Life as a Computer Game

This is my little thought experiment I have going on in my head at the moment. There’s lots of theories out there that life is a simulation, and in this context I think my contribution to the discussion may be useful.

In this game, I am Level 54. I have arrived here with many treasures, most important of which is the ability to create coins. Only about 90’000 coins every 12 months, but certainly better than many other players in this game.

First up, I need to pay 32’000 coins every 12  months to the game maker or I will be ejected from the game. The game maker goes by the handle “Tax Man”. This leaves me with 58,000 coins.

Having secured my access to the game, the next step is to pay the owner of the land I occupy (another player of the game, called “Landlord”) 15’000 coins every year to ensure that I can remain on my homestead. This leaves me with 43,000 coins.

To occupy the homestead I also need to pay 5’400 coins every 12 months to the game player, “Utilities”, who makes sure my homestead has water, heating and electricity. These are important as water is essential, heating means my homestead won’t freeze causing a “Game Over” situation and electricity means I can keep playing the game. This leaves me with 37,600 coins.

Let’s recap…

I have 90’000 coins per 12 months. Less 32’000 to Tax Man leaves me with 58’000 coins.

I pay 15’000 coins to Landlord which leaves me with 43’000 coins.

Utilities demands 5’400 coins, which leaves me with 37,600 coins.

I also need to trade 10’400 coins for food. Even if I wanted to hunt and forage I can’t as the homesteads of those who have been playing this game longer than me have already locked off these areas. These are the players I need to trade my coins with. I now have 27’200 coins.

Whilst playing the game I have traded my various skills to enable me to generate my 90’000 coins. To enable me to exercise my skills I need to pay 3’600 coins to player “Public Transport” to access their services. This leaves me with 23,600 coins.

In the game a player can also create alliances with other players. The benefits of making these alliances is that the other players can bring their coins, and their ability to generate these coins, with them. The gamble is that, having combined coins, they have equal access to your coins, even if they didn’t bring as much in with them, or make as many as you. The counter to this gamble is that they give you emotional energy points, which make it easier to generate coins. The higher the emotional quotient of the alliance, the more coins you both can create. This makes these alliances critical in the game.

The reason this is a gamble is that they can exit the alliance at any time. At the exit point,  if they have been generating less coins than you, you need to not only meet your own coin quota, but to meet their’s too. The assumption is that the emotional quotient you have gained through the alliance will off-set this. If you play it badly once, you’re probably ok. Twice…you’re probably game over.

The other benefit of alliances is that you can create new players. These players don’t contribute to your coins, in fact they generally cost coins, but they do increase your emotional quotient, which increases the amount of coins you can create. The challenge is that when an alliance is disbanded, the new players created in the game can chose which player they want to remain allied to. The player they remain allied to continues to benefit from the emotional quotient, increasing their ability to continue playing the game, whilst the other player receives a corresponding negative emotional quotient. For each added point to the allied player, a negative point is attributed to the exiled alliance player. This increases the degree of difficulty for the exiled alliance partner to generate coins.

Looping back then, I had 23,600 coins when last we checked. I was exiled from my second alliance, and the new players created allied with the other player. This means, in terms of the game rules, I need to not only meet my coin quota, but the quota of  the other player, and the allied players created by both players as well. The direct coin cost is 26,000. This leaves me with -2,400 coins.

Other players in the game, if they have played it differently, can ask the player “Debt” to cover this shortfall, for which Debt charges a %’age of coins loaned in return. The hope is that the player can increase their total annual coin generation to meet this. However when the player fails, this will remove this option from the game for the player. If the player, at this point, cannot meet their coin quota, it is game over.

This is where I am in the game right now. The game is offering me 2 options:

1. Declare “game over” and exit the game.

2. Keep playing.

To select Option 2 the player needs a good store of the emotional energy add-on, “Hope”, which requires no coins, but a high level of emotional quotient.

I don’t have any of these left.