The most popular video game for the PC right now is a game called The Sims, where people get to play people doing ordinary things in ordinary settings -- instead of fighting monsters or conquering countries, they're battling with leaky faucets and going out on dates. With a premise like that, one wonders what you need the video game for in the first place. Or maybe that is precisely the point: We can use the simulation to be vicariously ordinary, to feel more real than we might normally feel.
I find myself frightened by such an idea. Many friends of mine are fairly heavy video-game addicts; they spend a great deal of money and time in on-line games that are huge, elaborate multiplayer simulations featuring tens of thousands of people at once. For the truly hard-core, their real life is nothing more than a holding action until they can get back online again. I can hardly say my own hands are clean, so to speak -- one of my major side projects is an on-line gaming community I designed from scratch. I definitely understand the allure of a simulated world that threatens to replace or supplant the real one.
