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kimhaneul997 · 7 years ago

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3 Days in “Pocket Mafia”

https://www.flickr.com/photos/156228721@N04/

Game title: Pocket mafia

Game platform: Android/iOS

Publisher: Supercat Inc.

Currency/economy: the basic in game money is coins, and cash currency was called rubies. 25 coins were equivalent to 1 ruby, but exchange between is one sided from rubies to coins. 10 rubies cost 1,000 KRW.

The objective of the game is to eliminate the opponent’s team. There are two teams: the civilians and the mafias. The civilians are to utilize their abilities to find out who the mafias are and vote to kill them during the day, and the mafias are to kill the civilians at night until there are not enough left.

When I first joined the game, I was given the basic avatar called YoungHee (영희). Avatars were not unlimited, and they could be bought from the avatar gaphachon, where a random avatar could be chosen from 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 10 days, 20 days, and 30 days use coupon. The basic avatar and some special avatars (that had animation) were given the unlimited use availability, and had a chance to be picked from the gaphachon with at a very low chance.

I roamed around the game lobby, trying to find people. On top of my avatar’s head is my name, but I realized that a small green plant with two leaves was growing above my name. It was a sign that I was a newbie in the game with a level under 5. People instantly knew I was a newbie at this game. Most people looked down on me and called me stupid (for not knowing the game mechanics and how the mafia game operated), but some kindly helped me understand the game. Most of the time I learned the hard way, tring to understand why certain jobs operated in certain ways by getting killed in game. For example, I didn’t know that the soldier (군인) job had an immunity to the mafia’s attack in the first attempt and the game reveals his job as the soldier for everyone to see and confirm. I was a mafia pretending to be the police and had accused a player as the mafia, but by accidentally trying to assassinate him, the game showed that he was not the mafia, but a soldier which is a job for the civilian’s side, so the community voted to hang me instead, and I lost the game. Even if he wasn’t the soldier, I would still have been voted to die because if he was the mafia then he wouldn’t be able to die during the night.

It was around my tenth game when I saw an interesting player. He was very silent and said nothing since entering the room. But what I found interesting was that he was using a unique avatar, the dracula, and his name was colored red. His name was decorated with a golden nameplate, and the number “1” hung next to it. I checked his level: it was 60, the highest in the game at the time. When the game started, he seemed silent, but then instantly picked out the mafias in less than 30 seconds. We watched with awe as he correctly found the mafias and hung them successfully and led the game to a win. His name is “무료”, meaning “Free”. He left the room as soon as the game ended, and I wasn’t able to talk to him, but I realized that this mafia game had a mastery in which you could improve and become better at the game.

The game has a community space called the town square (광장) where users can go to and socialize. There I found many users with red names and dracula avatars. By then I had got rid of the newbie plant, but I was pretty distinguishable as a very common player without any unique qualities. My name tag was just plain white, and I only had the Basic avatar, Younghee. There I met a girl named Aing (“아잉”), who was level 50 and in the second to top clan named “Ranker”. At the time I was level 15, but I still dared to talk to her, because I had a lot of questions regarding the game. Aing friended me in the game and I met a lot of people in her clan, who were all level 40 or above. The mafia game is a game where you had to convince others that you are not the mafia and the other person is, so there is a lot of trash talk, and strong emotions come and go in the process. The Ranker clan valued honor and dignity, so they did not trash talk to other users in the game, but instead focused on logic and deceit to win the conversation and make the game go the way they wanted. Meeting those people made me want to join the clan, but it was already full (20 users), and my level was too low to join such a prestigious clan. But as the days went, me, Aing, Thunder, and Police (some of the other members of Ranker clan) got closer and we met and played together every day, sometimes until 5 AM in the morning. At the time the clan master of the Ranker clan was “Robber”, and Aing was the sub master of the clan. However, as our relationship in our circle improved, Aing considered adding me into the clan. Eventually, someone left the clan because of personal issues, and Aing invited me into the clan. I became a Ranker, and I was the lowest level player in the clan at the level of 20. Many of the clan members disliked the fact that they were accepting low level players into the clan, but Aing told me that I needed to prove of my worth in the clan.

