Shabe evaluated the data in front of him.
Over 90% of the high-end NPC “pilots” had fainted right after returning from the game. The mediocre ones, like those posted as city guards or forest rangers, returned with strong impressions of the game, while the bellow-average ones, such as goblins, returned confused and weirdly philosophical.
Jack was amongst the first batch of players, but he was just another number.
- It’s wildly out of expectative, sir.
Samanta said to Shabe, clear concern in her voice.
- I didn’t think there would be such a huge difference in the end.
Shabe was talking about a certain type of engineer. His VR-Testing engineers. Such a career only really launched out recently, but it was highly sought after by the craziest of people - the LSD Hippies, the Ayahuasca Wannabees, the ‘Shroom Hunters…
And the reason was simple - research psychedelia. As the VR technologies began to reach the brain and mess with neural pathways, it created the possibility of experiencing psychedelia on a totally different level from common drugs.
Not to mention VR-Drug research.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
So, as the Another World project went on, the first testers for all kinds of bodies and species were bound to be such kind of people which not only enjoyed being out-of-their-minds, but actually craved for more of the thing.
- Are you sure they were given the smaller intensity experience?
Shabe asked his secretary with a concerned look in his face. Even if they didn’t have the ability to tone up or down the entirety of playing-experience on Another World, they did have the ability to increase or decrease it around ten-fold.
- We normalized the experience, so they received the ten-fold-reduced intensity experience sir, but it seems like the sheer content of the experience was…
- Too much for them to handle - Said Shabe, cutting of in front of Samanta.
- Yes.
Shabe tossed his papers on top of his table.
This was out of expectancy. Wildly out. The VR-Researchers were hardened veterans in the field of psychedelic experiences, but for the normal person to be so impacted by it… how much would they have to expend on psychologists for this people?
Even the bottom-line NPCs had extremely strong experiences, and even if their experience had been indeed increased in intensity by two or three fold for the sake of experimenting, this shouldn’t be to the point where one of them groaned in pain and protected his stomach when another one was describing the sensation of stabbing him from behind.
This was almost at the level of PTSD-inducing experiences, and they only had a two-fold increased experience from the medium-intensity baseline.
- Bring the medium-intensity experience down at least five fold, and make the ten-fold-reduced experience to be mandatory for all players. Also, bring me Jack Hudderson.
Jack Hudderson isn’t our dear Jack. He is the chief of the VR-Experience research team. Maybe the geekest, nerdiest, hippiest engineer in the world.
…maybe of all history as well.
- We need to re-scale all of this from the basics.