ForumWarz: Maturity Time Machine

Game culture and internet culture aren't necessarily married, but for a good many of us, at least, they make dirty, salacious bedfellows. I grew up in a pretty wired household, as did many of my fellow game geeks. Do you remember the very first time you connected to the internet and realized that you were linked up to people? While I suspect that's a question that we'll be asking as we rock away our twilight years on a porch at sunset -- or in the dark corner of an underfunded nursing home -- it's worth reminiscing.

Tapping into the weird world of BBS, Usenet and later, a very primitive AOL felt like burrowing into some private science-fiction underground. With all of this new connectivity came a wave of very specific culture that's evolved over time; while the internet promised to be the great equalizer, joining disparate societies and exposing them to one another, this group of diehards, of which I suppose I'm a part, seems to have just burrowed deeper into their own world governed by memes and extremes.

I confess I did time as an obnoxious 14 year old scrolling scripts in AOL chat rooms and calling people names, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I still lurk certain message boards, and more rarely, dip my toes in a flamewar or two. I've never participated in forum raids, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't watch them. Okay, and laugh, occasionally.

But I laugh less and less these days; I think this is called "growing older," wherein one maintains an interest in one's wilder fellows of yesteryear without necessarily participating. It's somewhat akin to being the guy from the boys' club who gets married to a nice girl and no longer goes out keg-standing and cow-tipping, but likes to hear his buddies' stories on the phone. I'd even call it "maturity" -- or I would, if I hadn't gotten a kick out of ForumWarz.

This browser-based RPG is a send-up of just about every facet of internet culture you've ever seen or participated in. It's not worksafe; moreover, it's offensive and pretty gross. But it's so commendably apt that I found myself more than once halfway between revulsion -- was I ever really part of this? and hilarity -- wow, fun times.

The vulgarity is crass, if appropriately realistic, but it's actually deceptively complex, as a little game. If you're into "real" internet life, I highly recommend the parody. The interface's resemblance to the internet's cruder days is charming, as is the little mockery of Google's GTalk (Sentillion's STalk) that introduces the story to you with pop-up IMs from teh interwebs' usual cast of characters -- the otaku, the pedo, the haxx0r, and those of the sort of which The Rules prohibit mention.

Could it afford to be a bit more subtle? Maybe. But perhaps that's just my old-timey reverence talking. Certainly, it's worth checking out for the innovative way in which it makes a game out of the web, a popular concept these days and generally unveiled with a lot less useful, less entertaining and more hippy-dippy aplomb.

--Okay, you know what? On second thought, I don't wanna grow up; I don't really want to find myself at a point in life where ForumWarz is no longer funny to me, where I don't get the in-joke. Long live the internet, original gangsta.

Bonus content: Waxy.org's Andy Baio interviews ForumWarz's creators for Gamasutra.