MMO Language as a Power-up

While the text of chatter in MMOs has been analyzed by their weight in discourse or the social patterns they imply, less often we think about what it could mean were it directly integrated into the rule-set of the game world.

An extreme example of this would be a place where our words can have god-like impact: "part the sea", and the zone transforms... A griefer's paradise; a short-lived place of fire and brimstone. A lesser example would be where the text we type can manipulate an in-game system that in turn might impact some change... e.g. magical incantations:

Round about the cauldron go;   
In the poison’d entrails throw.   
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights hast thirty-one   
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,   
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.    
                   (MacBeth, Act IV, Scene I)

The ability of in-game language to work change in the game world has been limited to manipulating the social and/or cultural design. In some cases this has meant extending the textual medium with in-world verbs. For example, the language of MMOs have borrowed heavily from MUD traditions which extensively used "pose" (emote) elements. True expository - part linguistic and part exhibition:

Pose: What allows you to do something besides say things to other players. Pose commands are generally “:” or “;” and allow you to do things like “:wonders if you are accepting one-eyed dwarves?” or “;’s favorite alignment is Neutral-Hungry.’ Which would give you the respective poses of “Guest wonders if you are accepting one-eyed dwarves?” and “Guest’s favorite alignment is Neutral-Hungry.” (Kathy Pulver, from here).

Lynn Cherny wrote of these pose/emote commands as the "objects and commands that make ritual utterances easier to execute." It is through the creation of these objects that "culture becomes reified with the environment." A culturally-impactful MMO language takes on sharper edges when its vocabulary is underlined by status, as for example, occurs when pose/emote commands are doled out to high-levels:

...On Combat MUDs, (LP, Diku, Cold, etc) until you're an upper-level character you probably won't have access to a 'pose' command at all. In that case you'll be using "atmosphere commands," or words you type to produce a generic pose (smile, grin, frown, etc) with your name plugged in. For example, if someone on a Combat MUD types "laugh" the MUD will produce "Name laughs hysterically." (Now, Name is replaced by the person's character name, of course. And while he or she might not be laughing hysterically per se, on a Combat MUD they don't get to choose such subtleties.) (Claire Benedikt, from here)

Interestingly, it is left to the proletariat to devise the ingeniuous syntax of infixing as a counter-weight to elitist tendencies (below, emphasis added):

While the phrase "infix actions" is by far not the official name for this communication aide, it does describe them well. An English teacher would tell you an 'infix' is a word (more rarely an entire phrase) inserted in the middle of another word to modify it. A good example would be the exclamation "un-f*ckin'-believable!"

Infix actions are verbs or short verb phrases set apart by unusual punctuation (usually asterisks) used to modify the tone or mood of a sentence. They're sometimes found in the middle of a line, and are often tacked onto the end, sort of like a written-out smiley face. The best way to understand this is through some examples:

Claire says, "Hey! *waves wildly* Look over here!"
Elanor says, "Claire? Is that you? *blink*"

When asterisks are being used for emphasis (as described in the first part of this chapter), the person might switch the punctuation they use for their infix action to differentiate.

For example: Steam says, "Better yet, what am *I* doing here? >confused look<"

Infix actions are used almost as commonly as smileys by the online community. You'll find them in email, in newsgroup posts, and all over. On Combat MUDs they become especially important when the emote or pose commands are limited to upper-level players. (Claire Benedikt, from here)

Language is power in MMOs. It is certainly implicit to the social norms and networks in which we participate or create. Perhaps, too, one day we may choose to make its power more explicit, to festoon it from our syllables. If only we could reduce our words, somehow, to a game world resource implication, measured and weighted precisely... Eve-Online perhaps faintly hints of this by charging players 100 ISK (in-game currency) to send in-game mail (btw, not chat)...

What if, some day, we were measured by the kind of words we use, could this be leveraged by designers to make our words magical, again? If all our incantations were not so spilt lightly, but instead carefully crafted, considered, and measured, could this not lead to role playing?