From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Sun Feb 24 2002 - 12:25:48 MST
the animated silicon love doll <cheshire@velvet.net> wrote:
> What do we export? How would the being a citizen of this virtual nation work? Would it be my house/apartment seceding from the US (or wherever)? How would that work if I was renting my home, or living with my parents (as I do)?
There's room for a lot of innovations here. One might have an alternate
U.S. where Gore is president, for example. The system may be more
important than the specific setting. You might be a citizen in hundreds
of virtual worlds. Perhaps one would be a world where you're luxuriating
in a resource-rich environment whilst simultaneously trying to avoid
alien bloodsucking predators, which might be like living at home with
your parents ;-)
As for exports, how about AI's? Imagine an FPS where the computer
opponents learn continuously during the course of the game. When you
start the game initially, the bad guy just stands there and shoots at
you, without any tactics or evasions. With some basic concepts
programmed in (e.g. walls are opaque and bulletproof). But if the
program could learn over time how to be a challenging opponent, the
resulting code might be marketable to game companies.
How about a game where you're a room mate in a group house, and the
object is to clean the house. As folks compete to clean various
combinations of houses and messes, you build up huge databases, which
might then be marketable as customized choreographed housecleaning
routines, so housemates get a detailed plan to follow that minimizes
their housecleaning time. Seems to me the concept of evolved
choreography could be used in many projects involving physical movement.
In any case one can always spend years practicing Quake and then compete
in tournaments...
Since I work from home, making websites, and also spend a great deal of
time just reading sites and seeking out ones that are innovative or
aesthetically pleasing, I pretty much live in a virtual world right now.
Since I used to commute (often lengthy distances), and do my reading
from books and magazines, my current situation allows for a considerably
lighter workweek (I consider it good if I do 25 billable hours in a
week) and lets me save money and enjoy a 'virtually' better lifestyle
than I had previously. (Of course, I consider reading about web issues
leisure time activity, and if one considers this 'work', then by that
definition I work 50+ hours a week.)
-Mike
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