Sam launches Mapleworld with an avatar, Mayor Mazer, styled as a grunge-era, folksy guide who mirrors Sam’s glasses, mustache, and slight limp. Mayor Mazer greets newcomers with friendly advice, starter currency, and encouragement to explore Mapletown, immediately defining the world’s tone as welcoming and communal.

Within two months of launch, Mapleworld attracts over a quarter million accounts, overwhelming servers. Outage screens featuring Mayor Mazer become a widespread meme, and the character’s presence softens frustrations. Although Sam, Sadie, and Marx had doubted the timing for such a “soft” game, late 2001 players embrace Mapleworld as a kinder, better-governed virtual refuge.

Later, by 2009, Mayor Mazer ranks seventh on an AdWeek list of recognizable branded characters, emblematic of a utopian online vision. The character transcends the game to become cultural shorthand for a gentler, progressive virtual community.

On Mapleworld’s tenth anniversary, Sam delivers a TED Talk, “The Possibility of Utopia in Virtual Worlds.” Citing “everything that transpired at Unfair Games on December 4th, 2005,” he argues that avatars do not doom people to their worst selves and insists virtual worlds can be more moral, just, empathetic, and inclusive—posing the challenge that if they can be, they should be.