Utopia Redux

Last week I wrote about the addictive properties of Swirve.com's online multiplayer text-based game, Utopia, and how it had monopolized my life as a kid. But writing about it piqued my interest and, on a lark, I signed up for a new account. ("I'll just see what's changed and what's the same," I told myself. "I'm sure it won't be addictive anymore.")

It still is. My "province," which I named Ken-etic Energy, has doubled in size under my frequent and devoted attention (from 400 to 800 acres). My population of Humans has already grown to support: a strong network of thieves, who have already managed to save peasant lives by robbing other provinces of food and supplanting my Farms with it; a (weaker) network of wizards, who usually blow themselves up trying to cast spells but sometimes succeed nonetheless; and a powerful cabal of Knights and Archers who defend my province against enemy attack. I'm the gallant ruler: Lord Ezra the Wealthy. As a Human, my province isn't great at magic but has a knack for Science; as a Merchant, I get extra income that I can use to pay for soldier training and the exploration of new lands. All together, this makes me, Ken Colwell, a huge dork who will probably not allow this blog post to be posted beyond December.

So I play in a kingdom of Orcs, Dark Elves, and the occasional Gnome besides my fellow humans. Does it change how I interact with them that I chose this Human, Merchant persona? I don't think so--I am a sensibly-minded Human. I almost wish I'd picked an Orc or a Dark Elf province so I could be a little more evil. The other day, I almost wrote a random, archaically-worded message to a random province, just to test for a reaction, but then I thought--would a Human Merchant say that? No way. That would ruin the game. Honestly, the game hasn't been social enough for me to say if Behavioral Confirmation could be working here: whose beliefs would I be confirming? I think my kingdommates are still waiting to see if I'm going to man up and log in for the long haul. As for SIDE, the only way I can identify with my kingdom is if a friend gets attacked and I help him fight back, but I'm not powerful enough to do that. (I do, however, get uncharacteristically upset when that happens. Am I identifying with the group?) And the Proteus Effect is hard to search for when Utopia doesn't even give me a graphical avatar. All I've got are the words Human, Merchant, and Ezra. But soon those words will be known throughout all cyberspace. Maybe fame will affect how I act.

By the way--honestly, this post is a little tardy, but that's only because we're gearing up for War with a kingdom on another island. I need to stay focused. If I don't get my Soldiers trained into Specialists, I won't stand a chance, and my Thieves stand ready to rob the vaults of an unsuspecting province with full coffers. Please try not to disturb me for the next couple weeks.