Some of the most interesting stuff happening around virtual worlds, in my opinion, is the growth of real economies based on virtual goods. For example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4104731.stm. Virtual items are being bought and sold, and Chinese sweatshops have even sprung up in which teenage kids earn virtual benefits to sell to rich North American gamers--such as better armor, better weapons, etc. I haven't yet got involved in MMPORGs myself, but I definitely see the appeal. Maybe with some better biofeedback and cybernetic devices, people could play for days without having a physical meltdown.

Like I indicated before on the betterhumans forum, I am playing S.L, am active in a longterm relationship, escort, make money as such, make clothes and eyes and make money on those too, have been involved in a severely highhanded conflict, have been banned from several places, have friends and complex relationships with people all over the world and - of recently - started into a business has the potential (even if remote) of earning me more than 10K$ per year.

Ofcourse this *** is as addictive as heroin. It will create HUGE societal disruption if screen resolution and game mechanic complexity increases. The virtual rewards are paradoxically a lot more tangible than the real world ones.

However my wife IRL has retalliated. She propose we start hanging at swinging clubs, as "I have been spending so much time in SL". I said, sure, I love to, but lemme do some fitness a few months first !  

Another great article on VE's can be found here:

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wowworld.html

I have a far out theory on this topic...take it as far as you like, I tell it with a bit of humor...

As technology improves our ability to interface with these worlds, the immersion will improve until we can literally be completely in a world of our choice, ala the matrix.

As medicine improves and we achieve immortality...one side effect may be mass bordom.  One way to entertain our minds will be to become fully immersed in these virtual worlds.

Passing eons with bouts of full immersion means 2 things...

1. You do not even know you are in a virtual world except between adventures (ie, between 'lives')
2. You would not chose to be the king or the rock star every outing...the flavor would come from variety.

If you accept that this is a plausable direction for our evolution, lets take it one step further...

Draw a timeline of the evolution of man until what I described above begins...then extend that line out to approach infinity after the state of immortality begins.  You will realize the segment in the beginning is insignificantly minute compared to the rest of the line.

Now throw a dart at the line to see where it randomly lands...what are the odds that the life you think you are living is in the beginning part versus the infinite part of the line?

That is very much like Bostrom's simulation argument.  I wrote a blog about that

http://betterhumans.com/blogs/aggressiveprogressive/archive/2005/12/28/3855.aspx

AggrProg, thanks for the link.  I didnt think I was proposing anything that was totally new...or likely to be true for that matter.

However, as someone who loves MMORPG's I can say for certain that if I were to design my own immortality utopia, fully immersive simulations would be a cornerstone of it.  The weak link in my mind is the idea that the simulations would be largely such mundane existances (at least the one I am experiencing at the moment...I have yet to see any dragons to slay).

Maybe I am just resting up between more exciting outings.  In the link you mentioned I think you asked what is the point of thinking this way since it changes little...for me it provides the same comfort a belief in reincarnation or an afterlife would provide a more religious person.  It is in fact very much similar to those ideas explained from a viewpoint of technology...except that it puts man in the role of god.

Considering how quickly videogames have developed over the past decade, we will have fully immersive virtual reality simulations in the near future.  This is very exciting to me.

Projecting this into the far future it's clear that the only limit is the power of our computers. Perhaps one day we'll build computers out of the nucleonic matter of neutron stars. The simulations those would run would be very hard for a participant to tell from the real thing.

The only way, that I can see, to tell simulations apart for reality is by how detailed they are. There is no way to really prove it yet, but our reality seems to be infinitely rich, you can dig and dig and never get to the bottom of it. Simulations might be arbitrarily rich, rich enough that there is no essential difference depending on what aspect you care about but, would they be infinitely rich?

The simulations that run on these nucleonic computers would be so rich as to easily fool many of the consciousnesses that inhabit them but, if these simulated people started to examine their reality scientifically, they'd finally get to the bottom of it and realize their reality is limited in some way that implies artificiality.

Perhaps the same is in store for us. Perhaps a few years from now physicists may discover something that implies we are living in an artificial reality.

The whole thing hinges on whether we can scientifically prove that reality is infinitely rich and not merely arbitrarily so.

Sorry for going so far of the subject. The difference between simulation and reality has always been very interesting to me

To get back on the subject at hand:

There is no denying that Internet gaming is now a significant economic activity. Never mind MORPGs or Chinese/Indian game boiler rooms, this has been true since the emergence of online gambling more than 7 years ago. No wonder some politicians are thinking about ways to regulate it.

