Other Worlds to Live In
Kiddies, in the olden days there used to be a game called
'Dungeons and Dragons' that was not played on a computer, but
with people and many sided dice and graph paper. And the only
thing you had to make this game real was your own imagination.
Sigh. Those were the days, yep.
Well, I can't say that I was really much of a D & D player,
ever. I encountered it when I was in military language school in
Maryland and my Dungeon Master - there were no kinky overtones
to that back then - was a marine Seargent named Dave. Dave took
me and another sailor or two into some truly magical worlds -
Hey! There's still nothing kinky about this.
Come to think about it Dave did take me to my first strip bar
(and second) so maybe you really could say that he took me to
some magical worlds. Anyways, I might have played D & D on and
off for about a month before I realized that language school was
pretty effing hard and I didn't have time for this. The other
sailor, who was also in language school, didn't come to that
realization and he flunked out.
If it makes any difference to you, I had a seventh level
eighteen double zero strength warrior with a blue flaming sword.
He was awesome, man! For the life of me I don't know what ever
happened to that warrior of mine, and if he isn't in some other
dimension of space and time wondering what happened to me and
why I haven't called or E-mailed. To anybody who knows anything
about this I suppose that's considered a really lame character,
but it took me many hours in a barracks room huddled over the
dice to accomplish, though for some reason it's just doesn't
seem like so much of an accomplishment, anymore.
Does anyone ever play Dungeons and Dragons anymore? Or is that
just an old school thing which only gray haired dorks would ever
think about? The thing is, now with all the marvelous on-line
games that you can choose to be a part of - why would you
bother? The ones I can think of off the top of my head are Final
Fantasy XI, and World of Warcraft, and the ever popular
EverQuest which is also called 'EverCrack' because of the
addictive nature. I feel sad that people are living in these
pre-created worlds, spending hours and days, and they aren't
even using their imaginations, dammit!
I've spent a few hours with my beloved PS2 and I can tell you
that it certainly can be 'addictive'. After spending hour after
hour not moving any part of my body but my fingers, I've asked
myself what really would be the difference between that and
being an opium addict and spending the same amount of time doing
... pretty much the same thing. Okay. Opium costs a lot more
money to begin with, also ... I don't know. There are other
differences, though, I'm sure of it.
So far, I've only played regular games and they are self
limiting at one point or other. You can only play a game until
it ends and after that you're done. Unless you want to play the
exact same game again, which you probably will.
I've never been tempted to go into one of those online games.
For one thing, I would just hate starting out at the bottom of
the bottom where you have to spend, like, days doing nothing but
killing bunnies to get yourself leveled up and it's not even as
easy as that because the bunnies kill you back. That's got to be
frustrating. Then the other people who have been playing for
ever don't really treat you all that well. It's not a very
encouraging process in my mind.
Mostly, I fear getting lost in those other worlds at the expense
of this one. I've already heard stories where it's taken over
lives so that it costs more than just time, but lots of money,
careers, relationships and then when failure occurs in the
non-real world, some have taken their lives in this real one.
That's pretty scary. I tell you, some of these on-line games
look really beautiful and enticing, but all that's going to do
is make the one you have to go to bed in look all that more ugly
and uninteresting.