not just for mmo: user imagination + casual role play
After looking at all the user activity that happens in our forums, I’ve realized that a lot of the fun and entertainment people create for themselves has a lot to do with sharing short moments of funny imaginative roleplay.
In our game, we have this building called the court. You can store people in the court building. Pretty much we show an illustration of this building and a list of your friends’ pics who are “in the building.” Its almost as bare as a text-based MUD. Often times, our users will creatively describe their “lazy friends” who are partying in this “court” building and need to be whipped so they can get back to work or sent to the “dungeons” building. These imaginative characterizations come up out of any conversation topic. People are not purposely trying to roleplay, just entertain themselves while they go about their normal online life. Here’s some real examples: what’s your steward character doing?, KH theology
Some key aspects in fostering this kind of user entertainment…
- context: in our case a medieval theme game, their friends, and buildings in a castle
- space: We don’t tell any story. We let our users’ imagination fill in the gaps
- points of intersection: We provide events, or points where a story involving multiple people can begin or end.
It seems role play can be casual and isn’t limited to larp’ers or hardcore online rpg players. What makes this kind of casual role play important is that it helps create an easy mechanism for creating jokes and for good storytelling. This makes communication fun and could be one of the secret ingredients for what makes one forum active and another dead.
