One of the hardest "video games" possible: Voluntary Death

Originally posted by sdocpublishing
I love video games, FPS and MMORPG and I have always wanted a game that gave you one life, especially PvP.

Diablo 3 (or 2), Hardcore mode. You die -- your character, and all his crap, is gone.

reply to post by adjensen


I am so against D3, I enjoyed the first one until it got to the harder levels because all you do is push buttons as fast as you can.

Strike, Strike, Strike, Potion, Strike, Strike Strike, Strike, Potion, Strike, Strike, Potion, . . . .

It seems dumb to me to play a game where my performance is based on how fast I can push the buttons. I prefer a game that required more finesse and skill as opposed to button f******* my controller.

Originally posted by sdocpublishing
reply to post by adjensen

 

I am so against D3, I enjoyed the first one until it got to the harder levels because all you do is push buttons as fast as you can.

Yep, you have it in a can. But D3, in hardcore mode, allows one to decide... is it the man? Or the mouse?

(Dodges rotten tomatoes, lol)

reply to post by ErgoTheConfusion


I think we are like in gamer and the matrix. we are not fully in control and there is the real us someplace else sitting in a chair being cared for by caretakers.
Every once in a while we wake up. Like if we take iodine that day or vitamins and wake up in that while we sleep.

great game idea by the way.

I think you should have an option to kill the handlers of us to find the exit. then again that is me.

reply to post by ImaFungi



But at what price, my fungal friend? Wanna hear a story?

There once was this female who lived in the great U.S.of A. Land of the free to mess with anything "they" choose. "They" chose to feed our cows and chickens and pigs growth hormones. Growth hormones occur naturally, right?
By feeding the animals this growth hormone, it caused an abundance of effects. More milk, more meat etc etc.

Fast forward 20 years...this female starts having some serious medical issues and had to seek out a doctor. The doctor says you got something growing inside ya, and it ain't a baby. It was a tumor that had gone septic. Death was imminent if she didn't have the surgery. So, her first surgery she has.

Relief came to this young woman, for a very brief moment. The inside of the body, heals just like the outside. It grows scar tissue. The human body is absolutely amazing...it self regenerates. But, she had been ingesting growth hormones in the foods that she had been eating and the milk she loved to drink.

The tumor she had, doctors had never seen before. Didn't follow suit with cancer or non malignant growths. And, now, because she has all these growth hormones in her body, the scar tissue that is growing on the inside, is growing in abundance. It grows and grows and the woman is unaware of the growth hormones that she has ingested all her life. It grows until it starts smothering her vital organs. 12 weeks after her first surgery, she has to have another to cut away the scar tissue that is smothering her organs. 12 weeks after that surgery, she has to have another surgery because of the scar tissue growing from that surgery. This cycle repeats itself, over and over throughout the young ladies life. To this day, 13 surgeries later, this lady still has them, and they ares till growing.

Growth hormones are natural. Technology allowed us to manipulate them to our immediate benefit. The price this lady and millions of others world wide pay, is NOT worth the benefits.

Do you really believe that human beings have never been tampered with? You think we are in our natural state?

Just so happens, that yes, my avatar reflects who I am. I am Apache Indian. And as such, I have learned to love the land...nature as a whole. I assure you that the things man do to this planet and each other is not natural.

reply to post by Cuervo


"techno shaman" sounds like an oxymoron to me....

But what a gentlemen....

Sticking to your grass roots is basically believing in something and when you believe in something, it becomes all the more real.

The target market for a ‘game’ such as this would largely be people that play MMO’s. Ironically, most of these players are unemployed, displaced workers or college students (60%). As MMO type games require a large time commitment. Casual gamers tend to stay away from these types of games. So virtual reality (VR) games if/when they ever hit the market, most likely will be out of the price range for the early adopters. As I believe what you are describing is VR. The current paradigm we operate in (work, family, social life) does not constitute enough units of satisfaction (economically speaking) for the massive investment that is undoubtedly required for such technology.

reply to post by ErgoTheConfusion


Just out of interest, which games have you worked on?

reply to post by jonnywhite


Because we're already in a "virtual reality" and it would make it better if we, could also be able to play one of those game, to make our own reality less virtual.

Not sure if anyone has eluded to this yet but this new platform for video games sounds A LOT like Inception (the movie). This can do a whole lot of great things but potentially can be extremely dangerous when people decide the game is more exciting than real-life.

But that is an entirely different topic.

reply to post by ErgoTheConfusion


I have found that the only way to really win in any battle, illusion or reality, is to never play the game. I have not played a video game in many years. I used to stay up past sunrise playing.

That video game sounds messed up, is something like that planned for the future?

reply to post by darkbake

The reason this is in the Philosophy and Metaphysics forum is the semi-posed question... looking at many of the aspects of our modern world and history, is that where we already are?

I don't know of any project trying to accomplish this currently, but yeah, you can bet someone will try it as soon as possible and I see no reason for that to not be within the next 5 years for real efforts to be visible if you know what you're looking for. All MMOs are laying the technological and structural foundation, for example. Same with the cloud consoles (OnLive, etc) where you just send input and they send output but do all the rendering and processing on a centralized system.

There is also the ugly side effect of being able to "sell" you the same experience over and over because each time you go in you forgot you've done it before. We think games are getting shorter and more put into fewer "bangs"... well imagine a game capable of giving you the best bang possible in a few seconds as if you've never done it before. Talk about addiction and financial exploitation problems.

