| Top Ten Reasons Roleplay is Gone |
[Aug. 18th, 2007|04:12 am] |
"Roleplay is gone."
Once one of Y! Chat's biggest attractions to public rooms is virtually non-existent on the program, save in private. Those who were present for that reason many years ago will remember rooms filled with posts, and the never-ending tension between the lengthy posters and the brief posters. Though it can't be said that the rooms were used purely for that, it certainly wasn't difficult to respond to a character introduction and spend four hours questing and interacting with the imagination of others. But if you entered a Y! Chatroom today, you would be greeted by a flood of out-of-character banter and very little serious interaction where everyone can see. Though the extremity of the problem might be dramatized by those who claim to be "veterans" of the game, it is indisputable that there is, indeed, some sort of decline in the participation of roleplay over the last few years. Chat programs are not the only place this dwindling of interest seems to be; many message-boards that once flourished with ongoing plots are now quickly losing ground and finding themselves roleplay-less. Several "movements" have occurred to "save" roleplay itself or the boards it's housed on, but it seems that the train is only speeding faster toward an inevitable collision with reality. Many believe that it has not disappeared entirely, and probably never will, but that quality roleplay is, for all appearances, gone. I've surveyed websites once bursting with gamers that attracted a lot of attention on the internet, and asked the surviving community members why they thought their sites and roleplay as a whole were failing in that area. The responses I received tended to agree on the ten most prominent reasons roleplay is on a downhill run toward the ground.
1. Veteran egos
The younger or newer members of the community, especially, believe that there is a division between the 'old' roleplayers and the 'new' roleplayers, and that the egotism present in the veteran generation chokes off any possible interaction between them. Proclaimed veterans can be found complaining that the 'old days' were better, and that roleplay in today's chat and site world is gone (in fact, they tend to be the most actively outspoken on the subject). These older members refrain from passing on their experience to the newer players and many have agreed that, as veterans themselves, they signed their own death warrant for roleplay a long time ago (some even admitted they were presently guilty of it).
2. Everyone knows everyone
Especially in the so-called veteran community, everyone knows everyone. When you walk into a chatroom as an older or well-acquainted member, often times a good part of that room will have at least heard of you, seen you around, and know something about the nature of your character. The surveyed as a whole agreed that the old curiosity that used to exist in roleplay is disappearing; the older members know everyone in their community and have roleplayed with most of them in the past, and with very little revolutionary plots coming into view, it tends to get a little bit boring playing with the same people all of the time.
3. No user rooms
Many roleplayers blame Yahoo's lack of userrooms for the abrupt decline of roleplay. With roleplayers being restricted to Yahoo made rooms (of which only nine actually pertain to roleplaying itself, as a place where you can play), and being forced to interact with those who simply want to discuss roleplay, a new division has split between the old frequenters of the rooms and the (for lack of better wording) refugees from the userrooms. These rooms today are mainly populated by out of character chat.
4. Short posting limits
A hindrance in roleplay has always been Yahoo's word limit, which reaches only the length of an average paragraph. To those that post in length, this restriction is frustrating and discourages them from playing, being forced to constantly split up their posts and risk part of them being "eaten" by the chat (where only some show up, and others don't). Programs like YahElite solved this problem for a short while by providing a protocol that allowed almost five times as much text to be posted at once, but this feature has disappeared from yet another good program. This reason does not pertain to those who post briefly (called one-lining or "semi" paragraph roleplaying), because they are not bothered by a word limit they don't exceed. This makes way for such brief posts to influence new users, reducing the quality of the posts and discouraging older members, in turn, from bothering to interact with newcomers.
5. Division of styles
People often disagree in the community on how to roleplay. Some like lengthy, novelesque posts filled with detail. Some, in turn, deem this excessive detail unnecessary and prefer straight-forward posts, long or brief. Others simply gauge by length itself and never post more than a line or two. The styles of roleplay vary so diversely that it's difficult for people to agree on how to play. Styles that are dramatically different cannot work together (for instance, someone who posts four paragraphs on average in detail won't enjoy playing with someone who posts two sentences of straight-forward, descriptionless text). It is difficult to find a middle-ground, or anyone willing to bother trying.
