Category: Uncategorized

Since developing an autoethnography method for my thesis last year regarding permanent death in MMORPG online multiplayer servers I’ve been meaning to test it out with other types of games. Authoethnography in video games, I think, has been emerging as a tool not uniquely used by academia but also casual game enthusiasts and media content creators to explore digital worlds and experiences under a new light. Besides casual playthroughs, much of these explorations also seek to try out alternative versions of games, be it by use of mods or self-imposed challenges. 

One of the most popular recent examples include a Minecraft run seeking to beat the game while following the laws of Islam, which gathered millions of views  (almost 5 million after three months of publishing the video at the time this is being written) and sprouted many other players and content creators to try using that same rule system for themselves in Minecraft, or other games.

While some of these challenges adapt real world ethical codes into the gameplay of video games (another example is beating Breath of the Wild while mantaining a strictly vegan diet) others have a more in-game approach to the game’s mechanics themselves, however I believe most still share a common ground of wanting to integrate real-world experiences into video games that have not necessarilly been designed to accomodate these styles of simulation and meta-roleplay (like deciding, as a player, that Link does not eat meat or any animal-derived products) .

Since I wanted to try out some of these alternative gameplay mechanics myself, and also register them through an autoethnographical methodology, I scouted the best options for me and landed on the Pokemon ‘Nuzlocke Challenge‘ which became popular over 15 years ago through a webcomic.

Im not sure if now is the apropriate time to go into detail about this challenge’s origin, but in short – its a self-imposed gameplay mode useable for any traditional RPG-style Pokemon game in which the player follows some extra rules:

1-If your Pokemon faints during battle, that means they have died permanently and must be released
2-You cannot catch more than one Pokemon for every new area you explore
3-(Optional): You may not catch the same Pokemon twice
4-(Optional): You must give a unique name to each Pokemon you catch.

There are many variations of the rules and I have chosen to integrate the two optional tasks as part of my autoethongraphy since I think the serve to boost the purpsoe of the challenge itself. See, I think besides making the game more difficult (by giving you a permadeath chance and a limited ammount and variety of Pokemon that can be caught throughout a single playthrough), the Nuzlocke Challenge is, at its heart, a narrative device to make the experience of playing Pokemon a more significant thrill of high stakes risks.

Giving your Pokemon unique names makes the player create a more intense bonde than they regularly would with any random Caterpie or Squirtle. Giving them a name and narrative makes the possibility of their permanent deaths way more dramatic. Likewise, every loss has a significant impact on your very limited roster, which under regular gameplay could be potentially infinite.

So, you have a limited number of Pokemon at your disposal and each of them can be permanently lost if the player is careless or luck turns the tide against them.

The real-life experience I believe is being introduced in this form of gameplay is the existence of death itself. Pokemon, being a game primarily targeted at a younger audience, draws away from implementing costly consequences to failure. Pokemon can be ‘revived’ and healed to perfect health conditions. The Nuzlocke Challenge takes the safety net away from the player and makes the game inmediately more tense and scary.

My main interest in conducting this autoethnography will be detail emotional responses to events happening in the game while following the self-imposed ruleset. I imagine it will be sad seeing my Pokemon die, and even harder to actually go through with following the rules and permanently delete my beloved fighting creatures even though the core-game allows me to resurrect them or even cheat by loading up a save file from before any bad decission I’ve made.

I imagine there will be relief, too, whenever I manage to save a Pokemon’s life, and a stronger bonding experience with these few, unique, fragile and mortal creatures than I regularly would during a vanilla type of run. My hipothesis is that this experience will be highly emotional and the permanent death mechanic will completely alter the way the game is played and felt. Aditionally, I chose ‘Pokemon Fire Red‘ for the Gameboy Advance since 1) I have not played it before and 2) It is based on the original Pokemon Red game for Gameboy which I am familiar with, so maybe it will make it easier for me to recognize the Pokemon creatures and the world map’s routes in order to follow the second and third rules more efficiently.

Anyways, for now this is a thought experiment as I am quite busy with thesis work. This might be a distraction but perhaps if I conduct it casually enough it might be fun and enlightining enough to merit actually going through with it. I will post updates when it happens!

I realize some people might just call them ‘video games’ but hear me out because I think there’s a point to be made about a new trend of ‘specific multiplayer events’ within some digital gaming communities. The point started to come across when I first saw the ‘1000 Palyers Simualate Civilization: Rich and Poor‘ Youtube video by content creator ish. Set to a over-the-top narrator voice, the video is a two and a half hour long detailed documentary of a roleplaying event held within a Minecraft server. The event itself consists of a large map with two large islands holding 500 players each. One of the islands is rich in resources while the other one has scarcity. That is the whole premise of the event which during its 10 day course saw its fair share of power struggles, political turmoils, friendships formed and backstabbings performed. Although the video is longer than most blockbusters coming out these days, its two and a half hour runtime falls short of including the massive ammount of content generated by 1000 roleplaying players over the course of 10 days. However, in an extreme feat of editing, the Youtube video has been narratively strong and entertaining enough to warrant massive ammounts of views (27 million so far, three months after its initial relaease) and a steady place in 2025’s Internet pop culture Hall of Fame. This too brought the spotllight to other content creators who were running similar experiments and also influenced many others who began creating their own multiplayer events with specific roleplaying mechanics for different games.

