*** Please note that the events in this story are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. ***
Poor Johnny is bored.
Can you tell me why Johnny is bored?
Here are the facts, you be the detective.
Johnny wants to be an Olympic athelete. He's good at sports, but not that good, and he never seems to be able to stick at anything long enough to become that good. One thing he is good at though is video games. "Hmmmm..."
His strange old uncle bought him a game for Christmas, and well, he never really tried it, because it came from his strange old uncle, but who knows? He's bored, and he doesn't want to think too hard, and there it is, sitting right in front of him.
"Ultima Online - Stygian Abyss"
It looks like it's a make believe world, but he doesn't really want to play make believe. He heard somewhere that most of the people playing games like this one are strange old men like his uncle, maybe he could have some fun pwn'ing old "fatties" like his uncle? His uncle isn't really fat, but he heard that most of the people that play games like this weigh at least 300 pounds and aren't any taller than 5'8". Maybe he could pwn them all so hard they would all start crying and quit...
So Johnny opens up an account, and pays for it with his mother's credit card, his mother doesn't say "no" to him very often, and he takes his first few steps into this new world.
Oddly enough, he makes some friends, and his new buddies seem to be an awful lot like him. They invite him into their "vent" server give him his first pile of gold and some "arties" and start teaching him how to play the game. I won't bore you with all the details of his first few weeks in Sosaria, so let's skip them.
It's three months later. Johnny is "pwn'ing noobs" just like he hoped he'd be. He's spent the last three months doing everything his new friends told him to do. He trained up all his "leet skillz", he even found some cool programs and "scripts - shhh!" that will do all the boring stuff for him. He's got mounds of gold, all the phattest lewt in the game and he wins most of his fights.
When he wants to learn something new, he finds a cool script, downloads it, and it does the hard work for him while he's at school, or sleeping. And he started doing a whole lot better in "peeveepee" when he found those scripts that would drink his "pots" for him when he reached half health, or got poisoned.
Johnny didn't really have to work hard for anything in the game, and he's pretty convinced the game is easy. In fact Johnny didn't really have to work for much of anything in the game, and he's one of the best in the game. After a couple of weeks in the game he bought a veteran account, so he didn't even have to play for a few years before he got all the benefits of being a long term subscriber to the game.
His buddies taught him all kinds of tricks, and some of them are just hilarious. He can just imagine the looks on the faces of all those fat thirty year olds playing in their mother's basements. And he really feels like he belongs. In fact, he looks exactly the same as all his "friends". In fact he and all his guild mates are so good at this easy game that he almost feels like an Olympic athlete... almost...
But there's a problem.
Poor Johnny is still bored.
Can you tell me why?
Poor Johnny is bored.
Can you tell me why Johnny is bored?
Here are the facts, you be the detective.
Johnny wants to be an Olympic athelete. He's good at sports, but not that good, and he never seems to be able to stick at anything long enough to become that good. One thing he is good at though is video games. "Hmmmm..."
His strange old uncle bought him a game for Christmas, and well, he never really tried it, because it came from his strange old uncle, but who knows? He's bored, and he doesn't want to think too hard, and there it is, sitting right in front of him.
"Ultima Online - Stygian Abyss"
It looks like it's a make believe world, but he doesn't really want to play make believe. He heard somewhere that most of the people playing games like this one are strange old men like his uncle, maybe he could have some fun pwn'ing old "fatties" like his uncle? His uncle isn't really fat, but he heard that most of the people that play games like this weigh at least 300 pounds and aren't any taller than 5'8". Maybe he could pwn them all so hard they would all start crying and quit...
So Johnny opens up an account, and pays for it with his mother's credit card, his mother doesn't say "no" to him very often, and he takes his first few steps into this new world.
Oddly enough, he makes some friends, and his new buddies seem to be an awful lot like him. They invite him into their "vent" server give him his first pile of gold and some "arties" and start teaching him how to play the game. I won't bore you with all the details of his first few weeks in Sosaria, so let's skip them.
It's three months later. Johnny is "pwn'ing noobs" just like he hoped he'd be. He's spent the last three months doing everything his new friends told him to do. He trained up all his "leet skillz", he even found some cool programs and "scripts - shhh!" that will do all the boring stuff for him. He's got mounds of gold, all the phattest lewt in the game and he wins most of his fights.
When he wants to learn something new, he finds a cool script, downloads it, and it does the hard work for him while he's at school, or sleeping. And he started doing a whole lot better in "peeveepee" when he found those scripts that would drink his "pots" for him when he reached half health, or got poisoned.
Johnny didn't really have to work hard for anything in the game, and he's pretty convinced the game is easy. In fact Johnny didn't really have to work for much of anything in the game, and he's one of the best in the game. After a couple of weeks in the game he bought a veteran account, so he didn't even have to play for a few years before he got all the benefits of being a long term subscriber to the game.
His buddies taught him all kinds of tricks, and some of them are just hilarious. He can just imagine the looks on the faces of all those fat thirty year olds playing in their mother's basements. And he really feels like he belongs. In fact, he looks exactly the same as all his "friends". In fact he and all his guild mates are so good at this easy game that he almost feels like an Olympic athlete... almost...
But there's a problem.
Poor Johnny is still bored.
Can you tell me why?
