Poll: Would you ever play a "real" Sword Art Online?

[thejboy88]

Hypothetical situation here. The games given to us in the popular anime series, SAO, has become a reality. You can, in the comfort of your own home, plug yourself Matrix-style into this vast, online fantasy world, with thousands, if not millions of other players. Everything the game is capable of doing in the anime, from outright combat to more mundane tasks like cooking and smithing, is now open and possible for you. Every location, every small feature you've seen in the show, that's now all possible to be a part of yourself.

So, the question is this; do you play it?

And just so nobody asks this question first, no, you are not trapped in there, nor is it a life-or-death struggle for months on end, as depicted in the anime. In this hypothetical situation, it is a completely safe game.

 

[tippy2k2]

I see a whole lot of pros and zero cons here. Is there something in SAO that I am unaware of (I don't watch the anime; I heard it has a brilliant premise but falls apart later so I didn't want to invest the time in it) cause I thought the downfall of that anime was that if you died in that game you died in real life...

Because unless I'm missing something, you're asking if I would play a "real life" video game where I get to do all of the awesome stuff in video games "in real life" while still having none of the risks like breaking my legs after leaping off of a building...

 

[Spacewolf]

As long as it didn't have the weird prebaked combos SAO seemed to have I'd prefer to have full control and more realistic fighting if it was a Total Immersion game than a bunch of flashy moves that sound like they would be really disorientating.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

If you promise me that it is one-hundred-percent safe, and I have no chance of slipping into a coma like .Hack, or dying like Sword Art Online, or my brain just won't turn into mush or get hacked or anything like that, the okay. I would love to play a game like that.

I would certainly not be one of the first adopters though. Probably not even the second, third, or forth. Too worried about the tech flipping out and stuff.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Sorry, I prefer single player RPGs.

And graphics have yet to make my buying decision so far..

 

[BeerTent]

I see a whole lot of pros and zero cons here. Is there something in SAO that I am unaware of (I don't watch the anime; I heard it has a brilliant premise but falls apart later so I didn't want to invest the time in it) cause I thought the downfall of that anime was that if you died in that game you died in real life...

Because unless I'm missing something, you're asking if I would play a "real life" video game where I get to do all of the awesome stuff in video games "in real life" while still having none of the risks like breaking my legs after leaping off of a building...

It's a brilliant idea, but some of the half-baked shitty anime tropes we've come to learn and love have effectively ruined it. It's best to stop watching it at the end of the first "season" to avoid the absolute worst of it.

As for me? To stay on topic? I'd prefer something more Science Fictiony, but the technology alone would give me one hell of a hard-on. Actually, knowing human beings, I kind of suspect that part would be inevitably abused. People running around in underwear, or taking things to private inn's. As for the rest of it? The food? The Gameplay? I'd be addicted in no time. I'm a huge fan of the idea of "Jacking in" and transferring my consciousness to a computer. It was the main reason why I enjoyed Dystopia so much way back when before I understood anything about "Cyberpunk." (Full-time Decker, baby.)

 

[tippy2k2]

I see a whole lot of pros and zero cons here. Is there something in SAO that I am unaware of (I don't watch the anime; I heard it has a brilliant premise but falls apart later so I didn't want to invest the time in it) cause I thought the downfall of that anime was that if you died in that game you died in real life...

Because unless I'm missing something, you're asking if I would play a "real life" video game where I get to do all of the awesome stuff in video games "in real life" while still having none of the risks like breaking my legs after leaping off of a building...

the con would be having to disconnect and exist in the real world for increasingly long and boring periods of time. can you really say you would go back to your day job after being a fucking paladin and fighting demons for a week or two? I wouldn't.

Power and food bills dont pay themselves, and you would have to eat, shit, and exercise just like you would now. Or else you would end up an atrophied blob while you ran around in cyberspace. I'm sure there would be medical journals worth of psychological and physical aliments created by this system too, with the line between virtual and physical worlds blurring together as rampant dysphoria hits a large section of the population.

Even with a 100% safe game, it would literally be the worst thing ever for humanity.

That is, unless the anime had explanations for how they prevented these things (I wouldn't know, I haven't seen it)

I guess my question to that though is how is that different from what we have now? I suppose the risk would be higher as it would be more tempting to get sucked into a "real" game but I would much rather be at home slaying dragons with my Paladin in Dragon Age than go to work but I still manage to have a balance between work and play. I don't see how changing the way the game is played would make that big of a difference.

 

[Joccaren]

But there's a disconnect with today's games. Take Dragon Age for example. You aren't casting a fireball, you're pressing X to execute a specific animation and effect. You aren't chatting with friends, you're picking one of 4 limited speech options. You aren't exploring the mountains, you're looking at them through a screen.

Complete immersion would be much harder to pull yourself away from.

To be honest, some of us do just get that immersed. Shitting you not, the first time I played Dragon Age Origin's, I woke up the next morning seeing Dialogue options everywhere for everything I was doing until I realised something about that just wasn't right. Great immersive games are great immersive games. Honestly I get more immersed in a game version of a sport than I do a real life version most of the time. What matters is the quality of the experience, not how its presented.


OT: Hell, even if it had the death and trapped thing I probably would. Dying in game fighting a monster seems like a better way to go than being 90, lying in bed in a nursing home barely able to see hear or move, yet being kept alive because letting someone die is just wrong. Would depend on how my relationships IRL were going, but were they not keeping me in this world, I'd be more than happy to jump into that one.

 

[Fijiman]

Maybe. If I could do it while I was sleeping and the tech behind it would let me set alarms and such so I didn't oversleep or something, then hell yes. If not then I would not be too quick to say yes. I kind of like being able to drop the game at a moments notice when needed to react to things that are more important such as helping a family member out with something or some other such thing. The gear that they use to connect to SAO in the anime pretty much shuts you off from anything in the real world so it would be basically impossible to keep that sort of reactiveness while playing.

 

[Naraku578]

How expensive would the tech be to even get in this system? How strong of the internet would you need? Overall, I just think that completely extracting yourself from the real world would in itself be too dangerous.

This would be a good medical tool, however I just can't imagine a world where this is feasible.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Depends.

If this is the "Permedeath" Sword Art online, hell no.

If it's totally safe, I'd consider it, and probably wanna try it at least for a little while. Unless it's got one of those bullshit subscription based models. No thanks in that case.

 

[Tony2077]

I think I'll stick with ones where if stuff happens in the game it doesn't happen to my real self.

 

[Proto Taco]

If I'm forced to appear in the game as myself, no way in any world. If I could live in another skin though, then sure. Otherwise there'd be no reason to play. I may as well just cook, go outside and learn to smith/fight/leatherwork/etc. on my own. Screw playing my current life 1000 years ago in 4K, I wanna play a different life, hopefully a better one.

 

[Mister K]

No, because for me virtual reality is nothing more than bells and whistles.

If it WASN'T a VR game?.. Still no, because the setting seems to be a generic fantasy, and I don't really like it.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

If I had someone who could pull me away from it so I don't spend my whole life on the game, then sure.