Jolt Country

Robb, see the bold? Your Next Game?
I hit the wrong link on my favorites menu this morning and ended up reading about how Iraqi food rationing is worse now than it was during the UN sanctions. I was trying to get to a website about a video game that I’m playing right now and somehow hit the wrong link. I must remember to delete that link so it doesn’t happen again. It’s ruined my whole god damned morning.

It’s a mess out there kids. There’s a shit storm in the Congo. Palestinian and Israeli hardliners want nothing to do with current peace plans for that region so, as usual, they’re still shooting each other. The Queen knighted Afghanistan’s new President, but no one can seem to find him any money to feed his people (where are those humanitarian loving Yankees when ya need them?). Actually, there’s a whole whack of other shit happening as well, but I’m not going to waste my time mentioning it.

The truth of the matter is that it’s 22 degrees out right now and my near future is all about sitting on a patio and drinking beer. That’s my afternoon. I may get up to go take a slash now and again, but for the most part I’m just going to sit on my ass and drink beer (if anyone that works for a major brewing company’s marketing division happens to be reading this I’d be more than happy to play a few shows, if you know what I mean – cha-ching!)

I have no hard plans tonight to speak of. I might lie on my sofa and watch TV, I might go cruising around in the convertible and throw water balloons at street people, dunno yet. I’ll find something.

Oh, one thing to mention. Stop e-mailing me about the whole downloading nonsense. I don’t care. If you want to e-mail me about beer, or nude pictures of yourself, then fine. Hell, even just simple crazy fan stuff’s good. But no longwinded e-mails please, I just read the first two lines and then delete them.

I was thinking today that someone needs to invent an online game where it’s just anarchy in the streets. You start out in a house and the world is just a fucking disaster and you have to survive. You have a shotgun, an assortment pack of Hostess deserts, and that’s it. So everyone outside your house is someone else in the world that’s also playing the game and you can kill, rob, fuck, bludgeon, cripple, blind, burn, or dismember them as you see fit. Now that’s a good fucking time if ever there was a good time to be had. The best part about it is that you’d be aware of the fact that someone just like you was controlling other people in the game. So in a sense, you’d be doing away with real people (**while drinking beer optional). Now that’s a damn that’s sexy idea if ever there was one.

I have to admit, this whole kicking back, having a good time scenario is brilliant. I should have bought in a long time ago. Anyway, there’s a cold beer out there with my name on it, so I’ve got to go. But maybe we’ll run into each other in cyberspace sometime.

I’ll be the guy with the smile and the shotgun.

Unfortunately, I may not be able to get the Hostess license, though.

Also: WTF is this guy deleting e-mail that he gets on certain subjects? What, is he more interested in talking at people than to them? What's the "downloading" thing he mentioned?

Regarding the game proposal in the bold text: didn't Ultima Online start out like this? Or rather, it wound up more or less like what he describes after a few months with the Player Killer phenomenon?

I never played it, myself (or any other MMORPGs, for that matter) but I seem to recall that without the designers doing much of anything, a bunch of other players got together, formed armed vigilante squads, and rounded up all the psycho people beating up newbs and restored some order, gradually evolving into armed patrols. I had a friend who loved this and other games like it, but he got fed up when he lost an expensive pet dragon due to a bug in the program and Origin wouldn't replace it.

Sounds like a simplified version of various real life situations like the French Revolution: Restriction > Freedom > Chaos > organized mobs of weirdos > Order > Authoritarianism. Repeat as necessary.

It turns out we can we can tell pretty much what they'd do in such a game, more or less. Just ran across this today, and it's worth reading for the entertainment value alone.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/silico ... 019958.htm

First, there's be a bunch of raging assholes who'd do stuff just because they could and nobody could stop them:

To Mathieson, the lack of a government to lay down laws in virtual online communities like Alphaville -- let alone cops to enforce the rules -- resulted in anarchy. ``Grievers'' arose -- players who delight in creating misery for other players -- stealing money, trashing houses or even appropriating another's online identity.

Then, there's be a group of people who got sick of it and formed a vigilante group for protection. Or maybe extortion. Depends on one's frame of reference.

The most popular person in the Sims universe -- Mia Wallace, a composite character played by Mathieson and his wife, Jennifer -- stepped into the power vacuum and organized the Sims Shadow Government.

``We weren't playing the games as hoodlums, we were playing the game as protectors of the city,'' said Mathieson.

At least at first. Somewhere along the line, though, the Sims Shadow Government turned from benevolent overseer to a virtual version of La Cosa Nostra.

Maybe it was the emergence of a rival family, the Playtime gang. Or maybe it was the Mia impostor, who tarnished the real Mia's reputation by inviting other players to work for her as a prostitute. Perhaps the final straw was when someone hijacked Mathieson's America Online account -- and stole all of his in-game cash and property.

Fascinating article... I mean, I had no IDEA. And it sounds like a fairly accurate model of... well, the Natural State described in Hobbes' Leviathan:

Thomas Hobbes, way back in 1651, wrote:In such condition, there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

I knew people in high school who thought that anarchy would somehow solve problems ("Duuuude, smash the state, man!"). One of them wound up in some third world country during civil unrest and developed a very different outlook on the subject.