I still love WoW despite some of it's failings and that isn't a lie.  This video was posted on some mmo fansites and I think it's hilarious.  Great stuff.

Does this mean I'm going back to Azeroth again?  Nah, not in the immediate future.

Brave New Sociopaths

Prokofy Neva wrote a great post about developer Jane McGonigal's speech at TED.

In this discussion McGonigal gushed about gamers, their love for games, their obsessive game playing strategies and how that energy should be harnessed to change the world.

What McGonigal fails to address is the gang, the posse, the mob witch hunts that all online games encourage.  I've seen it in action in various forms all across the web.  From the brow beating of people who wanted to debate changes in WoW's game, attacks on bloggers of various subjects that range from politics, finance, fandoms or fashion, to people who suddenly decide that a company is a failure and must disappear (i.e. the attacks on Warhammer Online for example).

McGonigal naively calls this mass behavior, this group on a verge of their "big win"... Urgent Optimism.  She wants people in charge to give out quests to this unruly mob in order to fight hunger, poverty, global warming and various other misery windmills of human beings.  Throughout our collective history as human beings the one failing we tried to prevent in our collective survival strategies was the formation of mobs.  Mobs have no conscious, they have no empathy, they are only driven by extremes of anger, fear and more often, mania.  It is awful to state this but our games now encourage mob behavior.  Because the collective formation in games don't include basic survival strategies.  They are only activities that reward mass mob actions to attack others.

What McGonigal fails to understand or just plain ignores is that mobs cannot be controlled.  They are directionless entities prone to violence and will cleave to the appearance of any leader that inspires them.  More often than not these "leaders" do not have the best interests of human beings in mind.  They are people such as Stalin, Hitler, Manson, Jim Jones, or Torquemada.  Those people were very capable of harnessing that Urgent Optimism that McGonigal enthusiastically crows about in her speech.

So what is a more realistic example of McGonigal's Urgent Optimism?

Alexis Pilkington being attacked by faceless mobs on her Facebook page.

This may or may not have been a factor in her decision to commit suicide.  But the mob so driven by their Urgent Optimistic mania, kept up their attacks on her even after her death.  Obviously they needed to go back and exult in the presence of their big win.

How can people be without empathy for a young girl lost at the beginning of her life?

What McGonigal needs to be enthusiastic about is finding the reason why the internet and it's games fosters, harbors and loves sociopaths.  Far from making us more loving of our fellow human beings, the internet is cutting us off from each other.  It is turning us all into the "other".  It is turning us into "Horde", "Alliance", "Order", "Chaos" etc.  And if the chosen enemy's name is highlighted in red, it's dead.

Retiring

When I created this blog to separate my regular posts and game posts, I thought there would be loads of events to discuss beside SL.  But as it turned out, I decided to retire my WoW account and soon, my Warhammer account.

I still enjoy WoW and always will.  But I had a few insights in the past few months that couldn't be ignored.  The first was regarding game changes to classes and to professions.  And I watched with horror as many player suggestions/protests were ignored and not even addressed by game developers.  This happened regularly with game changes whether they had an effect on my characters or not.  Another aspect that gave me pause was that game developers across the board (WoW and not) let slip their real opinions about the people who pay them money for their games.  They think we are stupid, easy marks to be fleeced for subscription fees.  They equate their games with addiction and seek to discover new ways to keep the addiction running or hook new people into addiction.  The attitudes that these games foster have a very real "Lord of the Flies" feel.  In which mob justice mayhem ruled among players which upset and disgusted me.  Last and not least, my helm experience.  You see that helm on my main?  It took me numerous dungeon runs to get that digital piece of crap.  The first few runs were fun then it quickly turned into a something akin to slavery.  I realized that this helm experience would be repeated with every new piece I would want.  And it wouldn't end with basics but just get worse with each new quest.  All of this was floating around in my mind, when I finally decided to leave.

But all of this was apparent ever since I began to play these games.  Why the break now?  I don't know.  It just took time before I said enough was enough.

I have good memories of WoW.  I liked the quest stories and the cartoon artwork.  Occasionally I would meet another relaxed player who wasn't strung out.  They were good people with which to share the game.  I loved the story buildup to the release of the "Wrath of the Lich King" expansion.  The pets, little non combat companions, were fun and whimsical.  I loved collecting them.  All of this, I liked but it isn't enough to keep me paying a monthly fee.

Technically my subscription ends this Wednesday but I decided to turn today into my last.  Mainly because I feared that I would have a loss of willpower and fall back into the game treadmill.  So what did I do for my last hour of gameplay?  Not much.  It turned out, that with the exception of high level raiding, I did it all.  There wasn't anything new or uncommon for me to complete.  So I made a few frostweave bags for a friend, did some old dailies and one dungeon.

