Fed II Star newsletter - masthead The weekly newsletter for the Fed II game by ibgames

EARTHDATE: March 5, 2006

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HELP WANTED

by Hazed

I've just been updating the help messages in the game, adding in entries for some of the new commands that Bella has worked on recently. At the same time, I scanned the list that the game produces of help requests that don't match an existing entry, so I could add in any obvious lacks. Once again, I was astonished by the range of the things that players typed.

Typos... oh, yes, lots of typos. Probably the word most often misspelt when looking for help is "Akaturi". Not suprising - it is a made-up word that players won't have heard before they started out in Fed. But what a lot of variations on it: acaturi, akakuri, akatari, akatur, akaturoi, akauri, akira, aktauri, akturi, akuri, akutari and akuturi were all help requests in the last couple of months.

Words that have not been made up just for Fed caused players some problems too. Take "expropriate". This was deliberately used for the command to remove a factory from a planet because it is long and therefore not something players would type by accident. But many and varied were the attempts to get help on the subject: evaporiate, exappropriate, expidiate, expro, expropreate and exproriate.

Even the most simple commands resulted in some errors: some people who want to know how to change their clothes asked for help on clothers or cloths. Let's hope when they did get changed, they spelt their descriptions correctly!

Then there are the help requests that just made me stop and stare at the screen. What could the player have been trying to find out? Somebody typed "help kidnap". Huh? Even stranger, somebody typed "help bra". Sounds like this player may also have been confused about how to change clothes.

"Help with suicide" leaves me puzzled. If somebody knows enough to know that the way to kill off a character in Fed is to use the suicide command, what more do they need to know anyway?

"Help meeting the right person" might, I suppose, refer to somebody unable to find the clerk they have to bribe in order to get a ship permit. Or maybe the player wanted dating advice!

Then there are those that know they need help, but can't figure out what kind of help they need. "Help the idiot" and "help i'm stuck" both bring to mind images of players forlornly typing in help requests at random, hoping that they might accidentally hit on the phrase that gives them the info they need.

And finally, I am not sure what to make of this: "help hazed i've forgotten how to play this! :D" Is it a problem when the help system starts sending messages to me personally? Maybe I'm the one that needs help!


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