"the most realistic game engine is reality itself, the most compelling story is my own life, and the true adventure is living it."
This. A million times this. The most disturbing thing to me in this flight to the virtual is the neglect of the real. The buildings and people get uglier, making the virtual more attractive. It's a vicious circle that ends in a nightmare reality, a planet full of broken souls hiding from the wasteland in a Matrioshka hallucination that is ultimately no less nightmarish itself.
The virtual catastrophe has the potential to be a Great Filter level threat. Certainly it promises to be an evolutionary filter.
Feb 21, 2023·edited Feb 21, 2023Liked by Mark Bisone
Very prescient. Video gaming is yet another iteration of the process by which the entertainment industry has become integral to social control. This is pregnant with psychic and spiritual danger.
Entertainment already forms a central, defining, feature of life itself for a great many people. It is certainly as important, if not more important, than education or organised religion. The emerging technologies guarantee an exceptionally sinister future indeed.
In the dystopias to come devitalised and demoralised people, oppressed by atomisation, will pursue escapism into virtual reality, in order to find illusory companionship and simulated forms of recognition. It is reasonable to expect that the video games of the future will incorporate holographic characters connected by wifi to connected sex-dolls. And virtual reality larping will displace physical and social experience.
The techno-shamanic cults of the future will involve virtual reality, game-based, experiences fortified by psychoactives and hallucinogens.
AI generated egregores will prey on pod-dwelling worshippers. Makes perfect sense.
Really good, this two-parter should be read widely.
Frankly, I'm encouraged about the future of pornography and horror games. The latter of the two isn't a genre I personally indulge in though.
Here's a synthesis vision of future role playing games: the core story, the A plot, will continue to be scripted. The main NPCs cannot and will not ruin the story. However, the rest of the mass NPCs populating the open world will go about their daily life in a dynamic way (ala Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or the later Hitman games). These Mass NPCs will give the game world a more 'lived in' look and feel and can be a source of near-endless side quests. You can fumble around with them as long as you like, but nothing you or they do will impact the A plot. You have to do main quest missions to advance the story.
Likewise, artificial barriers to progress have been baked into games forever. There's always 1' ledegs you can't jump or invisible walls locking you into an area. I think most gamers will be fine if your companions say 'you can't go there'.
The real civilization killer will being able to truly 'jack in' to play these games. Once they become 'feelies' or 'Better Than Life' games, then you will indeed see vast amounts of society shut down, perhaps permanantly. There's a very cool art book called 'The Electric State' by Simon Stalenhag which has painted images of a future America where most of society has 'jacked in' and the world is finally collapsing in on itself.
If we don't make 'feelies' then the future video games you describe will continue to be huge time wasters, but it won't end the world as we know it. If anything, Gamers (as opposed to Filthy Casuals) have finely honed bullshit sensors and a mixed tolerance for jank. There are always players trying to break every game, explore every corner and do things that you aren't supposed to do in games. Those gamers will be fine. It's moving this from 'video game' to 'life coach' that we really need to watch out for. Those who aren't cyberpunks don't have the mental defense to protect against NPC bullshit.
Great stuff, Mark. It feels like we’ve been in a soup-pot game the last three years. You summed it up:
“Soup-pot characters designed in this fashion will often seem to speak and act in strange ways, because doing otherwise would contradict hidden conditions that are required to keep the author’s intentions from crumbling to dust.”
The Jean Baudrillard quote is on point. We must be careful of the self-referential nature of simulacra. This whole existence is computationally irreducible despite the desperate efforts of the reductionists and simulators. If we mistake the simulacra for reality the consequences couldn’t be more dire. More and more I think the only way to escape this will be to get rid of the screens...maybe I’m a Luddite?
Feb 21, 2023·edited Feb 21, 2023Liked by Mark Bisone
I am learning to dance tango. And one thing about our nature this dance reveals is how important it is to have a connection. Your partner could be experienced and pretty, but if there is no connection there is no dance. You can execute moves which could be more or less correct, but it doesn't feel right.
And such connection is relatively rare. I d say 2 out of 10 tops. And that is just for the dance.
I lust for connection, sexual is part of it, but not the only one. And i think for a lot of people of both genders thats truth as well.
And I been searching and looking for a long time and still didn't find it. I want dance the tango of life with that mutual connection. Alas it still just a dream for now.
And I keep thinking about that German movie " I am made for you". Where an AI bot is just a useful but not interesting machine at first. But over time learns all the strings of your soul and matches them. And becomes that perfect partner.
I am sure such bot for tango could be made relatively soon. And if it can do a few other types of connection well enough, would i bother to look for a real one? And my honest answer - No.
Feb 21, 2023·edited Feb 21, 2023Liked by Mark Bisone
Games seem like perfect mind bending tools to me, gaslighting the player, conditioning them. Remember how Yuval said approximately, useless eaters will have nothing to do but play video games?
I believe facial emotion recognition might play into games, instigating dopamine release, feeding and rewarding the player in real time as it reads their facial expressions, pupils size, heart rate...
