The tiny detail in KAG that I perceived in an unconventional manner, leading me to stick with it

A Letter to Fair Geti and Transhuman Design:

I have logged 815 hours in this first year of KAG, so I feel obligated to finally relate an important experience, as exhaustingly long and as convoluted as it may be. Bear with me here, I think it may worth the time to read. Nonetheless, I apologize for my habit of near essay-length posts.


THE BACKGROUND
KAG is obviously enthralling to us, else we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it, but a gap exists between the folks that stick with it and those that put it down after a short while. This player retention issue, that which is characteristic of most fighting genre games that require practice to rise above being a simple button masher, is fairly capricious: some random person who picks it up could fall in love with it and never leave, even if they have never had such a relationship with a game, and another random person could just put it down because they didn't experience the right combination of feelings and experiences that interested them. As time progresses the gap widens; Those players who become skilled feel the higher thrill of grand strategy and dueling, while those just starting struggle to mash their way to lesser satisfactions at the mercy of the skilled players. Existing in a sandbox world in a multiplayer format, this dynamic in game design becomes vastly more complex, but also more open for players. i.e. we don't necessarily need to aspire to the satisfaction granted by the grand strategy of fighting if we just really like tunneling and winning by other less glamorous means. Because of its format, there are countless things that may draw you into KAG, not being limited to fighting, and some of these things may lead to you putting in the time to become better at it until you reach the point that you can excel by other means; the satisfaction is flexible, and may be derived from the most seemingly insignificant details.

I am here to relate the single tiny experience I had with KAG that led me to go from a 1 hour toss-away to an 815 hour devotee, as awkward as it may be to do so because of the rather heavy subject matter it involves (at least by the standards of the United States game industry I know today).


THE STORY
I bought the game on a whim because I was procrastinating on an important paper in requirement of my Master of Science (I obviously had my priorities straight, even in the beginning of playing). I had no previous knowledge of it, and at a glance it didn't seem to be something I would enjoy (my tastes in gameplay had slowly shifted from destructive elements to constructive elements). The menu screen had me skeptical, and the tutorial was awkward at first, as the controls were giving me trouble. After mapping jump to the spacebar, alternate action to shift, and fiddling with my trackpad, I seemed to be able to move in a more coherent manner. As I continued through the tutorial, getting to the section where you play as a worker, my interest began to build (so to speak). The sandbox element had me hooked for a bit, and I was excited to potentially try it in multiplayer format.

Now for that tiny isolated detail that sparked my initial love for the game.

I tried my hand at Save the Princess. Going through the stages, it was fairly interesting, and well-composed to boot. I was drawn in by the art and how it immersed you at times, as well as what I now saw as a very solid control scheme. I went into this game mode with very low creative expectations though, saving a princess being the most stereotypical thing I could imagine myself doing as a knight, even if, as a player, I am a genderqueer female trying it. All those boring assumptions about North American interpretations of fairytales and children's stories I am used to were in my head: a characteristically weak and uninteresting female figure being rescued by a burly knight-- Monogamous and sexually heteronormative happy ending ensues. This sort of thing is normal, and is obviously romanticized in storytelling within our culture, pervading the mainstream to its brim. Nothin' inherently wrong with that, I'd say, though it certainly doesn't fit all of our gender identities, creative thinking capacities, etc. To each one's own. It certainly doesn't bother me in the least, it is just a sort of story and profile we all know, and most people enjoy it, even if it excludes weirdos like myself in its appeal.

With these things in the back of my mind, I traipsed through the princess trope on gaming auto-pilot and approached the castle. I could not figure out how to kill the wizard with my sword, so I backed him into a tight spot and waited for him to kill himself with his explosive magic bubbles (I think that is what you are supposed to do? I cannot KAG very well). To my surprise this worked, and he was blown to many magical giblets. Stunned, I tootled up to the tower without serious observation and opened the door.


Princess Geti was a male.

A burly, skimpily dressed, fawning, kissing, seemingly helpless, unidimensional male figure in the clutches of a wizard, waiting for me to come to rescue him.


I distinctly remember pausing and taking my hands from the keyboard at that moment. I could only smile. I didn't / don't care whether or not it was a silly joke based around oiled-up short-short infused male bits, or if it really was designed to make fun of a stereotype. What it was to me was inherently different: Throughout my entire experience with the game, I had merely accepted it for what it seemed to be on the surface, but now everything was shattered. The absurdity of the scenario was tossed right in my face, and I loved it. I no longer felt like someone looking in on a series of events in some other place, I was Mush. I, who walked through the lands of KAG with these serious thoughts of gender identity at the back of my head and who expected more of the same, closed off to the world through the dulling experience of the conventional, shocked into consciousness by the absurdity and beauty of reality, made comfortable in my own steel boots by someone else's marvelous and elaborate joke.

I carried Geti up the slope to the cliff top to strike a rad pose, and much to my surprise, he leapt to his death, kissing the whole way down. He died as he lived.

From here on out I was fully engaged, made no assumptions, and tried my best. I hope I ever continue to do so.


Thank you for keeping me at it, Fair Geti, may your kisses never stop.


