#it's an example of a video game being a computer program that requires a finite amount of energy to run

[jheselbraum]

I'd love to read like, an academic article on the racism in Zelda games but I swear some of these read like the author has never played a video game before

[raisingsupergirl]

Wasting Time

We all use our time differently. We assign certain values to everything in the known universe, and we allocate our attention accordingly. Work, war, school, sleep, play, research, romance, housework—life's pursuits all mean something different to each of us based on our personalities and circumstances. And, obviously, as we get older, those circumstances change. As young and middle-aged adults, we start becoming more practical (i.e. boring), and we tend to see anything that's not obviously productive as a waste of time. This shift comes primarily from increased responsibility, but oftentimes our sense of urgency is tied to awareness of our mortality. As kids, we feel invincible. We'll live forever. But it doesn't take long to lose a loved one or two, and then we start realizing that our days are numbered, so we'd better use them wisely. And then, in a fantastic twist of irony, as our final years wind down and death becomes an imminent reality, we become kids again, and we realize that wasting time is exactly the thing we should have been doing all along. Are you lost yet? Completely confused and angry that I would even suggest such a thing? Good. Because it gets better.

Last night, I downloaded Starcraft, a computer game from the 90s. Back in the day, I spent hundreds of hours mashing buttons and flinging commands at little soldiers, combatting evil aliens as if the galaxy were actually on the brink of destruction. Not for a second did I care that I was simply running through a pre-programmed simulation, just a bunch of ones and zeroes strung together to form some semblance of reality. No, for me, this futile act was pure enjoyment and mind-expanding revelation. I learned creativity, improvisation, leadership skills, and critical thinking, amongst other things. It didn't matter that the end result of the game was a pre-determined command execution that had no bearing on the real world. I grew as a person on the inside while looking like a mindless automaton on the outside.

I've spoken before about the value that video games brought to my childhood, so I'll not go into that again, but my point is this: as I got older, I just couldn't stomach the idea of "wasting'" hours crawling through some digital dungeon just to level up some ultimately meaningless character and storyline. And, to be honest, I still feel that way. I wish I didn't, but I've got books to write. I have a company to run. I have patients to treat. And I have a family to provide for and protect. In short, my time is too valuable to waste.

And for now, maybe that's okay. Maybe I have a few years or decades to give back to the greater good. Maybe I can sacrifice some of my time to ensure my girls' future. But already I'm starting to feel the weight of mortality, and the idea of wasting time is sounding better and better.

Are you starting to track with me yet? Are you starting to see how "wasting time" isn't contradictory to making the most out of a finite life? Good. I knew you would get there. I knew you'd remember all those self-help mantras about work-life balance and appreciating the little things. But there's a reason why I keep using the term "wasting time" instead of sugarcoating it with "mindfulness" or ""recharging." You see, as humans, we require raw materials to survive. Resources: food, water, oxygen, and yes, time. We need time to sleep so our bodies can recover. We need time to gather those other resources. And we need time to consider how we should order everything else. In short, we're constantly consuming time, without exception. And so, if we're constantly utilizing our time to do something productive, that time becomes like carrots and purified water. It becomes "health" time. And man cannot live on carrots alone.

Okay, sorry. You're lost again. But what I mean is this: in the same way that rewarding ourselves with a donut or a beer makes it easier to get through a hard exercise routine or a long day of work, rewarding ourselves with "junk time" makes life's relentless productivity more bearable, and dare I say a little enjoyable.

For example, right now, I'm literally sitting poolside at the waterpark, probably for the last time this year. My laptop is about to either melt from the sun or short-circuit from a random tidal wave. I'm drenched in sweat, and my family is splashing away in the shallow end. And I'm having a blast. Why? Because when I get done with this little post, I'm going to tuck my computer away someplace safe, and then I'm going to go waste some time in the water with my family. And tonight I'm going to waste more time by saving the simulated galaxy on a game developed almost twenty years ago. And during all that wasted time, I'm going to reminisce over all my good childhood memories, and I'm going to make more memories with my own children. I'm going to consider reality in new ways. I'm going to laugh. My heart is going to race. And at the end of it all, I'll have absolutely nothing productive to show for it. And that's okay. Why? Because productivity fades away. It all does. Famous authors will be remembered for a few decades. Maybe they'll even change the course of history for a while. In the same way, physical therapists improve the health and happiness of the human race. But ultimately, we'll all pass away, and the only thing remaining will be a glimmer of the collective time wasted by humanity. And it'll be beautiful.

