(MetaTech Virtual Headquarters, Shadowmen Control Room)
Demi Turner smiled as she looked over the data feeds coming through the control room. Everything was looking good. The time dilation didn’t look to be causing any trouble as players went between the game world and the real world. That was good, otherwise they would have had to rework everything.
During the Alpha and Beta process, a lot of consideration had gone into how to make the game accessible to people on different schedules. Part of this, obviously, was in having different servers, with each player starting in the city they were located in back in the real world. That reduced the variability somewhat, since the majority of people had the same work schedule in real life, and you weren’t dealing with time zones. Obviously, any players who traveled in game would have to deal with virtual jet lag, but there were limits to how much they could do.
The second part of trying to ensure accessibility was to utilize time dilation. Basically, speeding up time in game, so that every minute that passed in the real world was much more in game. They’d done various tests, and discovered that while a ten-to-one ratio was possible, prolonged exposure to that kind of ‘overclocking’ on the brain caused heightened strain, which might lead to physiological or psychological issues out of game.
Another issue was that if anyone had to miss a day in real life for work or other events, they would miss over a week of gameplay, potentially wrecking their in-game reputation, and encouraging people to spend as much time online as possible. While this might seem like less of a problem than causing brain strain in players, and the lawsuits that would cause, it was just as worrisome, in fact. After that incident with EVE 3, no one wanted to have one of their players so addicted to the game that they died in real life because they simply didn’t log off long enough to feed themselves or get actual sleep. That was the kind of thing that could destroy a company.
They eventually discovered that a four-to-one dilation was the safety threshold for time dilation. However, it was decided that, for an overabundance of caution, they would set the in-game world to two-to-one, while game administration spaces would be a variable timescale. Normally, ‘admin time’ would match ‘game time’, allowing game staff to respond to issues in a timely matter. However, they could adjust the time dilation in admin spaces upwards to four-to-one dilation if there were major bugs to fix. They could even jump all the way up to ten-to-one if there was a true crisis or emergency.
Thankfully, they hadn’t had any of those, yet. Just a bunch of players running full speed into the wall of ‘consequences for your actions’. They knew from the Beta that there would be an adjustment period as players who were used to the ‘kill things and take their stuff’ mentality of most MMOs were forced to actually roleplay, and not murderhobo their way around the world. Officially, she didn’t know that Sherry was the one who put together the clip reel of some of the funniest in-game deaths, and set it to that old song “Dumb Ways to Die” from back before the Plague, and posted it to the company server, or that the clip reel was currently the most-watched bit of media on the server. Officially, that is.
Still, having a two-to-one time dilation for staff meant that they needed more staff, obviously. Currently, they had six shifts for game administrators. A four-hour day, in real life, was a full eight-hour workday in the admin spaces. Thankfully, MetaTech knew that the staff were the key to actually keeping the game running, and making sure the money kept rolling in, so they paid everyone like they were pulling forty-hour workweeks even though they were only doing twenty, in real-time.
There was a hidden benefit to this, of course. Since the company treated them well, and they had more time on their hands, thanks to the work schedule, something like 94% of the admin staff actually were active players in the game. Not only were they more likely to find bugs and catch bot accounts that way, but it kept them more connected to the player experience, which had been huge during the Beta, since it helped iron out pain points, and made players feel like their feedback was genuinely respected. Because the admins actually knew what was going on, in game.
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Lilia Chandler materialized in the room, breaking her train of thought. “Ah, Demi. Good, I hoped to catch you while you were on shift. I wanted to follow up after your interview with the gaming channels. Strong stuff. Helped that they were genuinely wanting to know more about the game. And good work on defusing the worries about time dilation. Some people still get freaked out by the thought of it.”
Demi waved off the compliments. “We put enough time into working on the problem in testing, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know the questions were coming, or how to answer them.”
“Anyways, I wanted to follow up on the idea of getting the ‘mysterious Seattle man’ to do an interview for one of the channels. Now that you’ve met them, are there any of the influencers that you’d think would be a good fit for the interview? We want a positive interaction, after all, especially since he’s in the long-term testing group.”
