MMORPGs, reality and everything

The physical world has been fully explored. You can see the whole thing on Discovery Chanel. There’s nowhere new to go.

No wonder humanity is becoming ever more inward-looking, ever more narcissistic.

But with Massively Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Games (MMORPGs), we get an armchair experience of what inspired Elizabethan adventurers to escape whatever prosaic all-knowing suburban banality they felt constrained by and trek madly into the tropics.

MMORPGs attract people in a way that is new - and yet in a way that we all recognise - something familiar from dreams, from desires, from literature, from art and history. In MMORPGs we too can encounter strange environments, and meet stranger inhabitants - ourselves in fact, unencumbered by consequence, circumstance, or identity. Brand new creatures.

Meanwhile in China there are MMORPGs where the risk is toned down - the game difficulty is minimal and the emphasis is purely on socialising (for instance Battle of the Immortals). Monsters are not aggressive. Purchase the right “weapon” and you can dispose of them quickly.

That way your avatar has plenty of time to flirt and generally hang out.

In the West there is a more unforgiving tradition. It's dangerous and you have to fight hard to get anywhere. Adventure persists.

Will the future favour social platforms over biffing contests? Will the mainstream turn Middle Earth into a holiday in Miami?

Fascination with in-game socialising extends to academics. If you play MMORPGs there’s always the chance you’ll run across a wandering researcher questing for a PHD. You may be be asked questions like, do you feel that your gender performance in this game has freed you from patriarchal systems of identity??

MMORPGs are very thesis-friendly. They tick so many boxes - postulations about identity, the body and social organisation have been fashionable on campus for more semesters than departmental heads can remember.

I personally believe the arcane technical game play in MMORPGs (despite what is happening in China) is also a form of activity with philosophical resonances.

Which brings me to Postmodernism.

Continental theorists practically invented MMORPGs simply by thinking about society as a "text" or a "simulation". As the world sinks into a banality of social networking and endless “apps” (never mind virtual gaming), those crazy continentals may never be so necessary as now for the health of your brain cells.

Look out for them in this blog also!

Until next time....