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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there,

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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris paul At.

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Speaker 1: I'm an edder here at How Stuff Works, and today

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Speaker 1: I have sitting next to me writer Jonathan Strickland. Thing

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Speaker 1: I just leveled up. Okay, yeah, there there's an idea

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Speaker 1: that we were playing with, and that was to tackle

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Speaker 1: massively multiplayer online role playing games or m m O RPGs.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those one of those few times where

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Speaker 1: the acronym is is almost, if not more difficult to

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Speaker 1: say than the full thing. Right. Yeah, they they're they're very,

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Speaker 1: very popular, extremely popular. They're so popular, they're more popular

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Speaker 1: than popular things. Okay, I don't know what you know.

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Speaker 1: And Korea they're huge too, that's true. That's their enormous

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Speaker 1: Actually Asia really they really do dominate. But let's let's

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Speaker 1: jump ahead of our kind of talk about what these

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Speaker 1: things are. So for those of you who don't know UM,

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Speaker 1: and I imagine that's probably a very small minority, but

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Speaker 1: this is a there, it's a game that UM that

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Speaker 1: you where you take on the persona of a character

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Speaker 1: that lives within a certain virtual world. That world could

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Speaker 1: be anything from fantasy setting, like a token esque kind

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Speaker 1: of fantasy sorcery right sword and sorcery, Or it could

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Speaker 1: be science fiction. It could be the wild West, it

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Speaker 1: could be a vampire society. Really, it's just limited to

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Speaker 1: the imagination of the person creating the game or corporation

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Speaker 1: creating the game. Um. But you create a persona that

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Speaker 1: exists within this universe, and you play through that persona,

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Speaker 1: exploring the world, achieving tasks, making friends and enemies. Um.

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Speaker 1: And you're doing it online over the internet along at

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Speaker 1: with about you know, a couple of thousand to several

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand other people at the same time. So it's

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Speaker 1: it's a social thing because you do encounter actual other players.

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Speaker 1: I mean they're the characters. Many of the characters you

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Speaker 1: encounter will have at the other end of them a real,

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Speaker 1: live human being controlling that character. Um. And yet it's

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Speaker 1: also a computer game. So that's that's sort of the

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Speaker 1: the pie in the sky kind of m m O

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Speaker 1: RPG rundown I guess. Yeah. But if you didn't know

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Speaker 1: the the acronym and the name for it. You probably

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Speaker 1: heard at least of some of the games like World

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Speaker 1: of Warcraft, which is by far the most popular it's

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Speaker 1: got in the United States. Well, that's true. Well it's

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Speaker 1: got quite a few fans overseas as well, but request

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Speaker 1: um some others. Right, Well, and we can wait, Loot

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Speaker 1: spent a couple of Yeah, we can spend a couple

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Speaker 1: of minutes talking about sort of where this whole idea

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Speaker 1: came from. Yeah, that's true, that's that's where we are now.

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Speaker 1: But you know it didn't happen overnight. No, this is

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Speaker 1: this is a It was a process of evolution, and

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Speaker 1: Chris and I can probably talk a little bit about

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Speaker 1: the the source for this, UH this kind of game

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Speaker 1: because he and I have both been exposed to it. UM.

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Speaker 1: Back in the late seventies, UH a war gamer or

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Speaker 1: a few war gamers were trying to find a way

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Speaker 1: to have smaller UM squad based adventures as opposed to

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Speaker 1: giant battle confrontations, and a couple of them UH started

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Speaker 1: to develop this idea of a role playing game. This

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Speaker 1: was a paper and pencil game. You had you had

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Speaker 1: a piece of paper where you would create a character

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Speaker 1: and you would generate stats with some sort of random

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Speaker 1: number generator, which in those days were dice. Um, different

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Speaker 1: sided dice to to create different kind of stats. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I once upon a time had quite the dice bag,

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Speaker 1: a huge collection. That is, since I have no idea

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Speaker 1: where it is now, it's probably somewhere in my parents house. Um,

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Speaker 1: but I have not seen it for many, many years.