One I’ve become most interested interested in is a Youtube content creator named Harvest who runs specialized Project Zomboid events with hundreds of concurrent players roleplaying specific situations that go on for a few hours of gameplay. The creator uses mods that permit him to observe the whole map, jumping in to interview players ocassionally and also his editing  includes clips recorded by the players themselves for a more comprehensive view of the entire parallel stories happening within each game event. Some of his videos include stuff like ‘100 Players Simulate Medieval Civilization in Project Zomboid‘ which limits players tools to medieval technologies and explores how different types of government can make societies thrive or persih, and ‘100 Players Simulate Ikea Civilization in Project Zomboid‘ which puts a lot of players in an Ikea and leads to faction making, conflict and its own handful of sociopolitical struggles.

From what I’ve seen so far, the settings are mostly thematic and similar interactions seem to occur recurringly. Lord of the Flies style factions and conflicts occur whether the players are simulating life in an airport or a haunted house. Some events will lean more towards cooperation, though conflict probably makes for more entertaining Youtube videos (including a battle royale style event with a $150 prize going to the last survivor). Though Harvest’s Project Zomboid documentation is less elaborate and popular than ish’s Minecraft video, Harvest is putting them out at a much higher frequency of about once a week gaining a rough estimate of around 200k views average per video. Also, he counts with a Discord community of readily available players volunteering to participate in these events. Participation is free but spaces are limited.

Now, what I find really interesting about this are a couple of key elements that made me think ‘oh, these are like LARPs but in a digital format’. Also let me explain why this is different from any traditional RPGs. First, there’s the idea that these gaming events occur only once and although the same settings can be re-used, the experiences and stories created by the 100 individual players are unique. Then, there’s the idea that even though in-game events are not uncommon in, say, most MMOs… here we’re talking about gaming sessions which exists exclusively during the time-limited gaming events held by the creators and their communities. This is not something you hop into as part of a larger game campaign or an event for your ongoing character to participate it. The entirety of the experience from beginning to end exists within the event scheduled shared by players and the admin.

Then there’s a couple of mechanical aspects I find pretty cool and unique compared to actual LARPs. First, the replay value. As the creator can freely document with a free-roaming in-game camera, documentation is made easy. Couple that with players recording themselves and you’ve got an unprecedented level of registration of a massive roleplaying events. The closest thing to doing this in an actual LARP would be making everyone wear a bodycam which would probably be a terrible and invasive idea. Does the Youtube video aspect of it all influence the performativity of the roleplay? Probably; but all roleplay is performative, right? Here it’s just expanding from the usual audience of your peers.

A comparison that might get thrown between LARPs and DARPs (Digital Action Role-Playing) is that a video game will always have interactivity limitations to whatever the in-game mechanics can accomplish, but the same thing can be said about real life. We can roleplay flight but not achieve it during a LARP, and a bunch of stuff can be achieved through roleplay and imagination within any gaming system as well. As far as I can tell, though, Project Zomboid has such a vas array of specific mechanics plus a huge modding community which can probably make it adapt quite well to most roleplaying demands. In any case, the biggest feature of them all is voice-chat communication as most of the action and interactivity comes through player dialogues. Furtheremore, the existence of these DARPs creates an open field for players with physical handicaps which might otherwise prevent them from comfortably participating in LARPs that require mobility, for example. On a final note, though not a minor issue, DARPs are also vastly cheaper to produce and participate in than LARPs.

These are just some initial ideas I wanted to write down, and I’ll be continuing my investigation in the matter since I signed up for Harvest’s events and am looking forward to participating in one to see how it feels as a player. I must say my experience with actual LARPs is quite limited and if you find any bad arguments here that’s probably the main issue. Anways, I’ll update once I’ve gotten more familiar with this thing I’m calling DARPs for now.

TL;DR: Games have come full circle and are now imitating mechanics and styles employed by LARPs which in turn have also adapted some mechanics from both digital and table top roleplaying games. Im calling them DARPS (Digital Action Role-Playing). Why is it different from normal roleplaying games?  Because they take place in a specific timed sessions that exists entirely within said session and have primarily social-based roleplaying mechanics and cant be replicated outside of these cooperatively run events.