TwoFace

I’ve been playing MMO’s with the fine folks of Multiplaying.net for some time (some longer than others) and over that time I’ve groomed my in game persona to a fine edge.  This persona caries with me to the Forums and the Multiplaying blog.  But does it define who I am?  Is it really my subconscious trying to creep out of the box I keep it in?  Does it really matter to establish an online persona?  MMO’s give us all a chance to escape and enjoy doing things that we really never would do, seriously when was the last time you jumped in the car ran down to the local cave, jumped in and just started slaughtering goblins?  Well some of us take that freedom and extend it past just the mundane tasks of key mashing and extend it into our real game persona.  Admittedly I started my MMO life on a Roll Play server so picking a persona and just being different worked out as part of the game for me.  However now some six years later was it really a good idea?

For the benefit those that don’t game with the guild formally known as Circle of Trust or haven’t listened to the CoT/Multiplaying POD casts, or read any of my public posts on the Multiplaying forums; my well honed persona is a bit of a juvenile sleaze bag, obsessed with all things titillating to a pubescent boy.  For those of you that have this acne scared kid in his mothers basement BS’ing with a bunch of individuals that make up Multiplaying; your only partially correct — my game rig is in my basement but only because my kids and wife took over my office space on the 2nd floor (so yes — I’m married and have two wonderful children and am thirty something now) however don’t go calling child services yet…

Point of this is that over the years it’s become easier and easier to put on my guise as Kaar and slip into conversation with guildies and slip in random phrases that just are evocative or even sometimes WAY over the line.  Hey and they encourage it!  (Look who’s won sleaze of the year award past two times it was given out!)  And yes to some degree these things do run through my mind (I never said I wasn’t a little warped) however the vast majority of my exuberance is more of an act than anything I can come up with on a normal day. Why?  Well maybe I just want to feel loved, maybe I just want to feel like I have a place within this special group of people and sleaze was all that was available, maybe it’s because there is a little pixilated avatar on my screen that I can pretend can get away with a whole lot of shit that I couldn’t in real life because he’s just pixels and could maybe really get away with some of this stuff in the land of integrated circuits and 1’s and 0’s, maybe even its because it’s a game about something that reminds us of younger days when life wasn’t so difficult and we could afford to have a vivid imagination about harpies and banshees and zombies.  Hey wait… I think we have a winner!  Yes, Virginia games are all about escapism.  Yes when some of us were younger we sank into dark basements with a number of friends and then proceeded to use our imagination and play the precursors of MMO called… Table Top Role Playing Games  (Read: Dungeons and Dragons in my case).  Typically in all these instances someone invariably ran away from the group, attracted attention from some nasty critter, then proceeded to run away and laugh their ass off as their group got decimated (ok — that was me something greater than 50% of the time).  Anyway I think that MMO’s for those of us in the right age bracket bring back some of the child hood fun that we’ve long since suppressed.  They allow us to think back to days of wonder, and bask in the simplicity that was childhood and the freedom that was provided to us before we were summarily kicked out of the parents house on our butts and had to make a living for ourselves.

So yes, my in game/forum persona is me, it’s just a much younger me.  It’s a me that I look back at and laugh at, because sometimes he’s funny but a lot of the time he’s just so far off base you can’t help but laugh.  It’s a me that I occasionally regret having to leave behind, the carefree life of a child and not having to try to think outside the box.  It’s a me that knew no better at the tender young teenage years, and has since had a filter slapped on to his mouth.  It’s a me that I’ve put into a bottle and only let out when it can bring the little joy of a vast imagination that he once gave me.  So it’s part of me that makes me the man I’ve become, and who am I to deny him the ability to come out and play in the next generation of games (MMO’s) that he was brought up in all those years ago?  No, I think he’ll still come out and play and those that know me, well they’ll forgive his occasional ranting of a warped mind.

Happy Gaming — And remember to let your inner child out to play who knows you might really enjoy it.