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Speaker 1: But at any rate, you would use these dice to

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Speaker 1: create your character, also to kind of determine how random

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Speaker 1: or or events that were based on chance, how what

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Speaker 1: the outcome was, right? Right, So let's say you're encountering, uh,

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Speaker 1: you're playing the most popular one is Dungeons and Dragons.

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Speaker 1: I think that most people have probably heard it, right,

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Speaker 1: That's the one everyone's probably at least heard in passing. Um.

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Speaker 1: So let's say you're playing your Dungeons and Dragons, your

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Speaker 1: your your third level paladin, your third level paladin encounters

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Speaker 1: a cobald and you want to the cobolds attacking you,

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Speaker 1: and you want to attack it. You know, you would

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Speaker 1: roll a die to determine, based upon your paladin's abilities,

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Speaker 1: whether or not your strike makes contact. Yeah, it's not

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Speaker 1: like you have to imagine here if you've never played

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Speaker 1: one of these pencil and paper games that it's not

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Speaker 1: if you've played World of Warcraft, it all sort of

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Speaker 1: happens in real time. The computer is generating those numbers

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Speaker 1: as you're playing the game, and it's you know, you

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Speaker 1: attack and you can only swing your sword so fast. Um.

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Speaker 1: But with these pencil and paper games, there was somebody

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Speaker 1: who would run the game. It would tell you what's

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Speaker 1: going on, and you'd have to ask, you know, well,

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Speaker 1: what does my character see? Like, Well, this is all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, this thing jumps out at you and

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Speaker 1: you don't know what it is. It's like, what does

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Speaker 1: it look like? And you have to ask because you're

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Speaker 1: playing a role you don't know, you know, it's not

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Speaker 1: in front of you. You have to guess. And they

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Speaker 1: have to say, well, there's a thirty percent chance that

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Speaker 1: you're going to completely miss roll the die and it says, well, sorry,

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Speaker 1: you missed, and now you're getting ready to die. It

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Speaker 1: was really really a kind of interactive storytelling. Sure, and

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Speaker 1: some people got more into it than others. Some people

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Speaker 1: would really take the role playing part of the game

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Speaker 1: very seriously. They would they would be in character as

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Speaker 1: they're playing. Yeah, we even have an article called how

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Speaker 1: live action role play, which is about people who dress

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Speaker 1: up in the costumes and actual to go out and

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Speaker 1: and you know, interact with one another in person and

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Speaker 1: pretend to be those characters, right and so um, for them,

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Speaker 1: the role is the most important part. Other people, it's

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Speaker 1: the game part. You know, they're really interested in their

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Speaker 1: stats and uh, you know, collecting the weapons exactly. They

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Speaker 1: and the same sort of uh, some sort of behaviors

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Speaker 1: have kind of spilled into the m M O RPG world.

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Speaker 1: But before we get into that, we can go to

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Speaker 1: the next step, which really was the computer role playing game,

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Speaker 1: which was again text, right, the original ones were text

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Speaker 1: and then and then you would get some primitive graphics

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Speaker 1: like I played the Wizardry series and the Wizardry one, two,

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Speaker 1: and three, infect um, and those were those had some graphics,

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Speaker 1: although they were very primitive graphics, and things like Bard's

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Speaker 1: Tail and the Ultimate series and uh, but in general,

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Speaker 1: you still weren't playing these online with other people. You

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Speaker 1: were basically they were just telling you what you were

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Speaker 1: doing and you say, okay, I go left. Right. There

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Speaker 1: was no real role playing like that. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: had you had a character you controlled, but you didn't

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Speaker 1: really they told you your role, yeah, you and you

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Speaker 1: didn't really you know, you couldn't, especially the early ones,

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Speaker 1: you couldn't really talk to anyone. You couldn't establish a personality.

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Speaker 1: You were just kind of, you know, taking through stuff right.

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Speaker 1: The later ones ultimate things like that, there was a

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Speaker 1: little bit more where you you know, depending on how

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Speaker 1: you talk to people during conversations that could change the

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Speaker 1: outcome of the game. So that kind of started getting

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a role playing thing in there,

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Speaker 1: but still it was it was a one person, one

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Speaker 1: computer experience, so there wasn't any real social interaction. You're

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Speaker 1: just kind of it's this artificial social interaction with these

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Speaker 1: these nonplayer characters that are all controlled by the computer.

