Few nighs ago, I was minding my own business in one of the popular shopping places of second life. Out of nowhere, IM from unknown name came, saying that, in order not to die in this game, that guy has to drink blood. So if I would be so kind to donate a bit of mine? How charming.
Unfortunately for him, I was not in gaming mood, busy, a bit bitchy that night and usually prefer introductions before encounters… so I simply offered to end his immortality with a couple of chosen bullets. But it happened again, just ten minutes later, from another guy. Tonight, I've learned there is much more than a simple game here.
The game in question is The Thirst: Bloodlines (reviewed by Vidal Tripsa at NWN). In essence, it's a vampire RPG, with HUD. To survive in the game, one has to get some blood every now and then, as expected from a decent vampire. Here comes the trick: that blood doesn't need to come from another player, any avatar's blood is fine, even if they have never heard about the game.
Which is, on one hand, great. The game is not isolated on one set of sims, in an enclosed circle of players. It's not some isolated place with people stop playing as soon as they teleport anywhere else. On the other hand, some people already get irritated by bite requests. If you've ever heard about spampires, that's it.
Now, to be honest, this is not the first time we are hearing similar accusations. There are more "games" like this one, that stretch on unlimited amount of sims and might encounter people that doesn't care about it. Most infamous and most popular is probably sex. It was a couple of months ago, when one resident was accused of hitting on everybody that moves and oversexing every environment. While those accusations and drama that followed were based on jalousy and too much of territorial-macho instincts of a certain boyfriend, the problem remains:
How to make games, RPG's, lifestyles and activities as broad as possible (because that's one of the essential treasures of second life) and still keep all of us safe and participating only in those we like?
There is an idea of setting up the servers that would enable working of the HUD in some areas. DCS comes to mind. Still, there is still limitation over the area, though the area can be enlarged significantly. What these systems lack is possibility of recruiting. One have to get the HUD first to get into the game. There is also possibility (for some games) to connect to Linden's life-meter. You know, that little heart with percents on the top of your screen. That way parcel owners would have a nice control over the basic possibility of doing damage over the present avatars, and lots of games would have common, and very large, playground.
Sure, those are all technical solutions. The best one is supposed to work right now with good players and well-mannered avatars. If you want to bite my neck hon, do a good foreplay to get me into the game before you try to get my blood. And understand that no means no. Or be ready to instantly join my game which includes me shooting you into the orbit. But I'd prefer that you do it better way. That is the point, right?
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