the developers of Active Worlds made everything in the game free. Players built enormous houses - in which there was nothing to do. The game never quite caught on. That's why today's newer massive synthetic worlds make life hard. It's why we have to scheme, fight, and occasionally beg for food, shelter, transportation, and great big flaming swords. Games show us that scarcity can be fun.
You see? Abundance just isn't fun. What really seems to get humans going is a limit to be negotiated, whether by transcendance, different usage or inner adjustment. Unless, of course, God redesigns the new body etc to give us a rather different perspective. While I think that is a possibility, it does seem to me to be the meltdown scenario in that it begins to rob us of things that appear at the moment to be rather integral to being human. Our finitude is part of who we are. A finitude, what's more, that in Christ, God has committed into and sanctified.
So is it really possible to have finitude without frustration (or, is frustration, like anger, not necessarily bad in ultimate terms)? Is it possible to have created creativity without being forced to work at the limits at least some of the time? Is it the case, in fact, that our calling to be created co-creators will continue to be to push out the limits of created existence only in a more fully 'sacramental' way than now? To grow what God has made and to delight in it and in God who delights in our delight ... Puts me in mind of Tolkien's lesser known classic short story, 'Leaf by Niggle'.
Wired 14.04: Geekonomics:
Filed in: games, scarcity, economics, life, value, fun
No comments:
Post a Comment