So find someone and talk with about the weather. Share a laugh and a cry. Don't worry about being productive. We can't help but work too much. That's a part of our nature and culture. Instead, strive to be wasteful. And may the joyful sound that it brings echo to the edges of eternity and back. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some swimming to do.

[sam-gibbs]

Simulation

Now we are starting to move onto the simulation starting point. Unlike the other starting points I wasn't able to go ahead and find anything related to board games at all. This mind map mainly consists of films, games and even a documentary.

Surgeon Simulator:

In 2013 surgeon simulator hit the market and was loved by thousands of games. Praised for its new style of controls. The game was initially created as part of the Global Game Jam where teams had 48 ours to go ahead and make a game. The games controls are inspired by the controls inside the game Jurassic park: Trespasser. They decided to use these controls as teams inside the game jam got bonus points if there game used 10 buttons on a keyboard.  Initially the team wished to have a key assigned to each button however found this to be too impractical so they instead limited the controls to one hand with the other hand being controlled by the mouse.

Inside surgeon simulator the players has multiple levels to complete where they have to do an organ transplant of different organs. They win the game if they successfully transplant the organ, they lose the game however if they accidentally kill the patient. 

All informations taken from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgeon_Simulator#:~:text=The%20team%20took%20inspiration%20from,ten%20buttons%20on%20the%20keyboard.

Surgeon simulator can not only be experience on mouse and keyboard but also in VR. In Vr the player get to experience the game more like an actual simulation and are able to use both hands in order to perform there procedures.

Using Simulations for training:

Now of course with the advancements of Virtual Reality using Vr headsets in order to allow people to do more realistic simulations for training has become a lot more easier to access and advanced. For example the healthcare industry is one of the first industries to start using VR simulations in order to help train their medical student.

Vr surgery:

Vr surgery is a 3d model of a patient through the use of Vr technology. This allows medical students to do virtual procedures in order to learn new skills as well as gain more knowledge without putting real patients at risk.

All information taken from:

https://jasoren.com/using-virtual-reality-for-surgical-simulation-trainings/

The Osso Vr is really making the healthcare industry better for training student. Some procedures where students can only do written coursework on and cant have any practice until they go for there real life surgery test means that students have felt very stressful in the situation as well as put patients at risk due to them not having enough practical experience. The Vr allows the students to be able to practice as many times as they want/ need to.Osso also has a built in analytic system which evaluates the students on their work.

Immersive touch:

Unfortunately one of the drawbacks of the Vr surgery sim was that it wasn't able to give feedback in real time. Students can only understand how successful there virtual procedure has gone until after they complete the virtual operation. This is where immersivetouch came in and took it further. The immersivetouch simulators provided students with a special pod where they would perform the virtual procedures. The surgeons would interact with ned special haptic instruments which would allows them to receive feedback in real time. 

Surgical theatre:

With Brain surgery being one of the most difficult operations in medicine where if you are incorrect in the slightest can cause a lot of damage to a patient. Such procedures do requires countless hours of practice. However with cadavers being too rare to use surgical theatre was created. Surgical theatre is a vr solution aimed to help young brain surgeons get more practice and development more knowledge and skills in brain surgery.

Vr Tumor Grand Challenge project:

In 2018 I along with my friends were lucky enough to go on a trip to the CRUK Cambridge institute where we were able to sit a lecture which showed off the new Vr tumor grand challenge.Here is a little video as to what we were able to see.

The vr software allows students to go and examine tumours more up close in order to try and get a better understanding of them.Initially the project was highly focused around breast cancer however they have stated that in the future they can go ahead and developed it to look at different types of tumours as well.

The Sims:

The sims is one of the most popular birds eye view life simulator games.The creator of the game Will Wright came up with the idea for the sims when his house unfortunately burned down. Soon he became fixed with humanity's affinity towards material things and whether happiness can actually be bought.

