One Hour One Life Forums

Go! Bwah! wrote:

Well, yes.  And maybe some people have no better place to give their love than to random strangers in a game.  But to build a game on the expenditure of a precious resource that can probably be put to better use seems kinda... wrong.  Games already suck up time and effort; now we're to throw in emotional energy, too?

I mean, I found helping people in OHOL mildly satisfying, but it still felt like I was wasting my life.

Luckily, I've deleted the game already.  Wonder if I can do that for this account?

We're closer to the other side. People on bonding via the internet rather than going to bars in their local areas, rather than hook up with people at work, we are finding people on the other side of the planet who truly share more in common with us because of interests and values have aligned through art, media and education.

Don't be afraid of it. People dreamed this sort of thing would be possible before the internet, that they could just travel thousands of miles from home and happen upon someone who they could love for a lifetime, but rolling the dice by just relocating from Russia to Brazil, or Canada to Malaysia, and hoping that wherever you arrive you will find someone you can meld with, it doesn't work as well as bonding remotely.

Now thats RL stuff.

How about this game stuff, these parenting simulations like The Sims, they attract caring people, and allow them to bond overtime, like guild members in the highest rated WoW guilds, they become more than just random players to each other; they become friends, lovers, extended family members. Do some of the relationships not end so well, sure, you hear a story about lovers that run guilds who's breakup tears the guild apart. It happens, but it happens outside of video games, outside of the net as well. Major companies have been splintered and liquidated over couples who, after a time, just didn't want to be with one another.

This is life.

One thing is sure. We are all gamers. We all know this game, and we all love something about it enough that we're here.

Over time a community may arise, like the communities of players around other games, but, adding parenting to the conversation, there is a greater potential for a generational conversation. I don't know how old you folks are, but I've been playing electronic games for almost 40 years, and I have met many people who are married thanks to video games as well as several children who are a result of their parents communicating via the games and the forums.

Would it be better if people married their elementary school sweethearts? Their college partner? A business partner? Someone they met at the pub maybe? These are all potential places but to say anyone is better or worse than another is a little silly. Same goes for people who bond via social media sites, dating sites, MMOs or forums for bird watchers.

I think a lot of you are really good people, and you deserve the chance to find good people like yourselves, wherever you go.

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I just can't get over how potentially beneficial it would be for people to talk more about parenting, just in general. And with all the digital distractions we are presenting ourselves with these days, and in the future, it wouldn't hurt to talk about the subject via mediums. A lot of us around the world have great parents, a lot of us don't. Why such a great divide between families? Why so many neglected children turn to crime, live unsatisfying lives and go on to reproduce people born under the same circumstances, and can not help their children to truly lift their family out of that cycle?

Meanwhile their are great families, moms and dads who stick together, children that go on to Universities to become doctors and lawyers and have great families of their own. Families that take in six, seven, eight figures a year like that's just the way it is, always has been and always will be for them. They have massive family sections at the cemetery, they know their ancestors going back 500 years or more. They care; about themselves, their children, and their elders.

And they are damn successful at life.

Where is that for us?

How do we cultivate that in this new world?

Adding this element to our games, I think, is vital.

We're not going to divorce ourselves from games. Most of us will game will we die, some already have. There is obviously something very attractive about the purpose games give people. We can try and shy away from it, and condemn it, or we can live WITH it and find the balance; make it work, with what we already know is happening.

No one has gotten it right yet, what this present means for our future. Every book, movie or game, that attempts to foresee the future, fails to incorporate key aspects of human behavior.

Often times it's the desire to care for others, that, while not distinctly human, is certainly a trait of life, we have exploited to our greatest advantage, and it's one of the most powerful that dystopians overlook. Cry about problems all you like, but if you're not giving solutions, you're not helping. And love, really is a solution. It raises families out of generations of poverty, it inspires people to take great risks for great rewards, and it relieves tensions that can otherwise lead to wars, suffering and death.

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I'm not saying you are bad people for murdering your children in this parenting simulator.
You ran an experiment, you got your results.
Now lets try to care for our children more than we ever have, see where that leads.

I can already say that if you are the mother of three kids, and those three know the tech tree, know how to watch their temp and to eat food farther away from your central starting area as possible, you are certain to have a successful settlement.

Same goes for a town of ten players, if you give birth to three more kids, and those 3 all know how to prioritize jobs; they can see the need for a smith to make hoes, the need for seed, the need for soil, the need to EXPAND IF NECESSARY, then you and they will live good lives to old age, if you so choose.

However, the odds of these scenarios drop if you replace just one of those three children with a new player.

So what do you do if it happens that all three of your children are new to the game?

They just got done watching a streamer play the game, or saw a video and decided to give this a go. What is the best thing you could do if you are given such a child, or, have three at a time, all incapable of lifting a finger to help you, at once?

If you have been reading my posts you shouldn't have to ask; YOU TEACH.

I'm not talkin, fuckin, formal education here. You don't need a chalkboard and textbooks, grab a stone, crack it on a rock, cut some reeds, make a basket. Go through the motions, let them know that this is what we do to climb the tech tree to stability. Demonstration through a let's play or stream is one thing, being in the game and having someone do it before your eyes, another. And doing it for yourself, feeling that power grow in your hands as rocks, turn to hatchets, turn to axes; baskets become carts on wheels; wild carrot seed becomes pie, and all the while these, steps, are building up in the players memory...

I am an educator IRL, well, was for many years. This subject brings tears to my eyes. For greater reasons than you may suspect if you aren't also an educator and interested in subjects like evolution, anthropology or philosophy. These are all subjects that have weighed in heavily on the value I place; on reproduction, and education.

I almost value the way information is passed on memetically, as it is genetically.

We couldn't have had this, though, without language; sounds to represent nouns, pictographs, alphabets, Fortran...

I'm sorry.

Love your children, mind your temperature.