Gamer Life

I picked up Lord of the Rings Online while it was still in beta, and have been playing it ever since. Now don't get me wrong, its a fantastic game ans sticks very closely to Tolkien's original lore, but after a few conversations with some people i usually play with I've realized something. well I've always known it, but it wasn't until i found a post on the forums a couple days ago that it hit me how big the problem actually is, and not just with LOTRO, but with almost every game.

In the past decade, the gaming industry as grown exponentially, and will probably continue the trend for a long time, and with the realism in so many games now, especially online games, many people have almost given up reality to join these virtual worlds where they can do whatever they want. Now heres where that forum post comes in, one of the players was complaining about the rudeness of some of the people in the game, stealing kills, or standing in one spot for days on end to "farm" a monster so that no one else can get the items. Now i normally ignore posts like this, but i was bored and decided to read some of the responses. About halfway down the page, another player responded that they knew people who did this, and that they themselves were often rude to the other players. The reason for this? be cause there are no consequences.

Yes thats the point I've been been trying to get at this whole time, games have no consequences. How many times have you gotten stuck in a game and decided to just start over, or just got frustrated and killed your character on purpose? People are spending so much time in games and online that they are ignoring life and the importance of consequences. If you fail a math test, you can't just throw yourself off a cliff, then pick up a new, smarter body and start from the beginning. If the trend is moving towards recreating lives in games, then i feel that games should be made to be more like life. I know this concept won;t take off right away, and will probably upset a fair number of people, but I would rather  upset some people, teaching them how to properly deal with life than watch them watch them become organic robots who do anything they want without fear of punishment.

Here ends my rant, and I encourage anyone who is a fan of Lord of the Rings to check this out.