A pseudophilosophical rant
I talked gaming and games with a friend the other day, and the subject came to
EVE Online, I've never played it, he told me some interesting stories, and one
that inspired some kind of insight in me. It was about the online currency, the
topic was arrived at us talking about the nature of stock markets, bitcoin in
particular.. He mentioned to me, that in EVE Online, there had been a time where
play-time could be bought, not only from "real" money, but also using in-game
currency. That made me think. People were playing the game, but in the game they
were playing, they were working to obtain currency that they then used to buy
more time to play the game. He remarked that the price of game-time was quite
costly when using the in-game currency. In other words, it was expensive to buy
time with the in-game currency. At first, this struck me as being very meta.
Thinking further about it, it meant that people were playing the game to play
the game. I wondered what made them do it, I speculate, that it is some kind of
bias toward staying alive, a survival instinct, the thing we've been conditioned
for, the thing we are genetically predisposed for, is to labor for survival, for
the continuation of existence. It fits well with what life is on a macroscopic
scale, the never-ending quest to keep being. Every living organism does this.
This is life, in basic:
01 Be born
02 Grow up enough to
03 Procreate
04 Ensure survival of offspring (optional)
05 Stay alive (optional)
06 If still alive then goto 03
I think this is part of why we play games, they grant us different lives, but
almost all of them somehow revolve around staying alive, around keeping the
privilege of being. From Quake to Sim City, we want to keep existing. We want
to win over the competition. Could it be, that our desire to survive in a game
is caused by our desire to "05 Stay alive" ? Could it be that our drive to beat
the opponent, or win by some margin, in a game is caused by our programming to
"03 Procreate" ? I don't know, but it seems to me like it is pretty easy to map
almost everything we do, in life, in games, in society, onto the BASIC program
of life. Maybe we need to think outside the program once in a while, is there
anything out there, beyond being a generic life form running a program ?
Your name
Totally generic life entertainment. But it was nice anyway. I saw the Anime in a
Danish cinema, and they showed it with Japanese speech and subtitles, the way it
is supposed to be! I recommend it, and I think I'll watch it again some time.
Paprika
I'm watching it, well, I'm starting to watch it now.. Juuust when I've finished
writing this post.. I actually started it, but then I thought about the thing I
wanted to write, and went here, to write it, and wrote it.
Playstations
I've got a PS2 and PS3 now :D I'm very excited to some time get time to play
them a bit more.. But I've now gotten a few hours wasted on GTA V, it's a good
game, and I've not managed to keep out of trouble long enough to start the 4th
mission :D I also got "We love Katamari" for PS2, it seems a lot of fun! I want
to stream it, and I tried just pointing a webcam at the screen, that's a no go,
so I've ordered a capture device which hopefully can capture it well enough :)
Bitcoin
It's weird to see how the price is exploding these days.. Wow, over 1600 EUR.
