Any person or business selling anything is only successful to the extent that they make the sale. Making the sale means offering something better than other possibilities for using the spent time and money. That is not a sacrifice. If you think it is a sacrifice, then stop subscribing. No one other than the subscriber should be making that decision.
True, but some people here may be subscribers, and can use this discussion to come to a more rational conclusion about their game playing. Not to diminish from you point, only adding/clarifying.
About the main post, I think gaming is all about offering virtual values! Well, aesthetic values. Some games are good in that they let you fulfill your sense of being heroic in a world without heroism. My opinion is that this is actually good in the context of modern society. In the long-run I want to live a heroic life in reality, but given the anti-heroic society we live in (superheroes with weaknesses, come on!), virtual experiences teach us what heroism might be, and so we can more easily pursue it in realty.
Some games offer bad values and aesthetics. Grand Theft Auto is fun because you rise out of the ‘dumps’ to enter the ‘big-time dumps’, and has that sense of heroism, but all in the context of destroying values and committing crime in a universe constructed as an intentional vacuum of values. To explain, most of the characters/authority figures/regular citizens of grand theft auto are pretty miserable and corrupt, it’s a malevolent universe view of modern society. So, GTA is a bad virtual world.
WoW isn’t the only thing - remember Evercrack (Everquest)? I don’t thing WoW is a positive value overall because it uses negative reinforcement. Each new level is harder and harder to reach, but requires the same, simple, repetitive approach to gain. In the end, you’re just at the highest level. A proper virtual world worth valuing is one that offers a heroic conclusion, and a contextually significant plot.
Brutal Legend is a recent one. Though your value is ‘rock’, the implicit values are freedom, individualism, and the pursuit/discovery of values themselves against those who oppose that freedom. Each enemy becomes more and more explicity ‘evil’, until in the end you win by the same virtue you’ve possessed heroically the entire time: the power of rock. Not a perfect game, but pretty good.
Assassin’s Creed is also okay. You seek revenge, which isn’t good, but you also seek justice, and the truth and against its opponents. You also fight freedom boldy, as a super-individual that transcends whole squads of armored enemies. You also grow, and adapt into that role. It’s sort of anti-climatic, but decent.
Halo is good, if drawn out… Modern Warfare 2 is not, its value is as a mental diversion (tactics)… haven’t played much else. They might not be MMO’s but I’m responding to the idea of games as virtual/aesthetic values.
I should also say that while the virtual values can replace real life values, they shouldn’t if values can be obtained in real life with the time spent playing games. I suppose one redeeming aspect of MMO’s is they allow user-created goals. Say, in EVE Online, you can set out to do something, and then achieve that one thing. This can provide a ‘shot’ of the feeling of accomplishment, if life isn’t offering that, but you need it to keep pressing on.
But you need to be rational about it.
