لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Inventing Jenny
What is an open culture game? Let's start with an example. After the launch of massively multiplayer online role-playing game Ultima Online, the open-ended nature of the game play immediately gave rise to a rich ecosystem of play styles. Ultima Online's skill systems support an impressive array of preset player professions, ranging from Archery to Blacksmithing to Wild Animal Taming. Yet no sooner was the game up and running than one particularly enterprising player introduced a new line of work, which took advantage of the game's emergent properties. Side-stepping the designed system of player professions in the game, the player began operating two char-acters, one named Jenny and the other Pimp Daddy. Through these characters, the age-old profession of prostitution was introduced as a new revenue stream into the UO universe. Together the characters solicited johns, arranged meetings, and collected payment for services rendered. Although players' avatars could not actually engage in sex within the game structure, the implied narrative of the interaction was enough to generate a steady flow of customers for Jenny and her entrepreneurial boss. This player behavior was truly emergent. It was not designed directly into the game, but was made possible by the designed formal structures allowing players to name and customize characters, move about the game space, give and receive money, and chat and interact with each other. The new kind of play facilitated by Jenny and Pimp Daddy was deeply cultural, as the characters mixed the medieval fantasy world of Ultima Online with contemporary pulp fantasy (note the black-sploitation-style name "Pimp Daddy"). The playful act reinvented the idea of a "profession" in the game world and gave new meanings to the exchange and use of money. It also took sexual interaction beyond racy text chatting by adding a more meaningful structure of narrative and interaction (arranging a meeting, finding a secluded space, exchanging capital). These emergent cultural effects were made possible by a game design that offered players modular social expression through a set of very simple interactions. When game designers frame games as open systems and take into account the potential for emergent cultural effects, games can be specifically crafted to produce unexpected forms of play. But the emergent play can also extend beyond the borders of the game itself. Designing for open cultural play can increase the permeability of the magic circle, so that a transformative exchange of meaning occurs at multiple levels. Games as Open Culture implies a game design model in which the structure of a game offers players explicit creative agency. Players are encouraged to add to, delete from, or altogether alter the experience of play through manipulation of the game's system. We call this the player-as-producer paradigm, a design strategy linked to the creation of culturally transformative play.
