I found out about Kingdom of Loathing, aꦆ browser-based RPG with light MMO elements, on a talk show called that aired on the now-defunc🐼t TechꦚTV from 2000 to 2004.
My dad had recently upgraded from a basic cable plan to one with channels numbering in the hundreds, and I was overjoyed when I discovered TechTV, which featured a programming block dedicated to , among other shows that f𓆏elt enticingly anti-mainstream to me, a teenager at the time. My enchantment with this weird, new TV world was a large part of what drove me to check out KoL based on the recommওendation of what had become one of my favorite shows on the network.
Its stick figure graphics are visually similar to games I liked on Newgrounds and other Flash game sites that were popular at the time, but whereas Newgrounds-style⛎ stick figure games usually juxtaposed simplistic graphics with excessive violence, KoL’s se🤪nse of humor is witty, a product not of its vi✤suals but of the paragraphs of text that constitute much of its in-game content.
Over the course of four or five years, I played KoL regularly alongside a few friends with whom I started a small guild. We maintained our own sort of in-game community for most of that time, but when our co🍒llective level of interest in the game began to wane, I was left with years worth of accumulated in-game wealth and no clear use for it.
The Money-Making Game
The Money Making Game (or MMG) was located amidst a few standard slot machines and a roulette table in a building called The Thatch-Roofed Casino within a non-combat zone called the Wrong Side of the Tracks, across a literal set of train tracks from “Right Side of the Tracks.” Its💃 concept was as straightforward could be: one player offered up an amount of Meat, the game’s currenc♎y, and another player matched that amount; then, following a digital coin flip, one player received the full amount of Meat—minus a small cut for the house—leaving the other player with nothing.
Going through life almost always accompanied by a sense of anxiety, gambling has generally felt like little more than an obvious trap. My own anxiety aside, I used to read posts on the official KoL forums mathematically breaking down the pointlessness of the MMG. If you were to take, say, 10,000 bets, your win percentage wo👍uld approximate 50💞%, but the amount of Meat in your inventory would ultimately be less than what you started with given the house cut. Essentially, according to the law of large numbers, you can only ever lose at the MMG.
While I by no means wanted to throw away most of my in-game currency, and rather was enticed by the prospect of doublingꩲ all that I had accumulated over the course of four or five years of gameplay, the MMG did indeed become, uncharacteristically for me, a metaphorical trash can into which I threw that accumulated digital wealth.
Sometimes I won big over the course of my whirlwind time spent playing the MMG, and that felt as thrilling as winning𓆏 a triple parlay on Kevin Garn🎐ett's opening tip, points and rebounds in Game 7 of the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals. But of course, individual wins were never enough to recoup my net losses. Those losses are still cataloged, and from what I remember about KoL’s economy, the total amount is considerable.
Learning A Tough Lesson
Though I experienced a version of the same thing that’s happened to many a tragic gambler over the course of the history of pr🏅ivate property, I walked away from the experience without losing anything of real value, while still learning a vital lesson about gambling, especially after initially believing myself to be above it. Nowꦫ it’s easy for me to lose a few bucks to a slot machine and bow out, knowing first hand that hoping for more is an exercise in futility.
The Money Making Game was removed from KoL in 2019. Leading up to its re𓄧moval, accor🍷ding to the , new updates were accompanied by increasingly snarky comments about its pointlessness in the text that introduced the game. While it's hard 𒁏to dispute that its getting deleted was a n𝓀et positive, I value my shitshow of an experience with it more than anything else from those years spent with KoL. It left me with🦂 a real-world takeaway that continues to color my behavior to💮day.
Kingdom of Loathing has never been a notable game, though West of Loathing, a single-player RPG by its developer༺s, Asymmetric Publications, has received a moderate amount of critical acclaim since its release. Both Kingdom and West succeed due to their idiosyncrasies. I'd count♈ chiefly among those the chutzpah to include a deliberately evil gambling minigame. I was drawn in by that evil, but have come out a stronger person for it, in the same, silly, low-stakes, but nevertheless meaningful way video games oftentimes impact our lives.