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Speaker 1: So that moves us on to when the Internet started

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Speaker 1: really making it big. One of the first things that

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Speaker 1: college students started figuring out how to do was making

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Speaker 1: games that they could play with other people over the Internet.

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Speaker 1: And there were three major kinds of these games when

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Speaker 1: they first started hitting the internet. Um, they were all

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Speaker 1: kind of related. Uh. There were MUDs, which stands for

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Speaker 1: multi User Dungeon. There were Moves, which was a mud

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Speaker 1: object oriented game, so the objects could have their own

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Speaker 1: um um abilities and traits and objects or anything in

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Speaker 1: the game. Really they could not just necessarily like a

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Speaker 1: sword or a pot, but it could be a person,

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Speaker 1: that could be a table, it could be you know,

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Speaker 1: pretty much anything. And then you had the Mush, which

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Speaker 1: was a multi user shared hallucination. A little tripy there,

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Speaker 1: but these these were text based games where you could

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Speaker 1: actually interact with other people all at the same time.

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Speaker 1: So you'd be in this this world um reading about

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Speaker 1: it and performing actions and um. There was a bit

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Speaker 1: of a role playing aspect to it, although again a

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Speaker 1: lot of people were really focusing more on the game

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Speaker 1: than on the role and in my experience, a lot

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Speaker 1: of them turned into chat rooms. You'd go into a

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Speaker 1: section of the castle or whatever, and then people would

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Speaker 1: jump out of character and just start talking about whatever.

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Speaker 1: It was very it was very much like uh like

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Speaker 1: using some of the I r C type chatting, except

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Speaker 1: that people were you were theoretically in a castle somewhere

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Speaker 1: and you know, and some people just chose it. They'd

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Speaker 1: look at it as the challenge to see who could

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Speaker 1: get the highest level the fastest. You know. Again, it's

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Speaker 1: not a lot of role playing there. But then UM

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Speaker 1: as time went on, there were some game developers who

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Speaker 1: were really determined on making bringing this to the next level,

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Speaker 1: which is really adding graphics to it and having a

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Speaker 1: um at least a two D, if not three D

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Speaker 1: kind of experience. UM so that it made it more immersive,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't you know, you weren't just reading text

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Speaker 1: because a lot of people just skip over the text anyway.

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Speaker 1: You might have spent twenty minutes writing the perfect room description,

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Speaker 1: but everyone else just wants to see what's the monster

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Speaker 1: that's in there and where's the nearest exit. Um. So

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Speaker 1: that's when two games in particular really started taking the

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Speaker 1: lead on that. One of them was Ultimate Online, which

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Speaker 1: was a project that that evolved out of the Ultimate

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Speaker 1: Game series developed by Richard Garriott Richard lord Ish Garriott UM.

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Speaker 1: And the other was ever Quest, and for the longest

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Speaker 1: time that was the that was the Those were the

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Speaker 1: two biggies. Ever Quest and Ultimate Online really battled it

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Speaker 1: out to be the leader, and ultimon Line I think

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Speaker 1: had the early edge, but ever Quest quickly overtook them.

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Speaker 1: Um ultimon On line suffered some problems with griefers, which

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Speaker 1: are players who specifically make it their purpose in life

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Speaker 1: to ruin the good time of everybody else, right right,

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Speaker 1: And these, uh, these games are what I think of,

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Speaker 1: at least in my from what I've read or what

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Speaker 1: I think I was the beginning of the M M

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Speaker 1: O RPG economy because people started and and this may

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Speaker 1: sound weird to you if you've never played one of

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Speaker 1: these games, but people would start selling virtual items for

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Speaker 1: real cash. Um. There was an article in Wired magazine

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Speaker 1: a few years ago about somebody who was a player

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Speaker 1: on Ultima who had a horde of weapons and things

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Speaker 1: that he was selling for American dollars um, so you

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Speaker 1: could he Basically, they would play the game. And there

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Speaker 1: are people if you look on some of the search engines,

