Using my
newly built rig, I've finally been able to test out whether there's meaning to be found in the virtual world via the games I want to play as opposed to the games I can play due to the limits on "my" previous system (borrowing DW's potato-level windows computer).
I have not gone beyond installing EVE but instead focused on two other games that I used to enjoy vicariously on the youtubes. If "Grim Reapers" or "The Mighty Jingles" ring a bell (ha!), you already know what I'm talking about. If not, we're talking "World of Warships" and "Digital Combat Simulator" (also "Falcon BMS").
Fundamentally, the question I was wanted to explore was whether the Randers2052 suggestion of habituating yourself to virtual worlds and electronic entertainment instead of a rapidly declining real world of travel and nature in order to avoid the trend towards grief and disappointment as those get increasingly unavailable, is a good one or at least a viable one?
I think it is but with some unresolved caveats. Specifically these two:
AnalyticalEngine wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 10:37 am
One of the problems with postmodernity is that there are an ever growing number of metanarratives such that people can no longer understand what gives followers of a different metanarrative their meaning. Because metanarratives must exist to facilitate communication between groups, too many metanarratives creates a Tower of Babel scenario where people can no longer grok each other. Some branches of postmodern and metamodern philosophy are about bridging this gap between metanarratives or finding new metanarratives that work for are current, very weird, era of history.
jacob wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 10:49 am
The difference is that the virtual activity is literally a bullshit type job in the sense that it produces nothing of tangible value that in any way is necessary for the economy. Of course those jobs also exist in the real world but not to the same degree. Virtually it's literally guaranteed that the activity has to have self-generated meaning, like a hobby.
According to trackers (everything is tracked now, better get used to it), I've spent about 20 hours per week gaming for the past few months. (This is actual active playing time. I log out when I'm not active, so no artificially inflating the numbers.) This is a lot (I think?) and perhaps comparable to a "full time" job---at least the kind where you can finish the actual work in half the time and spend the rest of the time killing time or creating busy-work for yourself.
(A few months doesn't make me an authority on this point, so bare with me. Still ...)
When it comes to the question of meaningfulness, AE's comment definitely hits the mark. The games mentioned above are not your boomer parents' nor your Gen-X cohort's "concept of videogames". Over the past twenty years, some games have moved way past the Pacman or Duke Nukem stage.
WOWs is perhaps better classified like a PvP (player vs player) eSport. To older generations, eSports sounds like ridiculous concept, but compare to chess or poker, which actually does get some respect. Same thing! It takes skill and less skilled people like to watch the best. For most participating enthusiasts it remains at the level of "beer league". Still, it is both hard and challenging. Think tennis and
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tenni ... 0679778314 You get good by practicing. It's a perishable skill. It literally requires ongoing training to get and stay consistently good at it. Internally (intersubjectively) it's now no different than any other amateur sport, activity, or hobby. However, ...
(I think PvP is a difference in kind compared to the traditional PvE (player vs environment) games of olden times. There's a difference between going up against "live players" vs going up against NPCs.)
The intersubjective overlap is extremely narrow, though. You might be one of the best players in the world, but objectively speaking, you're just sitting in front of a computer doing hand2eye coordination (mine has really gotten a lot better to the point where I sometimes amaze myself at how I can now instantly hit whatever I want to click at from the other side of the screen
) and interobjectively speaking (that is, as far as most people are concerned), "you're still just playing video games", which to most people over the age of 30 remains a childish pursuit... unlike say being a passenger on an airplane to an exotic destination or being paid $20 or $40 per hour in a job to transfer numbers from one spreadsheet to another.
In terms of the last example, people might not understand or appreciate clicking on spreadsheets, but they definitely appreciate the indirect validation of someone getting paid by the hour and the job title that comes with it. As far as I've been able to estimate, all gaming efforts at the not-sponsored-rockstar level pay about $0.50/hour on the grey market. This is likely because the competition is global. Also, "program associate" looks better on a resume than "virtual battleship captain" even if the learning curve similarly hard. Likewise, "sports ball coach" sounds better than "virtual squadron leader".
Similarly, interobjectively speaking, most people find it a lot easier to understand how you're out running 10k each day because you're "training for a marathon" than how you're reading procedural manuals for communicating with a virtual air traffic controller or AWACS at a professional level as part of a videogame. I mean, why are you even doing this when the airplane isn't real?
