It felt otherworldly, and for good reason - this was another world. Jetlagged after my flight on the back of a gryphon, I was a first-time tourist, lost in the pixel-scape of World of Warcraft, a richly-textured swords and sorcery milieu visited regularly by 10 million people worldwide.
More and more Americans are playing online games like Second Life, EVE Online, and Warcraft. The fantastic lands their developers conjure are compelling, filling a need we have for mystery, discovery, adventure - a need probably not being met now that tourists have pretty much overrun the best medieval towns and Mediterranean beaches. Unless they are brave enough to enter the receding jungles or cross the shrinking ice caps, it is hard for travelers to blaze trails through uncharted lands.
Hence the appeal of virtual worlds. For a while, fantasy and science fiction novels, Disneyland, even armchair travel books, sated our wanderlust. No longer. Now XBox, Nintendo, and PlayStation systems reenvision places as palpable as Venice or Katmandu (but with much more "safe" violence). The explosion of TV and the Internet - travel channels, food shows, and blogs with video content - take us to every corner of the planet, anytime, for free.
By embracing technology to bring us these digitally-rendered worlds, we are redefining how we spend our leisure time, how we understand the world, and how we travel. Readers, moviegoers, and game players are being trained to straddle two worlds: the brick and mortar of sidewalks and bug-infested woods, and more shimmering realms, beckoning beyond our computer screens.
Where that leaves the 21st-century traveler is uncertain. If the average two-week vacation can't compare with these virtual experiences, a new generation of tourists may skip backpacking in India, let alone Europe. Why should they conquer the States by car or a rain forest by zipline when infinite pleasures can be had by tapping at keyboards? Even the guilty pleasures of outlet shopping or bar-hopping in tourist towns could be lost when younger generations find the malls and nightclubs of Second Life just as satisfying.
