The mark of an exceptional electronic RPG (role playing game) is its ability to make you forget that anything outside of the game exists. You become totally immersed in the surroundings...in the character you have built for yourself...in the learning of the skills critical to your character's development, in the achieving of your goal or "quest" and the collecting of rewards (which further develop your character) when the quest is completed.

As the game develops you become part of "parties" or "guilds" which consist of like-minded players who are banding together to achieve a collective goal. Sometimes these groups work well together, merging talents and skills to create a cohesive unit. At other times the collectives are unbalanced and one or two players take control of the situation, putting guilt trips on other players for their inability to perform up to specifications, even kicking members out of the group for various reasons.

In many RPG's You encounter PK's (player killers) who will do anything to undermine your achievements and (if they get the chance) will kill you outright for the sheer fun of it, causing you to loose valuable experience points and causing you the headache of having to go back to your point of origin and begin your current quest again.

So what is the difference between a well-developed RPG and this experience we have labeled "reality"? If you developed a realistic enough RPG would you be able to distinguish it from "reality"?

And how do we know that somewhere we aren't sitting in front of the cosmic equivalent of a game console, manipulating our "selves" with practiced accuracy and picking quests and experiences for the sheer enjoyment of it?

Just a thought

i'v been creating some rpg games when i was yougner and i parted in several adventure/rpg games making and what i can tell is i really had fun to create these kind of game and i hope i can form a new team one day , now that i really learned a lots in programming area =) and well for me the key of creating a good quality rpg is having a solid and deep background to put off behind the whole game play, and it has to be seen a bit like an interactive story, and the guys who i was making those game with we were used to create some paper interactive game and play each one's games regulary and all the abilities and and character handling stuff is a bit a view of the karma that would impact the story and reality you create while making the game =) but well really for me a fight oriented rpg without a good story is like not a good rpg its the main thing i would reproach to lots of recent titles , the lack of imagination and creativity in the background and the characters and to orient to much the abilities on fighting abilities but its not the case for all games =) and well as a game maker and programmer it point to a still new kind of reality i deal with, the 'virtual' and for me making an rpg game is nothing that creating a new form of reality that the player will get immerged in, more than with a movie or a book =) for me its better than a movie or a book, because it can associate text, sound,picture and lots of things about interactivity that you can't find in any other media today

So you, in effect, create an alternate interactive reality. Granted we are still on the upswing of technology in this field, but imagine technology so advanced that you couldn't tell the difference between the game and the real....
e.g.: The 13th Floor, The Matrix etc.

well yes i don't if you saw the thread on hacker i wrote, well its a matter of cybernetics, science of designing interface and i guess part of the hacker view on life may include something like your body is an interface to the world, like in matrix or something, and well a big part in a realistic game making is creating such an interface , connected to your body by the mean it have, well as speaker and screen for input, and mouse/keyboard/gamepad as output, and making in sort that it can make sense for your soul/mind/brain =) well about that kind of 'game' that you could make so complex that you could really not make the difference with reality, well i guess its the graal of any video game maker lol but well it something that programmer always think of, like how realistic will the game look like and feel, because well generally the player will be bored if he can figure out quickly the way it works and for it to work for lots of player it need to be at least a bit realistic =) i don't know the degree of reality it could achieve, but its not only in graphism and the appearance its also a matter of reaction of it to what you do, using the interface you have at your disposal to interact with this reality =) and i guess it can get pretty close yet graphically and physically the new generation of game will really be VERY realistic on this view, but well after this it would need to recreate some really form of intelligence in all actors in the game, and well when you create such form of intelligent interaction, the thing you have to think is , how does it work in the 'real reality' , and try to program a similar behavior, and well i guess for it to happen it would need some human to really conceptualiz our reality in a very close way , and find a way to program it or make a machine that could create it artificially =)

and well in a pure technicall point of view we have some 200 muscle in our body, well i don't know i'm thinking to this for a long and to be realistic, the character would need to be those 200 muscle with a gamepad with 200 button to contract one of these and you would need a lot of time to learn how to make a single step lol or it would need a better interface with the brain than joypad mouse or keyboard =) and yet i do not count in all the nervous terminaisons of different sense that would need to be computed and transmitted in our consciousness, and keeping ni mind that if its not intuitive enougth, you loose 99% potential players =)


but well there are tehse kind of game called 'simulations' most of the time its plane simulation, some of them use military technologies, like those in militaries simulators and are already very realistic, but a plane have a simpler interface than human body =) and it already use all the keyboard letters, with the alt,shit and ctrl keys lol

But if there were a way to have the intelligence of the player completely immersed in the avatar or actor, so that the player becomes, in effect, the avatar? So that the consiousness manipulating the actor would, in effect, determine the next step in the program...

one might beg the question that if this were the case then it would be a matter of programming, how well was the game programmed etc. But what if the game player is writting the program as they play? A sort of spontaneous coding function that determines the next step in the game.

