The Matrix is Real.
You heard me. The Matrix is real, and it's much cooler than the one in the movies. In fact, the real matrix is so cool that people around the world spent more than 175 million dollars last year just to stay plugged in. Admittedly the computer generated dream world that I am talking about isn't actually called "The Matrix", but is instead referred to as "MMORPG".
If you don't know what an "MMORPG" is, don't worry. It's a geek term, like "e-mail" used to be a geek term. For now, let's just say it's the most instantly gripping, involving and demanding entertainment technology ever invented. The addiction rate appears to be about twice that of crack. It's an infection, it's a tsunami, it's a volcanic eruption. All at the same time, waiting, like a nest of plague-infested rats next to a ticking hydrogen bomb in an underwater volcano. Or, something. What I'm trying to say is, it's the next big thing.
It all started back in March of 1999 with the release of a 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) titled "Everquest", merely two weeks before the release of "The Matrix" in theaters. Coincidence? Anyone?? Everquest's innovation and popularity opened the doors for countless game developers who continue to innovate and expand the online gaming genre.
Since 1999, the number of people playing these games has doubled every 18-24 months. In fact, Blizzard entertainment, developer of the current market share leader in the genre, announce this past January that its MMORPG, World of Warcraft, had surpassed the 10 million subscriber milestone. If you don't think that more than 10 millions subscribers is a big deal, consider that WoW's population is enough to make the top third of this list.
So where will MMORPGs will take us? Here's four things that will happen in your lifetime.
1. Everyone will look like a Greek god or goddess.
If you don't understand the gravitational pull of an MMORPG, I'm going to enlighten you with just a dozen words: You get to pick what you look like and what your talents are. That's the real beauty of it. The first thing you do in World of Warcraft is design your own body and decide what your strengths will be. You pick your race. What could be more seductive than that, the ability to turn in all of the cards you were dealt at birth and draw new ones from a face-up deck?
2. Someone will go to jail for stealing a Bonebiter.
You may have heard about a guy who recently was convicted of murdering a man during a dispute over a rare, valuable sword. That sword that was not made of metal or anything solid, but rather of 1s and 0s inside a computer hundreds of miles away. It was a sword he had won in the MMORPG Legend of Mir 3.
Insane, right? I mean, let's say our friend Ryan has his Bonebiter (one of countless powerful weapons in WoW) and a man steals it somehow. Should the thief be convicted of a crime and punished in the real world? Did you snort with laughter at that question? Why?
The victim worked many hours to "earn" the object. The victim used it daily and depended on it. He derived happiness and satisfaction from it. So why shouldn't depriving him of it be punishable by law? If you say, "but it's just something he used in a game," I'll say that golf is also just a game. Want to see what happens to me when I steal a new set of golf clubs?
If you say, "but the Bonebiter doesn't even exist," I'll say it exists in exactly the same way that the songs and software most of you download off Bittorrent exist. And yet, stealing them is a crime. The only difference is that when you steal a song is that nobody else is deprived of the song. When that guy stole Ryan's Bonebiter, he was left unarmed and forced to go find a replacement. That theft actually hurts more, not less.
3. You'll meet someone who plays an MMORPG for a living.
Let's take this a little bit further. You earn gold in World of Warcraft, gold with which you can buy these in-game objects. If this game gold is truly valuable to my life, if it lets me get more value out of the pasttime I already pay real-world money for, what's to stop me from paying real money for game money? Nothing. Go to Ebay and do a search for World of Warcraft Gold and let your jaw drop open.
Here, we have game currency being traded for real currency, and at a better exchange rate than the Iraqi Dinar.
If we go further, still, we can imagine a person winning rare weapons and selling them on auction sites or directly to other players they meet. We can imagine somebody working full time to gather in-game gold and then exchanging it for real dollars to pay the real rent with. Sure, it may be decades before you see this kind of ...
Oh, wait. There are people doing that right now.
And, if you're chuckling and shaking your head at the glazed-eyed geek who can't tell the difference between game money and real money, let me ask you something: When Google bought Youtube for $1.65 billion two years ago, do you think they actually stacked crate after crate of cash on a flatbed truck and then drove the $1.65 billion over to their offices?
No. That money only existed as numbers in a computer. In fact, not even 10 percent of the money in our economy exists as physical, printed currency. All of the rest exists on servers and hard drives and in the imaginations of the people. It has value for the exact same reason WoW gold has value, because people think it has value.
4. You'll meet a couple who have been married for years and have never seen each other's real-life faces.
If the metaverse interface is good enough, why not? You have a woman who, in real life, weighs 400 pounds and has a thick, neatly-trimmed beard. But she has a heart of gold. A thousand miles away you have a guy with three eyebrows and a hairlip. In reality, he lives in a trailer with his 14 cats. In the metaverse, he lives in a stone palace with 14 magical flying cats. They marry, the woman showing herself as a beautiful princess, the man a handsome prince. What do they lose by not meeting in the flesh?
If I just caught you thinking about the obvious, you're being naive. If you think the interface technology will go this far without developing a good and convincing means exploring the physical side of a relationship, then you understand nothing about the world. If you Google it, you'll probably find one for sale already.
Can anyone prove that such a marriage would be less "real" than the ones we have now? Once again, if this seems ridiculous and alien, remember how many societies had (or still have) arranged marriages, often where the groom didn't see the bride's face until their wedding night. Wasn't the change from that to the modern method of getting matched up with girls by internet dating sites just as strange?
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