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Speaker 1: you can find a way to play for money. And

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Speaker 1: I think what they're doing, I didn't, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: in a hurry, but I think what they're doing is

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Speaker 1: they pay you to go on, create a character, play through,

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Speaker 1: get some weapons, and then also they will give you

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Speaker 1: cash for those weapons so that they can turn around

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Speaker 1: and give uh, you know, get five for a plus

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Speaker 1: two sort of cleaving vegetables. Right. There's also there are

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Speaker 1: also people who will play your character for you so

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Speaker 1: that you advanced. There will be an experienced grinders, right,

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Speaker 1: just so that you have a stronger character faster, and

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Speaker 1: you don't have to go through the drudgery of leveling up,

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Speaker 1: which really kind of defeats the whole purpose of a

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Speaker 1: game when you think about it. I mean, they're looking

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Speaker 1: for the reward, and yeah, there, it depends on what

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Speaker 1: you're trying to get out of virtual reward. It's not

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Speaker 1: a real reward. The whole point of the game is

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Speaker 1: to enjoy it while you're playing it, and the only

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Speaker 1: enjoyment you get is having the strongest character. How long

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Speaker 1: does that last? That's that's true. That's true, And and

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Speaker 1: there are other examples. A Second Life had a crash

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Speaker 1: of its it's bank system a few months ago. Of course,

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Speaker 1: Second Life isn't really a role playing game, well it

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Speaker 1: kind of, I guess in a way, it's more I

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Speaker 1: think of it more of as a virtual environment. But

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Speaker 1: it does definitely have some m m O RPG elements

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Speaker 1: to it, and and do create an avatar. And I

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Speaker 1: have I have a controversial thing. I want to uh

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Speaker 1: to mention it. I don't know. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: take you off the track because you had some things

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Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about. But um here here's what

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Speaker 1: I think we should rename mm O RPGs. I think

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Speaker 1: we should just call them games because pretty much everything

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Speaker 1: now has some kind of online component to it. You

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Speaker 1: can get a console game like Halo or you know

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Speaker 1: some of the even some of the sports games and things,

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Speaker 1: and you can play with other people and essentially you

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Speaker 1: are playing maybe you're playing you know, Madden Football with

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Speaker 1: somebody else online while you're playing you know, the Kansas

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Speaker 1: City Chiefs. It's a it's a role and to some

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Speaker 1: degree it is a role playing game. Yeah, you can

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Speaker 1: think of it as a spectrum. I think. I mean

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Speaker 1: because when I think of role playing games, I really

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Speaker 1: do think that you're you're taking on a character. And ideally,

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Speaker 1: if it's a true role playing game, you're you're in character,

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Speaker 1: you're playing as that character. You're not you're not you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be Chris who happens to be playing the Dark

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Speaker 1: Elf Mohawk like like Mr t Um. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if you've seen that commercial. It's awesome, but it's uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you you would want to you would want to

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Speaker 1: be kind of part of this world, right, You're not,

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Speaker 1: You're not just someone who's controlling a little guy. It's

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Speaker 1: not like a remote control car. Ideally, ideally you are

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Speaker 1: an inhabitant of this world. Um and I think, but

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Speaker 1: even in games that are designed for that, you don't

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Speaker 1: really find that the majority of players treated that way. Um.

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Speaker 1: There there's always a core of players who really are

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Speaker 1: serious about it, and they have a good time and

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Speaker 1: they have fun with each other. But there are a

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Speaker 1: lot more people, I think, who just go on there

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Speaker 1: just to you know, kill a couple of hours, so

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Speaker 1: they're not really into the hole. Let me take on

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Speaker 1: this role and play this character. I think you have

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Speaker 1: to be if you're one of the serious, more serious

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Speaker 1: minded gamers, you have to be a little tolerant of

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Speaker 1: the people who are just there to kill a couple

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Speaker 1: of hours, right, And unfortunately the people are just there

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Speaker 1: to kill a couple of hours aren't always tolerant of

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Speaker 1: the core players because I mean, we think about it, it

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Speaker 1: it does seem a little strange to run into someone

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Speaker 1: who's something you know, it's a real person on the

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Speaker 1: other end of this character, but they're still talking to you.

