Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Professional gaming academic Ted Castronova has been talking about his new book, Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality, and he’s been saying the kinds of things that have been playing on my mind a whole lot in recent months. How valuable is our gaming escapism? And what does it mean to spend so much time in virtual worlds? Ted’s book is about making some judgments, as he explained to the BBC:

“If reality is a bad thing, and people are going into virtual worlds to reconnect, the word you would deploy is refuge,” he said.

“A father of two spending 90 hours a week in a virtual world because he doesn’t like his wife – I would say that’s escapism, and it isn’t anything you would say is good.

“But if it’s a heavy-set girl from a small town who gets victimised just because her body isn’t the ‘right’ kind of body, and she goes online to make friends because she can’t get a fair shake in the real world, then I would say the virtual world is more of a refuge.”

So are you escaping, or taking refuge, readers?

I love things like this. I’ve got into some of my favourite things via creators of things I’ve loved recommending them – following the trails to interesting places. Because if they’ve inspired something you’ve loved, they’ve got to be pretty good, yeah? That thought process has lead me to everything from Vonnegut to the Buzzcocks to Nethack.

Anyway, Gametap asked Ken Levine for his list of works which kept the Irrational team’s creative engines fully stoked up. For example…

Animal Farm: (Book, 1945)
“You really only need to read this one book to understand power and what it does to people; it’s the ultimate story of what happens when ideals slam into less than ideal people.”

Miller’s Crossing (Film, 1990)
“My favorite film of all time. It’s all dialogue, style, and more interconnected plot threads than you can possibly comprehend in one viewing; probably why I’ve seen it 20 times. A huge inspiration when trying to create the slang and language tonality of the city of Rapture.”

More in the full article including the music-inspiring Sweet and Lowdown, the Rand double-combo of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, the entire city of New York and Gilliam’s retro-sci-fi opus Brazil (For the record, which is in at least half of RPS’ staffs’ top 5 films ever).