Role Playing: Diablo

I've been in  the creature killing mode down in the caves of Hell,
learning to play Diablo. I have learned a lot about how to do business
by playing computer games. Transportation Tycoon was one of my
addictions, then came X-Com. I spent several months working through a
mass of anxiety in the process of killing off many ET creatures, and
finally ending on Mars killing off the Great Universal Mother. It did
wonders for my ability to control myself during critical barsehole
encounters on planet earth regarding the tribulations of the
preservation project. The techniques I learn to find emotional closure
in the computer game I find workable in the preservation project. I also
find myself wanting to *save* the reality so that I can come back to it
later.

I find interesting the potential for bleed over from role playing on a
computer game to role playing on the I-Way. If I shoot anyone, please
excuse me for I have slipped on the keyboard.

Along these lines, my son recently related his social experiments. Bored
with a game on AOL last year he started playing it with a revised set of
rules (like some recalcitrants do with PL). He would go online in the
game world and would meet another player and offer to sell them
something, like a shield or a bucket of blood. If they gave him their
money he would exit the game, leaving them destitute. Though we could
get into the ethics of game fraud (the best part of RISK), it presented
an important lesson; the lossers may grow to be less gullible, and the
perp learned a bit more about negotiation. Not every cyberwannageek fell
for his ploy -- he often had to work for the win/lose conclusion. His
satisfaction was in the balance of the tally between the gullible and
cautious. It is not much different a learning process than the games
invented in the sandpiles.

The online games are more sophisitcated now, and he is finding value in
cooperative role playing with the online version of Diablo. He slipped
with the mouse and with a battle axe killed off the character that had
been following him around. Now the character keeps a respectful distance
and he is trying to figure out how to make friends, without words,
through his actions on the screen.

][<en Follett