If you know an MMOPRG addict read this...

David Wong is more than just a comedian

Published on August 16, 2005 By greywar In Internet

I know some of you hate the link and discuss posts on here but tough... David Wong of www.pointlesswasteoftime.com has put up another incredibly insightful and entertaining article dealing with how online gaming is reshaping portions of society and why it is doing so. Go read it.

A quote from the article :

Even now, much of the satisfaction for WoW gamers is in the very real sense of accomplishment they get, a person glowing with a burst of golden light when they gain a level in experience and strength. How can the real world compete with that? Wouldn't those long Calculus lectures have been easier to sit through if, every time you learned something important, gold light shot out from your body?

damn right it would be easier.

Edit : More quotage... the article just gets better and better...:

Let's take this a little bit further. You earn gold in World of Warcraft, gold with which you can buy these in-game objects. If this game gold is truly valuable to my life, if it lets me get more value out of the pasttime I already pay real-world money for, what's to stop me from paying real money for game money? Nothing. Go to Ebay and do a search for World of Warcraft Gold and let your jaw drop open.

Here we have game currency being traded for real currency, and at a better exchange rate than the Iraqi Dinar.

I wish I could give him an Insightful rating on that.

Comments

Bichur

on Aug 16, 2005

d-a-a-a-n-n-n-n-g.
real money for game money? not even game money you can actually hold?

cool. when people decide they want something that can at least be touched...I might be sitting on a 'gold' mine... i gots some monopoly money cached away.

bakerstreet

on Aug 16, 2005

People try to make these arguments all the time, and I don't buy them. People are going to see them as negative regardless. What's the difference between sitting and playing a game for 5 hours, and sitting in front of the TV for 5 hours flipping channels? A guy pays $50 for gold in a game, a guy pays $50 to watch some pay-per-view boxing match.

When you PLAY mmo games, you're actually reading, participating in something with other people. How many people rush home to stare at reality TV? Which is worse, having a virtual life you participate in, or sitting for hours watching someone else's life with a zombified look on your face?

Count how much money people waste buying season tickets so they can sit and watch metrosexual steriod addicts in tight pants run around a little diamond. This is no different, beyond the fact that at least YOU get to play, instead of worshiping the knuckle draggers who don't deserve their wages.

Spc Nobody Special

on Aug 16, 2005

s' bout 10 bucks every hundred gold after conversion........sheesh.

greywar

on Aug 16, 2005

Which is worse

Actually you totally missed his points here Baker... he never once says that any of this is bad... just that it is and will continue to develop.

What's the difference between sitting and playing a game for 5 hours, and sitting in front of the TV for 5 hours flipping channels?

Nothing... that is exactly his point. Look how TV changed our society...

daelarr789

on Aug 16, 2005

Complain, Complain, Complain. They could be out there killing people and doing drugs like the othere losers in the world. You should thank them for keeping thousands of kids off the streets with guns.

bakerstreet

on Aug 16, 2005

I got his points, I just don't see why 'game geeks' need to feed into the myths. Everyone seems to get off on the 'addiction' junk, and bolster it. It's tongue-in-cheek, sure, but we're beaten to death with the implications all the time. Perhaps he is joking about most of that list, but even as he jokes there are people that really believe most of it.

I don't believe that it will continue to develop to any exagerrated degree, any more than the people who said we were all going to be TV zombies with catheters were right 30 years ago. I think instead of focusing on all the bad things, the escapism, etc., we should see it as an IMPROVEMENT on entertainment we already have.

"Nothing... that is exactly his point. "

On the contrary, there's a big difference in terms of quality. You interact, you use skills. I'm glad he welcomes the "futuristic terror", but in reality I think instead of geekish mediocrity and escapism it will mean new generations of old people doing something besides turning into vegetables watching QVC.

I wish it didn't have to be portrayed as some departure from human normalcy, when in reality it is heading back TOWARD normalcy, at least in the sense that we are talking and interacting and playing instead of mindlessly watching other people do it.

bakerstreet

on Aug 16, 2005

P.S. I'm not being pissy with you, I understand where you and the author are coming from. The arguments he uses, though, are taken verbatim from people who really think that stuff.

If anything irritates me, it is that as gamers we seem to feed this kind of derision with such self-abasement. I've done it, too. We're laughing at ourselves, but other people, like darling Hillary, Tipper, and the rest, are nodding seriously.

