An Atlas Shrugged video game?

Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years ago to Entertainment
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In this month's issue of Reason Magazine, the cover story deals with America's addiction to video games, including more adults than ever. The most intriguing item in the story was about how an economics professor had been hired by a video game company, and the former economics professor illustrated how these multiplayer gaming environments are outstanding models of microsocieties. As several of us are talking about putting together a physical Atlantis, perhaps we could simulate the Gulch as a video game as a "dry run" before actually building Atlantis. Moreover, could you imagine the number of teenagers who would line up to watch Who is John Galt? if the video game were released just before the movie?

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  • Posted by Solver 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Right. But that's my point "Kids (and adults) need to learn that game playing does NOT emulate real life." Which in reality it does not, EVEN if they somehow THINK it does.

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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    And there it is again, another down vote. Who ever it is, is quite prolific in their ability to track your comments.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I rather prefer Gray (and since I'm no hobbit fan, I have no idea if that makes me good/bad/indifferent).
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Certainly in a game about AS, you should be able to choose between which characters from the novel you play. (although not as doable in an MMO).

    Or you could play "classes" based on the characters in the book. You could be an industrialist, like rearden, or a miner like danagger or d'anconia (more accurately, a "resource aquisition expert", someone who harvests raw materials), or you could be a transportation tycoon, or a scientist (Stadler or Daniels style, your choice), or you could be a political operative, like Mouch,
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Read the story, and you'll see why they don't need money. Remember what D'Anconia said:

    "Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value."

    "“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others."

    "Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce."

    They don't need money because they trade value for value... and anybody who tries to mooch or loot gets shut out of the system til his only options are starvation or suicide.
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  • Posted by Kova 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Maybe "karma points" count for something, too. (Sorry, the name could be a little less flaky; let`s call them...um..."honor points," maybe?) Maybe if you choose a looter type character or behave in a looter-like way, you quickly gain "negative honor pooints" which deny you certain secret privileges/rewards/entry location accesses of the game?
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  • Posted by Kova 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Ooh, game avatars fashioned after the AS characters? I like! Maybe it could be partially an rpg, too, mixed partly with aspects of the game Monopoly, to celebrate the progressive virtues of capitalism. ;)
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  • Posted by Solver 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    "The only way to "win" the game is to stop interfering in the first place!"
    Kind of like playing Thermal Nuclear War (In the movie War Games.)
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  • Posted by Solver 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Does Grand Theft Auto emulate real life or using its immoral practices tend to work in life? Remember that, getting shot really hurts, imprisonment is long term and there are no new life replays in real life.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I saw your mention of CrystalBall in an earlier post. I guess CrystalBall makes you a regular Gandalf. Would that be the gray or the white version?
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    And before you go and think that it's me, it isn't. I might disagree with most of your posts, but you don't act like a troll. I only downvote trolls.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I just wrote a blog on MonteCarlo simulations. I use an Excel add-in called CrystalBall (yes, I have a CrystalBall). It's fantastic.
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  • Posted by Solver 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Too many people can play an RPG anyway they want then go outside into the real world and expect similar results.
    That people play video games too much is a different, but important, subject than the one I was talking about.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I hope you turned it off and promptly told them that there is no such thing as an action without consequences.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    I agree both of your sentences in your main point, Solver. However, what today's kids are learning is almost the opposite of your first sentence. They are learning that game playing can be their life. They can live in Mom's basement without repercussion. Today's kids need a serious wake-up call to reality. They have been taught that life is cheap and that their actions are without repercussions. One TV show that my kids watched a few years ago made me puke when a fairy granted the cartoon character a "guilt-free wish".
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  • Posted by iroseland 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    exactly what I was thinking.. Back when I was working in gaming projects would start pretty small and up to the first executive review they would move pretty fast as the team involved were all very much on the same page. Then they would get a green light at the first exec review. Then they would have an actual budget and do a lot of hiring and contracting to third party folks. This is where things would start to go off the rails. As they would close in on the second exec review they would get desperate which would result in crunch time and more hiring. One of the PS3 launch titles went way past launch and the team ballooned up over 125 people, and I could watch as that made things even more slow.. For one, the perforce box that stored all their stuff suddenly needed a pile of proxy's and I had to come up with a slick/new/untested way to keep traffic smooth across all of them. Then for one of our mainline sports games. Things were going great till they go a bit stressed and hired 3rd party animators to do a bunch of busy work.. Their was a moment when they discovers that there was no good way to explain american football to Indian animators. This resulted in a director of animation being busied up on the wrong things for long periods of time.. Amazingly that title made it out on time, and we all got some good laughs. Near as I can tell there is a ideal size for a game team, and if that is exceeded things pretty much only go poorly. I took part in a big art database project at one point. There were like a total of 4 people on the project. The result was we managed to grind out a fairly big and hairy holy grail to the industry project in about 6 months. The Mortal Kombat team was a team that did not change size that much ever. They were really good at picking a release date and then getting a flawless victory on hitting it. This was probably due to a few factors. The team was not very large. They had pretty much all been MK folks forever so they had experience with the title and each other. That made them operate like a well oiled machine..
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  • Posted by Solver 11 years ago in reply to this comment.
    This is my main point: Kids (and adults) need to learn that game playing does not emulate real life. What is immorally successful in a game tends not to work in life.
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