perhaps the first memory of my nearly thirty years was laying on the hood of my grandfather’s car at the old drive-in, now long gone, at the alabama state fairgrounds.
my baby sister was next to me, both of us sprawled out on a blanket. star wars was on the screen.
a few years after that i got my first comic book, star wars #71. it had a teaser cover that shocked me—they had found han solo! dear lord! you must understand, this was in the dark days between empire and jedi—which was still being called revenge of the jedi at that point (showing shades of future failures to understand his own wonderful creation, george lucas realized that a jedi cannot seek revenge, which is emotion-based). saving han was absolutely imperative to my life at that time.
i was hooked, hooked, hooked—and saw return seven-and-one-half times in the movie theatre (the half is from the electricity being knocked out in the theatre around when the ewoks showed up—my dad was already asleep, head back on the seat). years later, a mediocre books series, lucas’ incessant and second-rate cgi tampering, and boring games have left me with all but spiteful of the series. oh wait—plus there’s the abysmal episode I and II, both repugnant.
so when star wars galaxies: an empire divided was announced, i was kind of interested. i could play star wars my way! not have to deal with pathetic also-ran mythology! i could make it up as i went!
alas, i don’t have the time, bandwidth, or hardware to handle the massive game—which some hail as a masterwork, and some as a failure. but i do eagerly follow its social evolution, an element of mmorgs that fascinate me.
i was jumping up and down when i heard about when an everquest secret society sprang up to protect newbies from callous murder at the hands of powerful enemies—jerks that could spot the new kid and easily off him. it was like a virtual avengers! the justice league, built from electrons and faith!
for everquest and galaxies don’t have something we do: the police. in real life, we don’t need a batman (although we may want one): we have a police force, along with the attendant complications of a legal system to prosecute wrongdoers. but the games didn’t have police, so they arose just as they did in real life—by need. and they served an honorable purpose.
so today i was all a’tremble when i spotted a picture of a group called the black hand secret society attacking, and killing, a dark jedi master. the most powerful of all enemies! the most evil! brought down by who—or what?
one thing to note: the evil jedi was a real person. he was somebody who’d put in hundreds of ours since galaxies’ release to unlock the most carefully guarded secret—the jedi. and then he’d leveled up his jedi to become powerful and—worse—a patsy for the sith. this person spent dozens of hours to become evil—even if it were just on the computer for a few hours a day, he was still a bad guy. they’re the rarest of all characters, and once they die—they’re dead. this guy was a master of evil.*
until the black hand secret society took him down. a ruthless cadre of all types of galaxies classes and races, they are dedicated “[t]o achieve greatness in Star Wars Galaxies, with dignity and honor.” while they “offer our help to those that need it,” they “have no ties.” as they say:
No alliances. No friends. No enemies. We are self sufficient. We are everyone and we are no one.
they swear that they are “[s]o secret that even those we aid will be unaware that they are being helped by us.” i think that’s just about as cool as it gets. i’m totally awesomized by this—it’s a thousand times better then anything george lucas could shoehorn into the sure-to-be-awful episode III, judging from the highly-reliable script excerpts i’ve seen. and police—or rogues, like the black hand—are needed: there’s well over 125,000 people “living” in galaxies now.
the black hand is doing what i wish george lucas would figure out how to do: they’re bringing fun back into star wars—even if it’s just in a game.
- note: i assumed there were already jedi in the game, but this article by the chief content fella indicates that the jedi may have been a built-in bad guy—not player-controlled.
The only decent Star Wars games have been the Rogue Squadron games…all good, if not great!...the computer X-Wing/TIE fighter games and the Jedi Knight series. I hear that KOTOR is unbelievable and more exciting than any of the prequels (like that was hard…just watched Clones again last week…fighting cool…Ben Kenobi cool…dialogue unbelievably awful). It’s amazing how other people can do a better job with the Lucas universe than Lucas can. Hell, David, you and I could have probably written a pretty great set of prequels…hell, a million nerds everywhere could have!
i hope to get the sw game soon, but alas, i’m afraid of 2 things. too busy, or pals never wanting to leave my (newlywed) home!
I had no idea this type of “universe” even existed. I’m glad it does for some; it’s no different from collecting stamps or quail hunting or trying to find potato chips that look like Nixon. But it’s still a tad odd to me. I’d be interested to see if people have conducted psychological studies in these environments, as they seem to be refelctions/microcosms of real life.
Oh, and totally agree about the Star Wars movies. I’ve refused to see the last (first) two on principle. I was the biggest SW fan ever until they hit me with that teddy bear wars one and haven’t looked back since.
There are plenty of articles coming out now in Psychological journals and otherwise (why did I capitalize “psychological”?) researching MMORPGs, but, like the games themselves, it’s a pretty new thing. I took a class on role-playing and simulation and we talked about the dangers these new RPGs present. Pretty interesting stuff. Ask me sometime about the nature of play vs. not-play. I’ll fucking hook you guys up with some knowledge.
You took a CLASS on this? Sweet.
Via email we’ve been discussing that very thing. My take is that if there were such a thing, these guys would be molesting Boy Scouts for their outlet.