Why all human endeavour is destined to end up as a thrilling new computer game.
I walked through a friend’s front door the other day, and instead of offering me the customary cup of coffee, he excitedly told me about his new hobby — farming. I was staggered; this friend is the kind of person who would consider any venture outside the city limits to be a terrible lapse in judgement. His idea of roughing it would be if the barista failed to make the foam on his morning cappuccino sufficiently dry. So when he offered to show me his new farming venture, I was intrigued. I was waiting by the door to be driven to his new farm, when he beckoned me inside.
You probably know what’s coming next. His farm turned out to be a virtual farm — Farmville, to be precise. If you haven’t heard of Farmville yet, rest assured you will. Simply put, it enables people who have never walked barefoot on the ground in years to play at being farmers. You can own your own farm, weed it, water it, raise pigs, sell produce, buy fertiliser… in short, do all the things a real farmer would do. But unlike those fuddy-duddies, you can do this without the labour, the inconvenience, or the smell of actually having to touch a real pig. I don’t think you can go bankrupt yet, but I hear the company that made it is planning a new version where you can go through that most essential of farming experiences — having your farm taken over by the bank.
I guess this is the natural order of things. One of the first board games that really captured the world’s imagination was Monopoly, long before the personal computer took over our lives. The success of Monopoly is often credited to the desire of people stuck in post-World War II penury to play at buying and selling the houses they would never really own. Now, when most people only see vegetables, fruits and meat as neatly wrapped packages at the supermarket, it’s no surprise that a deep hankering within calls us to go out and raise some virtual swine. All art seems destined to end up on a screensaver, all music in a ringtone (ring me, Amadeus!!), and all human endeavour as a thrilling new computer game.
At the risk of going out on a limb, I can even predict the next twist in this virtual saga. At least in America, cooking shows on TV are at an all-time high in ratings. This at a time when people are actually cooking their dinner less than they ever did before, preferring instead to warm up packaged meals in the microwave so they will not miss their favourite cooking show. I think the next big thing will be a virtual cooking game, where you can cook up a big meal, invite all your friends, throw a party, and talk all about it, without ever stepping into the kitchen. I even got a small foretaste of this, when my friend sent me a bushel of potatoes, and some choice spare ribs, fresh from his farm. I clicked on them, and got a message telling me they had been consumed, but for some odd reason, I still felt hungry.
(Papi Menon is a writer and technologist based in San Francisco)
