Right as rainy

Back in the day of the point & click adventure games, a lot of titles had a scoring system. Every correct action in the game, every successful dialogue, every useful item (and some less useful ones) rewarded the player with a number of points. The objective, of course, was to finish the game with the maximum score, or to get as close to it as possible. It was something that added to the game (or tried to do so), provided for some bragging rights and maybe even made it worthwhile to play the game again.

For some time, as the classic adventure games lost popularity to other genres, the concept was forgotten. Until the console world picked it up again in a slightly different fashion. On the XBox 360, every retail game is worth 1000 points in so-called gamerscore. Since not every game comes with enough story or dialogue or items to adapt the concept 1:1, they had to come up with a few other ideas. The answer is Achievements – milestones scattered throughout the game, each worth a number of points.

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The other night I started reading a book which gave me a lot to think about. It opened with the following quote:

“Why waste time discovering the truth when you can so easily create it?” ¹

The first chapter describes how quick a story can spread through the world. A video was seeded on the Internet, made its way through blogs, forums and chain mails before ending up on BBC and being picked up by the mainstream media. It told a story so horrible yet believable that people could do nothing but believe it and spread the word. But it was a fabrication – an elaborate lie, spread out for disinformation and distraction.

One of my favourite authors once said in one of his books: “A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” ² This is especially true since the Internet became widely accessible and used. It is so easy to create stories and spread them – as long as it sounds credible, more people will believe it than question it. That opens doors to all kinds of abuse. Scams are only one of the possibilities. The more worrying ones include targeted and deliberate disinformation, and that can come from anywhere. Governments, companies, organizations – few people would be above spreading false information if it suited their purpose. (continue reading…)