New Haven

Posted by brilokuloj on Jun 27, 2024

Bringing myself to write this article has required a lot of strength and vulnerability on my part. This is because New Haven, to this day, is my favorite map in Furcadia, and perhaps any virtual world ever. And it is gone.

Most days, I feel fine. Some days, like today, I feel a sense of grief so deep it grips my soul. It is my hope that writing this will help me begin to purge at least a little bit of this pain, so that my grief can feel even just the slightest bit smaller.

New Haven, 2001

I’m beginning this walkabout in the north-west corner of the map; the game actually drops you in a spot near the middle by default, but this is how I started writing it and it just makes sense to me.

Bringing us back to the stairs thematic, we begin in front of the stairs upward to the Vinca, implying the player has progressed even further downward. There is nowhere to proceed from here but down the rainbow pathway ahead.

The Help Desk

To the immediate left is the Help Desk. There is no way to get behind the desk, but there can be seen two writing desks, two bookshelves, a rug in front of a fireplace, and a floating magical book that presumably contains all of this world’s knowledge.

Nobody is ever at the Help Desk. This is because you can get help at any time by saying any sentence that starts with the word “help”, which can be embarrassing if you happen to be roleplaying.

To the right is a beaten dirt path that leads to a couple of cushions surrounding a tree. This is the “pongo tree”, though that information is nowhere to be found within the map itself; the website bears reference to “pongo juice” as a purchaseable item, but does not detail what a pongo fruit is. The game’s code refers to this as the pongo tree, however, and later on this name will be added to the map’s quick-teleport locations.

The pongo tree is actually scripted so that when it is “ripe”, you may walk into it to knock all of the fruits off; after this, over the course of half an hour of real time, the fruits will regrow again.

The Friendship Hangout

Further down the path is the Friendship Hangout. With nearly two dozen chairs to sit in, paired off nicely into sets of two or three, this would be a fun place to meet new people… if anybody was ever here. But nobody is.

The Watering Hole

At this point, Sippy has noticed that there’s a crowd of furries – excuse me, Furcadians are “furres” – crowded on the street. What’s got them so excited that they have to take up the walkway like that?

Why, it’s the Watering Hole, of course. Since this is a world of anthropomorphic animals, the watering hole is an actual hole full of water; the joke about pubs is lost on Sippy, who takes it at face value and accepts it.

Everyone is talking animatedly. A few people are sitting in the outdoor seating area of the nearby restaurant, but most of them are sitting by the pond. And right there in the middle, there are a few people standing on the island! How did they get there?

The answer is really quite simple: when a player spawns in the map, they are placed on a tile in front of the watering hole. If that tile is taken up, it picks the next closest one, so on and so forth. If all players were to crowd around this specific area, eventually the game would have no place to put the newest player except for on the otherwise inaccessible island. As such, it is an unspoken ceremony to camp out as much space in this area as possible, so that a lucky few may get a chance to…

Uh…

Stand around in a place they’re not supposed to.

Having squeezed out all of the entertainment Sippy could hope to get from this sight, they turn the corner and walk to the north-east side of the map.

The Roller Coaster

Here Sippy finds New Haven’s star attraction: a functional rollercoaster! Using an elaborate system of teleport and item movement commands, the map first checks to see if anyone is on the coaster, then sends it off for a ride.

A piece of trivia occasionally passed from seasoned player to newb is that, if you sneak into the back room labeled “Keep Out” (there is never anybody to stop you, it’s merely flavor text), you can actually start the coaster with nobody on it – or give yourself a solo ride without having to wait the 60 seconds for the ride to start.

In the 2020s, this is absolute nothing technology. To Sippy, this is a world of imagination and wonder.

The Restaurant

The rollercoaster is still the coolest spot in town, but the restaurant nearby is just as lovely and functional. There are two wings to the building: the left wing is a traditional restaurant, with booths and tables; the right has tables that food is not served at, but more prominently features a sizeable “bar”.