In this case the brain being the interface between the player (spirit/consciousness) and the game (physical reality).

Hmmmmm....

hehe well why not but all the fact that make that its difficult to be a good programmer and why programs are somewhat hard to write is that what is in human brain as idea and will and behavior decision is not very clear and computer have no telepathic capabilities yet lol and writing the program for making the machine react as this or that still demand some understanding of how the machine actually work and to write the instruction explicitly as well as memory assignement, in today computer and programming way of it =)

there were a good article on that site in the personal write section but they removed it, the links to it seems to be dead, when the guy took an approach on developing human-like intelligence with computers and he told something like when we think of an action, in fact there are thousands possibilities and sub possibilities that are internally reviewed in our mind and that what make ourself being ourself is the matter of which one we choose and his conclusion was that it was somewhat quantic/chaotic and too much random to be programmed correctly yet =) and that in fact he was also going in the sens of a thread of 'what reality we create' , as saying that reality is so quantic, at least because our brain have some random behavior in making these decision =)

perhaps the very power of the Will is why individual "programing" is discouraged and behavioral conditioning is so highly encouraged.

Perhaps we all have it within us to program our individual realities as precisely and minutely as any computer program (just think of the things the mind does without any "obvious" input from us....keeping blood circulating and organs performing seamlessly, adjusting chemical reactions that enable changes in body temperature, fighting off unwanted intruders into the bloodstream, calculating the trajectory of a ball, timing to get the glove under it for the catch....projecting the height a foot needs to be lifted to climb the stairs without falling on your face...performing the translation of optic and other sensory input into visual images that are "read" by the mind and accepted as an accurate view of the world around us....

In short, we are performing incredible feats of calculation every minute of every day....we just don't think about it....

Now imagine that we were able to controll this, to put these incredible skills to work in generating the world that we wish to see instead of that which is fed to us through societal conditioning...

wow...evil look there dude...forcibly reminded of the Emporer in Star Wars

das pope iz spooki!

be well the very heart of any simulation program to me is still limited by the fact that you are always in reaction to thing matter, like the player do something then the world react then the player rereact and basically its somewhat wrong because mutual reaction always happen one after the other and after already an effective explicit decision on both side, which is not the way it happen on real life, but still some kind of interface and processing speed matter =) but well still it involve lots of mathematics, and what is to be said about that well i don't know for now all virtual realities are mathematic based and can only be mathematic based, because we have no other mean of representing in term of information handling to write and export the reality from our brain, for it to be actually be well 'created' if you consider it does not exist if its only in your brain =)

but its kind of the thing the guy was explainnig in his writing is that in a quantic point of view, all of the realities we may even imagine , virtually or potentially exist already in the 'real' world and what the world actually become, is the result of choice we make uppon these realities we first create in our brain, and well then its a matter of exporting the reality you have in mind to the external realities througt interfaces you have at your disposal =) hehe cybernetic powa =)

it can be view in a simple thing when you drive car, your brain want the car to go forward, but you have no idea at all of how the car work internally, but you know some action that will lead the machin to do what you 'want' it to do, and well 'virtual realities' are just some kind of car or a machine you can interact with using other interface,and it become very interesting when working on this with computer, because its a machine that you can program and customize to the bone by the means of the programs or software, and that can interact very deeply with the mind throuth all kind of means, and mind can also have some action on it =) but that what lead lots of confusion around virtual realities that always make me smile because ppl generaly have no idea how complex the concept of virtual realities is =) but i think here lots of ppl will understand it ok lol but i think today at the point of human knowledge around 'virtual realities' you first have to write it down into mathematics, physical , a full program or at least text or some kind of writing for it to be shared with other ppl, you can see a computer or any machine as a way to write down some behavior for any other human to use that behavior back trhougth an interface , and to really share a full complex 'mental reality' with anykind of another reality, may it be another human mental reality, or more physicall reality as objects or things, well you need to go througth some information protocol , may it be mental like language or physical-like acts, on interface you have to the reality you want to act uppon.

