[ExI] farmville, was RE: RPGs and transhumanism

[John Grigg]

Anders wrote:
I wonder what games actually make people go out and do things in the
real world? RPGs have certainly stimulated me to learn odd subjects,
and even helped my research. But what about other games (computers and
boardgames)?
>>>

I have several friends who loved the action/combat/militeristic aspect
of science fiction and fantasy roleplaying games, and I think they
later on joined the armed services to at least up to a point try to
live a real life of adventure.

John


On 2/27/11, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> spike wrote:
>> ...On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
>>
>>
>>> ...Tanzania trying to reboot itself in the rings of Saturn using a
>>>
>> Farmville-like game ...--Anders Sandberg,
>>
>> Would anyone here speculate about the wildly popular Farmville increasing
>> the demand for actual farmland?  My guess is that for every thousand
>> people
>> who spend time playing simulated farmer, there would be one or more who
>> would like to try her hand at the real dirt and sweat version.  If for no
>> other reason, it would give the player street cred with the others, and
>> perhaps lead to improvements in the simulation.
>>
>
> I am sceptical about how many actually do farming due to farmville. It
> compresses farming into a series of quick actions and rewards, while
> real farming seems to be about having a really long time horizon. Plants
> vs. zombies is not quite like real gardening.
>
> I wonder what games actually make people go out and do things in the
> real world? RPGs have certainly stimulated me to learn odd subjects, and
> even helped my research. But what about other games (computers and
> boardgames)?
>
>
> (In my RPG game, the Farmville-like game is actually a clever interface
> to the nanotech infrastructure underlying the construction of a space
> habitat. Players are playing a game but actually, just as lot of people
> filling in captchas are together doing reliable text recognition,
> solving morphogenesis problems and controlling the evolution of various
> nanosystems. Ideally this should all have been done with cheap AI, but
> it turned out that it was cheaper to run the 3.5 million surviving
> Tanzanian uploads on the servers... and they can get enticed by using
> game points in their virtual economy. And yes, the whole project will be
> in monumental trouble if people start tiring of the game before the
> critical control period is over. )
>
>
>
> --
> Anders Sandberg,
> Future of Humanity Institute
> James Martin 21st Century School
> Philosophy Faculty
> Oxford University
>
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