One Hour One Life Forums

There are 3 towns to cycle through right now, all of them have topped out on the tech tree, two have lost their name and lineage. They are gigantic and full of clutter. People brag about how they did this or that a few lives before. People now grief just so they can escape these gigantic trash dumps.

Is this what you wanted, Jason?

I've been wanting to write something along these lines for a while now, but I have a hard time putting my thoughts into words. I'll give it a try though. There's nothing in particular I'm hoping to accomplish here, but feel free to chime in with your own theories.

After playing OHOL for a while I found myself looking at the game and the 'societies' it creates through a philosophical lens. It is utterly fascinating to me how the game allows human morality and mentality to show itself in it's rawest form. I applaud Jason for having created such a platform, allowing us to interact with such anonymity to let the true human spirit show.

I started to pay more and more attention to the 'unspoken rules' that tend to emerge when camps hit a certain level of population. There are some things that people just tend to do out of personal morality, for example not murdering someone who hasn't done any wrong (I'll get to griefers later). How curious is it though, that as soon as someone goes against this unspoken moral, the victim of a unjust murder will have droves of villagers come to their aide, regardless of relation to the victim.
Now you might think to yourself 'duh of course' - but think again, nobody told you that's what you had to do. Nobody told you it was wrong to kill someone without reason.
It's a game after all, there are no real consequences. This is how griefers play, and it is just as valid as the game's code allows for it, but somehow we still perceive it as wrong and that such an action is worthy of punishment.
Okay so got it, killing is morally wrong, even in a simulated society. Pretty basic stuff.

Delving deeper I focused more on the traditions that seem to contradict IRL morals in some ways. It becomes apparent very quickly that females tend to run the show, girls are the most valuable resource and if there are none left the town is doomed. Occasionally you might even come across 'amazon' camps where males are exiled or executed.
Makes sense in the game, girls die - town dies. But isn't it the same with humankind as well?
So why does OHOL mainly produce matriarchal societies, whereas humanity skewed heavily towards patriarchy? I am sure it's mostly just due to numbers and lack of physical differences between genders (no pregnancy/related complications), but it makes me wonder if early human tribes actually were ruled by women, as the death of all females would lead to the death of the tribe.

Another thing I pondered about was why people are more likely to grief in larger towns and how boredom and lack of purpose leads people to 'immoral' decisions.
Your only goal is survival, but you only have one life. If you are born into a small village your purpose is usually clear, as it's easy to find something to do that helps secure the survival of yourself and your tribe. These lives usually tend to be 'fun', as you always feel that you contribute and it hardly gets boring.
But be born into a large town that is superfluous with food and littered with half-finished projects, you usually find yourself wandering about looking for stuff to do. Survival isn't important anymore, you get bored and don't have much motivation to finish other people's work or start a long-term building project yourself. Some might just busy themselves doing odd things here and there, some just talk shit by the berries for an hour, some kill themselves, and some start taking out their boredom on others and become destructive. But none of it ever feels like it has any meaning or makes any difference.

It's almost eerie how this game acts as a small-scale exhibition of the human mind, as we're seeing this happen in our world right now with increases in depression, anxiety and suicide due to people lacking any purpose in life and not having any feeling of worth or contribution. The only true 'reason' we are born for is survival, evolution hasn't caught up in our monkey brains yet, so having this problem 'solved' from the start by being born into the first world creates all kinds of new problems as our primitive brains grasp for any sense of reason or meaning.
I seriously think this game should be pitched to various universities as a method of studying the human mind and how our environment affects our decisions and mental health. I'm just some nerd with too much time to think about stuff and can't do anything with all this information, but this could be a valuable tool in the hands of the right minds.

All grievances over fences, balancing, temperature, etc aside, this is still by far the most interesting game I ever had the pleasure to play. No other video game has sparked such deep interest in anthropology in me, and I doubt anything will ever come close to it.

I know this probably will just fall on deaf ears, and at worst I will get banned - but let's be real here - Jason doesn't care about us at all, and I just want to tell you why I feel this way.

First, let me just show you a couple examples of how he treats his community:

(very professional)

(snappy reply to a user asking for clarification)

Okay so we established that he isn't exactly gifted in the field of community management, no big deal, few can be good at doing everything.

However, over the past month or so I have seen a drastic increase in activity by him here, but it never feels like he actually listens. How often have we gotten a late-night post with a wild idea from him met with lots of confusion by the community, only to be implemented in less than a week in his original conception?

The fence thing really is a prime example. To sum it up in case someone missed it:

This pattern has repeated a few times now, and it's just the latest example. It's as if he invents problems to fix with drastic changes, instead of focusing on polishing the game. I almost feel like a fool for wasting time by trying to communicate with him, it falls on deaf ears anyway.

Why pretend to care about what we think and want when he's just going to do whatever he wants anyway?