#6: Last Man Standing I
2002

Winner: Nick
Runner-Up: Jonathan
Third: Lesley-Anne
Killer: Nikki

The Cast:

Christine (fake player)
Dan (9th)
Heather (6th)
Jonathan (Runner-Up)
Katia (4th)
Lesley-Anne (3rd)
Mark (5th)
Melinda (10th/Quit)
Mikie (Expelled)
Nick (Winner)
Nikki (Killer)
Travis (8th)
Vanessa (7th)

Description:

Last Man Standing was the very first online game I ever hosted. I was 16 years old, and ran the game over the summer between tenth and eleventh grades, while I was taking classes at the local community college. So many things come to mind that I loved about this game, but the biggest right off the bat is that almost half the cast were my pre-game, real-life friends. Nick, Heather and Lesley-Anne all went to high school with me, and Katia was a bitchy, Half-Russian, Half-Latina alias designed by my best friend and partner in crime Ellie. This is also the game where I was first exposed to the beauty and wonder of Vanessa Short, who became a fixture in my later games due to my sheer, seething love of her tantrums, poor grammar and ridiculous behavior.

Despite being my first game ever, it was actually very competitive, mostly due to a great cast. I met Nikki, our Killer, in some Survivor game on Sucks back when they still hosted those there. I remember her being the "hot chick" on the board that everyone wanted to nail, and I cast her as the Killer because I envisioned her as this striking, James-Bond-style villainess. She actually ended up being really nice to everyone, but she enjoyed the role of saboteur and did it well (in terms of challenge sabotage, I'd say she was a close second to Chris, the Killer from LMS3.)

Since it was so early in the history of Mole games, not everyone knew what they were really doing on the quizzes. I was shocked at how few people realized early on it made more sense to split your answers, and the only people who really figured it out successfully (Nick, Jonathan, Lesley-Anne & Katia) all made the top four investigators. Katia's story was funny, since she actually didn't have Internet at home at the time, so she would take the quizzes in the computer lab before our class together. One time I even just let her handwrite them out and give them to me in person. She has always hated my reality TV obsession and has strongly resisted the few times I've tried to drag her into it since LMS1, but I know that she actually did enjoy the game. Nick, the winner, ended up joining a few other Mole games hosted by other people. A few years ago, we ran into each other at a club, and he drunkenly told me that he had a good time in that online game I hosted years ago, and it made me feel really happy. <3

LMS1 also had my favorite twist of a game I've hosted, where I had my then-friend Melinda play the first round as an alias named "Christine." The first challenge asked the players to figure out which of them was an alias based on this clue: "An idea of the better half of Richard Bachman." Since Richard Bachman is Stephen King, who wrote a book about an evil car named "Christine," I thought it was really easy. Ultimately, only two or three people actually got it right. Nowadays, since so few new players actually join games, there's no way a twist like this would work, but back then–especially when so many of the players were brand-new–I remember being very proud of it.

That said, I know my hosting this game was pretty egregious. First, I misunderstood how IP addresses worked, and based on one player's faulty explanation of what they were, I expelled Mikie and Travis thinking they were the same person (they weren't.) When I found out the truth, I extended invitations for them to return to the game, but only Travis accepted, and didn't make it too far after that. After we had problems in another game, Melinda quit immediately after entering in the second round and never spoke to me again (ouch). The only challenge I remember is where I made them pair off with one another and do a posting challenge called "The Dance," where I received several complaints from the gay male players that it was offensive to make them "dance" with women. I also remember Vanessa asking me for the password to the message board and my e-mail address upward of 10 times. I'd ask her, "Vanessa, will you write it down this time?" to which she'd reply "problay not."

I have so many good memories of this game, but I had to resist the primacy effect and remember the quality of my hosting was simply just not Top-5 material. Thus, Last Man Standing comes in at #6.