You are probably correct that it would be hard to create a VR that is indistinguishable from reality when looked at closely.  You would have to create a whole system detailed down the atomic and subatomic levels.

When I said we are close to fully immersive VR, what I actually meant was we are close to photorealism.  Tricking other senses is not that far off as well... we can already perfectly recreate sounds.  We just need to do the same for touch, taste, and smell.

Stages of development:

(1) Artificial environments created for entertainment purposes, wherein "we" surround ourselves with whatever stimuli we can to compensate for whatever we (always have found) find unappealing or unsatisfactory about reality. These simulations will evolve to better sate our desires, challenge us, stimulate us. The simulations will grow to fill all available niches in our "sensorium".

(2) As we grow and memetically struggle to compensate trying to cope with virtual environments we will try and change ourselves. Initially these changes will be "natural", such as a person actively forces himself to play longer and longer hours, or dedicating himself to train on specific routines in order to achieve. This is ofcourse a paradox; VR environments will set us with challenges that will have to do effort for to overcome? why don't do the same in the real world where it benefits us more? The answer to that is a coming together of virtual reality, real life and our neurological needs, in a new medium combining  the three; probably an augmented reality type game/religion/medium/tool that makes us happier while still helping us achieve whatever we (arbitrarily) deem to beworthwhile goals.

(3) The third stage will be evolution where augmentation enters the brain and passes beyond the merely "natural". We will implant cybernetic decides (such as forced feedback hand implants or sound implants or retinal implants), we will take reflex/cognition boosting meditations (such as modafinil), we will do whatever it takes to excell, mean something, i.e. obey whatever remains of our biological programming. This eventually will result in collapsing the same. When games desintegrate our sense of individuality, our sexuality, our belief systems the basic fundaments of goal-oriented action cease to be. In other words, if we are many characters instead of one (each with their own integrity), of we are largely driven by sexuality that has not a single tie to biological reproduction, if we are no longer bound by nationality, primordial instinct or normality - then we become something else altogether - probably something I can't as of yet even start to define.

Summarizing in simple terms, using a VR game line such as WoW as a metaphor: I play, using two PC's over here at my house, two characters on the same WoW server, one an alliance, the other a horde character, i.e. from opposing sides. When WoW2 or 3 come around I am wearing force feedback gloves, a virtual reality helmet. WoW 3 is so advanced you can have interactions involving touch. I order a non-standard device from Xbay, become member of the adult-only version of WoW and have a complex sexual relationship with someone who plays a remarkably erotic half-insect half-dragon creature I expect to be a woman living in Singapore but is actually a very old man living in Gdansk, whereas he thinks I am a man living in Southafrica whereas actually I am a postoperative *** with functioning penis and vagina living in the Netherlands. Then I create a third character, who is part of a third fraction, all three fractions competing against each other. And because it pays me money, I run a AI subroutine to part-time run my first characters even though that hurts in-game virtual business because my other characters are their enemies - but I don't care because my identity no longer can seperate me from my characters.

By then me and my virtual mate have children, who are then played by another subroutine and goes and runs away and I never see again. Though I get mailed updates about that characters progress in ANOTHER game every week.

By WoW4 I have implanted devices in me that cause me quite a bit of frustration because even with those devices I can barely manage to run Molten 5.0 Core 17 times a week which is painfully insufficient to pay off the mortgage on those same cybernetic implants. Then I find "myself" killed by my own part-me, part-subroutine and I have to default on the mortgage and sell one of my virtual kids to a chinese VR sweatshop.

By then WoW5 is a game which plays on a Augmented Reality Mesh overlaid with the real world and you can find me on the (real world) beach with jogging fractically around to position virtual troops (75% of which are subroutines and 25% or in some shape or format played by noobs) while laying siege to a city of those damn demons who are about to invade the sizeable goblin metropolis Booty Bay has become.

By then I was about to start on WoW7 but I die of a neglected ingrown-toenail ... but I don't really mind because my subroutines are so extensively programmed with "me" they are too busy argueing with themselves over whether that asian girl in the kindergarten I attended did in fact exist or was a therapeutic memory edit 5 years earlier by my AI neuropsychiatrist.

All that remains of my is a several virtual graves in the north of Tirisfal, linking to an angelfire website where I can be found painting impressionist paintings and reading all those books I haven't read yet.