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Entertainment often works best when designed as a vehicle of distraction to be
ridden by the more emotive regions of the mind. Each escape hopes to achieve a
sustainable divergence from that thing which is each of our personal realities.
The forgetting of oneself is only a part of what happens when we are entertained
and oftentimes not even the largest or easiest to spot, but it allows for a
unique experience to develop in video games. In roleplaying games, this
forgetting is taken a step further by empowering the viewer/witness as an
actor/agent. And by moving from the realm of passive into active entertainment,
especially in the online world, this forgetting of oneself paradoxically creates
a more uninhibited expression of who each of us really is.
When you read a book or watch a movie, you are bound to that one particular
story. You may come away with different interpretations from those around you,
but every viewer has been presented with the same material (even if what you saw
might have appeared different). Roleplaying games, though, go beyond this by
inviting the audience into the story as actors. The early roleplaying games were
quite linear as there might have been only a handful of mostly similar starting
points and very few different endings. And even though the choices in-between
were limited to what you could do, you were still actively partaking in the
creation process. Essentially you were reading a visual form of the old Choose
Your Own Adventure books. Even now, the number of choices, while increasing, is
finite, and in the MMORPG world, arguably still bound by the rules and conditions
of the developers. We have become actors who are allowed a great deal of
improvisation, but are still playing a part in someone else’s work in that we
are denied unbridled freedom.
Now traditional pen and paper RPGs have a limitless range of choices and
options, as the dungeon master is the omnipotent god of his world, free to keep
or toss out any of the rules of the game he is playing if he so chooses. Such
is the tradeoff in automating the dungeon master role for video games. Part of
the increased freedom in MMORPGs is the circumventing of the dungeon master by
simulating the world itself so that in its sheer size and diversity lies the
openness of its choices. In the online world, the developers have become the
dungeon master gods, rather than the dungeon master authors of the static single
player games.
Extrapolating current trends in RPGs yields a vision of total immersion in an
online world. All social interaction, monetary gains or education could take
place with players pausing only for the more physical necessities such as
nutrition, waste disposal or medical treatment. In such a “game” where you
would be able to supplant your identity completely with a virtual one, would it
even still be roleplaying? Aren’t you playing the role of your own life?
Pulling back into the now of MMORPGs, are these really RPGs? Is the role not
really an extension of who you are? Is an avatar merely the digital
representation of your physical being—how you see yourself or as close as you
can in achieving that aim using the set of variables the MMORPG world allows?
The “residual self image” concept from The Matrix, ORPGs make achievable. Even
if the technology is still nowhere near that level, the sliding of your identity
from the everyday physical world to an online virtual one is still taking place.
Further, online a person is freer to act however he truly wants without being
held back by the traditional fears and hesitations that normally restrain action
(such as those in school, at work or in one’s home). The developer is still the
god in the world, but the other limitations on how you want to behave or
interact with others are broken down and we are able to see causes without their
normally accompanied effects. To turn Machiavelli’s phrase on its head: online,
we no longer need to be concerned with even justifying the means in terms of the
end, because justification has been crippled as a focus. Developers may still
be setting the final boundaries of what can be done, but players do not need to
fear reprisal on the same scale as they do in the "real” world. So without the
traditional restraints of social judgment and punishment, perhaps we can look
towards rational selfishness as the guiding principle in preventing such
tremendous freedom from spiraling completely out of control in a Lord of the
Flies/mob rule type of way. Is evil behavior held in check because of
punishment or because of most people’s basic nature? The safe answer is both,
as in a more anonymous world, there is an increase in wickedness when it goes
unchecked, but most people are generally good in their attitudes and dealings
with others. Regardless of one’s goodwill, we all still make choices based on
what the consequences could be. The question is, does the removal of
consequence allow a more true identity to emerge, or is the weighing of
consequence an inseparable part of who we are that destroys the concept of
identity once removed?
Since gaming has created a system in which we are free to amend whatever
personal and physical traits we were given from birth, allowing us free choice
to create ourselves in our own image, is this new image any more or less
legitimate than the shell which we cannot otherwise leave? Almost like
reformatting a hardrive, the tabula rasa of our identity could be wiped blank
for us to reimagine online. Locke used the tabula rasa to argue that all men
are born good, independent and equal and it is our experiences that then define
who we will become. But the idea is no less potent in online worlds, since each
person upon initial entry into an online world, does give birth to a new being
whose qualities they are free to create however is desired. This desire of how
we wish to recreate ourselves, though, shatters our online identity as a tabula
rasa because we are starting from something (whether that is flight, anger,
neglect, companionship, etc) rather than a blank beginning. The experiences of
the real world, even in the negative, still claw their influence upon our acts.
Further at odds with achieving a true blank slate is the combination of an
abundance of freedom and anonymity not found in the “actual” world. So is my
virtual self a fraud, an outward manifestation of my frustrations at what I
think my shortcomings are that is flawed because the online world can never be
real? Is part of reality its property of being ultimately inescapable no matter
how hard you try to forget what is happening? Does fear help define who we are,
or is it an inhibitor for who we might otherwise be? And since the answer to
both those questions can be yes, which of the many identities of self should
take precedent?
If humans were capable of making themselves happy, content and otherwise pleased
by everything in their lives just by thinking as such, entertainment would not
be in much demand. Few would escape paradise unless it stopped being paradise.
But we do need diversions from our lives, no matter how great they normally are.
Sometimes sadness, anger or frustration creep in and we need to get away and
forget what is bothering us, if only for a moment. MMORPGs allow this forgetting
so much more fully than the other forms of entertainment and (for now) still
have ramifications on your actual life usually only slightly less than when you
dream at night. And just as the person you construct in your dreams to
represent your self is not an identical version of your actual, physical being,
so too is the online persona of you another self-portrait. All of us are
constantly playing different roles depending on who we are talking too, how we
are feeling or what events might be taking place around us, so in a way, there
is no static definition of one’s true self. Just as data can still be recovered
from a reformatted hardrive, so too does our continual relayering of tabula rasa
upon tabula rasa never fully erase our previous identities. Yet the Internet age
has allowed self-identity to become increasingly self-defined, breaking many of
the constraints of genetics or social environs in a manner never before
realized. And all the dangers and benefits of this freedom to define our selves
remain to be felt.
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