The Fun Doctrine
Entry posted by lamuella
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Oh god, not another one.
While I'm glad the blog option in the game exists, blogs have a tendency to act as soapboxes, and nothing in this world is more boring that yet another "well, here's what I think about this war..." post.
So why have I made one? Because I love the sound of my own voice. Because I, like everyone else, am entirely convinced of my own inner brilliance and think everyone else should respond telling me what great posts I make.
But anyway,
The purpose of this post is to expound, probably at more length than you care about, upon my stance as to Cybernations And How It Should Be Played. This is an out of character opinion, although to be honest my "character" in-game is basically me, so all being out of character means is that I'll be mentioning that this is a game. If it comes as a shock to you that this is a game, I can't wait to see what happens when you discover what color the sky is, and that water isn't as dry as you might have previously thought.
The whole thing can be summed up in a single sentence, represented here as a graphic:
Games should be fun.
Cybernations is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. If you're playing Cybernations and you're not having fun, you should either play another way or stop playing.
This isn't to say that games should be silly, or that games shouldn't be taken seriously. A lot of the fun of a good and immersive game is that it is serious, and that you can devote a lot of time to it. What it is to say, however, is that there's a line between taking the game seriously because of how much fun you have with it, and caring about the game so much that you start to feel genuine anger, bitterness, resentment or hate because of it.
Here's some things that are fun:
- Getting your own back on an in-game enemy
- Scoring a fairly wicked burn on someone on the forums
- Tweaking the nose of an authority figure
- Stomping on an alliance you dislike
Here are some things that go beyond fun into the realm of the creepy and sad.
- Forcing disbandment
- Going on a vendetta against an alliance and spitting hate at them
- Investing so much in your nation that you get genuinely depressed when you get into a war because of your precious pixels
-
These latter things fall very much in the area of Taking The Internet Too Seriously. Yes, I realize the irony of a former member of the Goon Order Of Neutral Shoving saying something like that. There's a serious point behind this, though. Even old GOONS at their worst were still ultimately committed to the idea of having fun in the game. Admittedly at points their form of fun was about the misery of others, but that's really beside the point. They played for enjoyment, and like I said:
I see a lot of people these days who play for revenge, or play to be the top dog, or play to instill their form of order in the game, and honestly they don't seem to be having fun. On the other hand, I'm in 3 wars right now with NATO, and I'm chatting on IRC with guys trying to nuke me even as the bombs drop, and we're all having a whale of a time.
Fundamentally, the fun doctrine comes down to this:
- Play your game, not anyone else's
- Only care about how other people play if it effects you
- if the game causes you more misery than joy, play something else
kind of waffly for a small point, but then I suppose I'm kind of a waffly person.
So, yeah.
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