For my essay due on the 20th of September I will be discussing the topic of video games in regards to real life social and economic simulation and their impact on our transition into cyberspace. 

I have derived my question from the Cyberpunk essay topic:

Choose a cyberpunk story or movie. Compare the economic and social world it conjures with the real world today. How close is this imagined world to our world and are we moving towards the imagined world or away from it?

Instead of analysing characteristics of cyberpunk stories I will be looking at certain features of video games (particularly online video games) that reflect real world occurrences as well as video game situations that act as simulations or experiments for future events.

The main example for my analysis will come from World of Warcraft. A game that I have both played and studied in the past. An example of an event that both reflected real world events and served as an analytical piece of information to be studied was the 'Corrupted Blood Incident', a virtual plague that was even looked at by medical academics as an indicator of what would occur in a real world plague (Lofgren, 2007). After this unpredictable event there was an increase in the number academics utilising virtual environments to simulate real world economical, political and survival situations.

So if I were to re-work the original cyberpunk question it would be something like this.

Compare the economic and social world video games conjure with the real world today. How close are these imagined worlds to our world and what are the ramifications of virtual environments closely resembling reality?

Lofgren, E & Fefferman, N 2007, 'The untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light on real world epidemics', The Lancet Infectious Diseases, vol. 7, no. 9, pp 625-9, viewed 22 September 2012, via ProQuest Central database.