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Speaker 1: Kind of funny that there there's a disconnect there that's

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Speaker 1: hard to get past. But there are tons of these

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Speaker 1: games out there right now, yea. And they're not all

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Speaker 1: you know, shoot them ups. There are things like uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, Puzzle Pirates, which is one of my favorite hope,

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Speaker 1: Puzzle Pirates in which you solve puzzles to do your

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Speaker 1: h to do your duties on the ship with your

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Speaker 1: your mates, but you everyone talks like a pirate and

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Speaker 1: they basically there is a chat element of it. It's

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Speaker 1: a casual gaming thing. Um. They are other things like

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Speaker 1: Club Penguin for kids or Hello Kitty online. You can

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Speaker 1: tell I have a daughter in kindergarten because actually, oh stop,

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Speaker 1: I just like um and and my my personal favorite

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Speaker 1: that I'm really interested to see come out, which is

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Speaker 1: supposed to be here in two thousand nine Lego Universe,

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Speaker 1: in which you can play a Lego minifig, which is

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Speaker 1: just really cool. And but they're I mean, you're right,

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Speaker 1: it's a there's a spectrum. There's everything from you know,

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Speaker 1: going online to play Capture the Flag and Unreal to

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Speaker 1: you know, where you're actually one of the soldiers go

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Speaker 1: running around or you know, a little mini fig. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you've got I would say that fantasy probably dominates

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Speaker 1: the genre, and we've got things like the Ultuan Line EverQuest,

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Speaker 1: World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, which came out not

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Speaker 1: that long ago. Um uh, the role. Let's see, there's

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Speaker 1: a Warhammer online which is shipping right now. I think

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Speaker 1: it's Brandon according this podcast. Um yeah, a Lord of

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Speaker 1: the Rings online. So there are all these games that

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Speaker 1: that kind of stem off of existing licenses as well.

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you one that I almost joined, but then

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Speaker 1: I waited to kind of see how it would go.

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Speaker 1: And then I'm glad I waited because it's like I

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Speaker 1: would have been disappointed was Star Wars Galaxies, because you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm a big original trilogy Star Wars I'm gonna say

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Speaker 1: that again, Original trilogy Star Wars band and uh and

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Speaker 1: and just the thought of being able to play, and

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Speaker 1: immediately I was like, I want to be I want

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Speaker 1: to be on the Empire. I want to be in

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Speaker 1: the Empire and I want to hunt down those rebel

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Speaker 1: scum and um, which kind of gives you incited into

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Speaker 1: my personality. But uh, but it didn't pan out so well.

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Speaker 1: Apparently there are a lot of problems with it. So

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Speaker 1: I'm glad I kind of took my time. But there

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Speaker 1: are tons of them out there and pretty much they'll

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Speaker 1: you know, just like you can find websites all cater

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Speaker 1: to just about anything, you can probably find a game

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Speaker 1: that caters to just about any kind of genre. But

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Speaker 1: be prepared if you're interested in in starting these. Not

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Speaker 1: all of them have a giant financial commitment where you

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Speaker 1: have to pay dollars to buy the game and then

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Speaker 1: loaded in. Uh. Some of them are are free, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they'll give you an opportunity to try the game

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Speaker 1: or or you can play all that you want for free.

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Speaker 1: It's up you can't access certain features, which is how

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Speaker 1: they lure you in to pay your ten dollars a

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Speaker 1: month to get access. Well, you know, you can't have

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Speaker 1: the ability to change your character's clothes, but if you

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Speaker 1: paid the ten dollars a month, you could. Or you

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Speaker 1: won't be able to use this particular really cool sword exactly.

