Amherst, complete with a quiet conservation area and nature trails and a special tree with a treefort at the very top. Our writing skills improved, descriptions turned verbose and delicate, and technically speaking, I learned to stop ending so many sentences with ellipses...

There were even robots, objects that used a player account to actually connect to the MUSE and then run around, executing programmed commands. I created a robot named Bob who ran around spouting nonsense words whenever anybody asked him to. One night while drunk I created Bob's arch-nemesis, a robot named Art whose every sentence rhymed with 'art'. From what I recall, he certainly was fond of the word 'fart'. Woe be unto any players who happened to be hanging out in a room when both Bob and Art entered. There were many fights and much crying.

This kind of creative license, robots who say "fart" notwithstanding, was special to the MU* community and more or less easy to accomplish simply because everything was done with words. Want to make a gigantic hot-air balloon in the shape of Marv Albert? You got it. Want to have full-scale Battletech combat with players in mechs on a hex-based battlefield? Code it up and it's yours. Want to trap unwary players in jail and force 'em to take off their clothes in order to go free? Well, okay, but you're a goddamn perv. There was more to do in the MU*s than just hang around and chat with others, though I do admit that chatting was indeed the most popular activity on TimeMUSE, next to annoying others and, coming in at a close third, netsex.

Graphical chat programs so far have lacked this creative ability. They've more or less been modified IRC clients, really. Active Worlds at least let you create buildings and customize your character and run around in a 3D environment, but once your house was built there wasn't much interactivity. You couldn't build, say, a rocking chair, and let people sit in it. Or come up with virtual crockery to smash on the walls when an argument got heated. The only real goal of these programs seemed to be to repeatedly ask strangers where they lived in real life, and if they'd share pictures with you.

So this brings us to the Sims Online, which while not exactly reaching the same level of interactivity as MU*s, is a step in the right direction. First off, the game lets you build property and houses and manage your property. There are objects, pre-coded, that you can use to encourage interactivity and accomplish goals, all involving your Sim's stats and skills. Much like any MMORPG, your ability to do certain tasks and earn money is dependent on your skills. Instead of the ol' D&D standbys like Strength, Stamina and Intelligence, your Sim is measured by their Creativity, their Logic, their Cooking or Mechanical ability, or their Body (ok, it's "Strength" with a different name. Deal.) Each of these skills can be exercised, either by yourself or with others, and each of these skills is your stepping-stone to earning mad cash so you can buy more fun objects.

For instance, perhaps you've shelled out 450 Simoleons to buy a typewriter. Have your Sim sit down at the typewriter (did I mention you'll also need to buy a chair and a table upon which to set the typewriter?) and in a little while, he'll have written a story. No, you won't be able to read it, but that's not the point. You'll be able to sell that story (to whom? I don't know. Someone. The game doesn't say.) for a small spot of cash. My first story sold for 11 Simoleons, which meant I had a long way to go to paying my typewriter off. But on the other hand, my character raised his Creativity skill while he was writing the story, so his next tale will sell for slightly more money. And so it goes. You can even paint on an easel and sell your paintings, the price dependent on your Creativity skill. There are objects that'll let you raise your Creativity skill faster, but without the benefit of being able to sell your work. Other objects let you raise or use other skills for cash -- the blackboard lets you "solve problems" and sell them using your Logic (selling solutions sounds like selling term papers online) and I've heard that the pinata lets you exercise your Body and when you smash the pinata open at last, you keep whatever money's in there. But I wanted candy.

TSO is all about socializing, however, so the game rewards you more for hanging around other people than for just sitting in your own room by your lonesome. This is to be expected, but it's some kind of mindset I have to re-learn, spending way too much time on EverQuest solo (wizards make great solo classes in EQ due to that magical ability called quad-kiting, as you can kill four monsters at the same time where other soloing classes can only kill one.) One of the most noticable ways socializing helps is with the speed at which you increase your skill. Doing something on your own isn't gonna get you any better very quickly. If, however, you've got a few typewriters in your house, several friends can sit down and you each bang out a story, you learn faster. One of the first things I did in TSO was sit down and play chess with a friend. The house we were in had four or five chessboards around, and within minutes they were full of chess players. As a result, we gained an inordinate amount of Logic skill fairly quickly, which let us then go on to make mad money with the blackboards. Of course, during all this, we had to make sure our Sims' happy levels were high -- keeping them well-fed, their bladders empty, their comfortable feeling up, making sure they got naps and took showers to keep their hygiene up, you know, those things that you should be doing yourself in real life. I find it reassuring that TSO is already spawning its own lexicon of in-game references; bringing your Sims' levels of comfort up to a good, green status is called "greening." As in "I don't want to play chess now, I have to green first." (And indeed, if your levels of comfort fall into the red, your Sim will refuse to do the fun money-making activities.)

