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Finding New and Unintended Ways of Playing Games
Ronald Diemicke writes "World of Warcraft players sometimes hang out in front of Ironforge and dance. Fallout 3 players seek out new and elaborate ways of destroying their avatar. Brawlers in Smash Brothers have an itchy pause finger, ready to catch any humiliatingly hilarious screengrabs. The thugs running rampant in Grand Theft Auto are putting Evil Knievel to shame by using a full assortment of vehicles to pull off some incredible stunt work. Personally, I like to collect and move things. My favorite is making piles of bodies in any game that lets me move them around. Ever catch yourself doing something in-game that isn't exactly part of the game, or just something really dumb?"
Emergent behavior is a property of any complex enough non-linear system.
My best in-game friend letting me kill her over and over, then chop up her corpse(s) to supply me with body parts which were needed to take advantage of a bug that allowed you to place objects on the walls of a house.
It got to the point we were having to get creative to kill her as fast as possible. A pet White Wyrm turned out to be the best method. One Bite-Death. If he got hungry, I could feed him some of the body parts as well.
"Whoa! How'd you get all that stuff to hang on the wall?"
"You really want to know?"
This is just a symptom of hoarding disorder. Likewise the article in the summary. For whatever reason, some people just can't feel good without FINISHING. A Warcraft level is finite, the real world much less so. What would happen if the completion counter on GTA3 (or whatever game) only went up to 99% and never 100%? Imagine the groaning and gnashing of teeth! And if the reason was revealed as "some developer with a subversive sense of humor made it so nobody could get 100% complete?" Oh, my, there would be blood. The real krovvy kind, not the kind that turns to green when you hit the parental guidance icon.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!