I am happy to say that I have learned the truth and am joyfully living it =D

SBV
11/28/10

~~~

So I have this friend, his name is Tim. Tim is anti-democracy and anti-capitalism—says these things engender individualism, which ultimately results in anarchy. He has this vision for a collectivistic society in which, among other things, if you believe you have something to contribute for the benefit society, it's a crime to withhold.
Now, I'm like, "Tim, I just want to play games."
And he's like, "No. You've got more to give."
And I'm like, "eff this [world]. I just want to play."

Now, I know I'm wrong. I know it, balls to bones...
... but the idea of working as a book clerk by day and roaming the (virtual) cosmos by night is so compelling.

I'm wondering what value there is in playing MMOs. It's tempting to think that I'm trying to justify a cop-out, and often times I do—like I said, I know I'm wrong. But, I guess I keep on hoping, hoping that I'm not running away, that it's not just escapism, that I'm not avoiding responsibility—that I'm not a hypocrite.

For some food for thought, I'm reading Edward Castronova's Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games.
The first quote explains a fundamental difference between the social structures of the MMORPG and modern society. The second equates 'virtual' with 'real.'

1.

Most MMORPGs give players strong incentives to adapt to these grouping structures to some degree. At the level of the individual adventuring party, the roles of the avatars may be designed so that no one player can accomplish things alone. Warriors may need wizards and vice versa. At higher levels, certain resources may not be accessible unless one has the help of an army. Outside the realm of combat and adventure, group structures give players access to markets and opportunities to socialize.

What if a player does not like the available groups? The game mechanics tend to ensure that players who don’t get along also never achieve much in the world. This, like risk, is another way to ensure that mere time is insufficient to succeed at the game; you must also be able to integrate yourself socially.

And that, in turn, generates perhaps the most important effect of scarcity: reputational capital. Since everything is not free, and since you need other people to get the things you want, you had better behave.[*] If you don’t, none of the other users will help you get what you want. It is interesting that MMORPGs are filled with various grouping mechanisms but have no explicit justice systems or governmental structures. A state of anarchy seems to be preserved as a conscious choice of the developers, so as to give maximum possible scope to reputation systems and the informal norms they support. Much research in political science validates this strategy (Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker 1994; Kollock 1996): reputation and norms are often more powerful than law. What law there is, is in the form of customer service representatives, whose unhappy job it is to intervene in particularly bitter fights among players. Truly nasty players can be banned from the world, but this seems comparatively rare. Indeed, customer service representatives are pretty rare. Labor is expensive; most developers would prefer that the player community regulate its own conflicts.

As a result of this decision, players in MMORPGs are thrown into a social environment with a truly unprecedented level of cooperation, with attendant effects on their behavior (Kollock 1999a). Anyone who wants to do anything usually has to learn how to cooperate. Think for a moment how different this is from social life in contemporary postindustrial communities. For the most part, we sit in our homes and watch TV. At work and school, we complete individualized tasks to receive an individualized compensation. We change residences and jobs and even families with such frequency that there is little point in maintaining a reputation, and doing things with other people in groups is becoming more and more rare (Putnam 1995). True, there are many situations in which teamwork is necessary, but these situations used to dominate social life only a few decades ago. At the start of the twenty-first century, the town square is empty, and barn-raising is a do-it-yourself affair. In the face of this extreme level of social isolation, some people now congregate in online worlds, where Society matters once again. There, people are thrust into countless cooperative ventures and find themselves unable to perform the most rudimentary tasks without the help of others. All of this is by design; the worlds are this way because people want them to be this way; they enjoy working with others. (116-117)

* "Critics of video-gaming in popular culture have yet to gasp the immense benefit that this particular feature may deliver to society. Like manna from heaven, finally we have received a media format that teaches people how to get along with one another (300)."


2.

I would argue that these processes of value creation have advanced so far, even at this early date, that almost everything known as a “virtual” commodity—the gold piece, the magic helmets, the deadly spaceship, and so on—is now certifiably real. Indeed, as I argued in the introduction, the term virtual is losing its meaning. Perhaps it never had meaning. The things happening online have always been literal human things; there was never anything metaphorical, as-if, or subjunctive about them. At first it may have been convenient in many ways to think of networked human interaction as only a model of the real thing. Now, however, and specifically in the arena of synthetic worlds, the allegedly “virtual” is blending so smoothly into the allegedly “real” as to make the distinction increasingly difficult to see.[*] There’s nothing revolutionary in this, though. It is merely recognition that these things were always as real as anything else in the human culturesphere. (148)

* "Recall that while I do continue to use the term "virtual world," it is primarily as a specific and technical reference to that territory which is inside computers and made by human hands. It is the area inside the membrane (301)."

I grew up as an only child with my father in a neighborhood without many children. To occupy myself, I used spend a lot of time playing with action figures, role playing (by myself) outside in the woods, and, of course, playing video games.
I'm in college now, and as think about what to do in the future, I look to the past. In hindsight I realize that I've never looked forward to anything as much as when I look forward to playing a game. While I'm actually playing that game, I wouldn't describe it as a joyous experience, but as compelling, and I find this distinctly different from daily routines, which are laborious and dreadful. As much as I would like to recognize this an obvious indication to play games, I see instead a symptom of a deficiency in the non-game world, in my real life.

This being my third post in almost a year, I feel something like a hanger-on in this collective. So it feels almost unfair for me to write this kind of post, asking you all for help, in a way. But that is what I'm doing, and this being a community, I hope that's okay.