Stuff that I know
1 . Arena is a massively-multiplayer combat game that takes place in a fully-realized virtual environment.
2. Hardcore (professional) Arena Warriors jack directly into the game by means of a brain-stem socket. This intercepts normal sensory perception, blocking it out with input from the game. In other words, if you jack into the game, you feel just like you're there - all 5 senses receive direct input into the brain.
3. Casual players wear a headset that "ghosts" the sensations of the game over their existing sensations. In other words, when playing with a headset you need to close your eyes, or you'll see double, and you'll still be aware of your surroundings (feel your chair, hear local ambient noise) underneath the ethereal suggestion of the experience that hardcore players actually feel.
4. Professional Arena Warriors are like sports stars. Arena matches show on flat screens all over, and there are lots of spectators in game, and so on. Most Pro Arena Warriors keep their real-world identities secret, even if their Arena Analogues are hugely popular, to avoid groupies and so on. Some of them welcome the attention, though.
5. Professional Arena Warriors are not the only Hardcore Arena Warriors. The brain-stem socket technology is expensive, but not exclusive. Anyone with enough money can participate in the fully realized-virtual game experience, although only the Pro Arena Matches get the big media attention - with the exception of a few underground / indie organizations.
6. Some Hardcore Arena Warriors make it a point of personal pride to stay jacked-in to the maximum amount possible. As such - since they are entirely disconnected from the real world while jacked-in - a whole sub-industry of Caretakers has arisen... people who empty excrement tanks, make sure that IVs are always full, etc.
7. Lexy Coleman is a Pro Arena Warrior corresponding to the analogue identity Caimili (Chigh-MEE-lee). She chews gum, has green-streaked hair, is a hacker, and a raver. She is one of the celeb Warriors that hide their identities. Unlike a lot of celeb gamers, she maintains her real-world health, and her caretaker's job is mainly to hit the panic-button in case Lexy needs to emergency disconnect. Lexy's dad was a rent-a-cop. Lexy has money now, due to her success as an Arena Warrior. To finance her initial Arena Warrior run, she had to do some illegal hacking of some sort, becuase her dad was obviously not rich. Anyway, now Lexy lives in an old nuclear submarine (the reactor has been removed) that is buried underground in some eccentric location, like southern CA.
8. An EVIL CORPORATION is messing around with using realized VR for R&D (weapons R&D, obviously). They will hook up a bunch of predictive AIs and a crapload of nifty technobabble memory to represent a real world R&D environment to an nth-degree of precision, then plug a bunch of scientists into it to research there. The advantage is that the VR R&D environment can be OVERCLOCKED to like 10x or 100x. A team of reserachers plugged in could do 10 or 100 years worth of research in 1 year!
9. This scheme has all kinds of potential pitfalls. First of all, there's the problem of getting a human brain to keep up with a 10x or 100x clocked VR network. This would undoubtedly involve all sorts of drugs, medical maintainance schemes, and so on. Then there's the psychological problem of your mind aging at 10 or 100 times the rate of your body. Also, on a slightly tangential note, once people can make *realistic* VR environments and run them at super-fast speeds, pretty much everyone is going to want to plug in and achieve, effectively, immortality. This sets up a potential sequal (or at least the opportunity for characters to ruminate about future consequences of their actions) in which the entire population of the Earth has become a society in which one is jacked in 24 / 7, where jacking out has the effect of decreasing your *experiential lifetime* by huge factors. It also brings up interesting questions of reproduction, life support, and military action.
10. EVIL CORPORATION wants to use hardcore arena gamers as test subjects for working out the kinks in their prototype. This is because: Hardcore gamers already have lots of experience being jacked in for extended periods; Harcore gamers have minds that are already highly developed for quick responses to virtual inputs - in other words, they're more likely to be able to cope with an accelerated VR network than an R&D flak who was just fitted with a stem-socket yesterday.
11. Lexy's friend (someone) with the analogue identity (something) is EVIL CORPORATION'S first "victim." He tells her he can't make their next match, then disappears off the Arena. Lexy obviously goes looking for him in the real world - no mean feat since she doesn't know who he actually is. But she has some clues, and her 1337 H@XX0R sk111z. She goes after him becuase she likes him, of course, but also because he has her (set of armor / BFG / misc super-duper in-game item) that he borrowed that she needs for an important match. (W00T! Thanks Andy!)
