I just ran back to my dorm in the rain and my fingers are frozen stiff, so pardon any potential typos and spelling slip-ups - I can't feel my toes!
This creative reflection is going to be about my last creative entry about my roleplay on the MMORPG Aion, and I've actually been looking forward to writing about it. Up until my first "tutorial" class it had never even occurred to me that it might be creative, until I was talking about it and the proverbial lightbulb lit up in my head. We were drawing simple "maps" about areas in our lives such as friendship, hobbies, and family, and what are certain things we do in each of these fields that we consider creative. Me being the avid MMOer that I am (I wouldn't say "gamer" per se, because I don't tend to play first person shooters, go to arcades, or play PSPs/XBoxes/what have you) I put down "roleplaying on Aion" as a hobby, and it occurred to me for the first time that it was actually something creative, contrary to most peoples' beliefs!
All throughout my childhood "playing pretend" was something I did every day and it came to me as naturally as, if not more naturally, than being myself. (I say "being myself" loosely, because can you really say who you are? I know I can't, and identity is something that I'm still not sure I've got a grasp on, as my interests, fashion, music taste, etc. are constantly changing). At school I'd be the dragon and would maul my friends (with sometimes fatal injuries, like clawing hair and biting each other), and at home I would pretend to be animals with my sister. My sister and I would even draw pictures together while simultaneously making up stories to go with our illustrations as we went along. This usually resulted in piles upon piles of half-finished drawings discarded haphazardly all over the table by the end of the day, each depicting different stages of our stories; our two different interpretations of the events. When we grew out of that I took to MMORPGs, and my love of playing pretend never left me.
Something like imagining stories and drawing pictures of them is obviously creative, and so is pretending to me your toys while walking around or playing with friends. Likewise, so is roleplaying: it forces you to take on the role of someone other than yourself, and to take on their role convincingly. Not only that, however, but you have to create the character in the first place, which again demonstrates creativity, as you more-or-less build your avatar from scratch. Heck, there is so much creativity involved in roleplaying my half-frozen fingers are having trouble catching up with my brain! But where to begin ...
Character creation. The starting point, obviously, is to make the character you have to play. My first MMORPG was Ryzom http://www.ryzom.com/ and when I joined I'd had no prior experience roleplaying in an MMO. It's far more sporadic than, say, roleplaying on forums, where you have time to think and write long, arduous paragraphs for the other person to respond to. In-game you're competing against the clock; real-time counts! Your responses have to be as instantaneous as dialogue would be were you actually speaking with the person, or at least as quickly and fluidly as your typing speed allows. Thankfully years of dabbling in story-writing in my spare time (and essays for school ... *sigh*) have made me fairly quick at typing, and sometimes I get ahead of myself and may type whole mouthfuls for my character because of it! But I digress.
When I joined Ryzom I began by fidding around with different character faces, tattoos, the races ... and as I was playing around with the creation options potential character ideas began formulating. "With this war paint she could be a wild Homin who spent her whole life in the desert alone" or "With this body build he's clearly spent all his life in the city" and so on and so forth. In the end I made a female Tryker called Taniqa with began with no character background, and decided to see how she evolved. I had originally intended to play her as a young woman, but even though Trykers are supposed to be short in height by nature I couldn't stop picturing her as a little girl, and so eventually she became my mischievious little brat of a character, with a tendency to steal the socks of her superiors in her guild and run away through the wilderness into dangerous areas from whence the others had to fetch her.
That was my first MMORPG. On Aion, now my fourth, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted for my character. Admittedly I did come up with his concept while tinkering with customisation options once again, but no sooner did I see the face than I had it all in my head. My character, Jaris, was inspired heavily by the gothic singer, writer, and stop-motion animator Mr. Aurelio Voltaire (see above image). This begs the question as to whether it is really "creative" if I base my character off another person, and I think it is. Even creating the character to look similar requires some measure of creativity, as Jaris was inspired by Voltaire, not completely copied from him. For instance, Jaris is a tattoo on the left side of his face, which Voltaire doesn't, but as my character I have creative license to do what I want. Additionally, his character is by no means that of Voltaire's; to pull of his personality perfectly I'd have to leave the realm of creativiy and delve into the creepy world of "stalker", which I'd rather refrain from doing. For instance, Voltaire is married and has a son, whereas Jaris is a shameless flirt and wouldn't want a child of his own, as it would tie him down with one woman. It's this image I have to maintain when I log into the game and step into his shoes ... or, well, clawed feet, as the case would be.
