The pointlessness of existence, online

A Slashdot comment on the problems of playing massively multiplayer online games:

This guy really hits on what I think is the biggest problem with MMO's. There's no end game. If winning is really important to you (and it's an important part of games in general), then you're never going to be satisfied.

I don't play WoW, but I do play Eve-Online, and it's basically the same thing for a lot of people. They've built big and powerful alliances, they control vast in-game resources, and they're deeply involved in all of the political intrigue in the game. But they're stuck at this terrible point where no matter how much they collect, how much territory they control, there's still tons more out there.

Just like many wealthy people in life spend their money trying to procure more wealth, the means and the end have become basically the same thing, watching a few numbers constantly increase. And since there's an infinite supply of higher numbers, there's no final goal to be reached. You end up playing to win a game that can't actually be won. Not because you're unskilled or aren't working hard enough, but because there is no game-mechanic that qualifies as winning.

Yet it still manages to sweep up lots of people, and stings them along until they burn out. But at least with real life wealth, if you eventually realize what's going on and gain some perspective on life, you've probably got a decent pile of money to support you as you move in a new direction. When you burn out on a video game and decide to leave it, you've likely sacrificed a lot of what you had in the real world.

The original essay is worth reading as well.

Unfortunately, the real world is like that too: ultimately pointless. You can choose to have fun, reproduce, accumulate resources or power, or contemplate trivial or deep questions. But there's no endgame, you can't win. At least in a video game, you can stop playing, and have an offline existence to go back to (albeit one perhaps damaged by your virtual sojourn). In the real world, if you quit, that's it. No wonder that a major MMO game is named "Second Life".

I see religion as one of the major ways we humans have come up with to deal with the pointlessness of existence. There's no right answer, thus the diversity of religions. But I wonder if video game companies shouldn't try to encourage some actual religion in-game, to help keep the suckers online, contemplating the fundamental pointlessness of their online world.

Or you could just go to a church in the real world. The bandwidth is better off-line anyway, not to mention the graphics. So realistic. Unbelievable.