Regular readers of the gamesblog will know that the thing that most excites me about computer games is the so-called "ludic spray" which emerges from play. By this I mean the cool things that players do to extend their experiences within and outside of the game worlds. You can imagine, then, how thrilled I am by a recent Howard Rheingold post on the social software blog Smart Mobs, in which the virtual worlds veteran passes on a question about urban legends which arise out of game play. Think "I buried Paul" for the interactive set.
The original request was:
I'm working on an article about how mythologies and urban legends arise in virtual worlds. My interest was kicked off by observing my children playing in Club Penguin an online world for kids where everyone's avatar is a cute little cartoon penguin. From time to time my kids will join dozens of other penguins hopping up and down on the edge of one particular iceberg, convinced that if enough penguins do this, the iceberg will flip and reveal some sort of treasure. There seems to be no truth in this, it's just a made up story that virally spreads from player to player. Urban myths are commonplace in real life of course, as is the ability of children to make up stories and then convince other kids...and themselves...of the truth of those stories. But I was wondering if anyone knows of other places online where urban myths have appeared and taken hold?
In the comments, the marketing guy from ARG Perplex City says that treasure hunters searching for their mysterious metal cube forwent using metal detectors to find it, believing rumours that the box was made of a metal that couldn't be picked up by the machines. Reference was made to Second Life's legendary cornfield, now vanished, where wrong-doers were sent as a punishment for breaking that virtual worlds' norms. In EverQuest, apparently players would keep a bundle of hay in their inventories believing it would stave off hunger (and therefore the need to leave the current quest to find some food).
The topic's been picked up by virtual worlds blog Terra Nova, where MUD developer Richard Bartle points to a database of hundreds of urban legends in that game space, and Ultima designer Raph Koster laughs about an infamous assassination myth of Ultima developer Lord British (which was apparently even photo-documented).
Of course, the thinkers there get deeper than just listing examples of rumours and legends. An anonymous commentator suggests:
It's not just about viral spreading of urban legends; it's about a spreading of a legend that says, "You can make the game have user-content and make it respond to the user in ways the game-gods never intended". That's terribly compelling, and that's what a lot of kids do with games, they shake them and rattle them to see if they will break somewhere and possibly even yield an exploit. Game gods know that, from what I gather, and even build some of the game play into that.
What are your favourite virtual urban legends? Share them here, or if you'd like to help Chris out, you can email him at chris@spurgeonworld.com.