“Ah, yeah. Well, definitely strike RedRocketGaming off the list. She’s good on games, but you can tell that she’s really big on the ‘men should be coddled and kept safe’ thing. The fact that so many of the people you’re killing in the game are men really bugged her. If she finds out our guy’s history, the interview will go downhill from there. And when she finds out he’s basically leading the team he’s on?”
Lilia winced at that thought. “Ooh, yeah. Definitely wouldn’t want her to get hold of him. You have any good options?”
“Two, actually. I’d recommend KarmaDesu and HarryManGames. Karma is a sweetheart who will definitely give a good interview with him. Harry is actually a male virtual streamer, which is part of the reason why he’s so popular. Lots of girls out there enjoying just listening to the geeky guy playing games. Bringing on another guy will definitely be a hit for his channel.”
“Hmm. He uses a basically human avatar, right? Basically just does it to hide his real face, so he doesn’t get as much trouble in real life?”
“Exactly. Well-spoken man, actually. Definitely knows the showmanship part of doing interviews.”
“Good, I’ll get in touch with them. See if we can work out an in-game interview. Do you think you can make some custom avatars for them? Temporary use ones that won’t conflict with their real game avatars, if they have one?”
“Oh, sure, that won’t be a problem. We have precedent already with admins. We need administrator avatars, in case we have to go in-game to work with something, but most of the staff actually plays the game when they’re not on shift. Time dilation is great for that.”
“Speaking of which, the PR people wanted a bit of a refresher on what you’re doing with avatars when people log out?”
“Oh, the idle system? Yeah, well, since this is a living world, the characters don’t just disappear when players log out. They set ‘idle actions’ that the AI takes for them. So, for instance, someone with a day job in game might set that as their idle action. The AI will puppet their avatar, based on their actions, and go to work for them, pulling a shift at the restaurant, or whatever it is they do. When players log back in, they get the flash ‘memories’ of what went on, like we did with their in-game backgrounds and skills.”
“What about the permadeath mechanics? Or the character’s possessions?”
“Well, the AI won’t start combat while doing idle actions, but if combat starts, the puppeted character will act like the player typically does during combat. The more the players play, the more accurately the AI algorithm will be able to mirror their performance during idle actions. As for possessions, the AI won’t directly target the character for theft and the like, but if a player is logged out so long that they can’t pay for their lifestyle, then they may get evicted, and lose anything they can’t keep in their ride. Log out long enough, and when they log back in they’ll be ‘waking up’ out of a coma in some hospital or corporate lab, and start from basically zero. But they’d need to miss a couple real-world months for that.”
“So, they don’t need to be constantly logged in, but taking three months off, real-time, will probably cause problems for them?”
“Exactly,” Demi nodded.
“Right,” Lilia said. “My people can work with that. What about bot accounts? Have you had any trouble with them?”
“Not yet. Most of them hit the ‘high-velocity lead is bad’ problem fast, since there aren’t any of the normal MMO ways to get rich quick. And we don’t have a Real Money Transfer system, with only some cosmetics on the shop, which you can’t access in game. Any functional items on the shop have the same mechanical performance as items in game. And with no easy money farms, and no player auction house or player-to-player mail system, you have to actually meet someone in game to transfer items or money to them, or trust in-game couriers or systems, which are easily tracked on our end. And the single-character limit means that the ‘multiboxing’ strategies of older MMOs are out the window, as well.”
“Great. The PR team will love being able to boast about that. So, how soon can you get those avatars done up?”
“Send over image refences for Karma and Harry, and we should be able to set them up in a day, real-time. After that, it is just a matter of arranging the in-game interviews.”
“Perfect. Can you get a message to our tester, and see if he’s willing to be interviewed?”
“One step ahead of you. I already sent word through the therapist he’s seeing, in-game. He’s willing, so long as it doesn’t interfere with his normal gaming, and he can wear a mask or something to hide his in-game identity, so he doesn’t get stalkers in game.”
“Yes, I can work with that! Thank you, Demi!”
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