I just contacted radio program "This American Life," which routinely spotlights themes in contemporary society and looks for interesting stories to tell. This was my message, edited to remove some identifiable information and without hyperlinks.
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This American Life,
Hello. I'm writing to you today to tell you part of a story that I think illustrates something deeper and more profound in modern America. It's the story of an electronic community fighting, as we speak, for its very survival. This community just so happens to be centered around a video game, and the video game just so happens to be centered around the nerdiest of fantasies: living a vicarious life as a super hero. The video game is titled City of Heroes, and it's a massively-multiplayer online game that challenges its players to create a comic-book-inspired alternate persona and fight (or perpetuate) crime in the fictitious, not-at-all-related-to-The-Big-Apple setting of Paragon City.
It's also a game that I've gladly paid a monthly fee to play for over seven years now.
It's also a game that is dying.
On August 31st, the game's publisher--the company that provides the infrastructure and support to operate the game--announced that continued support of City of Heroes no longer fit in the company's plans. The publisher, South Korea-based NCsoft, has had a hard time making ends meet of late and has apparently decided that the funds invested in the game would provide a higher return on investment elsewhere. The game's servers would be deactivated, effectively killing the game, by the end of the calendar year. The game's developers--the people that provided the intellectual capital and artistic knowhow to grow the game--were relived of duties effective immediately, and tens of thousands of subscribers--who pay up to $15 a month solely for the privilege of connecting to the City of Heroes servers--were shocked.
You see, the game isn't just a game. It's a community, and a remarkably tightly-knit one at that. People have met, fallen in love, and even gotten married with Paragon City a a backdrop. I personally enjoy talking, on a regular basis, to fans from Las Vegas, Quebec, New Zealand, and Bulgaria from the comfort of my home in Tennessee. We, the City of Heroes community, write. We share, we create, and we get to know one another in a relaxed setting--a sort of virtual Bohemia. And we learn: we learn how to be heroes. The game is known for the fans' advocating of gay rights and the real-world charity drive aptly named "Real World Hero."
So, yes, they--we--were shocked with the news that all of that would be gone. As far as we all knew--and still know--the game is profitable. We couldn't have seen it coming. There was silence. There were tears (which, as a grown man, I'm slow to admit that I personally contributed to in no small quantity). Then, just when it looked like the electronic world we'd invested financially, intellectually, socially, and emotionally into would vanish in a fit of corporate greed that would've made Superman's archenemy, Lex Luthor, proud, we remembered more things we learned from the heroes we pretended to be.
We remembered how to band together. We remembered how to hope. We remembered how to fight the good fight.
We wrote letters to the publisher, NCsoft. We reached out to anyone and everyone with the smallest amount of celebrity to lend to our cause. We started plans to reverse-engineer the City of Heroes server needed to make the game work, with or without NCsoft's support. In the hopes of pressuring NCsoft into bringing the game back to life or, failing that, selling the game to another publisher that would, we began a public relations campaign.
In the interest of full disclosure, that PR campaign is the reason I first thought of This American Life, but it occurred to me later that this is a story with themes that apply to modern America: a grassroots movement against perceived corporate heartlessness. Rallying via the Internet to create change. Even the very idea of a subculture coming to life virtually ex nihilo through online communications and existing entirely in the aether speaks to where America is and where it's going.
I think this is a story worthy of This American Life. I wouldn't be writing if I didn't feel that way. These players have wonderful stories to tell--if you want to hear from players whose lives have been touched by the game and its community, I could produce dozens within a day. I know personally of lives that have been saved because of the social network the game provided. And we will fight, with poise and grace, to save the game that made all of that possible.
If you're interested in following along, the efforts to Save Paragon City! are being coordinated by longtime fansite Titan Network, led by Tony V.