I concentrated more when I played mafia rounds to better understand how the game worked. For example, small things such as the visibility and the invisibility in certain jobs during night and that the doctor cannot heal himself after the first night could be the very evidence that a certain player could be the mafia. And I practiced the art of deceit, where I needed to calmly disprove the accusations pointed towards me with other convincing evidences, false ones if needed be. Slowly but steadily my skills improved, and I was eventually able to take on the skills of the original Rankers. Perhaps it could have been the environment they made that made it possible for me to learn faster. Often times they deceived me very easily to win my vote and then used my naiveness to gain what they needed to win in the game. Not only the game skills and understanding, I also learned the proper terminology of the game. This is because every day has limited time of around 2 minutes, and to share all the information between the jobs and decide the suspects one had to use proper terminology to quickly get the information across to other players. The game has around 100~150 terms that are used in the game, starting from “가경(fake police)”, “직공(직업공개, revealing your job”, and “닥3선4후(first vote to kill player 3 and then vote to kill player 4 the next day) to “위군(disguised as the soldier job)” and “가군(fake soldier, target to vote to kill)”, and so many more. Memorizing all the terms and being able to adeptly use them in game required a lot of time and memory, but as I got them all, I was able to use them and communicate much more efficiently than before.

Soon after joining the Ranker clan, a smaller circle formed between me, Aing, and Thunder. Aing told me that she had a crush on Thunder. And not even a week later, the two were couples in the game. I didn’t know such a relationship could exist in a game like this, but it happened and they seemed happy for a while. Online relationships were very interesting. The only thing that you get to see about your online girlfriend or boyfriend is their avatar and the way they type. Their type showed them what kind of person they were, and unless both sides reveal their irl identity (“in real life” identity), they will only know about the online version of each other. Aing did not want her in real life identity revealed; so Thunder respected that and did not ask for photos of her. To be honest, the relationship was fragile, because neither Thunder nor Aing could keep track of how each other are doing, and the only mode of communication was through the game: any other method of receiving information was unavailable. This meant that they had to trust each other that they did not have any boyfriend or girlfriend outside the game. Surely, only a few weeks after they made out with each other, they broke up because they knew too little about each other, thus breaking the inner circle between us, but they still stood close to me.

Meanwhile, I had put all my focus on becoming a better player in the game, and I had improved vastly. I had surpassed many of my clanmates in terms of success in the game, including Free, the player I met back when I was still a newbie. The game values five qualities that define a “successful player” in a mafia round. The first is Command. Depending on how well a player commands the other users and how convincing his argument is, the game can fall his/her way. The second is Resoning/Logic. A good player always has strong arguments that can convince many in a short amount of time. He is also good at finding the real mafia. The third is Trace. A good mafia does not leave traces behind or make mistakes when he talks, accidentally giving away hints about himself. The fourth is Design. A successful mafia will plan his kills in certain ways to make sure the civilian team does not find about himself using their abilites. The last is Mentality. A successful mafia does not give up even when the game is running very badly for him, and is capable to turning the tables to finally win in the end. I had worked on these five qualities, as well as a sixth one that I call Manners. A good player does not act emotionally in game; just because the civilians guessed wrong and are adamant with their wrong decision does not mean that I could start adressing them with inappropriate language. Eventually, I proved the clan of my worth, and by then Aing was the clan master, and she chose me to be her sub master. By then we were both level 60, the highest known level in the game. We worked hard to keep the Ranker clan in the highest ranks of the game.

But after Aing and Thunder broke up, Aing decided that she needed to focus more on her schoolwork and entrusted me with the clan. I became the clan master, and by then nobody dared challenge or question me of the chair. Thunder also became uninterested in keeping Ranker’s political position in the game and left the clan. He went to make a new clan named Shalom, and I helped him in many ways to make it thrive. A little sixth grader girl named Sebyul was the most active in the new clan, and she impressed all of us by showing what she was capable of in terms of keeping the clan alive and active; she constantly took care of the clan’s maintenance works and added new players and removed inactive players in the guild, better than adults at times. Because of this sudden demolition of the friendship circle, I wandered around in the game and met new people.

