Alexander Woods

English 125 Section 041

Monday, January 23, 2006

The Kingdom of Loathing

            Meat golems, moxious maneuvers, mysticality and muscularity, all for the Feast of Boris.  Confused?  Well, here in the Kingdom of Loathing, the learning curve is intense and the obscure references are many.  But it is the sense of community, of freshness, and the comedy behind it all that makes the Kingdom of Loathing a place I call home; a place called KOL.

            When I think of the Kingdom of Loathing, a few things come to mind, the first among which is its obscure references.  The game is a spoof and the creator’s sense of humor comes through in his almost esoteric references to everything from 80s polka band They Might Be Giants to the Mafia to drug slang – one of the “Heroes of the Times of Old” in this game is named Sneaky Pete, a nod to Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange in which mixing illegal drugs into drinks was called “peeting” them.

As I play the game there is also a KOL-sponsored chat with several self-contained channels on the right side of my computer screen.  I spend my time with the other “regulars” in Newbie, a place where new players can ask questions and (hopefully) be answered by the more veteran among us.  But Newbie shows anything but exclusivity.  An entire culture has formed within just this chat channel, and it is a culture of harsh jokes to the uninitiated, silly text-based roleplaying, and celebrities like myself whom, upon entering, are often “glomped with the passion of a thousand suns” (glomp: (noun) an overly-enthusiastic hug combined with a tackle).  I am the most veteran player, but certainly not the oldest; I often talk to the player finrot crapbag, a 45-year old male from Scotland with an obviously unique style.  The cardinal sin in Newbie is to beg for meat, which is used in this game as currency, and is met with a hostility I’d never seen before in my life.  A typical stupid question about how to defeat flies (nobody thinks to try the Fly Swatter item) goes like this:

Alarming Taste: how do you take care of the flies
KOLFreeek: swatter
Mutantboyy: how would you take care of flies at home?
Anita Coffee: @Alarming, flies pretty much take care of themselves.
Turbulent Squirrel groans.
HeyDude: Alarming Taste, try putting out some rotting fruit for them, and keeping away spiders.
Gravox the Terrible: I feed them high grade manure and make sure they get regular exercise.
Anita Coffee things Alarming set himself up for all the stupid answers
the dread pirate wesley: i knit them all hats and booties

            As harsh as we folks in Newbie can be, there is a good karma in the room.  There are over seven hundred sixty thousand accounts in the game, and yet the other chatters know my humors and heartaches and tell me when they’re sick, how they do on their exams, what funny, corny thing their mothers just said.  One day a newbie “fresh off the boat” came in, saying he felt that life wasn’t worth living anymore, and until he couldn’t help but smile Newbie was full of encouragement, uplifting anecdotes; people nearly begging this person to keep on with life.  Anybody can have a home, and everyone is welcome. 

            Even the game’s idolized creator is close and personal with his gamers.  Jick keeps the game free and runs a weekly radio show allowing any player to submit a question for him to answer.  He is eternally grateful for the constant donations he gets to cover his costs; he has, in fact, quit his job, the donations from happy players enough to make a career out of.  He rewards donations of US $10 with an in-game item named Mr. Accessory.  When this became shortened to Mr. A, he released a new item: Mr. Eh?, a reward for a donation of ten dollars Canadian.

            When I asked players to tell me what, for them, makes Kingdom of Loathing a real place for them, responses were varied.  I asked Bashy – the game’s oddest, most skilled, and most famous player, whose shtick (everyone in KOL seems to have one) is to speak as though English is not nearly his native language, whether he could help me with my paper.

            “Yes. What the hell am teacher of you smoking, with topic like "What make a place a place?"”.  Later he was more helpful.  “Bashy suggest writing "EXISTENTIALISM" on piece of paper and handing in.”  finrot crapbag offered insight on why there are different chat channels in the first place: “I think that the different chat rooms accommodate different mentalities, so there will always be a place for you whether you're young, old or whatever.”  Even a KOL-themed encyclopedia (you can hardly be surprised) had this to say:  “Newbie… gets a mix of idiots, asshats, and scammers alongside some of the freshest, least snobby and most uninhibited players in KOL. If Newbie is quiet, then everyone else has been kicked off the game.”

            It may be silly for my second home to be a virtual one, but when I see “You light the Knob Goblin <yes, I catch the innuendo> firecracker, and prepare to throw it up into the air.

Unfortunately, you get distracted by a nearby shiny object, and forget to throw it. Bang!

Ouch!” as the results of one of poor Fenris13’s adventures, I can’t help but to give him a “try again buddy” and a smile.  Never have I loathed a game less.