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Speaker 1: But if you pay this the subscription fee and become

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Speaker 1: a premium member, you totally could and uh if you

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Speaker 1: if you do start doing that, you may find out

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Speaker 1: why the people who played EverQuest used to call it

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Speaker 1: Evercrack because, as a friend of mine found out as

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Speaker 1: he came in bleary eyed to work one day, They

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Speaker 1: can be extremely addictive, and all of a sudden, it's

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Speaker 1: four thirty in the morning, you find you've been playing

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Speaker 1: all night, and then you end up doing that every night,

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Speaker 1: your job performance mighty suffer. Well. Uh, you know, so

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Speaker 1: be be warned if you get into this there could

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Speaker 1: be some financial commitment to it and uh maybe a

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Speaker 1: little lost time. Right. Yeah, if you have an addictive personality,

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Speaker 1: you might want to take it easy on these exactly.

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Speaker 1: But they can be a lot of fun. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: thought i'd mentioned one other kind of tangential. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of interesting here. Um I was going to talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about the Avatar Machine. This is just just

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Speaker 1: a cool little project that um I engineering and art

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Speaker 1: student named Mark Owens created and he's over in the

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Speaker 1: United Kingdom, and the Avatar Machine. The purpose of it

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Speaker 1: was to see how because Owens is very interested in

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Speaker 1: the way that people and objects interact and whether or

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Speaker 1: not we imprint an emotional kind of UH status to

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Speaker 1: certain objects like UH and he's done lots of experiments

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Speaker 1: with this very kind of interesting philosophical experiments. One of

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Speaker 1: them is the Avatar Machine, and the idea behind it

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Speaker 1: was that he made an observation that people within these

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Speaker 1: worlds often have show a lack of empathy towards others. Um,

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Speaker 1: they're not real, right. You know you're you're interacting with

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Speaker 1: a computer generated character. You know you've you're removed from

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Speaker 1: the actual person who is controlling that other character. So

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Speaker 1: it's harder to think of things like, oh, I could

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Speaker 1: be hurting this person's feelings or I could you know,

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Speaker 1: how would how would I feel if this person were

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Speaker 1: doing that what I'm doing to them to me? Um.

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Speaker 1: So he created this thing called the Avatar Machine, and

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Speaker 1: what it is is it's a helmet that has a

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Speaker 1: monitor in it um and a harness that that that

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Speaker 1: suspends a camera a few feet above and behind the

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Speaker 1: person who's wearing the costume and behind their head, so

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Speaker 1: the cameras focused down on the person wearing the gig.

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Speaker 1: So you're like wearing this thing, and from your view

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Speaker 1: when you look in the monitor, you see yourself from

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Speaker 1: a third person perspective, just like you would in a

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Speaker 1: lot of them. Many of the M M O RPGs

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Speaker 1: had that same thing, and he even designed it so

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Speaker 1: it had a kind of world of warcraft look to it.

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Speaker 1: Decided that as one of his inspirations, and so he

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Speaker 1: said that you know, at first when people start wearing it,

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Speaker 1: they're a little disoriented, and then they they start to

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Speaker 1: move around once they gain a little confidence. You know,

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Speaker 1: It's it's weird to look at your alf from the

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Speaker 1: third person perspective and then still try and move in

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Speaker 1: a space because you know, you're not seeing the ground

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Speaker 1: immediately in front of you as you would normally. It's

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Speaker 1: pretty literally an out of body experience, it really is.

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Speaker 1: It's a it's a computerized out of experience. And um.

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Speaker 1: He said that after a few minutes, people would start

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Speaker 1: swinging their arms and stomping around as if they were

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Speaker 1: this giant, you know, character, and even intimidating other people.

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Speaker 1: And they were behaving the way that people who control

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Speaker 1: a third person perspective character behave online. So maybe there's

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Speaker 1: this thing that if you're not within your own skin,

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Speaker 1: you just don't have that kind of ability to feel

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Speaker 1: empathy for other people, or at least it's reduced. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you're no one like went on a spree and started,

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Speaker 1: you know, picked up a branch and start whacking people

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Speaker 1: over the head. I mean, nothing in that extreme, but

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Speaker 1: you know, there was definitely a change in behavior. It

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Speaker 1: helps to be in work. Yeah, So, if you'd like

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Speaker 1: to read more, you can check out how m m

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Speaker 1: O RPGs work and that's live right now on how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Farewell, good gentles, we'll talk to

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Speaker 1: you again soon. For more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let us

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Speaker 1: know what you think. Send an email to podcast at

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the

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Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you