Saturday 30 December 2000

Pic of the day: Some winter days can be quite beautiful, like today.

Thoughts from Earth

Shortly after 7 in the morning, I got up to send a fleet of small space ships to another planet. Then I went back to bed and slept for a few more hours, dreaming strange and vivid dreams that I can no longer remember.

What's this about space ships? It's Planetarion, of course. This futuristic multiplayer game is rather simple compared to most strategy games, with a limited range of technologies and improvements. It is rather heavily focused on military. Its one redeeming quality is that it involves hundreds of real human players. The interaction between these adds nuance and complexity that no computer program can emulate. As the saying goes, "artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity".

I've noticed that the players tend to fall into three distinct groups: The leaders, the followers, and the eternal newbies.

The newbies don't read the manual, don't develop their planets, don't vote for anyone except themselves, and don't take part in discussions except to break in off topic and ask for gifts. They play rather little role in the game, except in galaxies where they are so plentiful that it is not possible to elect a galaxy leader or minister of communication, because the newbies are more than half the players. These people are not just new players - new players can be anything. Newbiehood is a state of mind ... or lack thereof.

The followers are players like me, who just like to build and research and try out the game. They may read the manual or ask for help, but they do learn eventually. They come online, start new jobs, read up and log off.

The leaders are the guys with ambition. They are online when you come and online when you go. They hang out on IRC chat rooms and evaluate possible alliances, make friends and enemies, and devote themselves to the game. Ideally there should not be more than two of them in each galaxy, as they tend to be bitter if they don't get a high profile.

In short, this game is not very different from a workplace. Or a church, for that matter. Scary, huh?

***

I usually like to have the living room a little chilly. It means I can run the Toshiba harder for longer before it overheats and starts to stink of chemicals. (It is a Toshiba, after all, which means it is not exactly top quality. If you need to know, I think they spend too much on marketing and not nearly enough on quality control.)

Today, I caved in and turned up the heat. The reason is that I want to sit without my shirt. The zit on my back hates the touch of even light clothing, as is the custom of that species. And the faster I can get it to fade away, the better. Weekends are good for this sort of thing.

It was a sunny day, cold with fresh white snow. I took a walk, bought food for the weekend, enjoyed the chance to move about a bit. I think of this more often the last couple years, that I may not always be able to move about. Lots of people are using wheelchairs ... in the past they stayed at home, but with new and better technology they are out and about. But it can't be the same as using your own legs. I want to enjoy them while I have them.

Speaking of new technology, the hospital in Bergen is about to try out a new treatment for brain cancer. Basically it's about getting the body's immune system to attack the cancer, but in a novel way. If I heard correctly on the news, they use kidney cells? Anyway, the new treatment will be tried on humans ... in a year's time. Yes, the same hospital that sent my mother home to die with a slow cancer in her brain. Can't rush things, you know. There will always be someone dying, this year or the next. I'm not really bitter ... it is more ironic. My mother may already have the world record in living with malign melanoma, she's had it since I was a teen ... 25 years or so. In 25 more years, the illness may be fairly easily cured, like testicular cancer or some leukemias today. Or the world may be swallowed by a small black hole. Science is neither good nor bad - humans are.

***

I'd like to think that mankind's future will not be like those games I play: Alpha Centauri, or Planetarion, with greed and war spreading to new planets along with us. But I'm not sure. My own life has taught me that intelligence does not mean goodness. Or even true wisdom. The real war is within ourselves: Against hate, greed, bitterness, false pride and envy.

But I've also learned a lesson from roleplaying games: It is very hard to play a party of evil characters, because if they are to remain true to form, they will also make life difficult for one another. Perhaps it is so that a species will not be able to conquer space until it has conquered itself and its own dark side. I'd sure like to think so.