The Forge of Souls dungeon is still a relatively new dungeon from the latest game patch.  I wasn't that familiar with it since I only played it twice.  But there was an armor piece I wanted so I thought I would give it a go one last time.  However I goofed with the LFG system.  What I needed was on the regular run but instead I picked Heroic (hard level).  Everyone in my group was so over geared in play armor that I didn't even notice that the level was set to Heroic.  So I was mighty surprised to the see the achievement badge pop up on the screen after the run.  Afterwards, I thought that I would try for a regular run in the same instance.  But then decided that the mistake and the surprise achievement was a good way to end the game.

So the end was a high note and I was on top.

I don't dance

I've been rethinking my involvement with VRs recently and what I expect to receive from my time inside of them.

And my conclusion is...a whole lot of nothing.  But that is and can be okay.  As long as I know that I'm paying to play.  David Mamet stated about Las Vegas that it only advertises paying to play not playing to win.  He equated it with the Acting school model where this same type of scenario was muddled.  In which aspiring actors were paying schools to feel as if they were winning.  When really they should just be out there...acting where ever they could.   They same type of muddle is inherent in the VRs as well, in that people think they are paying to win not to just play.

The swindle with VRs is that they are giving the illusion that players are gaining accomplishment.  Because due to the way our brains are wired, we can not distinguish the real from the unreal in VR.  I think of avatars as phantom limbs.  Or perhaps that is wrong.  A few years back, I took some lessons in fencing.  What amazed me during training was that it changed the perception of my body boundaries.  I could actually feel my personal space expanding to accommodate the fencing sword, to feel as if I were growing and projecting into a larger sense of self.  The sword became a literal extension of my arm.  Avatars are like the sword that becomes a part of a fencer's body.  But whereas swords are always considered tools, avatars are not.  Our brains look into that upside down VR world and think that they are mirror images.  We think we are seeing ourselves.

Therefore what our illusionary selves accomplish becomes an accomplishment for the real.  It makes us quite willing to jump on the hamster wheel just to feel that few seconds worth of joy through our voodoo dolls.  In the process, we are infantilized.  Its apparent in the very way developers treat their customers (who are keeping them in luxurious lives they are accustomed to), they patronize us.  VR customers are spoken to the way adults speak to toddlers suffering from the terrible twos.  Autonomy is not wanted inside our small children or in game world customers.

So what am I doing if I know its nothing?  Well I'm having fun.  Sometimes too much, which burns me out.  Then I throw tantrums, delete characters and defriend passing acquaintances.  This happened a few times.  And this is what started me thinking.  Even with some fun, why stay?  That was when I decided to wean myself from most of the games I play.  The first and biggest was Warcraft.  I deleted my low level alts and only kept my regulars.  My main has a vanity guild which will be taken care of by a friend while I'm away.  In the back of my mind, I believe that I will go back for the next expansion...Cataclysm.  But that is over 8 to 9 months away and who knows what I'll be doing then.  There is the possibility that my leaving could be permanent.

The next game to go will be Warhammer Online.  I've given myself a few more months with that game then that too will be cancelled.

However, Second Life will be considerably harder to curtail.  Mainly because I do so little inside it except to nest.  The main joy I get out of SL is to own my nicely sized fantasy land plot that I decorate for each season.  I don't really socialize in SL, because I've never really trusted anyone enough in the game.  You see, I never believed that SL was the same as RL.  Its always been a game to me.  And that is a sacrilegious thought to most SL hard core.  But I need boundaries between the real and the fairy tale, it protects me from hazardous addiction.

You see, I don't dance in SL when all is said and done.  I think virtual dancing is ridiculous.  And I've refused to do it which most other players don't understand.  I have the required animations but I don't use them.  Because I love dancing in RL and I'd rather be dancing in RL.  Just the same as I think photo taking in RL gives me more pleasure than celebrating SL screenshots.  My RL photos are mine.  My SL screenshots are jetsam and flotsam which more militant SL players would use to sue me for copyright infringement.

If one can't dance in SL, then they aren't true residents.  And I've discovered that I'm not.  I'm too critical and that gets in my way in-world.  So, I suppose, I should tier down my land to make a smaller monthly payment.  Then go out there and do what makes me happy outside a computer box, to learn that there is more than just paying to play.  When there could be just play.

This blog?  Oh it will continue to exist.  And I will update it with accounts of my travels.  It just won't be as starry eyed as most SL blogs. ;)