Of the new people I met (around 200 users, and I can still contact around 80 of them today) I met a girl named Gray. Gray was two years older than me, and she did not really play the mafia game itself, but rather roamed around the town square and talked to many other users. We were talking and then we both came to the subject about music and singing. We found out that we both really liked singing. Gray asked if she could call my cell phone in real life, and though I was unsure, I realized of her innocence and gave in. We both sang on the phone and talked and laughed about a lot of things. It came to the point where I told her I went to Yonsei University. She then told me she knew someone in the mafia game who studies in Yonsei University, and introduced me to him. His ign (“in game name”) was Yonsei, and we both introduced ourselves. He was an upperclassman, so though I wanted to show respect, he was too friendly and told me not to worry about such things. He was quite talented in the game, but he did not necessarily enjoy socializing with people. He told me to contact him when I went to Sinchon so he could get me a meal, but to this day I do not have the courage to meet him in real life. Through this experience, I learned that the next level of friendship in online games was to open up to the identity in real life. Once that happens, a transfer happens where an in game user actually seems alive and active. Whereas before our squad of users would sigh every time someone had to leave the game to do other things in real life, after the exchange of information regarding real identity, we started to understand their situation and empathise with the user who had to leave because we knew about their life. Another thing that changed is that users started to watch what they say after they revealed their identities.

For a few months, I joined a clan named “ExtremePro”, where only the best players were accepted. The clan master was a user named Wrecked. Wrecked was a man with great potential. Not only was he very smart in the game, able to create outstanding plays that nobody could ever think of, he was a natural leader who attracted people. With his humor and good nature, he kept bringing people into his circle. I felt a sense of belonging in his clan. In ExtremePro, everybody participated in clan activities very eagerly, and that created a fun atmosphere. We all shared our Kakao contacts, and created a group chat where often the notifications would stack in hundreds because of the liveliness in the chatroom. When someone in the clan was having trouble, in game or in real life, we would all gather and do whatever we could to help him/her. We had certain catchphrases that only we would understand, and we would regularly meet at 10PM and made it a systematic thing. I realized that a subculture had formed through these practices, and I was proud to be a part of the clan. Wrecked started to date one of the clanmates names Dahee. What was significantly different about Wrecked’s relationship with Dahee from Aing’s relationship with Thunder was that Wrecked actually went out on a real date with Dahee irl (in real life), and the two became couples after that. After a few months, the Ranker clan needed urgent help, so I had to leave ExtremePro and go back to being Master of the Ranker clan. Even when I was in a different clan, Wrecked made me feel like I was still one of his friends, and we kept the good relationship going.

One user who I really got close with was a user named Lady. She was ranked #2 in the game in terms of popularity because of her events, manners, and appearance. She revealed her face in the game’s naver cafe, and opened many events where the winners were awarded rubies (bought with real life cash). We became close because we found common characteristics that we both shared. We had both lived overseas (she lives in Canada), and we were both Christians. So we traded our Kakao contacts and would voice call each other, often when we were both in-game. Sometimes we would talk for such a long time that I would see the morning sun rise. I was sure I had started calling her at 11PM. We shared our troubles and stories to each other, and we became quite close friends considering it was someone I met online. Then last summer, she told me she was coming to Korea and wanted to hang out with me. We met up in Gangnam, and we ate dinner together and played Room Escape, in real life! I realized that by then she wasn’t a user who I occasionally talked to in game. She was a real friend who was willing to help me when I was in trouble. Last year in December, she became popular on youtube for uploading humorous content of herself and her life in Canada. I still talk to her today, and though we don’t play the game anymore, we’re still good friends.

Another user who was quite popular in the game was Feminism. Actually, she was ranked #1 in the game’s leaderboard. She spent a great deal of time and effort on embellishing her farm, which was personal space where the owner could invite users to come and chat. She bought a lot of rubies to spend on her farm: decorating it with purchasable objects, expanding the farm and increasing the limit of the number of users who could be on that farm. She gained in popularity in the community because of her farm.