well it come more intuitive i think when thinking in terms of interface to find the way to 'create another realities' , like this you can really write down precise thing on how you interact with it and how it can interact with you, and it make it easy to create the information needed to do the exchange =) but still the interface the soul have internally is still to be defined =) you can maybe define it anatomically , like studying our body, our senses , etc but the way its really connected to our soul is not really well defined today i think =) but if this is to be defined fully one day, it would be a great step in the virtual reality and cybernetics sciences =)

but i think its not even proven in any way that the body is the only interface that our soul have to the world =) but maybe alread acting to and from the body could be a realistic thing enougth, but like in matrix in directly like nervous and neural physical electric connection or in ghost in the shell , like the spirit which is directly inserted in the machines as a pure information into the network =)

but i don't even know if there is science in studying mental realities, for the object reaction to energy and forces its physics, for the mind i don't even know if there is name on how energy can impact the mind =) but it seem to be sometime a real lake of vocabulary on the matter =)

its not even sure that mind respond to a clear cause to effects pattern =)

Of course its not proven...it would be difficult indeed to pin down the soul, let alone hook it up to a monitor or other piece of testing equipment. You're right, there is a lack of vocabulary, primarily because it is difficult to put into words.

the different aspects of psychology (neuropsychology etc) are as close as we have to science of studying mental realities, and they only scratch the surface.

Perhaps this is one concept that, for the time being, we have to rely on instinct and that innate "knowing" to tell us if we are going in the right direction.

well the big plot in that is the question around the first turraing machin etc and would it be possible to create a machine of any kind that would be the same than an human =) and well i don't really even believe that the thing behind the matrix movie that the reality is nothing else that electric pulse inside our physical brain and that a computer or machine could recreate a reality for our brain that we would not notice a difference by this way is really true =) but its still a good metaphore on the brain interface and a good introduction to virtual realities and machines =)

but its something that sometime make me laugth about ppl speaking about virtual realities and irl, because as a programmer they say that things we create does not exist but still using them =) and well i think it still get more confusion in me on what is really real and what not =) there may be several level of reality, like the first level is when you think, the second level is when you think about choosing of path in that thougths, and then the third that is result of all the act we do which is the so called reality =) and well when thinking in the different use we do on machine well, nobody never tell that a car is not real, but for me its the same than a computer, like you use an interface to connect to some kind of subreality, the machine itself , and to change it in some way througth this interface =) and to me driving a car or using any complex machine is not different than playing a video game =) they are just some kind of sub-reality we connect to =) as well as we connect such kind of sub realities througth words when we read a book , or througth image and sound when watching a movie , and anything we can get using our perception will always be some kind of sub-reality anyway that we get and act on througth a more or less complex interface =) with book and movie its a 'one way' non interactive interface, well not really one way because you can still change brightness,volume etc well the usual TV interface, but it does change the 'reality' it create,well not easy to define , and to me i can't see how important the frontier might be between just looking or touching a computer like an animal could and actually 'use' it =)

but its a bit like asking if a 'story' or a 'religion' is real or not =) may it be imaganiray, it still exist as a story or a religion that can be connected to by our mind througth some mean and that lots of ppl share, just in the same way they share the so called reality =) and that will be able to impact same in the exact same way than the so called reality =) and i think you don't need any really complex technical interface as seen in matrix nor even some realistic graphics or gameplay to make the brain/mind actually feel something =) and i don't even know if a full interface as in matrix could create a more 'real' reality than a simple book =)


but i think that when the harry potter creator is said that her story is not real she must laugth the same than me when i hear that video game are not real =)

What all of this comes down to is...what is real? What defines our reality?

We look around us and we see a table, a chair, a glass...we hear the phone ring and the wooshing sound of the ceiling fan....we can taste the jam on the toast and smell the slightly burned smell of bread from the toaster.

BUT WHAT IS REAL? Everything we see, everything we touch or taste or smell or hear is the brain's interpretation of the electrical signals, the sound waves etc. fed to it by the nervous system. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT THE SIGNALS YOUR BRAIN IS RECEIVING ARE ACCURATE?

Better yet, how do you know that your brain is decoding the signals it is receiving properly?

We guage the accuracy of the brain's interpretation by how many others see things in the same way that we do. Those who do not interpret the signals acceptably are marginalized or put away for their own safety.

The psychiatric hospitals are full of individuals who do not - or can not sort the signals they are receiving in a manner that is acceptable to society.

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING THE TRUTH?

Perhaps we are the ones who are deluding ourselves, safe in our nest of acceptability, because the reality is too disturbing to contemplate.

Just a thought.

The psychiatric hospitals are full of individuals who do not - or can not sort the signals they are receiving in a manner that is acceptable to society.

