It is not possible to explain online gaming. You must experience it. No, sorry, that’s the Matrix, which was a big computer game that many people played at once. The first online game was called “Have you got any teabags, old chap?” and was played between two programmers on an Enigma machine shortly after the Second World War. Since then, online gaming has taken vast steps forward, to the point where one fifty-sixth-level warlock can enter an entire virtual world, summon an army of skeletons and demand of another “Have you got any magic bags of tea, dude?”
Players of such games are often stereotyped. The joke goes that the gorgeous elf-maiden with whom you stormed the Citadel of Urk is actually a pimply fat man named Barry. This is untrue. The truth about online games is this: none of the other characters is a real person. You only think they are.
Think about it. A ZX Spectrum with a hangover could programme a little man to run past you gibbering nonsense, weaving like a drunken fly and occasionally shouting “lol”. Just think how many other gibbering fellow-players could be created by a vast mainframe in Stockholm able to process enough pornography to turn China blind. The only exception to this is Second Life, an attempt to recreate venture-capitalism with Lego men. The players of Second Life actually are wizards and gorgeous elf-maidens, who have grown tired of smiting the Unliving Horde and have embarked on an epic quest to buy a poorly-drawn settee.
Thursday 3 January 2008
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