Zombie Pirate Ninja Monkey

But mummy it's not just a silly game you just don't get it

Like Cuppycake, I sometimes read Tobold's blog, and find it interesting from time to time.  But his recent post attacking Richard Bartle was awful, awful stuff that revealed a mixtue of intellectual shallowness and vapid foolishness that I found it hard to comprehend.

Tobold - and here we shouldn't put too fine a point on things - spends thousands of hours every year pressing keys in order to make a graphical representation of an imaginary person make numbers float above the heads of graphical representations of imaginary monsters.  Sometimes, a number increases in the top left of his screen, which in turn makes the numbers above his little person's head increase slightly when the imaginary monster does things, while also scaling up the numbers above the imaginary monster's head when he pretends to swing his imaginary sword.

Now a lot of us have played that sort of game, and enjoyed it greatly.  Some of us like to talk at length about whether the goal of making numbers bigger at the cost of thousands of hours every year is a valuable or worthwhile one.  Some of us are even excited by the technology and advances involved.  Many of us are aware of the history of the genre, can accept criticisms of it thoughtfully.  Some of us even address whether devoting too many hours to a pleasurable but unproductive pastime is truly worthwhile, especially after a certain point of discovery, learning and exploration has passed.

Dr Bartle helped invent the genre of multiplayer online gaming.  He didn't create it, but he advanced it, shaped it, dramatically redefined it and has helped to explain and advance it ever since.  He is a cantankerous, provocative, opinionated but nevertheless authoratitive, insightful and important writer in the field, who, far from resting on his laurels, continues to teach, advise and comment in the field.

In a recent interview, Dr Bartle made a number of points, some clearly deliberately hyperbolic.  None were as excruciatingly, horribly ignorant as Tobold's opening line: "Richard Bartle is the co-author of MUD, one of the ancestors of modern MMORPGs. But as he failed to patent any of the inventions he did while creating it, all he got was a Wikipedia entry."  Perhaps Tobold actually believes this to be true, but I thought I recognised a different pattern of behaviour.

Dr Bartle, as even Tobold is surely aware, is an authority figure in the genre.  Tobold was back in the position of being a little kid, being told by someone in authority that he was wasting his time with something silly. Tobold must certainly know that he is throwing away so much of his life through the unbalanced pursuit of a single pastime that he describes.  It seems he is rather sensitive to being told so.  In the time that he spends in MMOs every year he could study for another degree.  He could read every book in the classical canon, and take time to study each.  He could learn to play a musical instrument, or give time to voluntary causes.  I have no doubt that he has an argument as to why his frankly obsessive pursuits are normal and justifiable, and indeed I imagine that he is deeply in denial as to their extent.  But his blog is lengthy and voluble evidence to the contrary.  And when it is pointed out, he reacts as he did in his own comments and posts: furiously.

In a comedic note, Tobold even commented that he thought Bartle was anonymously trolling Tobold's comments pages, sock-puppetting to defend himself.  I wonder if Bartle was even aware that Tobold had mentioned him.  I seriously doubt that he was losing any sleep over it, and am absolutely certain that any responses would be signed: this is an old usenet and listserv warrior, after all.

Anyway, i am getting too worked up about this.  Tobold, as I said in his comments, is a diarist: he spends his leisure time in computer games and then writes about what he did.  His forays into thinking about the nature and characteristics of those games (as opposed to complaining about the surface impact of features) are occasional and unoriginal: they are on the level of a regular bus traveller suggesting better placement of the ashtrays or a sliding step from which to alight.  For him to dismiss and mock someone who helped give him the games in which he spends all the time he can is as ungracious as it is ungrateful, and his criticisms of an interview - one which was undoubtedly given while aware of the responses of the dedicated fanbois - are at best facile.

The funny thing is, by writing his piece, Tobold yet again proved the relevance and importance of his target.