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?
sets Dandellion down on a ‘baroque’ chair
poors in some red wine for her (desinfection by alcohol!)
turns on ‘Marcy Playground – Vampires in New York’
offers to animate a neck & shoulder massage to Dandellion
softly whispers in Dandellion’s ear: "May I now bite?"
Better? ;)
Whatever happened with the that Kingdowns game? (I remember being in Hawk’s clan.)
And I think I like demons such as Veyron over the Vampires. (Should I protect my neck now? ;))
*slowly leans her head aside and closes her eyes* Much better, dear.
That’s how it usually is instead:
Vall Braveheart: hey whats up
Rika Watanabe: Sky, people say.
Vall Braveheart: yea so u doin good
Rika Watanabe: No.
Vall Braveheart: oh
Vall Braveheart: why?
Rika Watanabe: That’s why I hate those questions, if I lie, no conversation topic results. If I say the truth, no conversation topic results anyway.
Vall Braveheart: hell then just lemme bite you thats what im really trying to find people for
Rika Watanabe: …Bloodlines, huh?
Vall Braveheart: yeah have you already been bitten?
Rika Watanabe: No. I have a garlic necklace.
Vall Braveheart: can u take it off er sumthin
Rika Watanabe: I wonder, why would I want to take the garlic necklace off for someone who can’t even type?
Vall Braveheart: i dont even fuckin try damn ur one annoying person
…and why it is like that, I blogged about back in September. :)
It’s sad to see how the originally good idea of a game got perverted by spammers and over-achievers. I heard that a lot of Bloodliners now get into escorting cause their customers, once in a menu-clicking mood, don’t even notice anymore they have just accepted a bite request or they create armies of alts to feed from.
My personal way of dealing with them is to simply report those bite spammers to the Bloodlines admins who have zero tolerance with non RP bite requests and usually eject those people from the game. Oh yes, and shouting something mean about goddamn undead wannabe bloodsuckers in chat usually helps, too :)
Rika, please, leave a link. ;)
BTW, you have to wear garlic necklace only once, just to give it opportunity to opt you out on the server. I have to say that is a nice feature. But still, I’ll have to say something about that in another post.
It’s interesting what you said on plurk it would be a great piece of multi-level marketing, if it wasn’t so annoying. Sex doesn’t need much marketing, but isn’t Xcite’s advertising based on that?
I said that if it wasn’t annoying, it wouldn’t be a good piece of multi-level marketing. Because multi-level marketing /has/ to be annoying to work. :) Sex doesn’t need much marketing because it’s a basic need, biting people, well… isn’t, for most.
http://rikawatanabe.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/suckers/
Story reminded me of a similar experience I had a while ago http://heidiballinger.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/you-can-have-my-bloodanytime/
I just let a vamp bite me when I got here and that was that, still keeping the fangs, memorabilia. I know a vampire girl who’s an adorable and gentle person, but she likes hanging out with her friends and hunt for bites. Go figure. I don’t care, she’s a good friend and she knows the hottest shops.
If it’s getting to a spam level, like bots and alts, go for the head, is someone making money out of it?
Can’t places block specific huds or texts?
You know what? I’m not sure I want it to happen. There are some very nice vampires out there I don’t know yet.
I am sure there are. It’s not problem with vampires that play around. Only problem we have here are people who forgot how to really play whatever they play.
And no, places cannot block specific HUD’s or texts. Any security system doing that would cause a huge wave of lag.
People doesn’t really forget how to play right; it is only that some get their fun playing "right", enjoying the experience that vampiric roleplaying gives them, and others want to "beat" the game, even if that means spamming.
Bloodlines pyramidal structure makes "fair" players lag way behind spammers; it probably would work better if it centered into keeping the relation with your vampiric family, Masquerade style, instead of sheer numbers. Of course it could be worse; if the hud asked for the victim to be alone, how many homes would be invaded by unwanted birds?
Looking at other worldwide RP activites, I can only blame Bloodlines’ way for attracting so many… (ok, I will try keep the swearwords under control :-p). And it is a pity, because the idea seems interesting, and it would be an awesome challenge to try to seduce bystanders into being bitten.
Yes, people who just try to beat the game on behalf of numbers are always the problem.
I don’t blame Bloodlines. It is far from perfect system, but it makes a step forward. At least, it should be an experience to learn from.
When I get on SL, I just wanna relax. Explore. Do my thing. I don’t want all my time eaten away trying to talk other people into letting me munch on their neck.
I guess I’m not much of a game “player”, silly me, I like games that can actually be WON. Which Bloodlines really can’t.
However! The clan I’m in actually SOCIALIZES which is more than can be said of most of the SL Groups you can join (you only hear from them when there are store updates, or club event updates most of the time).
As for blood, hey, I’m a modern vamp chick. I buy mine at the store.
Most of SL groups are broadcasting tools. Which is bad. There are subscribomatics and stuff for that.
But you are right, clan that is not about socializing and/or playing around something more than pushing up the points loses it’s point. It’s on the level of stupid facebook game.
[...] and their never ceasing “bite requests”? The Thirst: Bloodlines is one of the most scolded upon Second Life games pyramid scheme entertainment, as it leads to an endless amount of spam from [...]