It covers everything from the education system to video games to virtual operations in the military. If you are in the mood for something ominous, hopeful and thought-provoking this evening, i highly recommend giving this one a shot.

(total running time 1h 26m 13s)

Link to Frontline Website

http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/02/11/the-eve-upset/

…and for a while I was really confused as to what I was reading. I knew it was a game that was being talked about, but it sounded like a case of real-life espionage. Again, I find it fascinating how our video games mirror our lives…

“Lots of folks lose their livelihoods when an empire falls, and players invested in BoB are likely upset that years of work were lost. But EVE is not a game about the height of the Roman Empire. It’s a game about the sacking of Rome by barbarians, so that they can become the next short-lived top dog. BoB existed to be torn down, and anyone who dreams of permanent glory in a game like that should understand that their destiny is to be taken down by the next upstart, in a dog-eat-dog world.”

“the game, as a game, does want BoB to fall, because from a purely mechanical point of view, what is fun about EVE is the struggle, not the victory condition. The victory condition is boring.”

This is fascinating. I have often mused over how funny it is that people get so impatient with the struggle of life… people can’t seem to wait to get to “happily ever after.” But there is no such thing as happily ever after. That’s why there has never been a movie about being happy, foreverafter… the boredom would be annihilating. The fun comes from watching characters struggle to overcome obstacles… resolve conflicts… learn lessons. So the real “happily ever after” in life can only be found in the joy of watching your story unfold.

There have been several times in my life where i felt like i reached “happily ever after.” My dreams had come true… nothing could be more perfect… time to roll credits. The next day, however, i still had a job to go to. I still had traffic to contend with… office politics to overcome… unexpected drama from friends and family… The human condition is meant to be turbulent.

Maybe this is why there is always unrest in the world. Maybe if the wealth was evenly distributed, humans would lose their personal character-arcs and become depressed. Perhaps a certain level of struggle is necessary to keep this life meaningful.

There’s been a lot of these 3-D chat ads lately… especially here on tribe…

When I first got into 3D graphics i went to this conference where Adobe had a booth set up and they were demoing Adobe Atmosphere… kind of a 3-D environment thing for websites… and I thought to myself… “wow this is going to be the future… someday there will be some new 3D code to replace html and xml and flash and all that stuff… and a person’s personal website will be a 3D environment that you can walk through… You can tell people ‘hey come check out this video over at my place… my WEBplace’…” At the time I was thinking there might be big money in learning 3D modelling so that when this new world emerges I could rake in the cash by making custom high-quality avatars for rich nerds….

Now it looks like that might actually be a possible reality here very soon… i rarely click on these ads on tribe, but this one caught my attention… Looks like a combination of myspace and an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game)

I hope this doesn’t come off like I’m helping them advertise… but the whole concept fascinates me to death… I have many many theories about 2012 and the evolving internet is central to nearly all of them…

Video games were the beginning of virtual reality… especially the the new school ones where you can explore… not just be confined to a storyline.

Are we on our way? If so, is our virutal world going to be a mirror image of the world we have now? Is the world we have now a mirror image of a previous world that we destoryed? And where the fuck is Neo when I need him?