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Gaming Site Reviews.. Real Life?
jbp8 writes: "There's an article on GameSpot reviewing the ultimate MMOG - real life!" The article gives real life an Editor's Choice award, focusing on issues such as leveling up ("Typically, a character will learn of the numerous viable career paths available by undergoing schooling. This can be a long and tedious process, equivalent to the sort of 'level treadmill' monotony that characterizes almost all MMORPGs") and player death ("..a serious issue in real life, and cause for continued debate among players, who often direct unanswerable questions on the subject to the game's developers.")
I should have taken the Red Pill.
Real life is about hard work, its about survival, its about solving problems, its about paying your bills on time, taking care of responsiblities, doing things you dont want to do because they must be done.
That is real life, it certain isnt a game,and its not fun. If I had a choice I'd choose to live in some of these game worlds over this one.
Oh, and you only get one chance, so real life is stressful as hell. Failure is not an option.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
...where can I find all the cheat codes?
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
The only thing I hate about the REAL LIFE MMORPG is the freaking admins..
Every time I try to PK or steal.. they are on my tail.. can't get away with ANYTHING! Maybe i'm just bad at it.
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I've recently discovered "GTA: Vice City" and have been playing a fair amount of it.
The realism I find amazing - it looks very much like real life. (but I sure wish real life came with a Paint-n-Spray!)
Anyway, I was bike-riding with my 14 Y.O. son (yes, I'm that old) and I saw a neon "Open" sign out of the corner of my eye. And the pinkish-red color was just like the color on the bright, moving icons for health found in Vice City.
And the thought crossed my mind as I rode along - "Get health?" followed by the immediate "D'oh! - real life, move on" thought...
I don't wonder within a few years psychologists officially recognize a mental disorder of "Video Game/Reality dissociation" or something...
(Notice above, I said "in Vice City" as though it was a place and you didn't even notice!)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
...is it's got very poor replayability, unless you pick the Buddhist specialization (or so I hear).
-Jack Ash
I was expecting much more after the promising 9 month beta test.
For many players of games (my roommate included), online gaming is pretty much their entire life. I recently calculated that my roommate has played Everquest for 5 hours a day (on average) for the past two years.
Since he has virtually no social life, never has people over, and doesn't belong to any organization outside of work, one could assume that he is incredibly lonely, yet he doesn't seem so.
To what extent can an online game substitute for real human interaction? To borrow an idea from the Sims, can an almost entirely online social experience fill up the Social Meter?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Sounds like this game reviewer hasn't explored this game enough.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Does that make those who committ suicide the real heros, because they beat the addiction and quit playing? ;)
Hmmmm. There are certain in-game populations (Hindus, for example) that do apparently have do-over capabilities. Perhaps you've simply chosen the wrong alignment?
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
Seriously, as a maried parent (yes, I still game occasionally), I like this part of 'real life' the best. My five year old son just wandered in and asked me what 'random' meant. I'll make a gamer out of him yet... But at any rate, it does have chores associated with it. Time to stop posting AC on slashdot and go read the kids a story...
It just ruined the game when people started selling their items on Ebay.
And the weird part is how much I feel like I'm living in a business simulation. I invest in some things (equipment, advertising), make some profits, which I can allocate to whatever I want, including more adversiting, equipment, etc.
Abstracting life like a game can actually be helpful, since trying to distill the "rules" and come up with ways to cheat them, circumvent them or efficiently obey them can be a fun and rewarding challenge.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
This further discourages players from engaging in PVP combat, but it does help real life's rapidly growing player population from getting too out of hand (though eventually there will be a need for additional servers).
Some players insist that additional servers already exist, and that it is the players' responsibility to explore and "settle" them in order to guard against catastrophe and ensure that there are sufficient resources for new players. Skeptics point to extreme lag between the existing server and the suggested new host: ping times are measured in minutes, and player transfer could take months.
The shareholder is always right.
Can I have the remaining time on your Real Life account, then?
