Boing

Boing
Species	Zurg
Gender	Male
Status	Alive
Alias	UFO 05
Status
Affiliation
Relationships	Mother (Mother, Deceased) Blarg (Brother) Narf (Sibling, Deceased) Zownd (Brother) Zoit (Sister) Zooeep (Sister) Glarg (Adopted Brother) Woing (Sister, Deceased) Flarn (Brother) Omph (Sister, Missing) Sorn (Brother) Bobo (Brother) Nili (Sister) The Daughters (Sisters, Deceased)
Affiliation	Fleep (Roleplayer)

Boing is an NPC from the Halloween 2k6 Event. He was first introduced in H2k6 as UFO 05.

Boing would take part in the Halloween 2k6 event alongside his fellow UFO's under his numbered Alias, 05. He is a Chef(either by passion or profession) who is well known for his culinary arts... where Gaian's are normally on the menu.

Personality

ALL HE WANTS TO DO IS EAT YOU. IS THAT REALLY SO BAD?!

Q&A with Fleep

Sure, I wouldn't mind answering some questions!

1. Did you like the Zurg Event? I personally had a lot of fun with it, but I would never run an event in the same way again. Most users on the site had no idea what was going (in fact, most Gaia staffers had no idea what was going on). It works alright as a user-run event, but for a sitewide thing that we actually dedicated resources too, it wasn't worth it.

2. What was your favorite thing about playing an NPC? Originally this wasn't even the intention that we'd each play a particular NPC with personalities - we just made 12-or-so accounts and said "Go at it guys!". We all just logged in and were supposed to buzz around towns. It wasn't until later that people decided they'd stick to one account and give it a personality.

At first it was just fun to freak users out -- then later, it was fun to play off this funny personality I'd created.

3. What was your least favorite thing? The disorganization of the entire event and the fact that nobody knew what was going on. Only a very, very, very tiny number of users on Gaia were able to keep up.

4. 05 was loved for his amusing and alarming eating habits. (he is a figure of much honor in our cafeteria, and we have his recipe book archived and on display) What made you decide to portray him as you did? I think ultimately I wanted him to be all bark and no bite. He hated humans, but couldn't actually harm them (who knew if he actually would if Mother let him?), so the best way to convey that would be to threaten to eat them.

5. They storyline was pretty intense and often guided by user interaction. How did you and the team handle the questions and reactions the users gave the UFOs while still following your own plans? There wasn't much organization to the event. People told conflicting stories all the time, and even internally we had no idea what the role of the Zurg on Gaia was 

Those of us who kept up want the Zurg to be friends. Do staffers consider the Zurg enemies now? I think the staffers consider the Zurg gone. Though, I don't think we really consider them enemies, considering that Mother and Gambino were working together. We may see them again, eventually...

If you could change the way the event was run, what would you do? If we were to redo the event, the main things that I would change are:

- Have a central place where users could follow the storyline - Plan out the storyline in advance so all the NPCs are on the same page - Figure out a way to make individual NPC personalities shine on a more public venue (rather than solely in towns, where just a hundred or so people get to enjoy their antics) - Have the schedule a bit tighter, so that we don't release the end story several months after the event season ends (like we did with that storyline)

Zygona and Occip want to know if you like Zharks? Never heard of them, and really, I don't really get the appeal XD

We noticed that the UFOs had different actions than we did on towns, like scanning. Was the screen and console different than what we see with our regular accounts? Nope. We just hit the "Pose" button.