The game first started off as just a simple architecture simulator where players could build their own houses. However the team then decided that it is of course hard to evaluate the home you have created until you go and put people inside the home. This is where they added in the sims characters in order to help validate whether you had successfully made a good building. However things soon latched on to the fact that you can now look after the sims. That was the moment when the sims changed from just a simple architecture simulator to a simulator about domestic life.

All information taken from :

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/02/04/how-sims-navigated-20-years-change-become-one-most-successful-franchises-ever/

The sims characters:

Now of course in the sims the actual characters aren't very smart. They know basic things such as what fire is and how to talk to people. However it is very rare when they are actually able to go off and go and do things independently. A lot of the time you have to guide them as to what they should be doing for instance looking for a job, washing up dirty dishes and when to even go to the toilet. I know this is all programmed for the purpose of the game but this really makes me think about how do the sims know they are part of a simulation. For example is the voice in there head that goes and tells them to do something actually us telling them what to do. Another point to contribute to this is how the sims talk. The sims talk in a language called simlish which according to the creator was added due to the fact that if the characters talked in english it would become very repetitive with there phrases. However form a fourth wall point of view I think this is to do with the fact that they are all part of a simulation and have not been programmed properly to speak human languages. It also means that when it comes to programming the languages they don't have to program multiple different languages. This is why I personally think that the sims is a simulation inside of a simulation.

The Glitch in the Matrix:

The Matrix is a popular film which contains the thought of people going inside simulations of another world. However 20 years after the Matrix a new documentary called “ A glitch in the Matrix” was created which talks about if real life is actually a simulation. In the documentary he discusses a lot about simulation theory. So the real question is what is simulation theory. Well here is a video I have found which explains what it is:

In the video they discuss the idea about how reality could just be an illusion and how out of all of the theories put forward the simulation theory might just be the most convincing. The hypothesis states that our reality is merely just a simulation just like how it is in The Matrix. This hypothesis was first formulated in 2003 by Nick Bostrom in a paper called “Are we living inside a computer simulation”. Since then the idea has gained traction with a wider audience. It then talks about how matter is finite and can be broken down into discrete units with subatomic particles which are analogous to pixels in a video game. It might even be possible to soon program minds. In 2015 a team of researchers managed to successfully recreate part of a rat brain with digital code. If we are able to digitally add code to parts of the brain then what is to say that our brain itself isn't just code which has been uploaded. There is some physical evidence to support this hypothesis. Our DNA is extremely similar to computer code. In 2017 researchers managed to embed actual computer code inside of a strand of physical DNA which highlighted just how similar they are.

For some people the simulation theory is also used to explain supernatural activity which they explain as glitches inside of the simulation. Ghosts for example are people who accidentally became invisible . When it comes to aliens it is theorised that they do actually exist however were smart enough to break out of the simulation before we were actually able to go ahead and discover them. This brings along the question of can we infact one day escape the simulation like they did.

One popular question is why would anyone create a simulation of us. One hypothesis is that our future descendants have created us in a simulation in order to see how we evolved.and to potentially create the past by programming the same boundaries of reality. Another hypothesis is that we were created to solve problems in which our programmers don't have enough time to figure out. 

Job simulator:

Job simulator is a VR game where in the year 2050 all the robots have taken over human jobs. In the game the player is able to experience 4 jobs which consist of gourmet chef, office worker, convenience store clerk and a mechanic.However when looking into the story of the game I managed to find an interesting article about someone's theory of the story of the game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GameTheorists/comments/bi4giw/the_story_of_job_simulator/

In the article it talks about how the author believes that you as the human have made a deal with the robots during some sort of conflict between robots and humans to survive. His explanation of this start off with the fact that human nature would have humans find any way possible to survive which is why the human has negotiated with the robots. It is then believed that in this world robots have indeed taken over and think they are better than humans. During one missing when you have to clean up a mess a robot says:

“Whoa there! I haven't seen a mess this big since the human uprising of 2027″

This of course give us the impression that humans have been beaten by the robots and that the humans did in fact try to rebel against them but of course they didn't succeed.

Later on in the game you also have a line where the job bot says “ If you do a good job, you might even be able to keep your [slight pause] employment”

The author talks about how it sounds like the robots was going to say something else instead of employment such as “ you might even be able to keep your life”. Which make you think that the human is indeed a prisoner to the robots and that he is there against his will.