Community
Kingdom of Loathing has been praised for its welcoming and active player community. One of the most unique aspects of the community is the large number of female players: according to Johnson, approximately 40% of players are female. Fans often gather at both official conventions, run by Asymmetric, and unofficial player-organized meet-ups, including the annual KoLumbus event. Players support the game by writing scripts to perform various in-game functions, using Greasemonkey, Java, Perl, and Lua, and have also developed a player-run wiki which offers puzzle solutions and walkthroughs. Longtime player and nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot is active in the community and included a Kingdom of Loathing-themed song on his 2010 album Zero Day.
Brett Bixler, founder of the Educational Gaming Commons at Pennsylvania State University, has hypothesized that the Kingdom of Loathing community is successful because it accounts for Richard Bartle's model of player personality types in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, creating a balanced gameplay system that appeals to a wide variety of players. Researcher Martin Oliver addressed similar issues in a 2009 study of the Kingdom of Loathing player community, Playing Roles in the MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing
A Web-based SHOUTcast radio station, Radio KoL, is the "official unofficial" radio station of KoL. It is a 24/7 DJ-hosted station, with volunteer DJs drawn from the KoL user base. Twice weekly, development team members host shows on Radio KoL in which they discuss the state of the game and answer questions from players.
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Famous quotes containing the word community:
“When a language creates—as it does—a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”
—Christopher Ricks (b. 1933)
“The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate, so that being thrown into the balance it may prevent either scale from preponderating.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“I don’t think Dr. King helped racial harmony, I think he helped racial justice. What I profess to do is help the oppressed and if I cause a load of discomfort in the white community and the black community, that in my opinion means I’m being effective, because I’m not trying to make them comfortable. The job of an activist is to make people tense and cause social change.”
—Al, Reverend Sharpton (b. 1954)