So I log on to the Game Neverending site, click to join chat. This is maybe the second, third time that I’ve logged on. I come in, people say hi, I add a few new acquaintances. After a while, someone, maybe Tref, jokes about building me a shrine.

Shrine, eh? I decide to take this and run with it. I’ll be a goddess! And I’ll heal people, in more ways than one ;). It’ll be fun! I even start an org dedicated to my worship. Xylia and ravingoak are co-goddesses, and we get two or three followers and even a temple wench. Excellent.

The next time I log on, I play the goddess role to the hilt. Telling everyone to join my cult (spamming now that I look back on it), offering to “commune” with various folk, even making capodistria my enemy (who I’m immensely attracted to, of course). It’s rather amusing.

During a lull in the conversation, I visit the GNE wiki. I learn how it works, add myself to players, and browse a bit. In recent changes, I click on AOLization. The word seems to describe the effect on chat of those who take things too seriously (whatever that means), but I have a disturbing thought.

This is a game that never ends, of course. Sort of like the real world. So how do I want to be known in this little microcosm? The sex goddess thing will probably get old in about two days. I don’t want to be (or be known as) that ditzy sex-obsessed girl. Perhaps more importantly, I don’t want GNE to be a ditzy sex-obsessed game.

We all determine the direction the game will take by our actions in it. If I want this game to be fun, interesting, and diverse, I had better work to make it that way. That doesn’t exclude flirting, of course, but I don’t want flirting to be my sole contribution to GNE. I can help shape a better world than that.

Just as I would in the real world, I need to ask myself what face I want to present and what kind of impact I want to make in GNE. I would ask my fellow GNEwbies to ask themselves the same questions I did: what sort of place do I want this to be? How can I work to make it so?

I’m Sarafina Pekkala, and I’m a GNEwbie.