Paladins with muscle cramps: Immersion, MMORPG’s and Nozick’s experience machine
Paladins with muscle cramps: Immersion, MMORPG’s and Nozick’s experience machine

Summary/Abstract: When he first formulated the famous ‘Experience Machine’ thought experiment in 1974,Robert Nozick could only give his readers one analogy with a potential real-life ‘device’:psychoactive drugs. Now, decades later, MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft and EVEOnline, with their promise of delivering immersive pleasure to their users, have beendubbed as experience machines. However, some have argued that MMORPG’s cannotbe what Nozick had in mind when he developed his thought experiment for tworeasons: because of the interaction between users mediated by avatars and because theylack sensory-immersion. We discuss how both arguments fail to address the necessaryconditions for a truly Nozickian experience machine: (i) guaranteed immunity from anystimuli generated in the circumstances of the “real”, physical world and (ii) lack ofawareness, while being plugged in an experience machine, of the actual source of anexperience. Even though MMORPG’s cannot be experience machines in the sense of theoriginal thought experiments, they might still provide an opportunity to address theoriginal concerns that Nozick had regarding hedonism, or other, more recent (but closelyrelated) as escapism through technology.

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