Virtually Virtual?

Shock and Awe's "Virtual Morality" (about the WoW virtual massacre)and Grumpymutt's "Confessions of a Potion Drinker" have twisted my mind about the intersection of reality and games.

At the risk of stopping everyone from reading my entry, I'll quote Michael Joyce: "There's no simple way to say this."

In six steps :

1) I knew that WoW players burn hours and weeks "farming" for iconic "gear" that changes their gameplay circumstances and capacities.

2) I know that many players actually buy such gear -- I mean with real US dollars and similar currencies.

3) I've been told that such purchases actually make sense. I'm skeptical, but after all, one does put in the time "farming" to get the items; the time represents a real-world sacrifice that thus requires, I'm told, real-world compensation.

4) I see that there are real-world social actions that take place in game time. That's long been true of sports. And I don't see why a funeral for a WoW player should be any less real because it takes place online. After all, in what sense is the gesture for or about one who is physically present anyway? So we have a real funeral in a virtual setting and a real argument over virtual morality, which if it takes place online, may be a virtual argument over real morality, perhaps.

5) Given this existence of the virtual world in the real world, I can grant, at least in principle, spending real dollars for virtual gain (not mine, but I buy generic anyway).

6) So, wait, in what sense is the money itself more real than the epic gear?

Now, I know my landlord, the grocer, the gas station attendants and owners all have an opinion on this one. But the stuff's only valuable because of that opinion, right?

I must confess, I've secretly thought of money as a kind of fiction since I watched a quarter roll out of a backpack one morning in the middle of the Sierras and for a moment couldn't remember what it was. It's a fiction with consequences, and that troubles me, but it's fiction nonetheless.

But now WoW has consequences. The real funeral in WoW certainly has elements of narrative, and of narrative fiction. The place is fictional, and the actions are as representational and evocative as a fiction. So, while it's a real funeral, it's also a real fiction. Not only that, it's a real fiction in part generated by a game, by gameplay, set in a gameworld, told or displayed in game iconography.

So WoW produces fictions. But here's the twist. Perhaps money is not a fiction at all in the sense of our discussion earlier today (Wednesday), not a narrative but a game.

So if I pull George out of my wallet (Ben, Alex, and even Abe having long departed, as usual), I find he produces little in the way of story. George-on-the-bill isn't more real or (God knows) as developed as Lara. I see some cool iconography with the eyeball and the pyramid and so forth, but little in the way of sequence or coherence. And I find I interact with it (if poorly) in terms of strategies, trying to manipulate it for whatever results I desire. It seems to be understood in terms of simple, non-nuanced binary opposition: more is Good and less is not just bad but Evil (I'd say "trust me," but it's probably occurred to you, too).

And one can keep score and statistics! Baseball fans will be thrilled.

Next, the money game produces consequential fictions. For instance, any corporate decision, to be strictly legal, must maximize the profit of the stockholders. No other consideration may contravene that legally. This generates (im)practical results as well as fictions, to be sure. But it also generates Quarterly Reports and Forecasts, and to an extent even a regular State of the Union Address, all of which are clearly fictional, and all the more dramatically so since Nostradamus missed his cue at the start of this millenium.

I can't say I've gotten my head around the consequences of all this, and my odd suspicion that I'm still on the mountaintop reading "In God we Trust" on that quarter gleaming in the gravel does not help. However, I have come to suspect that what I really need to properly understand the economy and US foreign policy is a ludologist.

Ah, talk about virtual morality! Let's get those noobs out of the high guild offices and send them back to playing with icons for a bit.