Life is a Game

[mellian]

Imagine this...every single one of us all have a character sheet, with attributes, health points, skill points, experience points, and achievements. All base on quantifiable information gathered through a series of sensors everywhere.

Attributes and skills go up and down relative how much you learn in school and for what, how good you are in sports, how much exercise you do, what sort of job, how you drive, etc. Through every acts and experiences in life, you get experience points as simple summery score of how much you've done with your life and how productive you've been. For every success, even if it seems mediocre, can acquired achievements. Congrats, had this job for this many months or years, or congrats you got yourself a Bachelor in University and got married.

In the military context, it would sort of simplify some of the recruitment process as this character sheet would be ever changing, and form a record of the current status of an individual which is ever evolving. To join, your strength, constitution, intelligence, and wisdom attributes must at least this along with this amount of health points, and have no levels in the Criminal or Terrorist hindrances, yet have certain schooling achievements and Canadian Citizenship edges. 

How would life be like, apart from becoming something similar to Idiocracy without the idiocy (hopefully)?

 

[PMedMoe]

Isn't that pretty much what they do now with the CFAT, fitness test, background check, references, etc?  All without having the "Big Brother" aspect to it.

 

[mellian]

Yes, but for CF purposes only. If such 'character sheets' is applied in general, where people get experience points and achievements for being healthy, having good behavior,  exercising, going to school and getting good grades, and etc all of which with incentives attached to them like good insurance, tax subsidies, and etc, may just encourage people to be healthy and physically fit to pass CFAT right when they submit their application.

Even without the 'big brother' type scenario I described, already at present 'games' have been used to get people to improve themselves, for research, to make money and even as a recruitment tool in the case of US Army first-person shooter (which apparently teaches some real stuff at least in regards to first aid triage if one article the other year suggests).

Examples given in the video I linked to mentioned DARPA use this egg hunt type game as part of one of their research projects, Nintendo end up getting people to exercise with Wii Fit and Wii Sports, or that game designer turn professor who graded students by giving experience points where students can level up in class which apparently improved class attendance and quality of school work. Then there is all these games on facebook and such conning people to look at Ads and possibly end spending money for virtual money and status, and Xbox 360 achievements encouraging people to play on the Xbox 360 more and spend money for virtual Microsoft Points which can be used to purchased games via Xbox Live...

If even the best of us can be manipulated in such ways, why not use such methods for better of society, or for more than just making money off of? Imagine all the D&D power gamers figuring a way to power game life which results a life plan, like possibly becoming the most ideal recruit for a CF could ever want.

 

[Maelstrom]

When I was in Japan I often felt like life was one big RPG (role-playing game) and I was just trying to get to the next level and up my stats. Then again it could be due to the anime music played at every train station...

 

[PMedMoe]

But we do get an incentive for our behavior in the CF.  It's called a promotion. 

Seriously, who's going to monitor all that info?  It may seem like a godd idea in theory but IMHO, carrying it out would be another story.

 

[Journeyman]

~sigh~

I SO know better than to weigh in here, but.......I've got time to kill before the Canada-Russia hockey game.


OK, so what happens when the massed, self-deserving egos log into the real world and...shock of shocks....discover that reaching level 20 on "Dwarf Fortress" or "Mass Effect" doesn't award nearly as many "life points" as holding down a 9-to-5 job.... or say, reading (and comprehending) regularly a national newspaper is deemed more worthy than spray painting a railroad car?

Be calm -- it's a rhetorical question.

In your virtual world there are only two solutions:

a) massive doses of prozac, lithium, or any number of percocet-type derivatives to ameliorate the waves of manic depression upon discovering that they're not as brilliant as their facebook comments would indicate, or

b) skewing the results so that getting in a good crop on Farmville would be deemed equal to maintaining a positive bank balance; hell, the Farmville junkie would probably be offered a commission in your world because of the obvious planning and leadership abilities.

Sadly, I suspect anyone favouring your model would default to solution "b" (Note: these are the same people who would cheer someone for throwing a shoe at a US President, believing that it's an effective way to affect foreign policy)


Sorry, but if your self-worth is determined by your Super Mario Cart score, you're really not going to enjoy my world.




Oh, and that Canada-Russia hockey game.....you get no extra points for it, but both the game and supporters' nationalism occur in the real world -- no virtual points required. Feel free to give it a shot.