Community Blog Spotlight: Restless Finger Syndrome
Each week, Community Manager Laura Genender takes a look at one of the MMORPG.com blogs. This week, she looks as a mock-ad about Restless Finger Syndrome.
While browsing the blogs this week, I came across Jesad’s entry in his popular blog “In My Understanding.” While Jesad has often featured a great sense of humor, I felt that this week’s blog entry took it to a whole new level. Hats off to you, Jesad.
This week’s entry was written in a serious tone – it’s an advertisement for the Zen of Standing Still, a cure to the Restless Fingers Syndrome. “Do your fingers bother you?” The mock ad begins, “Do you find it hard to keep from pressing the movement keys? Maybe you just can’t help yourself when that stray mob passes by while you are supposed to be waiting for the rest of your group to assemble to enter a dungeon. If you have ever experienced any of these symptoms you may be suffering from Restless Finger Syndrome.” Following the introduction is a mock player testimonial given by Newton and Hardcore, the two personas Jesad uses to express his points in his blog. States Newton, “I don’t know what happened. One moment we were just standing there and the next thing I know we were getting clobbered by these huge big ugly things! I told the rest of the team that it wasn’t me but the truth of the matter was, I just couldn’t control myself!” Responds Hardcore, “I had been waiting for these guys to get their act together for over 20 minutes but some fool kept running off and pulling stuff and getting himself killed. Finally I just dropped the group!” Jesad’s humor hits a cleverly close note with most gamers; I’m sure we’ve all been impatiently waiting for a group, or we’ve watched some newbie jump up and down while they wait for you to finish buffs. Gamers are notoriously impatient, which leads to the “RFS” that Jesad describes. One humorous part of his examples, to me, is that ‘Hardcore’ is just as impatient as his newbie friend, showing exasperation after 20 minutes of waiting. The cure to this, of course, is Jesad’s product: Standing Still. “Thanks to ‘Standing Still,’ R.F.S. sufferers can find fast relief…that’s right, Standing Still promises not only to relieve the nasty symptoms of R.F.S but it can improve your gaming experience, increase your reputation, and allow you to actually get something accomplished in only a short amount of time in any group.” As with any good commercial, we get to hear from our satisfied customer, Newton: “I can now join a group, get set up and buffed, and hammer through any situation in record time. And people like me so much now that they don’t even want to leave my groups, EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE TO WORK IN THE MORNING!” As with all miracle cures, Standing Still has its negative side effects, such as “momentary boredom, falling asleep at the keys, and wife agro (once she looks over and sees that you are not actually doing anything).” All said and done, Jesad’s blog gave me a chuckle and a smile. Yet as they say, every good joke is seeded in truth. Is RFS real? As a raid leader, I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve seen raiders run in circles, jump up and down, cast spells over and over, launch themselves at the nearest trash mob…anything that gives them something to do. Heck, even I find myself twitching every now and then, strafing back and forth or jumping over the “cracks” of tile textures. In EverQuest I know many users who play gems or Legends of Norrath while raiding or hunting; in numerous games I’ve met boxers who get bored just playing one character. The hardcore gamer community seems so hardcoded to multitask, and so easily bored when there isn’t something new to do; games constantly have to give us more toggles, spells, skills, effects, and progression lines to keep us happy. Just earning EXP isn’t enough anymore; we want gear, storylines, quest progression, regular XP, specialized XP, crafting XP, evolving items, and the kitchen sink. I’m curious – how many gamers and posters out there feel that they have “RFS”, as Jesad dubs it?
Check out the original entry here.
