The RPG Enigma

Does art imitate life, or vice-versa?

Audio of this column:

Most people are familiar with Role-playing Video Games. Such games have been around for years. Games such as Warcraft, Zelda, Final Fantasy and Elder Scrolls have been dominating video gamers’ free-time for decades.

Anyone who has played a game such as these are also familiar with the concept of choice-points - how one’s choices within the game determines which immediate and future probabilities or events then become available or eliminated.

Such Open-World Games truly allow each player to carve out their own unique story and experience of the game, no two alike.

Older RPG’s had a semi-open world where there were some parameters that were limiting. But newer RPGs are almost limitless in their scope, in which the players can go just about anywhere and do anything. I would imagine that with AI engines, these games can literally write themselves.

What if that experience was being mimicked in real life?

Video games mimicking real life mimicking video games.

One thing that video games can do well and easily is to create a unique game-based reality for each player based on their choices that can be significantly different from any other player’s game-based reality.

To say that there is an official single-line game reality just simply is not the case. Each player’s game-based experience can be wildly different, to the extent that they would be considered completely different realities.

One such popular game right now is Red Dead Redemption, an RPG open-world game set in the Wild West. YouTube is awash in videos in which the player comes upon one of the specific areas that is familiar to most players, usually with various NPC’s (non-character-players), but then shows the results of various choices that the player can make in relation to the area and the NPC’s in the game, some of which can result in some pretty crazy circumstances for the player. By the player choosing somewhat unconventional actions in terms of the game, the results can definitely be surprising and amusing. A player may die, may be rewarded, may find a programmer Easter Egg. The results of choices made can vary immensely.

What if that is the case for real life? What if your experiences were completely dependent on your choices in each situation? Depending upon your choices, various themes, events, environments, and outcomes become probable or improbable, even possible or impossible?

Okay, well that seems to be the case now in life if we think about it. One’s choices dictate one’s outcomes. That makes sense.

But what if we were side by side with other players, and our choices could change, not only what happens to us, but would literally change the game parameters, the environment and the game itself for each version of the game as opposed to the other players? Changed to the extent that our version of the game differed almost wholly when compared to someone else’s?

Changed to the extent that both players could be looking at the same thing at the same time, and yet are seeing something completely different than the other.

Or even changed the game to the extent that the players no longer even see each other, even though they are each standing in the same physical location?

The implications of this would be STAGGERING!

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Now let’s apply this gaming idea to the “Drone” situation.

Drones appear in the game. Every player either sees or is otherwise aware of the appearance of the drones. The story of the drones is undecided at this point.

Players may look to authority figures for an explanation regarding the event. But no authority figure is offering any good information to any of the players.

Each player explores the drone event, speaks with other players, gathers whatever information they can about the drones, and begins to formulate an explanation and plan of action - a conclusion with regard to the appearance of the drones.

The majority of players will look to the game authorities to tell them what the drones are and how to regard them. Until such direction occurs, they basically have no idea what to do. This is how most people are, and the category most people would fall into. It is how they have been trained. They allow others to influence their perception of reality, therefore allowing someone else to decide for them.

In the absence of such an authority, or when that authority can offer no immediate answers, people are entertaining a vast array of possibilities. Dozens of stories and probable answers are created, including the one where no-one knows, and the government isn’t saying.

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What if they were all true, simply dependent on the beliefs and choices of each participant or player? What if our perception and choices actually threw us into a particular version of the game, of reality, that can be completely different than the reality of players who are choosing a different perception of the event? What if our perception of what the drones are entered us into an actual world that differed from people with a different perception of the answer to that question?

And what if the game-board actually changes depending on how each individual chooses to perceive the event in question? And even though we are all seemingly having the same events and experience, the game parameters have changed to the extent that there is not one version of the game, but as many versions of the game as there are players, each one of them different? Some more different, and some less, but all unique? Yet we are having the experience of the game side by side, even though we may not be able to see each other.

What if that were the case?

It is the case. Almost everything I have said above in relation to an RPG applies to real life and our reality. This is how we create our reality. Together, but separately.

Are we then in a video game, or is this a simulation?

Uhhh, no.

BUT the RPG is mimicking what really happens in physical reality based on our perception and choices. This is how it works. And this is how we can hold vastly different realities than the other people who are also in our reality.

In fact, we actually are creating our own version of these other people in our reality. Their actual reality from their perspective may well be considerably, if not wholly different from their reality that we create for them in our perception of our own created reality.

Here are some axioms to keep in mind. None of this is proven by scientific method, yet. Though, quantum physics is well on its way there.

• We create all of our reality through our perception.

• Reality is a camouflage tuned to our particular physical senses.

• There is no single-line version of history and reality.

• Time exists as a Construct. Past, present and future all occur NOW.

• We share physical space with other beings that we cannot see and are not aware of.

• Probabilities are created in the moment.

• Our realities can differ considerably from others.

We are this powerful. We just don’t realize it yet.

There is a great reason to choose how we perceive things. How we choose to perceive is the building block of our reality. And the choices are all ours to make.

Think about it. Then cast your attention back out into your world. See how our beliefs and our perception actually creates what we then experience - creates our reality.

You may even catch yourself creating a different reality than the people around you - your loved ones. This is a great opportunity to show this to yourself as we gather for the holidays.

We are becoming increasingly varied from each other. We just think we’re all relatively the same, and our realities generally match. We think there is only one truth. Not so.

This is not a bad thing. It just means we get to choose what our reality is, and it doesn’t have to match anyone else’s.

We are not victims to others. We are CREATORS.

“And if a bird can speak
who once was a dinosaur
and a dog can dream
should it be implausible?
that a man might supervise
the construKction of light?”