The book Synthetic Designs by Edward Castronova is a book which takes a look at the world and culture involved in Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games[MMORPG’s], also none as M-Mor-Pegs. The book attempts to take a look at these games in a way which is seemingly all-encompassing. It looks at everything one can think of, even the economics of the game. Overall, the book covered these topics very in depth. He especially did a good job of covering the economics of these MMORPG worlds, which he called Synthetic Worlds. It is understandable that he did a good job with the economics because he wrote a huge paper on the economics of these worlds and probably integrated it into his book. It was a good book to read and shed a lot of light on the intricate systems of these synthetic worlds.
I felt the most important topics which the book discussed were those of the user and those of the possible future of synthetic worlds. When discussing the user, the book peeled back the stereotypical view that almost everyone who plays these games are weird and nerdy high school students who don’t do anything other than play these games. What it said was that many different types of people play these games, with serious and professional people possibly being highest on the list of those that play the game. It even went so far as to describe as many characteristics as it could about these different users of synthetic worlds and how widespread the use of these games really are in the world. When talking about the possible future of synthetic worlds, the author looked at what synthetic worlds could possibly evolve to. One of the ways was the Matrix type way where the last person in the world is a person who is hooked up to a computer and doesn’t even realize he is the last person in the world because computers are mimicking humans and it’s impossible to differentiate the computers and the humans and, since it’s impossible to reproduce with computers, people ended up not reproducing and dying off, while computers just mimic who they were when they die. The other way they looked at the possible future of synthetic worlds was with the view that they will lead to a way for families and friends to be close together over vast distances in an almost real environment.
In general, these are ways in which synthetic worlds can supplement our happiness and possibly even make work and society easier to function in. However, the author did not really give enough thought to the idea that synthetic worlds could possibly not take off like he really wants them too. Of course it does not really matter that much if they do not because he was only looking at them as possibilities. With the users being diverse, I mostly agree with what the author was saying. There are many users who make use of MMORPGs. I have cousins who all have full-time jobs, one of them even being an airline pilot who plays World of Warcraft. The other plays it with his wife, sometimes even just talking in the game rather than talking to each other in the real world, despite the fact that they are right next to each other. Many different types of people play MMORPGs, like a friend of mine who is a fashion designer who also plays World of Warcraft, which was completely unexpected for me to find out.
Outside of the book though, I find MMORPGs to be very interesting. They attract huge amounts of people as something for them to do with their time outside of school and work, and for a lot of people the games even start becoming what they do in place of school and friends. I actually do not like these types of games because they do take over people’s lives in some cases and I have lost some friends to this phenomenon. However, they do give people something to do with their time which can involve some social aspects, which may be better than other things they could do which would isolate them from the world, such as doing drugs or hanging out with destructive people. In this regard, they can make good anti-drugs or even good places of getting one’s daily dose of sociality.
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