Furcadia is a massively multiplayer online social game set in a fantasy world inhabited by anthromorphs. It is often considered a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, but this term is inaccurate because the game has no built-in RPG element. For example, Furcadia has no combat simulation system, a staple of traditional role-playing games.

Contents

1 History 2 Playing Furcadia 2.1 Characters 2.2 Dreams 3 The Beekins 4 Business Model 4.1 Wings 4.2 Premium Avatars 4.3 Portraits 4.4 Sponsorship 4.5 Roses 5 Underlying Principles 5.1 Fairness 5.2 Opting In 5.3 Sovereignty 5.4 Community 5.5 Patience 5.6 Socialization 5.7 Diversity 6 External Links

History

Furcadia is one of the oldest multiplayer computer games with graphics. It was developed by Dragon's Eye Productions (DEP), which opened the game to the public on December 16, 1996. The original creators, who go by the pseudonyms Felorin and Talzhemir, first developed the core technology in 1995 in a preliminary project called DragonSpires , a graphical MUD with very simplistic real-time combat, that used a DOS-based client limited to the 16 EGA colors. One year later, peaceful Furcadia was opened featuring art with a 256 ("indexed" color or "VGA") palette.

Two additional people are now credited as Creators for their significant contributions over the next 8 years.

Emerald Flame developed (and coordinates) the Beekin help staff project. She has been the game's producer and community director for many years.

Sanctimonious, who created the game's editors, is heavily involved in coding the client and the server. There are numerous "behind the scenes" web interfaces and databases that he also creates and runs, such as the tracking system for which Beekins have attended which classes.

In the game, speech by Felorin, Talzhemir, Emerald Flame, and Sanctimonious may be thus be tagged with a purple wizard's hat and the letter C, standing for 'creator'.

DEP makes continual improvements to Furcadia and the game is much more sophisticated than the original DragonSpires. As of 2004, the game is (and always has been) in alpha testing.

More on Beekins

Furcadia has a brilliant community spirit, which is helped by the BEEKINS (ordinary players who represent Beekin the Help Dragon), volunteers from around the world.

Playing Furcadia

Characters

As of 2005, tens of thousands of players have created characters on Furcadia. A character on Furcadia is called a 'furre' (pronounced like the word fur) by Furcadia's population. In Furcadia's fiction, a furre is an intelligent humanoid mammal. Furres can be one of several species:

• Feline
• Canine
• Lapine
• Equine
• Musteline
• Squirrel
• Rodent

In the game, each furre appears as an avatar that can walk, stand, sit, and lie down. A furre can be one of three genders (male, female, and unspecified), but its avatar form is based solely on its species; there is no way to differentiate a male furre from a female furre merely by looking at its avatar. Players can customize their avatars by choosing colors from a small palette. After they've created their characters, players can move around maps and join in a wide variety of discussion and roleplay.

As of 2004, Furcadia regularly sees between 1,000 and 3,600 players at peak times.

Dreams

The focus of Furcadia is user-created content . Every player automatically receives an art editor and a map creating program. Their creation, referred to as a Dream, is then uploaded to the game. It remains attached to the main areas so long as it is inhabited, and, if unoccupied, it eventually goes away. Dreams can include the use of MIDI (.MID) and .S3M format music files, and .WAV sound files.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of a Dream is Felorin's coding language, DragonSpeak , commonly referred to by players as "DS". It can be edited in a text editor or in the Furcadia Dragonspeak Editor by author "Reunion". Each line of DS is English, with pound signs where numbers may be specified. It was designed for easy use by children ages 12 and up. It is a limited computer language designed to minimize the chance of "messing up". For example, it does not have looping or branching statements, so no knowledge of sophisticated computer logic is necessary to use it. If read aloud, a DragonSpeak script sounds like English.

Dreams can use bots to accomplish things that DragonSpeak cannot.

The Beekins

The game is supported by a structured volunteer group called the Beekins, who assist players and, in some cases, enforce Furcadia's rules of conduct. The Beekin program is divided into several groups based on function:

• Bugge Hunters, who discover, document, and eliminate bugs in Furcadia's client and server code.
• Dream Masons, who provide help with dream creation and DragonSpeak scripting.
• Guardians, previously known as the Owsla, who enforce Furcadia's rules of conduct.
• Helpers, who provide usability help with Furcadia's software.
• Pixels, who provide help relating to custom graphics ("patches") in Furcadia.
• Scribes, who maintain Furcadia's website.
• Welcomers, who provide help and information to completely new players.
• Mentors, who counsel other Beekins and do one-on-one training.
• Teachers, who give training classes to new Beekins.

Players can apply to most (but not all) of these groups via Furcadia's website. Since Beekins are volunteers, they work as much or as little as they please.

Business Model

Furcadia is free. Anyone who can access Furcadia's website can download the game client. Players do not need to purchase a subscription to log in and play. DEP has publically stated that Furcadia will always be free.

To cover the costs of running Furcadia, DEP sells several products to its players, known in the game as "Digos". Possession of the special product can last anywhere from one week to an indefinite amount of time, depending on the product and package one purchases:

Wings

Players can pay to add various types of wings to their avatars. These include:

• Classic wings (simple, single-color wings) ("classics")
• Triwings (three-color wings with more texture than classics, "tris")
• Butterfly wings ("butters")
• Bat wings ("bats")

Premium Avatars

Players can pay to use premium avatars. Premium avatars include:

• Dragons, whose special action is expelling magical dragon breath. ("draggie", "draggeh")
• Phoenixes, whose special action is producting a flame. ("phoe")
• Gryphons (called Gryffes), whose special action is the ability to transform into a smaller, eagle-like form. ("gryffe", "gryffeh")

Portraits

A furre's portrait is shown whenever a player clicks on an avatar with the mouse; it is usually a default portrait based on the furre's species and gender. However, players can pay to have a custom portrait associated with their furre. Players generally pay a one-time fee to have a portrait that lasts indefinitely.

