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From: russ
Date: Wed Dec 15 17:43:03 MST 2004 Subject: Eschatology Games

Responses
derek: MMOG (12/16/04)
paulmo: GOMM is just MMOG spelled backward (12/19/04)
Responses (sorted by date)
paulmo: GOMM is just MMOG spelled backward (12/19/04)
derek: MMOG (12/16/04)
I've been reading a theology book, and it has mentioned various times about how God's various atributes have their "ultimate" expression in eschatology (end of the world). This suddenly struck me as problematic because it sort of left out eternity from his "ultimate purpose." It was like we would all hit the end times, and then we wouldn't have anything left to do.

I realized that that sort of linear, terminal thinking is expressed in the sort of games we often play. How many board games do you know of are fun to play after they are "over"? Do you keep going around the Monopoly board, just because you enjoy the process of rolling the dice? How many combat-oriented computer games allow you to keep doing stuff after you've totally defeated the enemy?

Then I thought of a new class of games, which, by its very nature, has had to create a new type of gameplay. MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) create persistent worlds, and they want people to keep coming back (and thus keep paying the subscription fees). Yet, in order to do that, they have to (attempt to) create games which are fun indefinitely. They have no particular goal or end. Will this affect our cultural understanding of things? Will it be partly responsible for desconstructing linear thinking and replacing it with something else?

Come to think of it, many things that children do are pretty nonlinear - they just do something for a while, with no particular end in sight. But we "grow up out of that." Maybe not, anymore?

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From: derek
Date: Wed Dec 15 23:08:29 MST 2004 Subject: MMOG

Excellent. Finally, a theology built of MMOGs! I always love open-ended games, expecially RPG's (Role Playing Games). Between this post and your last post, I think you're just trying to suck me into saying something.

I've been thinking about what it looks like to live out my faith on a day to day basis. This doesn't go against the "eternity" discussion like it sounds, though. I'm thinking about an ancient mathematical dilemma. The one where the guy walks halfway to the endpoint. He again walks halfway to the endpoint from that point. Then halfway again. The dilemma being that if he keeps walking, keeps going halfway to the endpoint, he always approaches it, but never gets there. The eventual conclusion is that it doesn't take an infinite ammount of time to travel an infinite distance, or something like that. Math teachers- feel free to correct me.

So, the point is, in role-playing games there are usually very open places in the game and very bottlenecked places. When you hit an open place you can explore, level up your character, enjoy the scenery, play games, figure out secrets, etc. When you decide to walk back into the plotline, you will usually be limited on where you can go, how long you can take, what characters you can use. A MMOG relies on the open places to carry the entire game. They create new skills (building, designing, crafting), create guilds and clubs for conversations, and try to make everything deep and customizeable.

Usually, I find that in life I work for the bottlenecks. I don't delight in the open places. I don't explore the possibilities. That scares me. I love the lyrics of one of Modest Mouse's songs, "you wasted life, why wouldn't you waste the afterlife?" That's pretty much my concept of eternity. I don't even do anything with my weekend. What makes me think I'd do something with eternity? I have a limited amount of time and and unlimited distance (if I measure it small enough, such as by making use of each day, or each hour or, well, you get the point). So, it comes down to this: I need to do some more marrow-sucking.

And for the record, I have played with both Monopoly and Clue without playing the game, just pretending I exist wandering around in that universe. I think points are pointless. Except for that one.

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From: paulmo
Date: Sun Dec 19 16:35:37 MST 2004 Subject: GOMM is just MMOG spelled backward


I've always liked CS Lewis's vision of eternity. In books like the Narnia series and The Great Divorce, he posited that Heaven and eternity were like an inside out onion, more potent and real and rich the further in you went. That all our struggles and adventures in faith in this world were no more than pale shadows compared to the living vibrant and intensely real experience that eternity would be. Of course, the dark side to that is the notion of Hell -- that the choice to actively resist God and cling to our own Lordship could continue unabated, driving us into deeper and deeper isolation and misery and fear and hate for eternity: a truly horrible thought. But either way, he saw the afterlife as a more real and more powerful journey deeper into the either the adventures of joy or self-chosen damnation.

But the MMOG-model isn't a bad approach either. My friend keeps trying to get me to play World Of Warcraft with him and his crew (like I have any time for that). Maybe I could "advance a level" theologically if I started playing... :)

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