I've been running Real Life for a while now, and occasionally get frame drops and skips, especially in the "Alcohol Consumption" sub-games.
I quite enjoy these sub-games - is this a legitimate memory issue that will be addressed in a patch, or should I be upgrading my system?
We're all gonna die!
It's too much like the Sims. Pointless tasks to get simoleans to impress people with house and stuff in it. WAY too much micromanagement. I have to figure out when to go to the bathroom, sleep, eat, etc?
Still, I'm somewhat addicted to the game, and not looking to stop any time soon.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
"To what extent can an online game substitute for real human interaction?"
The majority of the time you are interacting with real human beings. What else would we be interacting with: dogs, apes, squirrels?
When people come accross someone who can find enjoyment in life without the hassles of looks, body weight, body fluids, the horrible effects of aging, they are jealous.
These are all things that normal people worry about, and when they don't understand how a gamer can be so happy in life and not worry about these things, they have to find something wrong with that person; they have to call them a gimp or a failure, a freak and a loser.
Online human interaction can be more fulfilling than "real world" human interaction, if it is done in a structured environment with interesting tasks and many solutions.
And no, it isn't only more fulfilling for those who are "socially inept". It is more fulfilling for anyone; where what matters is your intellect and your creativity.
When you say that a gamer is "socially inept", what you are saying is that they are poor at playing the game you want them to play; they may not even want to play it. Yet, you taunt and jeer them because you can not understand why they are so happy.
What are they so happy? They have every reason to be very very happy, and these are good reasons. They are successful at what they want to do. They have many aquaintences who they go on grand adventures with. Now only this, but they are able to give so greatly to others. You can make someone's day -- a real human being -- by your "in game" actions. You can make them smile; you can make them feel loved; love in the sense of brothers and sisters; the love of a companion: male or female does not matter.
And it is not a false sense of love. It is love that is as real as the love of your mother and your father for you, and you for your brother and your sister and your fellow man and fellow woman. It is love between real people, and it really matters. It is real.
Yes, if a gamer has obligations to a spouse or children, or to paying the bills, then it is wrong for the gamer to ignore these obligations, or to treat them with disdain. These are obligations, the results of choices you have made, and you must live with them.
But for those of us who are not yet so obligated, there is no reason why we should bind ourselves to this dying and decrepit world. There is no reason why we should be what society wants us to be, or what the people who are hip and fashionable and popular want us to be.
When we can interact with real human beings and when we care about others as brothers and sisters, and treat them with the love and respect that they are due simply in virtue of being persons, we do a great thing.
No one can take this away from us. No one can tell us that what we do does not matter, or is not real.
No, we may not be helping to eliminate hunger in Africa by playing this game, but what the fuck have you done to eliminate hunger in Africa? You haven't done a damned thing.
I can make someone's day. I treat others with the utmost respect. I can make them happy. I can make them laugh. I can make them feel loved. I can make them feel worthwhile. I can comfort them when they are down. I can help them up when they are in bad times. And they do these things for me.
This is what matters; helping real people, and helping them in tangible, real ways.
Yes, criticize me for not giving money to staving children in Africa, but first, tell me, just tell me, is what you have done in this world so much greater than what I have done? Have you comforted and inspired so many people? Have you loved them as human beings? What the fuck have you done for Africa? You do what you do for yourself.
It is as real as anything else in this world; the perceptions are as real; the emotions are as real. The people are real.
Why won't you let us be happy? We give you our bodies for 40 hours a week. What won't you let us live?
For the love of God, why won't you let us LIVE?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
and mostly just affect appearances and your standing with certain factions
Obviously the reviewer knows of the negative social effects of race, that's what "standing with certain factions" refers to.
By gameplay, he means the game mechanics; how the game works excluding social interactions. And race has little bearing on those. Differences are there, but most of the time they aren't very noticeable.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Ted: "I don't like it here. I don't know what's going on. We're both stumbling around together in this unformed world whose rules and objectives are largely unknown, seemingly indecipherable or even possibly nonexistent, always on the verge of being killed by forces that we don't understand."
