finding kindness online
"This way", the chat says. I see the bubble over their head.
It's around 1 am and I cannot sleep. I decided to fire up the MMO I got into two weeks ago and visit the houses of the people in my friend list so far. We added each other because of nice chat interactions, chopping trees or cooking together in-game. That's all it took, so uncomplicated. I don't need to know anything else about you aside from your kindness and your impeccable ingame design taste and we'll still have a good time.
And now I'm getting a house tour from 'Sameko'. The house plot has an intricate path full of little gardens, houses, pavillons and fences. We first enter an entrance area that looks like a little office to do paperwork when you first arrive. Sameko sits down behind the desk as if to process my arrival. Then they get up again and we continue. We walk over a little pond with a bridge, past little enclosures with shelters for plushies, like a petting zoo, through the dragon themed area with fountains and big blue dragons. We stop at the cocktail bar. Sameko gets behind it and I jokingly ask for a cocktail just the same second they ask if I want one, and they respond with laughing emoji.
We continue on to the next building, designed to look like a big pool. The water in the big rectangle on the floor isn't real, they're just blue tiles, but there's an actual jacuzzi in the corner that fills with in-game water. Sameko goes in first and sits down criss-cross applesauce. I do the same via the emoticon wheel.
After a little while they get up again and I follow. We run through a little park area with picnic tables to enter a big house. The interior is designed to look like a tavern. Once again, Sameko gets behind the counter. I compliment the designs throughout the tour and they thank me.
Continuing on, I see another little petting zoo full of plushies, then a whimsical little forest full of pine trees, flowers and little wolves. The twisting and turning path ends in an outdoor kitchen/barbecue area where we briefly sit down once again. The wooden planks on the floor lead us to an impressive dome made with insect terrariums (you can place star-quality insect and fish in this game so they show up in an aquarium or terrarium). I'm once again extremely impressed what people even think to do with the objects and ways to angle and glitch certain items and I love to see the creativity.
Next up is a beautiful arch made with separate stone blocks and gardenias glitched inside so it looks like it's overgrown with flowers. It leads to a garden full of flower furniture and a pavillon with benches all facing forwards to a kind of altar. "For the weddings" Sameko types in chat. There are no official weddings in the game, but this happens a lot - people make things on their house plot that are more about proof of concept or roleplaying than what is actually yet possible in the game, and I think it's so sweet. The house plot becomes not just a place for their character to live, but something communal, something where they host others and that could be used for something else, too.
Suddenly I realize why I like all this so much - it scratches the same itch as playing with friends as a child. Showing a friend your elaborate set up of your toys (in my case: The vast structures of stables, fences and pastures for little toy horses), giving them figurines to play, pretending this or that exists. It's a big, online dollhouse. We are both moving our little dolls throughout the world.
I wonder how much I will still be seeing - this seems so huge for a housing plot, but it's also just intelligently built. So close to each other, but winding paths make it feel longer and big while still being compact. The next building is a little shed-like structure dedicated to insects. Glowbug plushies are floating in the air, the center of the room holds a tub full of water made to look like a little swamp with plants. I comment on the floating items, knowing the glitch from YouTube tutorials. Even with limitations, people will find a way to design what they want.
The final building is dedicated to being a trophy room for all the ingame trophies and a beautiful blue-themed bathroom. "The end" Sameko says. I feel warm inside. I thank them for the tour and wish them a good day and leave for the next person.
I actually visited 'Nine''s house once before and we briefly talked about how I just started playing. Now I'm back to see what she's up to.
I get spawned on her plot and after looking around a bit, I enter the house. Nine is already there and I sit down on the sofa, as does she. I remember the times as a child when we would just ring the doorbell on someone's house and ask if they have time or can come outside. Unthinkable now. But I can do that in-game. Sort of.
She asks me where I am from and we exchange locations; not that far away from each other. We talk about the plans for our plots and secondary plots. She tells me her second plot is a cooking one for her cake parties, but it is rather barren so the Switch players don't crash. I tell her about my plans to make my second house plot a butterfly sanctuary.
What feels special about this to me is being able to just play hanging out. I chat with people digitally every day, but we don't have avatars, I am not walking around or sitting on sofas or in jacuzzi while we talk. When I play games with people, there is time pressure, there is an objective we work towards, we look at enemies and not each other. This is a nice mix. I don't play VRChat and I have missed out on Second Life or Imvu, and to be honest, I think I prefer having these experiences in a game that does not revolve around that. I don't want hanging out and talking to be the only thing we can do in that game... I think it attracts the wrong crowd. Instead, we are all here for everything else the game offers and these interactions happen organically.
The game is meant to be cozy, positive, focused on collaboration and having fun. And I'd say, so far it is working out. Specific design choices attract certain crowds, and while popular apps have chosen design to attract and foster rage and negativity, the opposite can happen too. I see it here. There's a party bonus, there's a bonus for fishing next to each other, and certain resources can only be harvested together and not on your own. There's no competition or stealing, because everyone that participated gets the same amount of loot and the total isn't split between participants, so you aren't getting less when more people participate and you aren't at risk for getting nothing just for not being fast enough at picking up loot.
That resulted in a nice crowd: Whenever I needed help, people immediately responded. No matter the question, it was answered patiently. People offered to show me things, to lead me to things, to team up for something. Unnecessary rudeness was called out. There is unofficial etiquette to call out rare resources via coordinate in chat and shoot a flare so the location can be seen across the map, as well as waiting for everyone who indicated they are still coming before harvesting a resource. When I missed blueberries for a cake I wanted to make, someone came to my house and we made the cake together with their blueberries.
But I think the most remarkable part of it is the surprising success and use of the request system. In it, you can request a fixed quantity of a resource you have already made or harvested yourself. When you publish it, it gets listed in an admittedly rather hidden menu that also requires you to click through multiple tabs to see them. There is no indication anywhere that a new request was posted, you have to manually check. It is not a trading system, so the other person requesting isn't actually offering anything for you. And if you fulfill a request, you always get the same reward by the system, no matter how expensive or rare the item is that you gave - +1 'Renown'. For comparison, just talking to an NPC usually gives you +5, completing quests and other objectives can give you +10-50. You'd think with all that, no one would even bother with the request system.
But it's actually used a lot. I frequently check the tab and so do others, fulfilling what we can. Whenever I had a request, it was usually fulfilled within minutes, sometimes even seconds. It doesn't actually seem to matter that you don't get a meaningful in-game reward, it seems to be enough that you helped someone (and usually receiving a thanks in chat) and know that in the future, when you need resources, someone is going to do the same for you.
Every time someone fulfills a request of mine, it still feels like the first time when I was amazed that someone would even care. It's awesome. I wish we had more of that in games.
P.S.: Right after I posted, a stranger actually came to visit my house randomly. :)
Published 23 Aug, 2024, edited 2Â days, 21Â hours ago
The game I am talking about is Palia. If you want to add me there, my in-game name is 'Nehalennia Amelia'. My invite link is this. I can't promise to give you a super elaborate house tour like the above since my plot is still small, but we can totally hang out.
The screenshots included were taken the day after while writing this post because I hadn't taken any throughout the initial experience :)