A great article on my recent obsession.

I'll admit it...I'm a big fat geek.

I recently got sucked into two online role-playing games. I got sucked in so hard you could hear the slurping sound from miles away.

The first game is one that I've laready blogged about: Puzzle Pirates.

It's a cute and addictive blend of Lego dudes and Tetris style puzzle games, wrapped neatly in a silly pirate-themed world. Even though the graphics are cutesy and low-end compared to other games - one thing stands out - the community. The problem with most games is that the people who typically play them are angst-riddled teens who get off by spouting interweb slang and bullying n00bs. Puzzle Pirate's pacing is slow and when you have a swordfight, there's no blood. So you end up with players who are all mostly of a certain maturity level - they have patience. They all fully understand that it's both silly and fun to use piratey-speak - and they do so with gusto.


The second game is World of Warcraft.

Now, World of Warcraft is superficially, what you expect when someone tells you that thy play online role-playing games. It's based in the fantasy Dungeons and Dragons world. It's populated heavily with aggro-teens. It's got elves.

As of a few weeks ago, World of Wacraft has over 3 million players. That's a larger population than many countries. The in-game currency is worth more than many Real Life currencies. In fact, there have been a few articles about sweat-shops in third-world countries where all they do is play World of Warcraft for 24 hours a day and make a better living at it than making Nike shoes. And it's probably a lot less annoying too.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is kind of amazing at the level of depth it has. There are guilds to join, professions to learn. I spent several days running around battlefields after people had killed a bunch of beasts. I didn't kill anything, I just ran around to the corpses of animals and skinned them. Skinned them for the leather, which I then sold at the auction house to other players who are tailors. Tailors make things like pants and bags. bags are useful because they let you carry more loot.

It's stunning to me that all the technology of the new Millenium has amounted to me finally being able to live the fantasy of being a backwoods trapper. And a priest. Thanks to Progress, I can pretend to live in poverty and virtually master skills that were actually being used 100 years ago. You can train to be a blacksmith too.

There's another game that I haven't touched yet called, appropriately, Second Life.
Second Life isn't really a game. There's no story. You do what you want. It is, in effect, the very first 'metaverse'.

Agent Em and I have had a few conversations about how interesting it is that there are these pseudo-realities starting to spring up. They blur the borders of what's real and what's not...I mean, if you can make 'real' money playing these 'games', and you develop unique skills that distinguish you from other players...if you can own property, create products and interact with others...how 'virtual' is it??

Everyone I tell about this laughs and me and smirks a lot about how I'm some jerk who should get a job and stop messing around. They smile patiently.

Well, read this, bitches:

How MMORPG'S will change the world.