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A World of Warcraft World
An anonymous reader writes "On ebay people are paying real money to buy WoW gold... while some guy in Korea murdered another guy over a rare sword that existed only in an MMORPG. This essay looks at the way more and more people are failing to draw a distinction between their real and online lives and takes it to its logical, yet utterly insane, conclusion." Amusing, and with more than a few ounces of truth.
For one thing, I hate MMORPG style games. I think they are for control freaks who have failed to get the control they want in real life. Most of them probably of a libertarian bent. There was this guy I knew through a friend of my wife. He loved playing Civilization back in the 90s. He loved it so much that it's pretty much all he would do when he got home from work. Now, this guy was a Republican Nazi. I'm not exaggerating. He actually said once that Hitler really had a lot of good ideas and that the Republican party will go far utilizing them. Anyway, he love playing this boring ass of a game so much that on Valentine's day when his girlfriend asked him what he wanted to do for the special day he actually resorted to physical violence (nothing extreme, but certainly not warranted in the least) just to indicate that he wanted to keep playing Civ. Freak. Let's put it this way, choose:
1. Play Civ all night and imagine yourself to be the master of all that you survey on your CRT.
Or...
2. Go out to dinner in the real world with a cool woman and get laid.
Simple choice really. Sex always wins. But not for him. Fortunately, she ditched his ass.
I also knew this other guy who was also addicted to Civ at the same time. Also a Republican with Libertarian leanings. In general a pretty nice guy. But he took Civ so seriously it was just weird. Since I saw all this fuss being made over the game, I thought I'd look at it myself. And you know what? I thought it was the most boring thing I'd ever played in my life. I've had more thrills playing tic-tac-toe against myself and winning every time.
However, it became clear to me why some people just love the game. It makes them feel like they are part of something. Makes them feel important even. They can throw off the humdrum of their real lives and mayors, presidents, service men, etc... Even moreso, it encourages the false notion that everyone has a chance at being successful if they work hard and do everything right. That's pretty much the focus of these kinds of games, except that "chance" is thrown in which may throw off success. They might think it's their mighty skill at politics or military strategy or magic spells or what have you, but in actuality, it's pure luck. Kind of like real life. The only difference is that you can be a wimpass and save your best states to retrun to after a dismal failure. Can't do that in real life.
So, what do these games do for society? THey are DAMAGING. They help people hide from dealing with harsh realities. They also give these people unjustifiable egos. A lot of these people take their online feelings and begin attempting to transfer them to their real lives. Most of the time they come off looking like pricks or weirdos. But sometimes, they convince just enough people that they know what they're doing and wind up ruining things for other people by furthering the lie that everyone can be a success. Yes, you should work hard. Yes, you should try to succeed. But you should always keep in mind that failure is the likely outcome in every case and if you do miraculously succeed, then you should be quiet about it and accept it with dignity instead of being a total ass and saying "I RULE".
Yeah. I hate MMORPGs. I think they are a total waste of time and brain cycle. The time those people are spending living these ridiculous fantasies would be better spent helping those around them. That is the only true way to success. Help those in need. Because if this is done at every level, then all of those who need help will be helped and all of those who can help will have a REAL purpose (ie. NOT buying yachts and Cadillac Escalades). Besides, every real gamer knows that FPS games are the bomb! Let's hear it for my next 18 hour Quake III Arena session! Yeah!!! I RULE!!!!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I love the quality of journalism on slashdot. The guy who killed his friend over the mmorpg sword was chinese not korean. Post your source before attempting to tarnish the koreans' image (lol...)