Brand Loyalty (was Re: [MUD-Dev] Requirements for MM (wasComp lexities of MMOG Servers))

[holding99 at mindspring.com]

At 12:52 PM 1/31/2003 -0800, szii at sziisoft.com wrote:
> From: <holding99 at mindspring.com>

>> I actually agree with you, to a point. The vast majority of the
>> population consider online games a waste of time, or at best a
>> weak diversion. However, the true question you are asking is,
>> "Apart from social pressures, and individual variations, what is
>> objectively important? Why is RL (whatever that is) more
>> important than a game, objectively?" And I really don't think
>> that's a fair question. I don't think you can separate the
>> needs/goals of the individual/society from the priorities in any
>> meaningful way.

> I think it IS a fair question, but then that brings up the
> "Matrix" style of thought : Apart from the physical "body" aspects
> of life, what makes "real life" so much more "real" than an
> imaginary interactive one?  What you perceive is what you perceive
> - end of story.  Regardless of the hallucination or delusion or
> immersion, it's still your perception.

<stuff deleted>

> Already our visual perceptions can be altered by staring at a
> computer screen.  1 sense down, 4 to go.  Get into a chamber, fed
> by IV with a few other "amenities" and lose yourself in the world
> for a while.  Or indefinately.  If a person is miserable IRL and
> extremely happy in game....why deny him that?  And then who would
> contend that "real life" is more important?  Not to him; and when
> he's on his deathbed and thinks back over his life, he's still got
> a memory chock full of experiences, contacts, emotions...perhaps
> even more full than someone who lived a "real" life and had to
> deal with the misery which accompany so many people.

Actually, I wasn't arguing so much that people who find games
important have altered perceptions; that implies that there was some
base perception that was then altered by the game. Instead, I was
suggesting that perhaps the things that people deem important,
whether it be health, wealth, friends, or whatever, is not so much
based upon the physicality of it (by that I basically mean "Can you
touch it?"), but upon the amount that it fulfills an emotional
need. Every game serves a purpose to the people who play it; in a
sense, the point of game design is to write a game that fulfills
such a purpose.

T.H. Cooke


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