Jerry,
One important difference is that people who play the Monopoly board game
usually would have a rich set of different kinds of social relations
amongst themselves, of which playing Monopoly would presumably constitute
only a very small portion. The game described below would involve people
who most likely would have no other direct relations with or knowledge of
each other and who would be further encouraged to relate to one another as
manipulable objects.
Also: the board game, played in a physical room, on a table, say, with the
other people physically present, likely does not have the immersive quality
of a (perhaps ever more 3-D, multimedia, etc.) virtual reality, against
which the alternative reality outside the computer would possibly pale with
respect to excitement, the wielding of power, and so on.
Blair
>> The WSJ, March 20, contained a special section on Entertainment and
>> Technology. One article, "Where the Action is" (p. R19) about San
>> Francisco's SOMA (South of Market) "Multimedia Gulch," discussed the
>> development of interactive stories, and contained the following:
>> "One such story is an Internet game that Mr. Martinez claims could involve
>> up to one million people, broken into tribes warring for control of a
>> digital planet. Items in the story--such as weapons, oil and
>> transportation--are sold to the audience, whose members may then trade
>> parts with each other, with PostLinear [the company] collecting a
>> transaction fee."
>> Is this bizaare or what? People usually get paid for trading (the work of
>> trading); now people are paying for the right to perform the exchange
>> process? They're not even getting (or exchanging) anything real; the act of
>> exchange is the whole point here! This is bread and circus on a scale
>> zillions of times bigger than anything the Romans ever dreamed up: entire
>> communities of people engaged in fantasy worlds, working in the real world
>> to make money to work in a fantasy world.
>> I really don't get it. Anybody have any thoughts about this?
>> Blair
>
>It doesn't sound that much different than the board game called "Monopoly"
>that you played as a child.
>
>It also reminds me of an electronic game that James Bond played in one of
>his more recent movies.
>
>Jerry
_________________________________________________
Blair Sandler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"They say that it's never too late,
but you know you don't get any younger.
Well I better learn how to
starve the emptiness and feed the hunger.
-- Indigo Girls
_________________________________________________