Of course, there's also socializing and mad chat to be had, if you're into that sort of thing, but at the moment I'm having the most fun making money. I really don't need to disco dance with someone with a Santa Claus head and the body of a rabbit. No, really. It's OK. I'd rather play the money-making game called Code. It comes to you in the form of the "Some Super Sim-Sounding Office" object and gives three Sims at a time a very special job: Crack a secret three-letter code. It's a three-character code where each character consists of A, B, or C, but is easily guessed if you use a simple (HINT: Always choose 'aaa' first, and then 'bbb', and go from there, based on the number you got correct for each guess.)

Each Sim participating in a round of Code has to take a "station" at the object and do a job that either requires the use of their Logic, Body or Mechanical skill. Your skill doesn't actually dictate how well you do the job, as the code can be guessed every single time, but you do get paid depending on the collective skill levels of all involved. All you really have to do as the player is input in one of the characters of the code: Body inputs the first character, Mechanical the second and Logic the third. One player is usually designated the one who'll call out the next code to try -- and off you go, until one player begs off or simply falls down. And in the meantime, you're making money.

Money means improvements to your own plot of land. As you start off, it's best to go hang out at somebody else's place as you're not going to be able to build Socko's Pleasure Palace right off the bat, no matter how many roommates you have. I became painfully aware of this after starting a character named Abbie The Cat.

Abbie began life as a suave mustachioed gent in a green serge Nehru-like jacket with one hell of a styling medallion. He hunted around for free property and plunked 2,000 simoleons down for his own little plot of land which he promptly dubbed Abbie's Abbey. Then I heard "ACK!" from someone else. "Don't do that! Don't spend your money right off the bat, become someone's roommate or something."

Oops, says I and, flustered, I deleted -- er, "retired" -- the Abbie character and tried to start him anew. Well, there are a few certain rules Maxis has implemented to prevent, oh, I don't know, some kind of crazy collusion or exploiting. Perhaps they won't let you create a Sim with the name of a retired Sim for good reason, but all in all, I was unable to re-create Abbie The Cat.

Enter 'Abbie teh Cat'. That's Professor teh Cat to you. I'm currently building a University setting with Fleep and Zhymlet, and if you're in Dan's Grove, do stop by and say hello. I think we may be changing the name from Cranky Acres to something like "College University". I'm not sure.

TSO is currently in beta, which means that as you play, you know there'll be a few certain inevitabilities as the development team works to test the game and iron out the bugs. These inevitabilities include such things as servers spontaneously crashing for no apparent reason, login difficulties galore, possible bugs that completely render the game unplayable, your character showing up one day with no pants, and frequent player wipes, in which all your progress and goodies are deleted for the sake of beta balance. The usual goal in beta-testing is to smooth everything out and reduce the number of game-killing bugs, stress the servers to the point of crying to gauge exactly how much larger one's server farm will have to expand in order to accommodate the eventual hordes of paying customers, and to give the playtesters, most of whom are doing this for free and out of the goodness of their hearts, something to bitch about on the message boards when there's a player wipe right after they grandmastered metalworking and fashioned their first +4 Saber of Dood.

Keep in mind the ultimate goal here is to accomplish all this before the game goes live and people start paying for the privilege of wandering around your virtual world and accomplishing things. Some games, however, stretch the beta process well into the live phase, giving us all the unique privilege of paying to continue the beta testing. I quit EverQuest the first time around due to the incredibly horrible way Shadows Of Luclin was released ("The only difference between Disney's ToonTown and Shadows of Luclin is that we're not paying to beta-test ToonTown," I remarked in January) and only started in with Anarchy Online after I'd heard the game had finally progressed out of its 347th beta phase and was actually stable and playable. (Unfortunately, while AO proved to indeed be playable and stylish and really beautiful, it just wasn't compelling and provided no real staying appeal. This is a total shame, since I really really really really really loved the environment and the expansive outdoor maps. AO was the first MMORPG I really got lost in, and I do mean lost as in "Where the hell am I? There's rocks and grass around me, I think.")

So I'm fully ready and prepared for the Beta endgame -- namely the soul-crushing playerwipe near the end, when all our accomplishments and achievements and momuments to our largesse will fade out and be overwritten digitally by a bunch of zeroes. Because, really, the beta process is to benefit the game designers, not the players who are more or less getting a free ride for a while until they implement the per-month fee. I guess the real question here is once the wipe happens and we're reduced to a smoldering pile of Ozymandias, with naught but screenshots to prove our past might, will we pay for the client and the privilege of playing on a month-by-month basis only to have to rebuild our grand creations? I don't know. It's damn compelling, but I don't know. Besides, I'm still paying monthly to keep FORTZ TEH WIZERDS!!1 falling down The Hole.

Take care, and don't eat anything you shouldn't.

R. Noyes
Cambridge, Massachusetts
02140