So, regular readers will of course know that I've suddenly gotten all interested again in the subject of online games, and specifically of the idea of getting a job as a puppetmaster at one of these games. Blame it on Sean Stewart, I suppose, the mid-level science-fiction author who turned out to be the puppetmaster behind the 2001 "Evan Chan" online game I was so fascinated with; I ended up corresponding with him over the holidays about it all, and learned that he got involved with gaming the same way I'm hoping to get involved as well (that is, accidentally sucked in through the world of the arts first), which has inspired me to believe that maybe I'll be able to do such a thing in 2006 as well.

Plus, I admit, a big part of why I'm thinking about it all again is necessity as well; that is, the growing realization of just how much money I need to put together this year on my own, just to get potential investors for my arts center willing to even listen to me in the first place. See, for those who don't know, I'm currently seeking a grand total of $100,000 in order to open this arts center in the way I'm envisioning; and I'm currently doing this without much of a credit history to speak of, and no assets that could be put up as collateral. And the more business experts I speak with about all this, the clearer it's becoming that I'm simply going to have to raise some of this myself, long before speaking with any potential investors, just to prove that I'm serious and will do the work necessary to make this plan a reality; in fact, most people I've spoken with have said that I'll need to raise $20,000 of it myself before a potential investor will even agree to a meeting with me. And so that means, among other things, that I need to go out and get a pretty good-paying corporate salaried job again, no matter how little I want to, or how loathe I am to the idea, in order to even have a chance of putting together, say, $10,000 of my own money for this center; and of course I've got to figure out how to raise that other $10,000 in a way that's outside of traditional investment resources as well, which is a whole topic I haven't even begun to tackle yet.

Sigh, so anyway, it's looking pretty clear that I'm going to have to get another high-paying salaried job again this year, which means all the research and cover letters and follow-up letters and rounds of interviews and all the other endless list of bullshit that comes with such a job. So if I'm going to have to invest that kind of time and energy into the process anyway, why not at least pursue a job I might actually like, as a writer or other puppetmaster type at an online game? And specifically, one of those really complicated online games, where people inhabit virtual personalities, take on roles, interact with their fellow players and the like? And what we're talking about here, of course, is the unwieldy "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game," or MMORPG; but I just can't stand using that acronym, like listening to a line from "The Simpsons" or something, so instead today I'm going to refer to it by the newer term of "Alternative Reality Gaming," or ARG. (This term, by the way, also refers to such viral/underground games like that aforementioned Evan Chan one as well.)

So, that all said, I guess the first thing I should confess is that I don't have much of an interest in joining a genre-based action-style game; you know, one of those "Lord of the Rings" ripoffs where everyone's running around calling themselves Elves, and hacking at each other with virtual swords and whatever. I'm more interested, frankly, in the games that double as virtual realities, the "Second Life"s and "Sims"s of the world, where the main reason to join is the same main reason to socially interact in the real world - for companionship, conversation, flirtation, professional networking and the like. And one of the reasons I'm so fascinated with these types of games is because they seem to be the manifestation of the "virtual reality" concept defined by Gibson and other cyberpunk authors in the '80s and '90s; of the internet being traveled through a graphical interface instead of keyboards and browsers, a really sophisticated graphical interface, where you are a freestanding 'person' like in the physical world, and other websites are 'buildings' that you can 'travel' to in order to visit.

Take this tidbit, for example, which is but one of the many things that makes me intensely curious about the game Second Life; that within the virtual reality of that game, MAKE magazine apparently has its own "physical" space that they pay for with real money, where the staff can host virtual social events for other SL members to attend. Brilliant! What you're really doing, of course, is taking all the best elements of online social interaction (the flattening of physical distances while still retaining the real-time nature of it all), and then combining it with the best elements of physical social interaction (the sense of "traveling" somewhere special, of "arriving," of being in the same "location" as all these other like-minded people). You don't become a member of the game for the sake of the "game" itself; you join in order to simply have access to that environment, and all the benefits that access can bring you, much like becoming a member of a museum so you can attend their hoity-toity preshow events. And in this respect, you can see an ARG in the same light as something like the Well, the notorious online community from the '80s where many of the tech industry's current leaders got their start; that it's not just a fun piece of tech but a social experiment as well, an attempt at building a legitimate community of like-minded thinkers, run by a combination of new technology and old etiquette.

