October 15, 2006
Playing, well, God
Will Wright, of SimCity fame, is about to launch new video game. It's called Spore and it allows the operator to play God, or, more accurately, identify with God's big dilemma.
In the game of Spore, the player is, let us say, consciousness and light, and has the capacity to construct a complex world from a single cell. From this tiny morsel containing, pardon the expression, the breath of life, a player can generate something that is not only alive and kicking (if only its scillia ), but procreating. During the procreation process little idiosyncratcies add up to alot of biodiversity. Slowly but surely, a more and more complex containers develop to hold the breath of life --and then, Bingo! You some creatures with a bit of consciousness.
As the game continues, the semi conscious beings begin to work together to develop societies. When the societies notice one another, some of them don't join to create even more complex containers, they tend to destroy one another. As Will Wright points out:
When your tribe has reached a sufficient level of sophistication, it will begin to form cities, and the player shifts to issues of trade and commerce or constructing roads and buildings. All the while, decisions made at earlier stages of the game continue to shape the current stage: adopting a carnivorous lifestyle in the creature stage changes the activities available to your subsequent tribe; a tribe of warriors will have a harder time building alliances with other cities when it reaches that stage. Eventually, you ascend to a United Nations-like perspective as you try to unify an entire planet divided between rival civilizations. Once you successfully pass from the “clash of civilizations” stage to the “end of history,” the game grants you that ultimate in Hegelian rewards: a spaceship. And then you’re off terraforming other planets and exploring an entire universe teeming with Spore life.
So the game operator gets to see the results of his or her decisions on his or her creation, thus coming face to face with creator's dilemma, keeping consciousness alive until the warriors wake up and realize that they could demolish the entire system .
Pretty good game, huh? A space ship is a little deus ex machina for me though. We must all be careful not to use the E word in relation to this, or the Christian fundamentalists will whip it off the shelves.
If Spore catches on, it could cause a paradigm shift. Hopefully folks will grow some creator empathy in their minds, while watching their painstaking work self destruct, and rethink their political affiliations. I personally plan to start with plenty of feminine spores --the kind that produce oxytocin, rather than war when they congregate.
Someone should give a copy to W. It takes about 30 hours to get to the part when societies begin to blow up one another Maybe W. has enought perserverence and concentraton to get there -- after all, he has been reading Camus and the Shakespeares all summer. Maybe he would watch the movie
Photo note: See how easy it is to make something out of nothing? If it isn't already completely obvious, this fellow is entirely composed of a window reflection. I got all the facial features, and the bowtie, but I have ,thus far , failed to get that breath of life thing going.
Addendum: the creation of a sycophant -- hope you like what you create
Posted by Dakota at October 15, 2006 07:16 PM