Topic
Name changing, game changing?
I goofed and – thinking "oh the world will be blown away during these tests, so will my little character" – did not choose my usual username. Now I very much want to change it to MetaGrrrl, but it's not something that I can just change in my profile.
Here's where it gets complicated. I think it's good to have some consistent sense of identity, particularly when our appearances seem likely to be completely mutable. My hypothesis is that encourages better social behavior than effective anonymity. Sticking around with an account has the benefit of building up skills (power). To gain the freedom of not being associated with your past actions, you should have to pay a cost – starting over from square one with a new name. (Aside: Square One might be a nice place name).
But, we do go through change over time. People do change their main public handle out in the non-Glitch online world. Seems like we should want to support that, but in a way that doesn't damage the pattern above. How about if your profile also had a "Gossip" section?
"You know, before Turkmenbashi, year 8, she used to be called 'Hepsibah'."
"Check out these old pictures of her!"
"Striatic told me she mooned him. Can you believe it?"
Replies
- why don't you just start a new account?
- We will allow name changes at some point, probably limited in some way (like you can do it only once, or twice maybe) and we will also keep a record of it on your profile, for sure. Also, still thinking about the uniqueness thing.
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I assume I can't start a new account without rejoining the queue to get in on the alpha. Have to poke around a little to see if that's true.
Thanks, Stoot. - Surely this isn't a major issue right now: once it's out of testing this will be just a case of deleting your old character and creating a new account.
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Not sure I agree, wurzel. I have a lot of friends I met in Game Neverending who carried over as Flickr contacts. There's something so social about the space that I think it's important to provide for continuity of identity/character while still supporting the occasional name change.
I also can see a probability that people might casually come into Glitch, then realize the community nature of it and want to identify themselves with their real name or the handle they use many places on the web.
- Dinah - I'd like to throw in another request for changing my name (I'm really Nogwater). When I created my character, I assumed that it would work like many other MMORPGs that let you create multiple characters under the same account, so I quick came up with something without much thought. Oops. Also, seeing someone else using my name would be very disturbing (it would probably only come up if someone was pranking me).
- I know this is old, but it's still a very valid point. I'd like to see the opportunity to change names at least once possibly before the game is released from testing or even during gameplay afterward.
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Yep it's definitely something people will want to do (possibly annoyingly often) I was Hemulen for one of the tests and then couldn't rechoose that name for a later one, panicked and went with Snorkmaiden. Hemulen is obviously cooler. And Snorkmaiden's a girl.
Excuse my identity crisis. - Dang! I should have picked Little My.