6. Degradation of plot
Older members in particular agree that roleplay plots have degraded over the years. Once, where quests and dragons and mages were advocated as material in a roleplay, now has replaced itself with "furry", perverted or purely sexual, substanceless, and also effortless plots. In fact, it seems that in some roleplays, there is no real plot at all. It is often norm (by appearance) that roleplays be carried in 'short term', or a one-night stand type of situation, where long-terms used to be favored (people could roleplay together for weeks, months, or years in an ongoing plot). Between the catgirls, anthros, overplayed demons and other characters, serious roleplayers are often discouraged from finding roleplay (equine loving doesn't sound too pleasant).
7. Bad apples
When a roleplay community does pop up and flourish, or a plot itself, it's often the case that a few people in the group will ruin it for everyone. It only takes one character to make a plot whose course of progression is up for grabs completely sour, and this seems to happen more frequently than can be tolerated.
8. Messageboards failing
A lot of members are registered to several communities at once. Every day new roleplay websites pop up in an effort to save roleplay or to advertise particular plots or themes. The problem with this is that the roleplay community is only becoming more scattered and disconnected. These quickly made messageboards often fail, though long-running websites aren't innocent of the same. Certain communities which remember glory, such as Ayenee.com or GiveUpAlready.com, seem to be slowly fading away in participation, despite their large member base.
9. Over attention to detail
A complaint held mostly by brief posters, but also by lengthy posters at times, is that people treat roleplay with too much pretentiousness. They pour an excess of detail into their posts, dragging a comfortable paragraph or two into three or four paragraphs of fillers. These posts often disinterest players and discourage them from playing with the person in the future, or in general. The over attention to detail is becoming a serious problem, as roleplayers who are trying to stay serious start to treat roleplay like novel-writing. People don't want to read four paragraphs of your hair blowing in the wind.
10. Not enough time
And finally, the most popular response I seemed to get was that people simply couldn't find enough time to do it anymore. Roleplay requires a commitment that many can't find the time or motivation to put forth. For the older community, this might be because of jobs or college that they've moved onto. For the younger generations, high school and social life. They simply can't put forth more than an hour or two in some cases to be on the internet, let alone spend it playing around.
What are some possible solutions to this problem? I think, personally, one of the biggest issues with roleplay dwindling is disconnected messageboards. A way to promote roleplay would be to interlink these sites together with affiliate pages to attract traffic, to make the community more concentrated. Lesser-known roleplay sites (some I've found on my own) need to be recognized and linked to to promote traffic, and the communities need to become less isolated and function more like a roleplaying network. Sites like http://www.ayenee.com/, a widely used messageboard instantly recognized in the Yahoo community, could try linking to lesser-known sites like:
http://www.adellion.com/
http://bb.surrealtwilight.com/
http://aledeon.net/Community/phpBB2/index.php
http://forums.rpgchat.com/
http://roleplayerguild.com/
http://ayeneerealm.proboards46.com/index.cgi
Or connect with other large communities like http://www.giveupalready.com/ .
Some directories exist where members can create profiles and be looked up by roleplay interest and one can find their contact information, but the system isn't used widely enough. People in general need to stop complaining and start taking action when they hear or find themselves saying 'roleplay is gone', by taking the person saying it aside and saying "I'll roleplay with you". People need to quit being afraid of interaction and start conversing with strangers who are without roleplay as well. It does no good to passively sit by and watch as a whole room of people says 'where's the roleplay?', when they could be playing with each other. So, in my opinion at least, the biggest contributor to no roleplay is the stubbornness and egotistical nature of the players themselves, and their inability to let their pride go and find somebody to interact with. Even when roleplay was abundant, you would find that some people would post the same introduction five or six times in a row and become impatient when someone didn't respond, instead of initiating roleplay themselves. So what do I believe is the biggest problem? Lack of interaction. Posting an introduction and waiting is playing, but not interacting. Walking up to a character that does behave like that and bumping their drink off the table or drunkenly busting a chair over their backs, or just sitting down and talking to them to get a response is interaction.
Roleplay is not gone. |
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