In fact, how cool would it be to start up a new ARG under the auspices of creating a new Well? A place exclusively for all those Boing Boing readers of the world, and Kottke fans, people who attend cutting-edge tech conferences and write O'Reilly tech guides on the side. I've been thinking a lot about this recently, to tell you the truth, ever since that new company Multiverse opened its doors earlier this year. See, what that company has done is create its own ARG software that anyone can download and use for free; you create your own virtual reality with it all, Multiverse hosts it, and you and the company split the membership fees of the people who join. (The benefit as a player, then, is that since all the Multiverse worlds are running off the same platform, in theory you'll be able to build up one character and hop with it from game to game.)

Well, jeez, talk about the online equivalent of putting together a punk band; just run around to some of these sites where gamers hang out, and put up the virtual equivalent of a flyer at a coffeehouse, that you're looking to put together four or five programmers and other tech people to start a new ARG. And hell, if you could work it out with Multiverse, you wouldn't even need to charge money to the players at all - you could make membership free, in fact, to encourage more people to play, and simply charge money instead to the groups wanting their own virtual meeting space within your universe.

I'll admit, I still have a whole lot more to learn about all this; one of the things I need to do, for example, is actually play a game like "Second Life" for a bit, which I've never gotten to do because I have neither home internet access nor a credit card. But it's not a totally ridiculous situation by a long shot - I am a veteran of roleplaying games, after all, just in paper form in my particular life instead of virtual, and I am a veteran of nonlinear storytelling as well, and have a history of cross-tech project management too. And in this fabled "Web 2.0" age that we're living through, apparently we wouldn't even need to make a profit with such a self-started ARG; our job would simply be to make it as cool as possible, and get half a million people to become regular customers, so that Microsoft will notice us and buy us out and we all become rich, rich, rich! Cigars and brandy for all my friends, boys! Oh no, wait, those were the Dot Com years when everyone flaunted their virtual VC wealth; in the Web 2.0, apparently, tech millionaires still drive Saturns and accept $1 salaries and hold company picnics in city parks. Red Kool-Aid and potato salad for all my friends, boys!

And now, ladies and gentlemen...

One of the things I decided to buy with my Christmas money this year was a new cock ring - that is, a strap of leather with snaps, which is wrapped and then closed tightly around the base of a man's cock and testicles, so as to slightly cut off the flow of blood to the area during sex, leading to more intense erections and hence orgasms. (There are other types of cock rings as well, by the way, like actual metal rings that one slips on while one is still flaccid, etc.) And let's face it - it's embarrassing to go shopping for something like this, even for some shameless confessional writer like me, to simply walk up to some stranger and say, "I'm looking for a strap of leather that I can wrap tightly around my dick, in order to heighten my orgasm during sex? Do you have something like that?" And I was just thinking about this while out shopping the other day, in fact, and how much more unpleasant a situation it would be, if the only places to buy sex products in Chicago were the usual sketchy, dingy, dirty-feeling adult stores that are usually the only option in most other cities.

So, you know, thank God for places in Chicago like the Pleasure Chest at Broadway and Belmont, which is where I did end up buying my new cock ring. Thank God there are places in this city for buying sex products that are actually clean, well-lit, with a friendly, inviting atmosphere, where the employees are trained not to give you the slightest bit of shit or even subconscious leer no matter how freaky your question might be, where it's not only perfectly okay to ask about cock rings but will also get an absurdly detailed answer back, and learn that there are in fact something like 30 different types of cock rings currently for sale on the market (of course). And in my case, with these employees actually being hot punk-rock girls on top of everything else, with these smoking little pale bodies and I'm sure just an entire closet full of kinky little fetishes themselves.

I know that it's easy to make fun of urban sex shops, and that people do so all the time - of the pretentiousness found at so many of them, the lack of humor among so many of the employees. But I'll tell you this, that such snooty stores are just such a more pleasant experience than the usual scummy surroundings and molester raincoat types found at most other types of sex shops, and that I appreciate them being around enough that I felt compelled to make a little mention of it today. And besides, as Carol Queen (one of the founders of Good Vibrations) reminded me when I met her in 2001, it's so easy to forget what a relatively new development such stores are - that it wasn't until the '70s that sex could even be talked about in public in such a way, and not until the '80s that such stores started appearing for the very first time. We shouldn't take such stores for granted, I think, especially in the times we live in, where Fundamentalist Christians just keep gaining more and more power and keep spearheading projects that sound more and more ridiculous. I say let's all appreciate such stores existing in the first place, before the time comes that they're all driven out of business again.