We increasingly live in a world where all contests are virtual, the stakes pure artifice. And barring professional athletes and gamers, no matter how spectacular the play on the court, it will never have any impact on reality off the court. No matter how incredible somebody’s speed play in a video game, it will never impact their real life (again, barring paid professionals).
The call to adventure is dead, because you aren't called anymore. You have to go looking for it.
Is there a way to change that without devolving to the raw, brutal state of nature?
One way you might invoke real consequence is physical. MMA has grown dramatically in popularity. I believe that is because there are real physical consequences. You really will get hurt. Badly.
CrossFit has also grown in popularity. Torturous races have grown in popularity.
The reason these are growing in popularity is because people are yearning for an authentic, real experience, with real consequences. Regardless of your other worldviews, physical pain is undeniably real to those experiencing it.
I think a successful enterprise/movement could be something I will call “Combat Games“. Combat Games would combine all of these, with a little bit of gladiator flare. A scenario could be as simple as capture the flag. But the threat and consequence are much higher.
Imagine the a field of modest obstacles with two contestants on either end. Each contestant has a simple objective. One is tasked with getting their flag to the other side of the arena. The other contestant is meant to stop them. All the same rules as MMA apply. You can hit, kick, knock your opponent over. Real physical harm is not only possible, it is likely.
I think you’d find a (to some surprising) number of men who lead otherwise totally civilized lives seeking this out. There’s just no other outlet for aggression in a developed society. Regardless of that primal urge to engage physically, we have nowhere else to put it. You might find men going from their desk jobs to the Combat Games club, practicing for the upcoming tournament, where they will face off with other men in their skill and weight class. And at the end, they’ll feel satisfied in a way they couldn’t anywhere else, and likely closer to each other.
Another way real costs could be invoked is economic. Drone racing is becoming increasingly popular. But the drones are small, relatively affordable. In a way they’re unremarkable and almost disposable.
What if they weren’t?
What if they were big and extremely expensive? A bit like “pod racing” from Star Wars Ep. 1. And what if they were tokenized, and the token holders got to vote on the core management team and pilot? This would take the best of fantasy football, drone racing, NASCAR, and the floundering effort to start a mech combat league. Plus it would be a fascinating experiment in tokenization.
What other ways could you create a setting where very real (but tolerable) consequences could be engaged with?