Blast From the Past...

November 28, 2007

It has come to my attention that most people are oblivious to most everything around them. It is not until they are engulfed, smothered, or shadowed by an issue for an extended period of time before they actually take the time out of their day to ponder the issue and the wide array of outcomes that it may have. Today in the Marietta Times there was an article about gamers and more specifically, online gamers. I guess it has just occurred to the editors and staff writers that online gaming poses a threat to people and might actually become an unhealthy addiction. They summed up the online gamers as people who, are you ready for this? Had a "Second Life" online and would more-less focus more on their secondary life than their primary. Or at least that is how their theory went. To this I have many things to say but will say only one thing for now. DUH! WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU ALL BEEN IN THE PAST, SAY 5 YEARS?!?!

Gaming has been an addiction and a cause of the "second life" theory for at least the last 5 years if not longer. I only have to mention one game in response to this. Does nobody remember The Elder Scrolls 3 – Morrowind? It was one of the original modern day style RPG that allowed you to do most anything that you wanted inside the world. If you didn't like the world you could edit any piece of it to meet your expectations. Everything you did inside the game affected how something else would play out in the end of the game. The game could also be beaten several different ways, there was only one main story line but many ways to "succeed" in the playing of the game. Morrowind is not the only title that hooked gamers on a "second life". Thinking back even farther than Morrowind you have the original "Sims" game. Where you could literally start a new life in many different professions, you would have to make your "sim" stronger, smarter, and more charismatic in order to achieve common everyday goals such as reaching the top of your career ladder, making friends, building relationships, etc. This is just another prime example of an amazingly addictive RPG that resulted in the "second life" effect. Now it seems that most of the hype is being built on online games which lead to online communities and online social networks. I believe one of the terms they used was "an interactive "facebook" that is a game". Again I ask, where have you all been? Does nobody remember "The Matrix" online game? The entire game consisted of building a virtual reality around the members of the network inside the game. An alternative life inside the game where the only other characters were other players thus turning every action you make having a lifelike and "real world" consequence behind it. This type of stuff has been going on for the last 4 years at minimum, possibly longer. It is only now, in 2007 that people have concluded that they have nothing else to bitch about so they are focusing their attention and "concern" among what may be, the happiest group of individuals among any of us. Why would they be happier than the rest of us you ask? Well my uneducated reader the reason is simple. These types of games give people a, you guessed it, a second life. A second chance at something they may have previously failed at. Is it in any way going to win back a lost relationship or lost promotion? Not hardly. What is it going to do? That is as simple of a question to answer as it was for you to ask. They are literally enjoying their second life in a game that is notorious for inducing a "second life" feel upon the person playing the game. They are finally succeeding at something they may have previously lost at or maybe even accomplishing something that they have only dreamed about before and it wasn't until the false reality that they live in came along that they were actually capable of obtaining such a previously unobtainable goal. Maybe they are losers in the "real world" and "winners" in their world. They choose to live in a world more receptive to their thoughts and ideas. A world where there is no discrimination because of age, sex, religion, or ethnic background. Lets face it guys the "real world" is run by the rich and the beautiful. Don't believe that? Turn on "E Television" right now, watch it for, eh, 4 minutes or so and you will soon change your mind and see that I am indeed correct on the matter. The second life that these people live is more or less an escape route from the real world. Their newly found life is an outlet that destroys all boundaries of modern day society and replaces them with creativity and imagination. Now my thought is this, and it presents an issue far more devastating than the "They are lost in a false reality, we must save them" bullshit that I just talked about. Think of it this way. If this online secondary life craze ever catches on big enough that one game goes mainstream with free and limitless access to the public and does become a secondary life in a "facebook" or "myspace" form, who is to say the roles as to who is in charge doesn't change? If there was ever an online community game that went free to the public and offered unlimited access to anyone with a broadband speed connection and incorporated the kind of secondary life that any of the previous games mentioned did, how would someone overrun such a social network? You would have every geek and gamer already running the game and thus the electronically generated world before any of us "normal" people who live in the "real world" even knew about it. Now provided the old saying holds true about "safety in numbers" and "it's not what you know, it's who you know" how would anyone that is not a part of this online world ever accomplish anything in the real world? We would have all been left out of what could have been the greatest and biggest social network the world has seen yet. My entire point with all of this is simply, quit trying to eliminate the social networks created by the gamers and learn how to use it for your own benefit. In theory, a social network that large and comprehensive would be one of the greatest sources of information ever generated in one place. Seeing as how information sets it own price and is the most valuable thing on the planet, why don't you do the math and see how good this kind of gaming network would actually be. It would easily be bigger than "myspace" and "facebook" combined and eliminate the need for either one. That my good friends would be worth more than it's weight in gold. As Donald Trump said, "Since you're thinking anyways, why not think big?"