And the creativity doesn't stop there. Roleplaying in Aion constantly inspires me to draw Jaris, other people's characters or in-game creatures, or even events that happen in-game. In fact it's as a result of my roleplaying online that my webcomic "OOC - A Gaming Webcomic" (OOC meaning Out Of Character, for those non-roleplayers among us) came to fruition. It can be found here: http://canadian-rainwater.deviantart.com/gallery/?6098039#OOC-A-Gaming-Webcomic Of course, since I am juggling time between roleplaying, drawing, and not failing university, it's updated infrequently whenever time and inspiration allows. But more often than not inspiration will strike while my character is chatting amiably with someone else, and I find myself picking up that pen again and scribbling all over some paper. Even indirectly, gaming/roleplaying has creative results.
In tutorial it was also mentioned that the Western and Asian ideas of creativity vary, and while I have to agree, it only got me thinking all the more about how ironically appropriate Aion is as an example of when two cultures mix to produce something else. Aion - The Tower of Eternity is, in fact, an Asian game http://www.aiononline.com/. It was developed and released a year earlier in Korea before NCSoft opened it to the Western and European public. The only major difference between the Asian and Western versions of the game are the voice overs of the characters, for which I am grateful - Jaris is not supposed to sound like Bruce Lee. Besides that the game remains the same: the graphics style and armor is noteably Asian, with large, overly intricate pauldrons and sets of armor bristling with spikes, catpeople in distinctive Samurai garb, and swords as tall as your characters blazing with neon lights (I'd illustrate this point with screenshots but I don't know how to format them in this blog). Additionally, the fighting animations, while well done, are overexaggerated and remind me distinctly of drawn-out battle scenes in the odd anime I may have had the misfortune of watching in the past. Of course there is a vast majority of the Western culture that endorses Asian art, particularly anime and manga, so Aion has a significantly large player base in these other countries.
I am not sure if roleplay is as abundant on the Asian servers as on the Western and European ones, although I'm inclined to assume it isn't, and this would demonstrate a clash of cultural creativity. When released to the Western public the company, NCSoft, recognized roleplayers as an "important part of the community", but made no effort to provide an official roleplay server. Instead a vote was held for unofficial roleplay servers for both the US and EU servers. This may be a result of the heavy empahsis placed on player-versus-player gameplay in Aion, or PVP, which requires a large player base for the two factions to war with each other. Sadly, roleplayers are still a minority of the gaming population, and thus a roleplay server would nullify this important aspect of the game.
I think I'm getting a brainfreeze just sitting here in my room ...
While Eastern creativity places emphasis on the journey to get to the product (eg: the long, arduous grind from level 1 to level 50 in Aion) the Western community prefers the end product (eg: reaching the maximum level and reaping the rewards, such as nice looking armor and high-end raid dungeons), and herein lies another conflict in the MMO. Because it was originally an Asian game, Aion is structured like an Asian grinder, where a lot of experience is needed to get from one level to the next, and quests to help structure your grind are few and far between. I've met may people in-game who have eventually left Aion due to the almost unbearable grind, which is unfortunate. There are a few dungeon instances where you can create groups to run through in the hopes of getting unique armor and weapon drops, but most of these are end-game instances (within the 40-50 level range, 50 being the max level at the moment). I am all the more thankful for my constant roleplay input as a result, or I would probably leave too. While I can enjoy the game for the new areas to explore and Aion's stunning graphics, an MMORPG is simply a mindless grind without the creative exchange roleplay offers.
Thus ends my first creative reflection for now, as I think I've covered everything I meant to say. If not ... well, the editing option exists for a reason. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to burn my hands on the radiator to wake them up!
--Sak
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