I had this conversation with my brother just now as he was playing Dragon Age:

Me: What, you started over?
Mac: I’m glitching my way up to level 25. Then I’m going to import to Awakening. I want to try an Arcane Warrior.
(seconds pass)
Me: This is going to take a while, you realize.
Mac: No, look, this area is for levels 3 or 4 and I’m already level 12.
Me: The game auto-scales. It doesn’t matter.
(more seconds pass)
Me: You can just start a new character for Awakening, you know.
Mac: I know, but I don’t want to be level 1 in Awakening.
Me: You won’t. You start at level 20.
Mac: Well, I don’t want to be level 20 in Awakening.
Me: The game auto-scales, it doesn’t matter!
Mac: It matters!

This is the real idea behind RPGs. It’s not about fighting monsters, or huge epic worlds, or being a big damn hero. The point of playing RPGs is to take little numbers and make them bigger. That’s the appeal. Everything else is just decoration.

He’s still at it, by the way.

(Here’s a cleaned up and slightly edited version of an old post of mine on Zeros 2 Heroes. I still want a microchip.)

I want a microchip in my hand. No bones about it. After enduring a 1-hour lecture from the travel agent about the dangers of pickpockets and how I’ll apparently need to keep all my money and electronics in my undergarments, I have decided I will be first in line for a subdermal RFID money chip.

Just think about it. Imagine the speed of it. It’d be like those PayPasses they have at gas stations, but even quicker ’cause you won’t have to dig out your keys. Just wave your hand at the detector and off you go. Solves the problem of theft, too. Now, instead of having your wallet snatched on the train, they’d have to dig the chip out of your hand or possibly cut off the whole limb. I’m not saying it wouldn’t happen, but it takes more effort, which is what thieves are trying to avoid by stealing wallets in the first place.

Environmentally friendly. Less oil needed to manufacture plastic cards. I mean, they’re putting RFID tags in credit cards anyway, all they have to do is take the chip out of the card and put it under your skin instead. Less trees needed for paper money, too. Unless I’m missing something and the oil and forestry industries have Visa by the balls. Which is entirely likely.

People complain about privacy issues. Personally, I don’t care if the government tracks my movements. My movements are from home to classes, classes to work, work to the mall, and the mall to home. If Big Brother wants to watch that all day, he’s welcome to it.

Those guys who are actually paid to predict technologies in the future promised 20 years ago that we’d have hand-microchips by now. The technology exists, it just needs to be implemented. So I’m claiming my spot in the line-up right now.

I want a microchip in my hand.