Interactive Shapeshifting

We constantly shapeshift electronically and socially. And if we lack something in our life, we need an experience of some sort, we simulate it. Or in other words: Play it. And by this simulated experience, we learn, grow and prosper.

There are many kinds of games that are available to us today. Here are some examples of interactive gaming, with explainations from wikipedia:


RPG
Role playing games (RPG) are fundamentally different from most other types of games in that they stress social interaction and collaboration, whereas board games, card games, and sports emphasize competition.
Both authors and major publishers of role-playing games consider them to be a form of interactive and collaborative storytelling. Like novels or films, role-playing games appeal because they engage the imagination. Interactivity is the crucial difference between role-playing games and traditional fiction. Whereas a viewer of a television show is a passive observer, a player at a role-playing game makes choices that affect the story. Such role-playing games extend an older tradition of storytelling games where a small party of friends collaborate to create a story.
While simple forms of role-playing exist in traditional children's games such as "cops and robbers", "cowboys and Indians" and "playing house", role-playing games add a level of sophistication and persistence to this basic idea with the addition of numeric rule sets and the participation of a referee. Participants in a role-playing game will generate specific characters and an ongoing plot. A consistent system of rules and a more or less realistic campaign setting in games aids suspension of disbelief. The level of realism in games ranges from just enough internal consistency to set up a believable story or credible challenge up to full-blown simulations of real-world processes. Popular examples are Dungeons and Dragons and the World of Darkness series.


VIRTUAL WORLDS
A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. These avatars are usually depicted as textual, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional graphical representations, although other forms are possible. Popular examples are Second Life and IMVU.

MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a genre of computer role-playing games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world.
As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (often in a fantasy world),[1] and take control over many of that character's actions.[2] MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game's persistent world, usually hosted by the game's publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game. This is often reffered to being offline, or AFK (away from keyboard). Popular examples are World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online.

DIRECTION! AT LAST! or?

After mapping my thoughts down on a paper several times, it is obvious to me that play is something fundamental for me. I have never stopped playing, wich is I might have an easygoing attitude and people can consider me as unseriuos.

It is playing that has made me this person of constant change that I now can define my self (NOTE: not myself, but MY SELF) as.

I am right now playing through Homo Ludens by Huizinga.

I think I´m going to focus on the interactive or abstract playing. With this I mean roleplaying games (rpg) and computer games.

“Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.”
-Johan Huizinga, Homo ludens

I have come to the conclusion that my project is all about play as a method of learning even for grown ups. In a world where our attention is not misdirected to 24/7 fear through media, be it fear for stock market crashes, pandemic outburst, terrorism, global tyranny, unemployment, starvation and so on and so forth, then what do we do?
Well, the answer is very quite simple: We grow. We grow because all the energy that creates the chemicals in our arms and legs that makes us ready to fight or flight (reactions to fear) goes back to the brain, and the torso, centers for growingboth mentally and physically. And how do we grow best? Well, let´s just look at the masters of the subject of growing and learning: The human infant. How does she/he learn? Of course.
Through play.

Why would it be any different for a so called "growned up"?
I have chosen to critisize the term "growned up", since it describes a static state of being the no longer evovles. This I think is one of the most catastrofic mindsets of the modern man.
You constantly grow up, but you will never be a grown up.