Like in real life, when the public becomes bored, waking up to the game, it will throw out distractions and new challenges, rewards, whatever it can see triggers dopamine. This could also be the new media model, reading each person and targeting news, wording, group think by reading what is under the skin, as Yuval would say.
A true shower thought after this article percolated: according to folklore demonology, God forbids demons to take a fully human form -- when they present to humans something must always be "off". But after reading this post I think "forbid" is an over-simplification. The truth is that, lacking the spark that God has bestowed upon humanity, demons can only simulate the human form (see the most well-known Gnostic sects). Thus their presentation always falls into uncanny valley or even the horror-cavern you hypothesize.
The corollary is that we are being subjected to more and more uncanny presentations (transgenders I'm looking at you) in order to soften us up for the scheduled incursion of demonic forces.
As you know from my comments on some of your other posts, I don't distinguish between the advent of AI, "the Singularity", and the intentional thinning of the veil between this middle realm and the lower ones. So this may not really be a very deep thought once you really examine it.
Coming late to this, but it confirms my notion that real life is vastly superior to video games, and if I want to escape into an alternative world for a bit, I will stick to novels. Thanks for confirming for me what I suspected about video games, the are for neutering and controlling.
I quit playing video games in 2015 because I realized I had to start digging into my real life. Occasionally I'll miss them, but it's been one of the wisest decisions I've ever made. I'm busy trying to get ready for what's coming around the corner, while most of my generation seems to be sinking into the virtual abyss.
"Others will inject you with 100% pure, concentrated nightmare fuel. The memories of these glitches will haunt you day and night. It may take years to recover from the worst ones, and some of those scars may never fully fade."
Man this hits the nail on the head so much. I'm extremely concerned about how horror is inevitably gonna seep its way into everything, and reach levels of sheer terror we cant fathom right now. Great read Mark!
"If they’re shackled to hidden agendas, they will become propaganda weapons. If they’re set loose, they will degenerate into porn."
Does this mean that the majority of humans need to be led? When I was younger I bristled at the idea of any state or monarch limiting any man's capacity for self-determination. But now, especially after the last 3 years, I wonder. Maybe only a few men and women can use freedom responsibly? Sobering thought.
Interesting point about things degenerating into porn. When I was a lad, I was really into Starcraft. The game came with a "campaign editor" that allowed people to create their own missions. I'm sure that the designers hoped that this would unleash a wonderful stream of creativity, but everyone quickly figured out that it could also be used to cast the female characters in this weird softcore techno erotica. My friend even made one about the girls in our school. And this was back in 2000 / 2001! I can't imagine what it would be like now.
"the most realistic game engine is reality itself, the most compelling story is my own life, and the true adventure is living it."
This. A million times this. The most disturbing thing to me in this flight to the virtual is the neglect of the real. The buildings and people get uglier, making the virtual more attractive. It's a vicious circle that ends in a nightmare reality, a planet full of broken souls hiding from the wasteland in a Matrioshka hallucination that is ultimately no less nightmarish itself.
The virtual catastrophe has the potential to be a Great Filter level threat. Certainly it promises to be an evolutionary filter.
Very prescient. Video gaming is yet another iteration of the process by which the entertainment industry has become integral to social control. This is pregnant with psychic and spiritual danger.
Entertainment already forms a central, defining, feature of life itself for a great many people. It is certainly as important, if not more important, than education or organised religion. The emerging technologies guarantee an exceptionally sinister future indeed.
In the dystopias to come devitalised and demoralised people, oppressed by atomisation, will pursue escapism into virtual reality, in order to find illusory companionship and simulated forms of recognition. It is reasonable to expect that the video games of the future will incorporate holographic characters connected by wifi to connected sex-dolls. And virtual reality larping will displace physical and social experience.
The techno-shamanic cults of the future will involve virtual reality, game-based, experiences fortified by psychoactives and hallucinogens.
AI generated egregores will prey on pod-dwelling worshippers. Makes perfect sense.
Really good, this two-parter should be read widely.
Frankly, I'm encouraged about the future of pornography and horror games. The latter of the two isn't a genre I personally indulge in though.
Here's a synthesis vision of future role playing games: the core story, the A plot, will continue to be scripted. The main NPCs cannot and will not ruin the story. However, the rest of the mass NPCs populating the open world will go about their daily life in a dynamic way (ala Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or the later Hitman games). These Mass NPCs will give the game world a more 'lived in' look and feel and can be a source of near-endless side quests. You can fumble around with them as long as you like, but nothing you or they do will impact the A plot. You have to do main quest missions to advance the story.
Likewise, artificial barriers to progress have been baked into games forever. There's always 1' ledegs you can't jump or invisible walls locking you into an area. I think most gamers will be fine if your companions say 'you can't go there'.
The real civilization killer will being able to truly 'jack in' to play these games. Once they become 'feelies' or 'Better Than Life' games, then you will indeed see vast amounts of society shut down, perhaps permanantly. There's a very cool art book called 'The Electric State' by Simon Stalenhag which has painted images of a future America where most of society has 'jacked in' and the world is finally collapsing in on itself.
