Is Virtual Reality becoming Virtually realistic?
When does virtual reality end and real life begin? Is it when your wife shouts that your dinners ready? Is when your character gets killed online? Or is it when you’re found by your parents hanging in your bedroom closet?
Social gaming on a massive scale is meant to be a way to remove yourself from the fools of this world, and dive into a dream land that has you as a hero slaying mythical beasts, or as a smart-dressed, confident person that’s not afraid to interact with other humans, among other things.
But it often goes wildly wrong. Take the example of David Pollard, 40, ho has been divorced by his wife Amy Taylor after he was caught “cheating” on her with someone else’s avatar in Second Life – the hugely popular virtual reality game. The couple, who lived on benefits and collectively weighed 41 stones, gave themselves svelte in game avatars, cool jobs and fancy clothes – complete escapism, creeping over into real life.
Fantasy gaming is more popular than ever, with around 5 million Second Life users registered on the UK (around a third of the worldwide total), and gamers queuing up – and collapsing from exhaustion – for the recent World of Warcraft expansion pack.
“When it comes to fantasy, people have always done it,” points out Alistair Ross, chartered psychologist and honorary fellow at Glasgow’s Strathclyde university.
“Don’t forget that kids used to dress up and play cowboys and Indians and pretend to kill each other.”
Gamers, I would seem, are happy to destroy some virtual worlds in the same way people do it in real life. Virtual Utopia, once a nice play to play in is not entirely unlike the real world, it currently has a massive crime problem, and high interest rates. You’d be as well not bothering.
“Residents of all Utopian societies want to build an ideal place but often have specific ideas about who fits in,” Ken Roemer, past president of the Society for Utopian Studies, said recently. “Who they don’t let in defines the boundary of who they are as the place grows, there’s this notion of the wrong type of people coming in.”
The problem is, he suggested, is that people are becoming increasingly addicted to these games, and some are finding it difficult to separate right from wrong in the real world.
One disturbing example of how bizarre online gaming can be was the McAllister family form Arizona, who played Second Life with each other. Dad Jim bought a shotgun in the game and ‘murdered his wife, 41, and kids Timothy, 13 and Rebecca-Anne, 9, before killing himself.
Second Life creators Lindon Labs freaked out, naturally, and called the police to investigate. The police promptly burst down the family’s front door to find the family happily eating dinner together.
“Our family gets along great in real life,” McAllister told police. “But in Second Life, we couldn’t stop arguing.”
Is the link between gaming getting too muddied? It’s an impossible area to regulate unless these games are taking offline, but with so many people relying on them for their confidence, and only means of social interaction, who could take them away and not feel guilty.
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