When real life becomes a game
Someone in Beijing decides to try reaching a blogger under house-arrest:
Luckily, just prior to this I had finished reading The Gulag Archipelago, so I was mentally prepared for the conditions inside an institution. However, this was still not enough, so I did a crash course in learning some criminal procedure law and investigation and interrogation methodology. Aside from that, my head was full of the first-person shooters in Delta Force and Counter-Strike—so I was thinking of what was needed for a military operation.
I don’t know about the “real life becoming a game” notion. This sort of thinking and activity certainly was/is common in police states. Nazi Germany, the Marcos regime in the Phillipines, probably North Korea, obviously China, etc. Heck, every roadway driver (especially those who speed) thinks about their driving as some sort of secret mission.
The entire Soviet Union was a virtual world: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
It’s too bad that article gives away some of the ideas people had to beat house arrest.
Hey, Raph. i mentioned you in conjunction with this very topic in a recent interview on TVOntario.
Check it out:
http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2008/03/05/ryan-creighton-on-the-agenda-with-steve-paikin/