Allegra: "That sounds like my game all right."
Ted: "That sounds like a game that's not going to be easy to market"
Allegra: "But it's a game everybody's already playing."
"The dead know only one thing: It's better to be alive."
I'll put it this way: There may be other games that let you have sex, but the feedback is sooooo much better in "Real Life".
Enjoy!
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
- fresh fruit all year (all sorts, yum yum)
- central heating / air conditioning
- cold drinks (refrigeration)
- effective medecine
- expect my children to survive to adulthood
- music all the time (kings did have live muscians)
- Movies, videos
- lots of books
- cruise ships
- jets planes
- public transportation
- cars
- radio (TV sucks - cancel your cable and spend the time playing more real life)
Even with a crappy job you have it good. Is anyone actively trying to kill you? Are you in danger of starving to death? If not, stop whinning and get out and do something!Life is as intersting as you care to make it. Get off your butt and do something.
A few things I do, to make life more interesting:
Most people have to work, but that still leaves lots of time to pursue many intersting real life intersts.
Anarchists never rule
The truly amazing thing about Real Life is that the development process only took six days, although that all depends on who you ask.
irb(main):001:0>
I was creating a world on the PC and all the sudden it was like "bleep beep beep beep beep" and I was like, "Wah?".
It devoured my world.
It was a really good world.
Then I had to create it again and I had to do it fast and it wasn't as good.
It was kinda, a bummer.
I'm God and I'm a deity.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
This was generally a good review. Unfortunately, the reviewer completely failed to explain the finer points of character creation.
A unique feature of real life is that, while players cannot choose their own character attributes, new players can enter the game only when their characters have been created by players already online. The mechanic is that two players of opposite gender and appropriate age and alignment combine their attributes randomly to create a new PC. This mechanic makes the gender attribute more than superficially significant: much of game play, including many socials, are gender-specific.
The newly-created avatar actually encumbers the female "mother" character for 9 months, after which it typically spends time as essentially an item in the mother's inventory. Character creation is normally part of the "parenting" system referred to in the review, although it is not uncommon for characters other than the creators to parent the newbies.
Many players of real life find character creation among the most enjoyable aspects of the game. There is a practice-only option for character creation: in fact, practice character creation is itself one of the most popular activities in real life, and is discussed endlessly in-game.
Some character classes in real life, for example, the "nerd" class, are usually nominally male, but essentially genderless from the gaming POV. Perhaps the reviewer's character is a nerd: if so, I'd encourage use of the in-game training and character mods to develop some character creation skills. I think the reviewer might be surprised by how much fun they can be.
Racism falls under "your standing with certain factions," which the article clearly references. It is saying that your race does not affect your characters abilities, but it will affect other people's attitudes towards you. Which sounds like a pretty apt, non-trolly, non-racist viewpoint.
"Try being more subtle"? I think he was already too subtle for you...
And yet, real life STILL doesn't have as many features as Nethack.
I've always hated Gamespot for their biased reviews, but this is just... beyond words. Transcendant, almost. Someone give me a good, hard kick if I ever visit that site again.
I find that Real Life is not fair to chaotic characters. Lawful characters have it much easier. I mean, just look at the artifact weapons: Lawful characters have the Thermonuclear Bomb which does 4d10 shock damage, 3d8 fire damage, and 2d6 radiation damage for 100 turns afterward.
Chaotic characters only have the SCUD Missile which has a -1 to hit and only 3d6 damage.
Lawful characters can enchant the Thermonuclear Bomb up to +6 when it becomes a Hydrogen Bomb which does 8d10 shock damage but less radiation damage. SCUD Missiles cannot be enchanted but instead lose -1 to hit for every year left in the desert.
Not fair i'm telling you.
# ssh -l neo the_matrix; killall -9 agent_smith
glittering prizes
glittering prizes
glittering prizes
glittering prizes
Crap! Why isn't this working?