Why are you here?

May 5th, 2008The Orkfian Times3 comments

When Orkfia started in 2001 the internet was still a brave new world, Mr Average was coming around to using it for some things but it was still a bit of a gimmick. There was no Facebook, no Youtube and the phrase “I bought it on eBay” was still met with a puzzled expression.

The majority of people used the internet for fairly mundane things, either they were learning something or buying something. There were however a minority who had discovered it’s potential for socialising and having fun. Chatrooms were becoming popular along with simple online games. When Orkfia began, it’s players were excited by the idea of playing against real people and using gaming tactics not just against a computer simulation but having to use real human psychology.

Coming from an age of console games that had set conclusions and set paths for you to follow, Orkfia was a relatively new experience. You could make of the game what you wanted – time could be spent chatting on IRC to recruit people and making friends, or the more evil amongst us (me included!) spent time on there trying to work out enemies sleeping/drinking patterns to find a time best to attempt to kill their tribe. Being able to share your sucesses and failures with the wider community was part of the appeal and this was much more fun than the high score table on your playstation.

Orkfia was able to keep it’s popularity for a number of years but with people’s desires evolving faster than ever it has become a niche in a gigantic market. A lot of players were lost to games like World of Warcraft which builds even further on the principles started by games like Orkfia. Particularly in the last two or three years the internet has exploded into a hub of entertainment and social interaction. Gaming has even become mainstream with the majority of new games having some form of connecting with other people via the internet. Orkfia may have been one of the first fish to grow legs and walk on land but others saw what we were doing was cool and ran past us.

So I can’t help but wonder… with all the advances in gaming and the big commercial companies offering us everything our little gaming hearts could desire – why is anyone here at all? A text based game where we have to use our imagination to see our armies rather than seeing and hearing them – are our imaginations really that good? Some people say it is the community that keeps us together, and indeed many people from around the world have virtually grown up together against the backdrop of playing together on Orkfia as they shared their news of passing/failing their exams, a new job..new babies.

Yet there are new people joining all the time so it isn’t just a load of Orkfia veterans with rose-tinted glasses who won’t let go of the past. Something still attracts new players, maybe not in their hundreds and thousands but still a few are joining every week. Whilst some of these newbies become as much a part of the community as the established players a lot of players still have never logged onto IRC and don’t post on the forum. People do still play because of the gameplay.

I don’t know if we will ever get to the stage where thousands of people are playing Orkfia, personally i’m not sure if I would even like that. I think Orkfia does what it does very well. It’s a non commercial game with no ulterior motive, you can choose your level of involvment whether that be just a daily log in to tend your own tribe or actively recruiting a full alliance and enjoying the power of deciding which enemy tribes live or die.

Orkfia is also one of the few games you will ever play where you can choose to influence the future of the game and get involved at staffing level if that is what you want. Compared to the mammoth commercial games available it may be a speck of dust, but I think for at least a few hundred people of many different countries this game means more to them than any of the multi-million dollar games and that’s quite an achievement whichever way you look at it.

~ By Jamzi ~

P.S. As there is a comment facility available in this new look OT it’d be interesting to see your views relating to this article, do you agree with me or have a different take on things?