It's part of why I'm reflecting on what I want my role going forward with an industry that is close to playing with real fire that it isn't addressing at all. It's like we're building all the tools independently as toys where you can't see how they will eventually be combined, only to later realize that we've actually created the greatest platform for mind/economic control possible.

Will catch up with the rest of the thread today!

Interesting ideas! But what would happen to someone psychologically who has experienced the game??? How can they really be kept safe? If its "real" to the mind, then you could end up with a lot of PSTD or other mental/emotional issues. It gets out of the realm of playing once the mind believes something is real. I'm not trying to harsh the buzz on this idea, as it could also be extremely educational (immersion in another culture is the best way to learn the language and understand the environment), not to mention giving people with physical disabilities the opportunity to live more fully in an alternate reality where they are not disabled. On the flip side, people could use it for interrogation or to make people experience torture, or could generate really evil situations (I had a dream like that once - kill myself or the serial killer would do it for me, slowly...). In other words, I see a very double edged sword here - one that could be a great enhancement, and another that could lead to psychological ruin.

What do you think about that, OP? I'm curious - I've thought about how gaming can effect someone a lot, as I have kids and have to make decisions for them about what is healthy and what is not. Your input would be very valuable. Thank you!!!

peace,
AB

reply to post by Xaphan


That premise you mention is something I've been seeing and thinking about more and more in recent months. I had a blown mind moment myself thinking about what you said and mixing it with the OP's ideas. Let's say this reality IS some type of video game like you described, or our spiritual consciousness is shot into a physical or programmed reality here on Earth. Then we come up with the kind of video game and augmented reality that the OP describes, our mind would then be delving into another layer of video game reality. What if you are inside a human made video game here on Earth and there's a little kiosk you can walk up to inside the game to play like a mini-game that is also another virtual world altogether.

Then your consciousness would be three layers removed from the original "real" reality, a game within a game within a game. What if your consciousness got stuck or forgot to come out of the second or third layer? We still see glitches in modern video games and codes that haven't been thoroughly debugged, could a glitch in a game like this cause irreparable harm to your consciousness or cause it to get stuck, or make it shatter?

I would propose that before we actually design and put someone inside a virtual reality indistinguishable from our own, that we would HAVE to be capable of writhing flawless computer code that doesn't malfunction, or glitch up. Especially if the interface is directly linked to our brain or uses a neural network type of technology. It would suck being stuck forever in a kind of glitch loop or have the program crash and it kills your real self.

This is creepy. I had a dream that i was being transformed into stuff, and being led to believe I was being tortured in unimaginable ways, then i relized i couldn'tposibly survive what was happening in this dream. Then the woman in the dream revealed herself and she said: Why don't you just die! In the dream I told her I cannot die here because if I do i will be trapped here like you are... I refuse to play this game anymore! You traded everything you are for an F-ing video game!

Then i woke up, funny thing is I'm not a gamer.

Originally posted by RMFX1
reply to post by ErgoTheConfusion

 

Just out of interest, which games have you worked on?

I thought back and forth on this as you can imagine.

gamingisstupid.com...

Originally posted by benrl
the best games are the ones like you sugest.

Build a world, make the basic rules, let your player decide what he will make of the game.

Some very interesting things come out of that, look at EVE online, or Minecraft.

We are on the cusp of some amazing things....

But as you suggest, who knows, maybe we are all just souls playing this "sim" game as we go through life, when we die, we unplug and brag to our fellow souls all the cool things we did in the game...

and as a gamer, this concept does not frighten me, theres always another game to play...

It's an interesting push and pull though. I too am far more drawn to the games which give me a field to play in and otherwise gets out of my way as much as it can. But this seems to appeal only to a more hardcore audience and as you integrate more and more of "everyone", the experience is required to become more and more formalized and hand holding to reach the same destinations. Those destinations are always unsatisfying to those who prefer the open world.

The original Everquest and DikuMuds enthralled me more than WoW ever could, but it's because I had something at stake in those... while always knowing that I had chosen to get myself into the mess (losing corpse at bottom of volcano and equipment that took days to get, etc) and can thus choose to stop if really wanted to.

Perhaps even within a collective consciousness there is only a portion capable of diving head first into truly open worlds (those same portions probably struggle to thrive in well organized structured worlds).

Originally posted by ImaFungi
reply to post by ErgoTheConfusion

 

this is kind of a contemporary understanding of the universe as Gods.,.,.,,.,,..,

If we are really unbiased pure quantum of energy,, all born equally from the architect of the game,..,, and this energy has an eternal infinity to bounce around,.,., the ultimate roll playing game, the stakes are whats real,,,,, we made up the concept of "game" after the fact we are in this real life "game" .,.,.,.,.,

making your own game to trap your self in,,,,

Doesn't that seem like one of the ultimate destinations of any consciousness?

To even reach the point of being able to create new consciousnesses that can create new games to trap you in? For example... perhaps all of the imaginary worlds we come up with for our entertainment now are really a "factory" of things for consciousness to go do.

It gets tiring trying to come up with it yourself... might as well develop a system to just keep generating interesting worlds to explore and "people" to meet... and have the stakes be real because you believe them to be real.

Originally posted by Zaanny
I look at it like this..

We are the debuggers of the program.

Our reality is an illusion.

We are all one.

I've always had a particular affection for the people in QA (testers) precisely because of how I felt like we all are the equivalent of Turing Testers for universal physical existence.