Connected to both in the back, there is a kitchen. Walking into one of the stoves mimes the action of “cooking food”, which places a plate of food at your feet that you can pick up. Holding the food, you can walk into an empty table, which will change the table into one with food; likewise, you can walk into the table again to clean it. You can do this an indefinite number of times as well, so it’s really more like you’re holding a Token of Manifesting Food.

All the way in the back of the restaurant is the docks, where you can interact with some barrels which… well, to be honest, I’m not sure what this part is supposed to represent.

All of this amounts to small toys you can play with while waiting for your friends to come online. Nobody is ever in the restaurant, least of all willing to roleplay eating there, because New Haven’s playerbase is almost entirely out-of-character.

Minor amusements

Across from the Friendship Hangout is the Furre Wash, a “game” of sorts where you try to dodge moving tiles that will dump you into the lake near the rollercoaster.

Near this lake is Wet Paws Corner, a circle of chairs nestled into trees. This is a prime spot for a friend group to occupy; the people here tend to be rambunctious and rude, perhaps because of the location’s secretive-feeling nature.

In the south-west corner of New Haven is the pillow pile. By the time Sippy finds it, it will have been entirely pilfered. Every time the map is reset (i.e., when the server reboots), the pillows spawn in this corner; as soon as people log on, it’s a race for everyone to run here and get a colored pillow of their choosing.

Pillows are the unspoken treasure of Furcadia; it is the item that gives you the right to sit down wherever the fuck you want. Sure, you can sit your butt on the floor, but a pillow makes you look like you’re supposed to be there.

Nearby is the Raptor Pen, a semi-interactive area where you can “ride” on Scarhawks. This is entertaining for about all of five seconds. Interestingly, in Furcadia canon, Scarhawks are notoriously temperamental animals that require at least a dozen caretakers and a rider that they are bonded with; as this pen is unlabeled in the middle of the map, it is left open-ended who is taking care of these birds and why they are domestic enough to allow complete strangers to hop on them.

South from the raptor pen is the soup pot. You can light the fire or put it out – that’s pretty much it. Still, the soup pot is – for reasons unclear – a prime location for “Serious” roleplayers and mature discussion.

The slow death of New Haven

Though Sippy grows older, they will continue to return to New Haven as a location to meet new people. Unfortunately, New Haven will not age alongside them; as the playerbase grows more accustomed to the game and more insular, it will be seen as useless.

First, New Haven becomes merely “Haven” in 2004. The Help Desk is removed; all newbie-related support has been shifted over onto the new and shiny Naia Green map. Though Naia Green has a higher concentration of true newbies and staff helpers, it has not been designed with “just hanging out” in mind, and its labyrinthine design of similar-looking buildings does not attract a sense of wonder or play. With New Haven being demoted, new players are expected to learn the controls and then immediately integrate into Furre culture. Furcadia, at this point, is now a game where you need to Know A Guy.

In 2007, the staff will recognize Haven’s obsolescence and give it one last shot at livelihood. It is renamed to “Hawthorn” and rebranded as the game’s 16+ section. Though this is appropriate for the players who grew up in New Haven, it isn’t the friendly attitude that people liked it for; worse, now it has an unexpectedly classist “ghetto” vibe.

One true story

When I first joined Furcadia at behest of my childhood best friend, she immediately dragged me into the restaurant and demanded I be her “wingman” for picking up boys. I went along with it to be supportive, but I had no idea what she was talking about or what I was supposed to do, and she got quite curt with me afterward for “blowing her cover”.

This memory brings me a lot of pain, because it was humiliating to be forced into a situation that I did not understand the dynamics of in the least. At the same time, I recognize that children online may have it even worse now, because at least this was happening in an online space I was encouraged to “play” within.

I don’t think virtual worlds are designed with play in mind anymore. I think the hostile architecture view of the real world has spread even to the games we play – if we are not being constantly advertised to, what’s the point?

I hope things will get better soon. I hope my heart will hurt a little less.

Categories: gaming virtual worlds

Tagged: furcadia

On this day...

• Why I gave up on YouTube (Jun 27, 2023)