OTOH, why are you even out there running to replicate a long-distance-running-story that was so crazy that it became legendary, when you could just pick up a phone a call in the message instead of killing yourself by running the distance? (if you didn't know, the original marathon runner died of exhaustion after delivering his message)
See my point? If not, welcome to the struggle
My point is that the virtual/gaming world is still on par with an esoteric hobby that is very hard to explain (narrow intersubjective overlap) to anyone outside the hobby. Therefore, anyone looking for external validation or validation in terms of what they do for a living or even what they do now that they're retiring remain SOL for now insofar they turn towards virtual games.
To be fair, the same also holds for a lot of other retirement activities that are hard for muggles to understand. Ordinary people will be no more impressed with "watching movies", "practicing yoga", or "writing poetry", because in their mind those activities are not associated with the measures of "doing good", "entertaining themselves", or "contributing to charity" which are just about the only frameworks they understand beyond working a job.
OTOH, the current virtual gaming world is materially deeper than your grand-parents' perception of "video games". Indeed, in some cases, a few games are now a lot deeper and more complicated than most jobs. Let me introduce you to DCS or worse, Falcon BMS.
Both of these now simulate real world fighter jets at about a 90-95% accuracy level.
To give you some background, I used to play a lot of fligt-sims back in the 1990s. Back then, sims had some 15 different kinds of input-commands (switching missiles, ECM, chaff, flares, map, target selection, etc.) and that was considered hard. Manuals were about 100 pages long and a lot of that was "goodies" like fictional narratives to get you in the spirit, or long indexes of various payloads.
These days, sims are as true to life as they can be. You're looking at 300 buttons and full-cockpit dials and some 500-1000 pages of tech manuals (often the ones from the real plane). The manual to just turn on the engines and avionics of a modern fighter jet is is 50-100 pages long. (I've still not gotten through a proper ramp start.) It's no longer a "game sim". It's a "study sim" of the real airplane. You have now available what used to cost several million dollars 30 years ago. You can put a competent simpilot into the corresponding plane and they can tell you what 90%+ of the dials mean and what they do ... probably also do a decent job at flying the real plane. Disaster movies where ATC talks someone down by explaining each button are gone. These days, it would be more like "the captain passed out. Is anyone on board familiar with the 737Max on FSX? Yes? Great! Please come to the front..." (probably every sim nerd's hero fantasy).
Overall, I think we're in a transition/liminal space with this [new] world. I now understand why some collect BTC, attach value to NFTs, or spend time (and real money!!!) dressing up their avatars. I'm not there personally, but I do see how both reflect real human effort and how the difference of [intersubjective] opinion might just be generational.
WOWs can definitely feel like a real bullshit kind of job where you log in, do your thing and get your daily rewards in order to rack up points and not lose your streak. (Sound familiar?)
Similarly, DCS---aka the study-sim---can feel like a college education with a ton or reading and practicing including a steep learning curve. BMS's learning curve is practically vertical just to get off the ground. In terms of how real it is ... hmmm .. not sure... but I still get sweaty palms trying to land a jet at 300kph.
The simulation feels real enough to make it matter. Then again, after all this work, where's my degree? Where are my job offers? It isn't and there aren't so from that perspective it's the ultimate waste of time.
As far as the Randers2052 suggestions are concerned, this is good news, though. Unlike your local sports club that offers training Mon, Wed, Fri classes from 7pm-8pm, these interobjective gaming communities are 24/7 operations. WOWs, for example, has a player community of 7500 people, so there's always someone on.
The interobjective aspects also allow you to work yourself up from a player to a team-leader or maybe a commentator or a coach. You'll see many of the same roles as IRL equivalents. E.g. PvP games have coaches and commentators. EVE has CEOs and diplomats. Some of these positions actually can pay money (but only directly or indirectly via advertising) but it's mostly either at the rockstar-level (sponsorships and prize money) or as a streamer/commentator. You're not going to make more than the $0.50/above equivalent mining asteroids in your little spaceship even if it costs as much as a real life car. (Just like NFTs can be inflated to insane values, so can rare digital content.)
In short, I'd say that whatever the virtual world is or will become, there's presently enough to keep you occupied in whichever way you desire (whether exploring, achieving, socializing, killing). HOWEVER, you will probably still find it hard to explain what you're doing to most other humans, at least for a good while. Insofar you need to derive meaning, respect, or even understanding from other people, you're SOL. You're basically at the forefront of working fundamentally useless underpaid bullshit-type jobs.