Because the game deals with deceit and competition, the community of the game also reflects such values. Quarrels, arguments and fights between players were common, so the GMs (Game Master) had to create some disciplinary policies. The most basic type of discipline was sending a user to a specific place that acted as jail. The user could not leave the room until the duration of penalty is over, and he/she cannot talk nor use private chat in that room. Other users could enter the room and see the user behind bars, but they also cannot speak in that room except some encouraging words like, “Let’s make this game a great place again”, or “I love you”. However, some users could not be corrected with this discipline, so harsher punishments took place depending on the level of violence the user commits. These included Account bans and Device bans. Account bans meant that the account is no longer able to be logged into: everything, including all avatars and items in the game, were lost forever. However the user was still able to get in the game using different accounts that he/she owned to continue violating the game rules and harming the game community. To prevent the abusers from entering the game, Device bans were used. Device bans meant that regardless of how many accounts the user could have, the device the user was using was banned. Though there are multiple ways to get around this and rejoin the server by resetting the ip adress of your device, many users who did not know such methods were permanently gone from the game. Feminism was a victim of such. Because her farm was filled with many people, quarrels and arguments broke open often, and she was involved in many of them. Though the GMs knew that she was just trying to protect her farm, inappropriate language was still prohibited, so Feminism was often sent to jail. Eventually, the GMs could not contain her by just sending her to jail, so they had to ban her device for a couple of weeks. During that time, Feminism used spies to find out real information about the users she quarreled with, and blackmailed them with real threats. The situation was about to turn into lawsuit material, so I called Feminism’s number and had to stop her. She did not listen to me, but she was betrayed by her spies as they leaked information about her to her enemies, who uploaded photos of her and her life on the cafe. They all got permanently banned from the game, but recently I heard they moved onto a different online game and were repeating the same process there.

It was one typical day in the game where I was playing the game and socializing with my friends when a crazy thing happened. Somebody came into the farm we were in and told us that Game Masters had appeared in the town square, in the form of avatars! We all rushed to the town square and watched with amazement. There were a total of four GMs: Supercat, CodeK2, PixelK, and Numik. After that incident, GM PixelK often came to the game in the avatar Endymion. There was a sudden increase in the popularity of Endymion amonst the users. PixelK was kind and passionate about the game, and he enjoyed talking with users. I became very close friends with him, and he secretly shared his Kakao adress with me, so I could chat with him even outside the game. His job was creating all the avatars and designing the UI of the game. He was also responsible for handling the disciplinary actions and punishments for the users who harmed the community. I helped him with his job, finding users who used inappropriate language and looked for trouble. PixelK offered me the abilities of a GM, where I could kick players out of the room and control the users’ statuses, but I declined the offer because it would have not been fair to anybody else and I was not sure I would be able to resist abusing it for personal benefits. Numik was a new GM, but his personality was quite the opposite of PixelK, because he taunted users and had a negative attitude towards the game. The users complained about Numik ’s attitude, and instantly he was not allowed in the servers, or so that’s what we think happened, as he never appeared before us again.

One day me and my friends were roaming around the town square when a player rampantly screamed in the chat, telling everyone to quit this game. He was apparently a user from the previous game “LostGuns”, a game made by Supercat (the same company that programed this game). He said that the GMs had betrayed and left LostGuns, leaving all the players behind and published Pocket Mafia. He prophesized that the same will happen to this game as well; Supercat will soon stop updating this game and move on to publish a new game. We didn’t take his words seriously; as long as PixelK was in the game, this game would receive continuous support and release new contents. Then suddenly one day, PixelK announced of his depart from the Supercat company. He wanted to make his own indie game and create a community where we wouldn’t have to fight or argue with one another because of the game’s nature. We all gathered at the town square on PixelK’s last day as a GM. Around 50 people gathered to say their last goodbyes to him, and I can say it was quite a sad moment. I didn’t know parting with an online user could be this difficult. After PixelK left the game, the GMs really did turn their backs on this game. They released a new game called “GrowStone”, and completely submerged themselves on developing that game. It was very saddening, because users started leaving this game one at a time because they saw no future with this game.

