This is an editorial about networks and how online gaming might offer useful models for creating more realistic military simulations. Duh! What have I been saying?! Simulation mixed with RP is the ultimate. Of course I was talking entertainment and these folks are on to something altogether different.
Here’s the corrected link to the Washington Post article. Free registration required. :?
For some reason, this thought popped into my head:
- Alan
Wagner James Au already outlined this headline-friendly, crackpot thesis in his landmark Salon essay about the “heat-packing humanitarians.”
Well, I would certainly never admit I read Salon even if I did, but they may actually be right about something for once. Without reading the Rand paper, it’s hard to know exactly what these guys have in mind, but it’s certainly difficult to see how computer networks are any very realistic paradigm for human “networks.” What it sounds like to me is typically dopey modernists with imaginations run wild–something along the lines of all the so-called scientists out there who suppose, for no particularly good reason, that the human mind functions like a computer.
I did like this quote from the Post article, though:
Lineage isn’t popular with Americans, notes Herz, “partly because it’s a game where not everyone can be the boss.” Koreans like a “tightly defined clan hierarchy,” she observes, whereas in American role-playing games, it often seems that “everyone is the Lone Ranger.”
No, lady, it’s because the game sucks. There are many popular games in America where not everybody gets to be the boss–Natural Selection the newest among them. However, I’m willing to concede this much: maybe Koreans are better suited to games in which everyone looks alike…
Glad I’m not the only one that thinks Wagner James Au needs to be beaten with a very large cluestick. My pappy always told me never to trust anyone that uses three names.
Speaking as someone that needs to be beaten with a cluestick - thanks for putting up the correct link Alan. I was in a rush at work when I fired that one off. Frankly, I don’t have much of an informed opinion about the subject but it was nice seeing gaming mentioned in a context other than school shootings or the corsening of our culture in a mainstream publication.
Glad I’m not the only one that thinks Wagner James Au needs to be beaten with a very large cluestick. My pappy always told me never to trust anyone that uses three names.[/quote]
The real question here is how do these numbsticks end up writing these editorial acts of gastroparesis in the first place?
Glad I’m not the only one that thinks Wagner James Au needs to be beaten with a very large cluestick. My pappy always told me never to trust anyone that uses three names.[/quote]
The real question here is how do these numbsticks end up writing these editorial acts of gastroparesis in the first place?[/quote]
Well, according to Salon Wagner James Au is a video game expert. In the same vain that I am a NASA research scientist.
Can’t we just grant ourselves certifications in ‘gameology’ or something? :P
BTW, I’m offering to ‘certify’ people for $1k a pop (for the level 1 cert, mind you - hehe).
- Alan “not related to WJ” Au
My pappy always told me never to trust anyone that uses three names.[/quote]
Lol… Every almost every assassin had three names.
My pappy always told me never to trust anyone that uses three names.[/quote]
Lol… Every almost every assassin had three names.[/quote]
John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald!! My god man, you’re right! :lol:
My pappy always told me never to trust anyone that uses three names.[/quote]
Lol… Every almost every assassin had three names.[/quote]
John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald!! My god man, you’re right! :lol:[/quote]
That’s so you don’t confuse them with John Smallberries Booth and Lee “Bud” Oswald.
[referring to Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald]
Hartman: Do any of you people know where these individuals learned how to shoot?.. Private Joker.
Private Joker: Sir! In the Marines, Sir!
Hartman: In the Marines! Outstanding! Those individuals showed what one motivated Marine and his rifle can do. And before you ladies leave my Island, you will all be able to do the same thing.