Questions!!! Answer them!!!

Ok... been gaming too much over the new year... but at least now I can write something very relevant to the questions that have been asked... so here goes...

My game of choice? Maple Story... yes that kiddy looking game which captures almost all the primary school population in Singapore and some parts of South East Asia.. and one of the leading online Asian games in Korea/Japan!
www.maplesea.net

So let's see what's so great about this 'kiddy' game:


1. Describe the formal elements that make up the game. Be as clear and detailed as possible.

Alright, the maplesea website itself provided me with the answers so I'll highlight them here:

• Easy interface with simple controls: No complicated 3D movements that induce vertigo here. It's plain simple 2D side-scrolling and most of the time you only need to move left/right, jump, attack and use special skills, heal... that's about it! Not much of key memorization needed. It's easily approachable for anyone to play.
• A combination of interesting items: Which basically means you get to wear all types of clothing! This is how maple story makes its profits: If you want to wear cool looking clothes or have different hairstyles you need to buy maple cash... which means going down to your nearest 7-eleven store or comic connection to buy a pre-paid card. The clothes and accessories are not cheap, can range from $5 to $28 and more... depending on how 'fashionable' you are.
• Creative ideas: "In MapleStory, unique and bizarre items appear alongside the usual items that are available in most common games. Unexpected items appear as weapons and clothes to give you the kind of fun simply unavailable in other games." Erm, well... you can plungers, surfboards or some other weird items as weapons. It's creative in a sense that the game humors you in a light way, and it's refreshing to have a more light-hearted approach in fighting monsters.. unlike the usual mmorpgs where you feel like you're fighting life and death.
• Adding humor to the game: Indeed the game design is cutesy and anime like. All the character design, you know they aren't gonna be your serious looking dudes out to kill monsters. And some monsters.. are actually too cute to be killed!
• Distinctive graphics: All i can say is if you saw it... it's easily identifiable that the screenshot is from maple.

2. Does this description fully capture the requirements for playing the game? Are there any additional rules or assumptions that you may have left out? Do these need to be written down? Why/why not?

Definitely NO man... anyone reading this do take a look at the forums in maplesea. One topic that is always the hot topic is the idea of kill stealing and change channel (known as the cc pls syndrome)

It's gonna be a long tiring debate cos these topics would never have a conclusion. I can only comment that online games nowadays would have community/societal problems that wasn't found in games many years ago. The idea of kill stealing - killing a monster that 'supposed' to belong to another person's kill, is never heard of in the days of nintendo 8-bit or the console games.

But stealing.. is a real world social illness and it's been transferred to the virtual world. The act of kill stealing is virtual, but it is performed by a real life person. (sighz, that is why the issue is so complicated it's hard to dwell into it without writing a whole lot of stuff.. if you get what i mean)

So right now I think there are much more unwritten rules in computer games than before cos the online element had merged virtual aspects with real world aspects. The virtual world as it seems is not confined to its algorithmns. Ever heard of marriages in games? The game wasn't programmed to handle such events, but players themselves created this idea, this 'space' for marriage to happen in virtual areas. And to write all these rules down .. it would take too long, and too much time. These rules would get edited and re-edited- what is the use of rules that changes frequently? (recall the calvinball topic)

Yup, ultimately No is the answer for this question especially in relations to online games. I would say what you wanna write down as rule in the game would only be valid within the 'community' that you have come across - now known as 'guilds'. Guilds in maple story actually have their own house rules which they write down somewhere online. These rules are not universal throughout the game.. so when guild members are told not to kill steal or be rude, they will definitely still encounter people who dun obey the rules and start disrupting the game. This actually provokes a thought if those guild rules are of any use.

Question 3 to be continued...