The fact is, though, I watched my neighbor putter in his yard for 10 years. Then, he sold his house, and the neighbors ripped it all up to putter on their plants. It isn't so much I differ that MMOGs are a waste of time, it is that we somehow refuse to see that most everything else is, too.

greywar

on Aug 17, 2005

are taken verbatim from people who really think that stuff.

Actually it is taken directly from people who live it right here and now. I know several. They have very happy online lives and have chosen to focus on sucess in that reality rather than the physical one.

Also Wong never even uses the term "future terror" or even "terror" even a single time! You are reading way way into this with a jaundiced eye I think. These are most definately NOT myths and he isn't deriding a damn thing. He never even says that it is a waste of time! Where are you coming up with those reads?

bakerstreet

on Aug 17, 2005

I explained what I meant, did you read it? I said I know that he is just doing the same insipid characterization that we all do of ourselves. The 'futuristic terror' comes from the intro on the site you linked:

"10 Ways Online Gaming Will Change the Future

Futurist David Wong takes a terrifying look into an online future world ripe with futuristic terror. "

Reread what I said. I KNOW he's being tongue in cheek, but that doesn't help when the things he says could be spoken by Hillary Clinton in a different tone of voice and be scathingly critical of MMORPGs. He ends up qualifying things like a guy murdering someone over a sword by saying we need to understand this stuff is, basically, real, if virtual. Other people would make the SAME argument, and conclude that MMORPGs are bad..

The same top ten list could have been made by a satirist opposed to online gaming, and spun in a totally different way. I like his sentiment, but it angers me that to some people it isn't tongue-in-cheek.

bakerstreet

on Aug 17, 2005

Look at it this way. Wong takes a list of what are usually considered to be very negative aspects of gaming, and validates them. I agree with his validation, I'm just thinking that most people who would be making arguments about games would see his validations as just as sick.

Re-read the list, and consider it coming out of a critic's mouth.

1. Everyone will look like a Greek god or goddess.
2. All will play in the same virtual world.
3. Someone will go to jail for stealing a Bonebiter. (in reference to the recent murder)
4. You'll meet someone who plays an MMORPG for a living.
5. They'll take the "G" out of "MMORPG." (in reference to in-game sex)
6. You will find yourself momentarily forgetting whether you're in the real or virtual world.
7. You'll meet a couple who have been married for years and have never seen each other's real-life faces.
8. There will be a branch of government to rule the virtual world.
9. There will be a whole class of wealthy people without a dime to their name.
10. The rise of the metaverse will go almost completely unopposed.

Can you imagine what a feminist or Jesse Jackson would do with #1? Heck, what Pat Robertson could do with any of them? They come to the same conclusions, they just see them as wrongs.

Sure, he takes their arguments and turns them around, but you can't tell me you haven't heard such stuff come from people frightened of gaming and MMORPGs. No amount of tongue-in-cheek justification is going to matter to those critical, though.

greywar

on Aug 17, 2005

but you can't tell me you haven't heard such stuff come from people frightened of gaming and MMORPGs

sure I have, which i why I find Wong's take to be so refreshing.

bakerstreet

on Aug 17, 2005

But he really didn't speak to the concerns, did he? My take on it was he was saying was "Yep, that's the way it's going to be, so? People like it that way." What he looks forward to, a lot of people would see as a dire prediction of a future they'd fight against.

So instead of taking his words and saying "You know, that isn't so bad", to some they'd just be more reinforcement, and more ammunition. He just said a lot of what critics say, only approvingly. I just wish they could see how little is really different, and how many more inherant benefits there are.

greywar

on Aug 17, 2005

I just wish they could see

That will never happen. The people who said that rock-and-roll was the devil died thinking it was the devil. You just don't get over those sorts of beleifs (for the most part)

qrush

on Aug 17, 2005

I guess when you're BORN to play MMORPG all you can do is PLAY MMORPGS!!!
(Adapted from http://media.putfile.com/FPS-Doug)

As for reorganizing society, this is starting to become like one of those stupid Virtual Reality movies when everyone on earth is caught in VR and doesn't go out of it because it's become like a drug. Maybe this is the beginning of the Brave New World?

greywar

on Aug 17, 2005

Maybe this is the beginning of the Brave New World?

well I doubt it will eclipse the globe anytime soon but I think a Wong s correct in assuming that a statistically significant chucnk of folks will attach a great deal more of themselves to their online lives than their physical ones. I don't think that is a bad thing neceessarily.

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