In clarification of my argument on the MMO's systemic irrelevence.

When I gave the presentation a lot of people struggled to understand my somewhat long-winded theory of the MMO's systemic irrelevence. Here is a cut down version I think might be easier to understand...
---

MMO’s are not “all about cooperation”, they are about keeping the player playing so the company can keep making money. Systems of cooperation, economy, socialization, etc, are essentially artifice for allowing players to get their fix of faux-satisfaction; their difficulty curves just the cure for the need for a more substantial fix. An MMO’s economic system is not there to facilitate the creation of goods (except maybe Eve online, but I’d just as soon argue they are simply better at hiding it...), it’s constructed to give maximum satisfaction for negating a system- you pay money so you can feel like you’re making money. Thus, just as existence within the ‘Matrix’ is irrelevant because the ultimate meaning of your life is the serve the purpose of supplying electrical energy to a world desperate from your own world of existence, so too is any existence within an MMO...
---

In other news, the fourth episode of the Out of the Game podcast came out- it was a good one, but not quite as amusing as the first two episodes.
A Life Well Wasted also had its 3rd release, this time a discussion of the fundamental issue: "Why do we play?". As I've come to expect- it was 'fan-freakin-tastic'. I can't help but feel somewhat guilty for the plight of the indie developer... I often love to discuss the various merits of these game but ultimately fail to buy many (mostly due to my megre game buying budget and the freqent release of more attention grabbing titles...).

Anyways, I've got to get back to working on another assignment, this time for Australian Foreign and Defence Policy- an assignment which I may need to re-write because of the release of the Australian Defence White Paper! Way to go and invalidate my argument Kevin...

In the words of the venerable Shawn Elliot:

"We out, we out, we out..."