12. I think that is all for now.
2. Hardcore (professional) Arena Warriors jack directly into the game by means of a brain-stem socket. This intercepts normal sensory perception, blocking it out with input from the game. In other words, if you jack into the game, you feel just like you're there - all 5 senses receive direct input into the brain.
3. Casual players wear a headset that "ghosts" the sensations of the game over their existing sensations. In other words, when playing with a headset you need to close your eyes, or you'll see double, and you'll still be aware of your surroundings (feel your chair, hear local ambient noise) underneath the ethereal suggestion of the experience that hardcore players actually feel.
4. Professional Arena Warriors are like sports stars. Arena matches show on flat screens all over, and there are lots of spectators in game, and so on. Most Pro Arena Warriors keep their real-world identities secret, even if their Arena Analogues are hugely popular, to avoid groupies and so on. Some of them welcome the attention, though.
5. Professional Arena Warriors are not the only Hardcore Arena Warriors. The brain-stem socket technology is expensive, but not exclusive. Anyone with enough money can participate in the fully realized-virtual game experience, although only the Pro Arena Matches get the big media attention - with the exception of a few underground / indie organizations.
6. Some Hardcore Arena Warriors make it a point of personal pride to stay jacked-in to the maximum amount possible. As such - since they are entirely disconnected from the real world while jacked-in - a whole sub-industry of Caretakers has arisen... people who empty excrement tanks, make sure that IVs are always full, etc.
7. Lexy Coleman is a Pro Arena Warrior corresponding to the analogue identity Caimili (Chigh-MEE-lee). She chews gum, has green-streaked hair, is a hacker, and a raver. She is one of the celeb Warriors that hide their identities. Unlike a lot of celeb gamers, she maintains her real-world health, and her caretaker's job is mainly to hit the panic-button in case Lexy needs to emergency disconnect. Lexy's dad was a rent-a-cop. Lexy has money now, due to her success as an Arena Warrior. To finance her initial Arena Warrior run, she had to do some illegal hacking of some sort, becuase her dad was obviously not rich. Anyway, now Lexy lives in an old nuclear submarine (the reactor has been removed) that is buried underground in some eccentric location, like southern CA.
8. An EVIL CORPORATION is messing around with using realized VR for R&D (weapons R&D, obviously). They will hook up a bunch of predictive AIs and a crapload of nifty technobabble memory to represent a real world R&D environment to an nth-degree of precision, then plug a bunch of scientists into it to research there. The advantage is that the VR R&D environment can be OVERCLOCKED to like 10x or 100x. A team of reserachers plugged in could do 10 or 100 years worth of research in 1 year!
9. This scheme has all kinds of potential pitfalls. First of all, there's the problem of getting a human brain to keep up with a 10x or 100x clocked VR network. This would undoubtedly involve all sorts of drugs, medical maintainance schemes, and so on. Then there's the psychological problem of your mind aging at 10 or 100 times the rate of your body. Also, on a slightly tangential note, once people can make *realistic* VR environments and run them at super-fast speeds, pretty much everyone is going to want to plug in and achieve, effectively, immortality. This sets up a potential sequal (or at least the opportunity for characters to ruminate about future consequences of their actions) in which the entire population of the Earth has become a society in which one is jacked in 24 / 7, where jacking out has the effect of decreasing your *experiential lifetime* by huge factors. It also brings up interesting questions of reproduction, life support, and military action.
10. EVIL CORPORATION wants to use hardcore arena gamers as test subjects for working out the kinks in their prototype. This is because: Hardcore gamers already have lots of experience being jacked in for extended periods; Harcore gamers have minds that are already highly developed for quick responses to virtual inputs - in other words, they're more likely to be able to cope with an accelerated VR network than an R&D flak who was just fitted with a stem-socket yesterday.
11. Lexy's friend (someone) with the analogue identity (something) is EVIL CORPORATION'S first "victim." He tells her he can't make their next match, then disappears off the Arena. Lexy obviously goes looking for him in the real world - no mean feat since she doesn't know who he actually is. But she has some clues, and her 1337 H@XX0R sk111z. She goes after him becuase she likes him, of course, but also because he has her (set of armor / BFG / misc super-duper in-game item) that he borrowed that she needs for an important match. (W00T! Thanks Andy!)
12. I think that is all for now.
posted by Paganini at 9:01 PM
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