Kirsten Powers attempts to navigate through the taudry world of Second Life

In case it hasn’t been patently obvious, we’ve had some other project to occupy the time we’d normally spend blogging lately. One of these projects is a massive academic paper discussing the application of the natural law and natural law……

Seriously, I’ve been gaming in RPGs since computers were invented. I BUILT my first computer in the 1970s. I was playing computer games on programable calculators then too (Lunar lander for instance).

I’ve run BBSes since 1980 (dial up, now web based) and I’ve been heavily involved in computers many, many years.

The ONE thing that has been common to everything from online gaming to BBSes, and weblogs is that you have a contingent of anarchists out there, who break every rule they can break. Hackers, crackers, phreakers, Player-Killers, etc. It doesn’t matter, in what venue you LIVE (real or imagined) you are GOING TO FIND idiots who want to force you to live by THEIR rules.

They will come in and disrupt a game to force you to run for your life in the game (Ultima Online for instance, when it was first started, you could kill other players. So these little in-game terrorists would hang around town and murder unsuspecting people who walked out of safe areas, stealing all their hard-earned belongings, forcing players who just wanted to play as the game was MEANT to be played to figure out how to get around them).

So you see, it’s not “geekism”, it IS TERRORISM even in a game. Other games (one I play now) like Dark Age of Camelot, allos realm wars. You can come incontact with bad guys from the other “countries” in realm versus realm areas. But no where else and unless you’re “dueling” another player in your OWN realm, you can’t kill, rob or otherwise do anything bad to the other players.

The game as it’s limits, but then most do… unless terrorist hackers, players etc figure out ways around the rules. Now, gaming companies have taken to banning people like that.

Basically… there is a world psychology view to examine if you’re “deep in a dungeon” or out in real life, and few people fail to realize it. Most will just say, “It’s a GAME for God’s Sake” and let it go. They are missing an opportunity though, to actually see human behavior at it’s finest,… and at it’s worst.

I had to turn the voice off when I’m not playing with gamers I know because I have kids, and quit playing after about eleven at night because the cheating is so thick.

It’s just stupid.

You don’t enforce the rules … people won’t play by them.

as much as i’d like to enjoy a tall glass of schadenfeud at the red on red terrorism (american apparell is an “anti-sweatshop” outfit) i know this is going to progress to the point where any non-maoist’s experience there will be miserable.

imagine if it happened to this site or a message board you liked. then imagine that it’s the only message board on the internet. then imagine that you’ve paid a subscription fee to post there. sure, you could turn off the computer and play frisby instead, but…

Are they after our bodily fluids???

Have you ever been more hot to sign up than right now?

-at 6:04 pm on February 24, 2007 by Allahpundit

No.

I did the MMORPG thing for a few months a few years ago.

Star Wars Galaxies: LAME: If I wanted to spend my time doing meaningless make-work, I could do it in REAL-reality and get paid REAL money.

City of Heroes/Villains: fun for a while due to good gameplay, but still lame. For someone like me who is in it for the stories… when a game lacks a solid plotline, it becomes uninteresting.

The Sims/Second Life/etc: not even worth thinking about… Refrence my Star Wars Galaxies comments.

No.

I outgrew my geekism, right around the time I got married and started getting some on a daily basis.