Disaster came after PixelK left the company. All the game abusers surfaced all at once, and fights and quarrels were unstoppable. One user named “Beggar” developed a hack for the server’s rubies and had attained a way to have infinite rubies. The chaos happened to be the same time I needed to study for my finals, so I passed my clan leadership to Aing and decided to stop playing the game until the finals were over. Aing passed the clan leadership unto a player called Pluto because of the same reason, and Pluto, with the sudden loss of around ten players from the clan, found it difficult to keep the clan points up to date to keep the position of 2nd best clan in the server. Then a player named “5” came to Pluto and told him that he could instantly bring 10 players into the clan. To bring players into the clan, one needed to be at least the sub master. Pluto made a deal with 5 to pass the leadership, bring in 10 players, and instantly receive the leadership back. But as soon as Pluto passed on the leadership, 5 kicked everybody out of the clan, including Pluto. Pluto, in rage, contacted Aing, who contacted me about the situation, but I had turned off all notifications to focus on my finals. Meanwhile, 5 brought in players of his own and even changed the name of the clan from Ranker to “WeNeedToTalk”. The biggest problem was this: you cannot have the same user have two of his/her own accounts in the same clan because it goes against the policy of raising clan points. 5 had three accounts that he controlled in the clan, and the penalty of that was losing 50% of all clan points gathered up to that point. That meant that the clan would lose its position of being 2nd place in the game. I finally read the message Aing sent to me and came into the game. I talked with 5 about this, and requested to give the clan back to the rightful owner, but 5 insisted that it was Pluto’s fault for being so naive in the first place to pass on the leadership. I told 5 that Pluto had made a deal with him and that it was 5 who broke the deal. The #1 clan and #3 clan joined in with me to tell 5 that he had done wrong and the clan master needs to be restored. They said this because they knew how hard it was to bring a clan up to be in the top 3 ranks, and 5 and his new clanmates did not deserve that glory. I was friends with the #3 clan’s master and sub master, named Nine99 and Yeonjoo respectively. 5 opened a secret chat with me, and he told me he wanted to destroy the clan they had raised, and once that was done, he would give back the Ranker clan’s leadership. He demanded me to help him destroy the clan, but I rejected his demand, telling him that I won’t hurt my friends’ clans to get my clan back. In rage, 5 deleted Ranker clan, and the clan that had been keeping its 2nd place for a year and a half was gone forever. Estimated loss was around 2,400,000 KRW, in real money. PixelK couldn’t do anything about it because he wasn’t the GM anymore, but he told me that the other GMs were aware of the situation yet did not bother to step in. Somehow word of the secret chat got leaked and Nine99 and Yeonjoo heard of what happened. Since the #2 clan got deleted, the #3 clan filled the place and became the new #2 clan. Nine99 and Yeonjoo saw my loyalty in friendship and changed their clan name into Ranker and offered me the master’s position, which meant a huge thing in the game. I thanked them for the kindness, but I refused the offer to be the clan master despite my clanmates asking me to continue. I already had gone through a lot, and I thought it was ultimately my fault for letting such a thing happen to Ranker clan, so I was not worthy to be a clan master anymore. I told Nine99 to take care of the original Ranker members. So to this day, the #2 clan is still Ranker (the new Ranker), but the clan master is Nine99.

Bringing all of this into a close, I still feel like I have many things I missed in this report, such as the competitive ranked gaming system and how friendship worked in the game by sending each other rubies as gifts. However, I can proudly say that I had experienced everything about the game, and I do not have regrets about it. I still contact some of the friends I met from that game. When I log into the game from time to time, there are still people who greet me and plead me to stay. PixelK told me the other day that he was almost through making his own game, and he wants me to help him as a GM when the server opens. I offered to help as a beta tester, but I still need to think about whether I will help out as a GM. In conclusion of this game, I was able to better understand how people act differently online than in real life, and how the line of a virtual world and reality could be merged, blended, or even substituted depending on how you experience it.

#PocketMafia 포켓마피아

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