MMORPG

Great article here about computer role playing games, the motivation behind why people play them, and the future consequences.

In the future, long after World of Warcraft has gone the way of ARPANET, everyone will have a virtual-world twin. An upgraded, digital representative of yourself which I'll henceforth refer to as Awesome You. And you'll see a time in your life when more people know Awesome You than know the real you.

Some people live like that already.

I've mentioned before that one of the consequences of technology is that society tends to isolate itself. We have big screen television with a billion channels of programming, any type of food you want can be delivered, and then there's the computer. People used to socialize for the sole reason that they were bored senseless at home. This applied to married people as well. Now, when I'm at home, I talk to more people I know online than I did during the day in the real world - (IRL), "in real life". Seriously.. millions of people have to make a distinction in their conversation between what is simulated and what is IRL.

One of the consequences of the isolation is the resurgence of religion. Most people do not choose the isolation solution of online interaction, but that's only because they haven't truly found out about it yet. Human beings will do whatever is easiest, and it's far easier to get your human interaction sitting in front of your computer than it is to actually take a shower and get dressed to go outside.

It's true - it's only a matter of time before people discover the MMO existence en masse, religion will die, and you'll hardly see any traffic on the roads at all.

But like all things, when the pendulum swings too far one way, it comes back the other. I think most people will burn out from the online existence. At least it's hard to be as hardcore as a Korean at a net cafe. My WoW guild is falling apart right now because a lot of people are burning out, but the reason for the burnout isn't because people don't like the online existence. It's because the game creator made it so difficult to get the "reward" that people have become discouraged and give up - amidst much finger pointing and drama. At the end of the day, it's a "team" game, and there are always the best players and the worst players on any team. Sucks to be the worst player I bet.

Specifically in the case of Warcraft, this is kind of dangerous to the game. The expansion is still 4 months off, and nothing is going to change to give a positive feedback to the user base. They've really screwed up the game if you ask me. The lesson they need to learn is that in the world of make believe, it damn well better not be as shitty an experience as most of the real world. People want the alter ego, the brave dragon killer, and when the dragon kills you no matter what you do, that gets on people's nerves, and they go find something else where the effort/reward ratio is balanced properly.

Truly, in game design, the designers job is to lead human beings around by the nose, and pat them on the head, just like a dog jumping through a hoop. It's exactly the same thing. The designer who comes up with a way to make a game interactive with many others, but allows the player to set their own effort/reward scale will win everything.

It may turn out, like it appears to be happening to people that I know, that even if a game perfectly simulates what motivates people, people will catch on that it's not real, and doesn't feel quite right. They're the type that may just shut the thing off, take a shower, and head out side to see the sun.

Anyway.. the article is interesting. Everyone should read it as it will be come on of those "next big thing" that we all have to deal with.. and the author is correct. Much of our lives are already bits and bytes on a computer server someplace. Your bank account, your mortgage, your social security number, your paycheck, your medical records, your taxes, your music, soon your art. Human beings are digitizing their world.

And that, my friends, will be a watershed moment in human history. The point where we can trick the senses into thinking a piece of software is real, thinking a real supermodel is in our bed or a dragon is in our front yard or our dead mother has come back to give us advice, that's when everything changes.