alternate-reality
Latest
A tour of DC Universe Online's new Origin Crisis DLC
DC Universe Online's latest DLC, Origin Crisis, allows players to fill the shoes of some of their favorite -- and not so favorite -- heroes and villains and fight to keep reality as it is. Thanks to yesterday's update, players will actually be traveling through time in order to stop a chain of events that might result in entirely new universes and timelines. You'll be bamming and powing your way through content in the hopes that history remains intact. We sat down with Jens Andersen, Creative Director of DC Universe Online, to discuss this special DLC, a pack that has been in planning since the game's conception.
SXSW: ARG! The Attack of the Alternate Reality Games
Ever since the success of The Beast, the alternate reality game created to help pimp Spielberg's A.I. back in 2001, alternate reality games (ARGs) have been popping up left and right, most notably the I Love Bees ARG that was used to launch Halo 2. Based on what the panelists were telling us, there are a lot more coming down the pipeline.However, one of the problems was that the panel promised to help define the term "alternate reality game," but that never happened. Wikipedia calls it "an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions." Which is quite a mouthful. But that makes us wonder, does it have to use the web as a medium to be an ARG? When people used to play T.A.G. or Killer on college campuses, that was definitely an ARG ... but where did those games go?
Gamers of tomorrow: brains in vats [update 1]
From my favorite (private) discussion group comes this summary of Chalmers and Bostrom, written by a lawyer friend of mine: "Have you considered that if we assume computers can at some level of technology run an accurate simulation of the universe, then it's a virtual certainty that at some time somewhere in the universe, models will eventually be running? He continues, "Indeed, it's in fact likely that many models [of the universe] will eventually run, such that the odds that we're living in the "real" universe are exceedingly small. In other words, assuming that a computer network could eventually model the operation of ten million universes -- and there's probably no reason to assume that it couldn't -- consider how low the chances are that we're in the single real one." /em takes a deep hit, then croaks, "So you're saying that today's game designers are tomorrow's gods of universes? Whoa." But what form might this "living" take? At first, we'll consciously choose to spend some portion of our waking lives in these virtual worlds. That's happening now when gamers play World of Warcraft. Then we'll spend time in them out of habit, as we spend time today on the internet without really thinking about it. Eventually, we'll figure out how to engage our minds in these worlds even as we sleep. Once we've achieved that, some will choose never to wake, figuring it more fun to set their body to rest while their minds romp in well-designed simulations. Brains in vats. That's where gaming's headed. Brains in vats! [Update 1: Changed Bostron to Bostrom. The simulation updated his birth certificate instantly.]
