Flit

EVERQUEST IS PAINLESS... IT BRINGS

EVERQUEST IS PAINLESS... IT BRINGS ON MANY CHANGES

I've covered a couple stories when I wrote about games professionally where the (admit it) highly addictive EverQuest played a part in the ruination of someone's life. This isn't even the saddest I've heard. Now, I'll say it right out: I don't think the company is to blame, and I sure as hell don't think they should be sued... but to deny that the massively-multiplayer computer game can have a deleterious effect on the seriously mentally or emotionally unstable among us (just like alcohol, gambling, or strip clubs, or several other vices that I have also enjoyed in moderation) is to kid ourselves. Now of course, all those other addictive habits are at least a little regulated, and rightly so. Accordingly, I am one gamer who thinks the ESRB ratings are a pretty good attempt in that direction. What other kind of regulation could there be? To demand designers, on threat of lawsuit, make games less fun? Less immersive?

Folks, we haven't even started going on the immersion train yet... in the coming years, and decades, we're going to see game-induced endorphin rushes that make Everquest look like Zork. The trendline, running asymptotically to the vision of the Holodeck itself, is going to ever more toward more verisimilitude, more intense personal interactions, more to risk and more to lose, and more people who'd rather live in a world with their friends where dragons also roam (or whatever) than in a world where the night shift at the pizza parlour is the most exciting thing they have to look forward to.

The game companies probably do need to take this into account... and maybe it should affect decisions on such things as exorbitant penalties on death. There are games that are designed to be more addictive than fun... I would count EQ among them. (I'm very pleased with Dark Age of Camelot because it uses much the same lineage and assumptions, but tilts it back toward the fun side. As a result, I suspect it'll be a long time before we see the first DAOC tragedy like this.) But imagine you lived in a world where every year the liquor, purely by improvements in industrial processes, became even more intoxicating and attractive to drink than it was the year before. What is the responsibility of the regulators then? And of those who make it? And of those who drink it?

LOT OF IDIOTS OUT ON

LOT OF IDIOTS OUT ON THE WEB TODAY: MUST BE THE WEATHER

Take a look at the Bell Canada ad on this page in the National Post. Now tell me how encouraging epilepsy in the casual web reader helps sell anything to anyone.

LARGE ASTEROID THREATENS TO WIPE

LARGE ASTEROID THREATENS TO WIPE OUT LIFE ON EARTH IN THE YEAR 2880 -- EUROPE BLAMES BUSH GOVERNMENT AND THE JEWS

Okay, I made that second part up.

SHE MAY ALSO BELIEVE LEPRECHAUNS

SHE MAY ALSO BELIEVE LEPRECHAUNS HAD A GREAT DEAL OF INFLUENCE IN THE ULSTER PEACE ACCORDS

In yet another example of how easy it is to get a professoriate in this country, York University's Ananya Mukherjee Reed writes a spirited defence of the right of Palestinians to kill Israeli civilians in the Star today. She ends with a direct comparison of the Palestinians to blacks in America, who, as we all know, freed themselves from slavery:

As history tells us, the end to any form of subjugation has never come about without resistance or merely through goodwill and missionary zeal. Here's one example close to home. Could slavery have been abolished merely with a sufficient dose of American liberalism in the absence of slave revolts?

It's called the Civil War, Ananya. There was also an interesting man named Lincoln involved somehow. You may want to look into it.