The end is in sight...

The end is in sight...
The other day an adult told me, in all seriousness, that they believe in heaven.
These days, when one encounters people who profess a belief in heaven, they get a similar reaction to that if they were to express a sincere belief in Father Christmas: it hardly seems sporting to argue, there are so many obvious objections. Here is a simple reductio ad absurdam, that occurred to me: each of us is imperfect, sins, and has a propensity to evil. Do we carry these imperfections with us to heaven? If so, do people occasionally get mugged or deceived in heaven? If not, are we somehow ‘cleansed’ of our imperfections? In what sense would we then be the same person – I suspect I would be unrecognisable without mine.

In the World of Warcraft there is no heaven – you die and are returned to where you left off. This might seem unrealistic – but the world has features which make it very realistic - hyper-real in fact. What is real? There is considerable consensus in the philosophical community that we know the world to be real (as opposed to, say, a dream) because it ‘kicks back’. The world may not be what we perceive it to be (as in the Matrix) – but we know that it is real because it does not always do what we want it to do and often responds in unexpected or frustrating ways.

In this sense Warcraft is at least as real as my daily routine: it is peopled with other players and computer-generated characters and environments which challenge me, which ‘kick back’. In fact, the virtual world presents far more immediate challenges than does my physical world.
And there is another related sense in which Warcraft is hyper-real: it has a point. In fact it has many points. In Warcraft one is not working towards heaven, one is gradually working towards level 70 - and self perfection. With every few hours there is tangible progression; new skills, talents to acquire. You see exactly how your every action contributes to the sum of your experience, and with each new level there are new abilities, new areas to explore and items to purchase. Our digital settlers devote vast amounts of time to their virtual selves – some will spend more hours per day in the digital world than the real world. And who can blame them: their digital lives are so much more rewarding than their physical lives – no need for a heaven, then. In their digital worlds settlers are finally able to achieve what they could not achieve in the real world: the creation of themselves in their own image.

It is not surprising then that for many millions of adults Warcraft is the real world – their meaningless daily grind a poor second, a shadow by comparison. Those people who see this as simply an ‘addiction’ have not the faintest idea: such feelings are not comparable to the physiological or psychological dependencies that one might have on drugs. The closest comparison I can imagine is that of a work-colleague who simply does not return from their holiday, deciding instead to remain in the sunshine albeit with a very different role. It is a Nietzschean ‘No’ to the world – a turning of one’s back on things. You probably assume that settlers are ‘geeks’ and low-self esteem types – on the contrary, some of the brightest and best people I know have already relocated. In short virtual worlds expose much about how we, as human beings, find our worlds meaningful. How paradoxical, how very post-modern then that something as ultimately ‘meaningless’ as an online world should surpass our historical world in meaning: but ‘explanations have to end somewhere’ and, after all, there are still people who believe in heaven.

There are two practical implications that interest me: why are most organisations so utterly inept at creating anything like a sense of progression or reward for their employees and, secondly, if Warcraft – probably merely a precursor of worlds to come – has such compelling appeal how much longer before the bright and successful depart the physical world altogether?
On the former point – how about adding a ‘rating’ bar to emails in which one could rate the usefulness of colleagues’ responses: we accumulate points according to our useful responses – and points are linked to holidays, progression or financial bonuses. We might also be allocated an annual quota of ‘recognition points’ – which we could distribute to those people who have been helpful or delivered projects on time. Would it rob our daily activity of its intrinsic appeal? For some, perhaps, but for the vast majority I suspect it would make it more meaningful.