The Corsair Demographic, Part 4: To Lead the Guilty

"Yet was not Conrad thus by Nature sent
To lead the guilty—guilt's worst instrument

[...]

My very love to thee is hate to them,
So closely mingling here, that disentwin'd,
I cease to love thee when I love mankind"

 

Lord Byron - The Corsair

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"They were driven enough to excell, but relaxed enough to socialize. And they were crazy enough to want to leave Earth forever, but sane enough to disguise this fundamental madness [...] They had to be alienated somehow, alienated and solitary enough to not care about leaving everyone they had known behind forever—and yet still connected and social enough to get along with all their new acquaintances"

 

Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars

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About three months ago I ran a series of four posts on the sort of clientelle which would necessarily populate a persistent virtual world game, a true MMO, in light of our escapist fantasies' heavy slant toward romantic adventure stories like The Corsair. For the last two posts, I'd like to propose two reasons why such a pirate crew cannot be reliably recruited.

First, the problem of independence. Multiplayer games intuitively appear more social than single-player variants because... well, yeah. However, a persistent world's persistence does not necessarily include player associations. Each individual must plot one's solitary long-term course, mingling periods of direct cooperation with long stretches of independent exploration, adventuring, character customization / advancement, moving from guild to guild through their inevitable declines and falls. The intrepid pirates best suited to building up a virtual hearth and home and living much of their lives in imaginary worlds are those who hate reality enough to abandon it.

Paradoxically, the most social of game genres must root its communities in individuals who, regardless of their prosocial ambitions and self-delusions, must carry a fundamentally antisocial streak.

A compromise could be found by formalizing more and more interactions through the game interface instead of the chat box, eliminating the need for discussion, bartering, pleading, motivating, etc. - but that in itself might alienate even more of the more casual target audience. In fact, this very series of posts started with the observation that even as online games have lost more and more functionality, lost all purpose for players to associate with each other, lost even the last traces of interesting conversation, guilds have been retained in name only, as chat boxes in which participants may find verbal validation for their existence. The rabble, the vermin, will not admit to being only set pieces in each others' personal fables; they desire each others' vacuous company. They want to haggle, flatter, plead and cajole each other where formal rosters and automated economic interactions would be faster, clearer and fairer.

And of course, the more you allow the vermin to impinge upon their betters' perception, the more of your best customers you will lose. Why should I put up with their stupidity when my fleets in Stellaris are so much more cooperative, allowing for such grander schemes? How can you disentwine my love of immersion and novelty from my hatred of the rabble?