~Mush Lt. Danecki

 

Does anyone else remember that defining moment when you knew you would stick with KAG? Was there something in particular that sparked it?

 

I was initially drawn by the unique bomb-jumping mechanics. I thought it was a creative way to improve mobility.

 

Yeah overall I love the fluidity and vast array of interesting things you can do. Sometimes the best part of KAG is overcoming a problem on your own using your own unique way.

 

Umm...ummm....words. I just want a like from blackjoker77777.

Haha no actually what really made me stick with kag was the graphics. I have always enjoyed pixelated video games such as kag. I also really enjoyed the sandbox element in kag, and how every match was different and unique. Ah just typing this makes me really want to play kag.

 

I already fucking loved the game as it was back in the early days of alpha (post-B190, but pre-ZF), but as FBB up there said, it wasn't until I saw Strathos beasting as a builder. A class that really should have been no more than a construction worker was shown to be not only one of the most versatile classes, but also one of the most deadly.

I thought it was funnier when the Princess was named, "Shannon," AKA resident Sharsharshar @Arcrave.

 

reminder that princess geti was developed @Contrary, and we called it "Princess @Rayne" at first so much that he would leave servers if anyone asked "hey, how are you princess"

 

It was a free multiplayer competitive building game. Didn't have many of those on the market back in the day.

But mainly it was the community that had so much drama in it that kept me here. All the detective work into ousting them pedophiles. All the bro moments where we basically teamed up against sedgewick and other professional griefers. Catakus even made a colored diagram with the colored lines to help out and stuff with the detective work. We had so much drama with people hating each other because they were foreign or something. Shadlington hated Loki and got him kicked from HA. Contrary got in trouble with these server owners and Shadlington had to distance himself from YB. I started the Shadlington face meme. It was great. So many white knights when there was a girl around. So much drama. So much.

MM was always suave and debonair guy and was great with Total biscuit. He was quite bad at public relations. Geti was always the guy who looked like he couldn't help but bash his head against a wall only to look up and smile when MM went by. Only to end up bashing his head into the wall again when he wasn't looking at him. Geti handled the PR for the most part. It was pretty funny for a while because people treated him like a god for a bit then they realized he was kind of a dork and started to bully him. This kind of leads to when I found out he was a vegetarian, every time I talked to him he kept on saying he had to go and eat lunch. So I kept on asking if it was tofu. He got a good laugh out of that.

 

For the first couple months I played classic for free then eventually bought the game. I found myself frequenting the premium servers but then one day some guy came on and asked why we were here. He then said all the best players hang out on BC flat maps. It was at that point that I wanted to see just how good these players were and to my amazement the majority of players there were all unbelievably good. For the next months I spent my leisure time going only to that server and I made good friends with everyone well known there. It still saddens me that a large chunk of those people don't play release KAG but fortunately some of them do like Kazaco and BC. I never really got that great at classic however, one day I saw someone who was litterally unkillable, his name was Maverick. Undoubtedly the greatest knight classic had ever seen and there I was just watching him, completely awestruck as he mowed down the masses with nothing but his sword... Even the more experienced players were all running from him. It was at that point that I wanted to do better. I had a purpose and I wanted to achieve that level. I still don't think i have gotten to such a level yet and I am still striving to reach it in release kag.

 

Actually, I was best knight EU

 

You know, it was one of those Déjà vu moments when I (somewhere in something) scrolled down to see the familiar graphics style of a previous game I had played as a kid.
Could not remember the name of the game, was just accompanied by the feeling of some previous great joy.

A few days later I was describing the game to a friend of mine and he told me it was "King Arthur's Gold".
Managed to locate the website and attempted to sign into my old account under the name "Android85" (had to change email).
Found out it was a free account after all this time, bought it on steam for the sake of it.


tl;dr version:
Was my previous experiences playing KAG way back in the early stages that helped me locate this gem.
I'm glad I did, might of ended up playing Dota 2 or some scrub game ...

 

The fact that it is very player controlled, which can causes matches to vary a lot. Though mostly because I loved sniping knights trying to shield glide across a pit.

 

I forgot to mention that this was my EXACT experience with KAG. I've never stuck with any online multiplayer games for more than a week or two, let alone the 3 years I've hung out in this community.

To be completely honest, I literally cannot remember where I first heard of KAG. It was almost one of those, "1 hour toss away," games, I didn't play much the first few days because the learning curve IS pretty steep. I convinced (or forced) myself to keep playing, only because I spent the $10 and figured I should at LEAST try to enjoy it for a while. It was much the same as my experience with La Mulana, I played it for about an hour (blind), then didn't play it again for about a year.

Just like La Mulana, it's an incredibly tough game to learn, but once you're AT LEAST proficient, it's defintely a time sink.

 

I like that theres a small but good community were everyone sorta knows each other at some point in time. But in other games you hear so and so is the best, but then you never see that person in game. But in kag you hear "so and so is the best!" and then you get into a match with them 10 minutes later. I just like that instead of joining a game and then never seeing the people you just played with again you see them alot.

(also spike drops kept the game fun, until the nerf though)

Is your unique way water bombs and boulders