Sponsorship

Players can pay to be 'Silver Sponsors' for a month. Silver Sponsors get some perks:

• The ability to change their furre's color and species without disconnecting from the game
• A special portrait that can be changed each month, but lasts as long as the player is a sponsor
• Access to private listen-only channels
• The opportunity to preview new software features

Roses

A player can pay to give another player (or himself) a rose, with the option of an attached note. (If the receiver is not present, the message will appear when they next log in). This is a small graphic that appears in a furre's description. Roses come in various colors and last for different periods of time:

• Yellow (one week)
• Purple (two weeks)
• Red (two weeks)
• Black (four weeks)
• White (four weeks)

Underlying Principles

Furcadia can also be viewed as an ongoing experiment in empowering the "citizens" of an Internet community with tools for self-expression, self-organization, and communication. Many of its design decisions reflect consideration of deep principles held to be important by its founders.

Fairness

In creating the rules of the User Agreement, two old FidoNet principles were strongly considered:

"Thou Shalt Not Be Annoying" and "Thou Shalt Not Be Too Easily Annoyed".

In places where it was possible, an "authoritarian" system was avoided, and the main maps are not hosted by operators, or patrolled by security.

The first responsibility for social comfort is given to the player, thus, all players are expected to use the Ignore command if they do not want to hear what another individual says. In those cases where Ignore is not enough, they may call then upon the Beekin Guardians, the game's security volunteers.

Profanity is filtered and dodging the filter is forbidden on main maps. As much as reasonably possible, freedom of speech is protected, provided that it is not abusive and does not endanger the community as a whole.

Because it is an environment where the typical player is expected to have a certain amount of "thick skin" and be self-motivated to protect themselves against verbal abuse, this game is not so well suited for children under the age of 13.

Opting In

"The right to govern comes from the consent of the governed."

Furcadia encourages cooperation with its communities' leaders by relying on an opt-in policy. That is, users are not ordered to do things except when they are being made to uphold the User Agreement to which they must give assent in order to play.

This is reflected again by the "Dream" model, where players can be informed of a Dream's standards and goals through its "entry text" (which may additionally refer guests to a web page.)

Sovereignty

"Your home is your castle."

Dream owners are not held accountable to Dragon's Eye for their politeness to other furres, their choice over who may and may not be in their Dream, or the entertainment of their Dream-guests.

A Dream's owner may eject anyone at will. Furcadia doesn't permit "hate speech" or racial slurs or gender-preference slurs on its main maps. However, with the sole exception of the portrayal of virtual rape, Dragon's Eye has no standards for the attitudes within a Dream.

Furres can and will go where they are most comfortable. Thus, the people to whom the Dream owners are most accountable is to the ones they want as guests.

Community

"You're amongst friends."

Although Furcadia is a commercial venture, and not a democratic government institution, the atmosphere is that of a community. By participating in the running of the game, individuals often come to have a say in the policies. (However, this is never guaranteed for anybody.)

The Beekin Volunteer program is enormous; it is Dragon's Eye's optimistic goal for 1 in 10 players to be a volunteer in some capacity or other. The players are the staff; the staff are the players. One of the largest and most important groups of Beekins is the Welcomers, who greet new arrivals and offer to take them on tours of the game.

Patience

"We'll try to fix it."

In taking on the ownership of a Dream, Furcadia's players have a microcosm view of what it takes to run an online game. They create, playtest, debug, experiment, and innovate, just like large companies do. This has led to a community of very understanding players.

Although Furcadia's development is very very slow compared to other online games, its staff have a keen awareness of the wants and needs of all its players. Suggestions can be made openly on its Forums, where they may be critiqued but more often improved by others. (Suggestions that are not accepted should at least be treated with sympathy if the ideas are reasonably well-intentioned.)

Socialization

"Do unto others as you would have done unto you."

"Your right to swing a fist ends at the tip of my nose."

To what extent do we owe each other attention, or assistance, or the revelation of our personal real-life details? At what point are we imposing?

Single-player computer games present a narcissistic fantasy where everyone else is just a robot drone and the world bends over backwards to cater to the player's whims. Online multiplayer games should encourage us to treat others as people.

For many, Furcadia is an arena for socialization of this kind. Helpful behavior is rewarded by the game and by peers. Hostile behavior is punished by the game and by peers. Socializing is not that simple, of course. Between these two ends is a wild spectrum of possible interactions.

Rather than presenting anonymous people to each other as the Internet so often does, Furcadia is geared towards helping individuals establish their unique identity to one another, through speech, personal description, portrait, and Dream. With identity comes accountability and more of a willingness to reciprocate and cooperate. With the relative freedom can come a sense of optimism: other are expecting, not your worst behavior, but your best.

Diversity

"The more you know, the less you hate."

Both the staff and the volunteers of Furcadia live all over the world. They are of all ages, shapes, races, religions, creeds. Many of them happen to have disabilities. Furcadia appears to be a place to be someone else but some also find it is also a place to be yourself.

External Links

Official homepage