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING THE TRUTH?

as would say, miami sound :

reality serious buisness =)

for me the only correct answer is that everything is real and true, and in a quantic/statistic point of view it is , still its a matter of probability for things to actually happen or to take part in the common shared reality =) and i think that some ppl reality is not wanted to be shared by others for some raison, and when a sufficient amount of ppl do not want to share your reality, you are put aside and isolated =)

if you take a man that would think he is jesus christ or something like that, and you want to do behavior study on him, or any clinical study, you have at some point to take the fact that he is jesus christ as a reality because it will impact his behavior for real =)

here there is an article maybe on the matter :

the interactability one
http://number-none.com/blow/rants.html

Consciousness is some thing that originates outside of the world and is the source of "quantum collapse". But because all these realities exist at once, quantum collapse just involves choosing which direction to go along those local weavings as you navigate this big tree structure of reality.

Going back to the dualist model, we can easily modify it so that the consciousness is navigating not a point through the reality space, but a ball of small radius -- in other words, the ball encompasses a number of realities at once (an infinite number, but a small infinity compared to the number of actual realities in the possibility space). The ball moves in order to seek the desired stimuli, but things not pinned down by the stimuli (not observed) are allowed to vary somewhat. Since the brain is a physical system, perhaps some of its internal processes are not observed well enough by the stimuli to be pinned down. In this case there would be many mental processes all arriving at the same conclusion/action/stimuli, and they are all equally valid as descriptions of the way we got from A to B, so "they all happened" in some sense.

As I've described it here, this picture fails to explain some things, e.g. why everyone else besides you appears to be behaving just fine (if the brain were such a lax computing device requiring consciousness to help steer it, and your consciousness went off on some path without other consciousnesses there, everyone else would sort of fall over and start spouting gibberish or something, and why that doesn't happen would require significant explanation).

but well i think that there is more than just electric signal that define reality in our mind, or at least well if you study brain like you would do for signal study in filter, like you watch what is going in and going out and you create some kind of blueprint, its more or less the thing used in convolutions filters, and if you would do this for brain, may you take this from reality, or nervous action/stimuli , and that you see what come out, it won't give some real plain clear result, so it must be someelse that just electric input involved in our conception of reality =) or at least this reality is not the only thing that will have an implication on our action/reactions =) there is some kind of processus that is done somewhere that take those into account, but its still more than only those stimulis =)

- even if it can't be measured or proven scientifically?

but why should this be? Why should one person's reality be acceptable and another's rejected? I'm not talking about people whose beliefs or "realities" are harmful or dangerous (I mean, if I believe that I am really the aligator from hell, and I go around with sharpened incisors bitting people to prove my point, then yes, I should be "put away"). But what of those people who simply see things differently? Who interpret the signals differently?

'science' measures and 'proves' the reality or validity of an object or the reaction of a serum or whatever it is measuring...but the tests are biased. They HAVE to be biased, because those creating them CAN NOT BELIEVE that anything that can not be measured can exist so there is no provision made for the unmeasurable.

its fun because games programmers always have to deal with this unmeasurable , and are told they are not scientific and its true in some way, but the thing is as a game programmer, when giving things to test out, you are always told , this or this is not realistic, may it be in object reaction or in ppl reaction or in anything and you always have to deal with this thing of making things 'realistic' and science often do not give a clue on how things should react in some case =) or even when it does its just not appliable to a computer simulation, and you always have to deal with finding behavior rules, and simplistic ia on how an enmy or any character in the game should react to what for making it 'realistic' =) and really there is not real scientific things published on this, and each programmer in company probably write their own routine for handling what should be done in what situation identified how etc =)

but it may link to a bad side of our society to make us comply to a vision of what reality should be, and what should not be put into this reality =) and well i don't think that science or scientist can tell what is true or not, a 'real scientist' should come as a searcher, on reality, and take anything that happen in consideration in his research and not make the reality to look like this or that following arbitrary rules.

Very well put

And you are right - they SHOULD come as a searcher and take anything that happens in their expirament into consideration. Unfortunately so many scientists come to their research with their opinions already pre-defined (or pre-defined for them because of their corporate funding) and so they ignore or sideline those results that do not conform with their expected results....after all it is fairly difficult to "sell" an intangible concept (new age products and tele-evangalists aside). People for the most part like to have something tangible for their $$ and the $$ is all most corporations (read sponsors of scientific resaearch) are interested in.

and the $$ guyz are often politised and won't put $$ in any project , concerning his goal and effect it can have =)

what is science

shodan is an ia created by some hacker from a military study :
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=4URGep...eature=related