Sometimes I wonder how people who hold particularly irrational beliefs
(just world hypothesis and superstitions in general, flat Earth, those
who keep spam/scams profitable, and many others) manage to otherwise
function, and sometimes even rather well. Sadly, programming and other
technologies are not exceptions from that, but will better focus on
more general situation here.
Generally I find it frustrating when large-scale events based on those
occur (for instance, large scams, religious and political events), but
some bits are just amusing: stores sell "healing bread", in
apothecaries one can find items such as "white stone of eternal life",
and there were websites asking to press your hand to a computer
monitor for future prediction. One can buy a bunch of magic items, hop
into a church for some rituals, read a horoscope, make a deal with a
Nigerian prince, perhaps visit a sportsball event and get into a fight
afterwards. Quite similar to what one can do in a fantasy RPG (or a
MUD), but much more sophisticated.
The view of a life as a game is not new or original, but only recently
I started noticing how close it can be to a fantasy game, while more
realistic genres are even easier to compose out of common views and
activities.
Given that people still manage to interact more or less smoothly while
"playing" different "games" (or "living in different worlds", and even
with differences in how they communicate), I wonder how viable it is
to recreate in software, for distributed games. Actually had it on my
"ToDo" list for a while now, to try making a game without hard
universal facts (and without a strict protocol, letting different
actors to sort out how they communicate with others). Maybe presence
of strict and known rules is what makes [computer] games entertaining,
but it might be fun to try nevertheless.