If we don't make 'feelies' then the future video games you describe will continue to be huge time wasters, but it won't end the world as we know it. If anything, Gamers (as opposed to Filthy Casuals) have finely honed bullshit sensors and a mixed tolerance for jank. There are always players trying to break every game, explore every corner and do things that you aren't supposed to do in games. Those gamers will be fine. It's moving this from 'video game' to 'life coach' that we really need to watch out for. Those who aren't cyberpunks don't have the mental defense to protect against NPC bullshit.
Great stuff, Mark. It feels like we’ve been in a soup-pot game the last three years. You summed it up:
“Soup-pot characters designed in this fashion will often seem to speak and act in strange ways, because doing otherwise would contradict hidden conditions that are required to keep the author’s intentions from crumbling to dust.”
The Jean Baudrillard quote is on point. We must be careful of the self-referential nature of simulacra. This whole existence is computationally irreducible despite the desperate efforts of the reductionists and simulators. If we mistake the simulacra for reality the consequences couldn’t be more dire. More and more I think the only way to escape this will be to get rid of the screens...maybe I’m a Luddite?
I am learning to dance tango. And one thing about our nature this dance reveals is how important it is to have a connection. Your partner could be experienced and pretty, but if there is no connection there is no dance. You can execute moves which could be more or less correct, but it doesn't feel right.
And such connection is relatively rare. I d say 2 out of 10 tops. And that is just for the dance.
I lust for connection, sexual is part of it, but not the only one. And i think for a lot of people of both genders thats truth as well.
And I been searching and looking for a long time and still didn't find it. I want dance the tango of life with that mutual connection. Alas it still just a dream for now.
And I keep thinking about that German movie " I am made for you". Where an AI bot is just a useful but not interesting machine at first. But over time learns all the strings of your soul and matches them. And becomes that perfect partner.
I am sure such bot for tango could be made relatively soon. And if it can do a few other types of connection well enough, would i bother to look for a real one? And my honest answer - No.
Games seem like perfect mind bending tools to me, gaslighting the player, conditioning them. Remember how Yuval said approximately, useless eaters will have nothing to do but play video games?
I believe facial emotion recognition might play into games, instigating dopamine release, feeding and rewarding the player in real time as it reads their facial expressions, pupils size, heart rate...
Like in real life, when the public becomes bored, waking up to the game, it will throw out distractions and new challenges, rewards, whatever it can see triggers dopamine. This could also be the new media model, reading each person and targeting news, wording, group think by reading what is under the skin, as Yuval would say.
A true shower thought after this article percolated: according to folklore demonology, God forbids demons to take a fully human form -- when they present to humans something must always be "off". But after reading this post I think "forbid" is an over-simplification. The truth is that, lacking the spark that God has bestowed upon humanity, demons can only simulate the human form (see the most well-known Gnostic sects). Thus their presentation always falls into uncanny valley or even the horror-cavern you hypothesize.
The corollary is that we are being subjected to more and more uncanny presentations (transgenders I'm looking at you) in order to soften us up for the scheduled incursion of demonic forces.
As you know from my comments on some of your other posts, I don't distinguish between the advent of AI, "the Singularity", and the intentional thinning of the veil between this middle realm and the lower ones. So this may not really be a very deep thought once you really examine it.
Coming late to this, but it confirms my notion that real life is vastly superior to video games, and if I want to escape into an alternative world for a bit, I will stick to novels. Thanks for confirming for me what I suspected about video games, the are for neutering and controlling.
I quit playing video games in 2015 because I realized I had to start digging into my real life. Occasionally I'll miss them, but it's been one of the wisest decisions I've ever made. I'm busy trying to get ready for what's coming around the corner, while most of my generation seems to be sinking into the virtual abyss.
"Others will inject you with 100% pure, concentrated nightmare fuel. The memories of these glitches will haunt you day and night. It may take years to recover from the worst ones, and some of those scars may never fully fade."
Man this hits the nail on the head so much. I'm extremely concerned about how horror is inevitably gonna seep its way into everything, and reach levels of sheer terror we cant fathom right now. Great read Mark!
"If they’re shackled to hidden agendas, they will become propaganda weapons. If they’re set loose, they will degenerate into porn."
Does this mean that the majority of humans need to be led? When I was younger I bristled at the idea of any state or monarch limiting any man's capacity for self-determination. But now, especially after the last 3 years, I wonder. Maybe only a few men and women can use freedom responsibly? Sobering thought.
Interesting point about things degenerating into porn. When I was a lad, I was really into Starcraft. The game came with a "campaign editor" that allowed people to create their own missions. I'm sure that the designers hoped that this would unleash a wonderful stream of creativity, but everyone quickly figured out that it could also be used to cast the female characters in this weird softcore techno erotica. My friend even made one about the girls in our school. And this was back in 2000 / 2001! I can't imagine what it would be like now.