Random thoughts for a project inspired by Diane Duane's Omnitopia
Book one has sat around in my head for forever, and book two doesn't seem to be coming out ever y.y
Maybe this'll be fanfiction, maybe not, idk.
The most basic premise of omnitopia is that there is a technology that allows people to jack in to a virtual world, and explore it as if they were in their own body. There is also a software run by a Totally Normal Video Game Company that definitely takes some hints from Blizzard / Bethesda pre-enshittification where mods and custom maps were easy and encouraged to to be made, and there was some level of developer involvement in a positive sense; in universe, this was a set of tools that allowed people to make their own worlds, their own games, their own everything using their engine / software. People could log into what had been a bog standard MMO, and then travel through portals to other universes.
Mostly, I've been disenfranchised with a lot of that, but at the time of the books release, the future was pretty bright, the big video game companies weren't as obviously evil (looking back, knowing what I know now.... look, I was in high school, leave me alone, I wasn't even a leftist then), and the idea of an MMO that allowed infinite variance and infinite future stories put in the hands of the common person was really cool.
Regardless, a lot of it has rattled around in my head over the years, and I keep coming back to a core concept that took root; the idea of a technology that allows people to jack into a virtual world and explore it as if they were in their own body, for the explicit purpose of MMORPG's, BUT instead of playing it in real time, they instead upload their personality and memories, and upload it into the game. There is no logging out, because the idea is that your body (the original you) unplugs, and goes about their day. They go to work. They go and do things. You essentially clone yourself to go and have activity. At a later point, you then download the experiences of the avatar, and enjoy the in-detail memories.
I've played around with it in a few ways in my head; time dilation was one I kept coming back to, but ultimately decided was a bad idea; you leave your avatar in there for 1 minute, you get 60 minutes of gameplay back. One day, 60 days. One month, five years. How long does it take before the memories of the person you put in no longer feel like you? Those memories aren't contextless; your avatar is living them, your avatar has thoughts about them, maybe even the Avatar isn't having a good time about it. How many of us have tried a game out, only to go "wow I hate this actually", only now you can't back out? It's great for a philosophical "Don't create the torment nexus", but I'm not really interested in writing that kind of book.
Another one I kept coming back to was the idea of a team of developers, and A.I., who are in charge of story telling within the game. They're constantly watching for errors and odd things. Mostly, I just felt that they were interesting but purposeless within a narrative sense, except to explain certain sudden changes, or bug fixes.... but why tell that at all? If I'm writing a story, I want it to be about the characters living it, not the gods above trying to figure out ways to "fix" things.
I've also messed around with the idea of how this ultimately allows a company to have free access to your mind and soul. The freemium MMO's of today, and what they would do with your mind if they could; intellectual slavery (Just cordon off a copy in a datafarm, have them work on bullshit, who would ever know?), advertisement via direct implantation (you're downloading memories already. It's not that difficult to imagine the nauseating level of "Your avatar ate LOTS of MCDONALDS and ENJOYS IT, here are 6 months of ENJOYMENT from BURGER".), but this, too, ultimately is just more of philosophical "Don't Create the Torment Nexus" stuff that isn't really interesting to me. Someone else can write that. Enjoy. I'm sure cyberpunk will love being rehashed again.
So, what exactly does interest me in this? I think I like the idea of characters who are Functionally Modern, who are playing a game, and getting enjoyment out of it. The game itself is an MMO with a hyper-realistic setting; mechanics of the game don't really "exist", so much as there are physics. The game itself isn't complex, just "What if World War 1, but there's magic?" "What if you were part of a community of farmers?" "What if it's a complex world that you are encouraged to explore, but there aren't any NPCs, so everything has to be done by players, so make sure to encourage players who are different from you and enjoy the game differently than you do, so you can still access the kind of things they do like crafting!" "What if Mega-dungeon Dungeon Meshi MMO?"
I like the community aspect. I like the idea of people interacting with and exploring the world, and the idea of exploring the systems within them. I like the idea of it being exceptionally violent and terrifying and gory, but it's okay because none of it is permanent, you can opt out, there are limits and lines.
I think my favorite is probably still the WW1 version. A slow burn of a war, filled to the brim with magic that only makes it worse. I'm pretty sure the game itself would be called "The Forever War" or something similar. The main character creates their character, deciding at the start to go against the meta, not because they think it's actually good but, because they just wanted to RP as that character. The war is already entrenched. They arrive by train to the battlefield, and they already have to deal with trench foot. They spend a lot of the book just chatting with other players, caring for the equipment, doing minor enchantment work, recovering fallen player's so they can be revived, and eventually dying before they even shoot their gun for the first time because they stuck their head out and got sniped. There isn't even a waiting period, they just wake up later, revived and go "Woops haha".
I think the main character would be a silly clumsy failgirl transgirl, both because that's the way she is, and also because that's the way she's RPing. She's a dummy who enjoys the tedium of this war, the bursts of combat and adrenaline, and the feeling of camaraderie that she doesn't get in real life. She enjoys hanging out with all these folk, who are also all going to be just as queer as she is, she enjoys how terrible it is, she enjoys exploring the way the system and mechanics can be broken in subtle ways. I think she'd be autistic. She knows too much about this game, but she's never played it. She's read all the wiki's and guides, and doesn't know that last week a player discovered how to teleport using a glitch, and now hypermobility is out in the meta because it can be replicated with heavier builds using the glitch. She knows about how players value a quality of life enchantment more than a damage spell, but she doesn't know that the average player is more than happy to cuddle at the end of the shift in the trench because they're just as touch starved as she is.
I think the game has set it up so that every country is in fleeting alliances with one another, constantly shifting in diplomacy and technology, and they fight over resources between each other, each one trying to get just enough of an advantage to push on another one, to hold just long enough to build one more tank. Pockets of resistance, holding out against hope, and completely cut off, hoping that an armored car might come to get them and the resources they were protecting and make it worth it. The country the main character is in is a minor one; they have one or two resources left, and they're making pushes out, but it's probably doomed. Half the players are already talking about which country they'll join after, the other half about waiting for the global reset. There's a feeling of gallows humor, but also stubborn joy; they chose this.
anyways, that was a lot of thoughts, and maybe I'll do something with this later. But probably not <3
