Nathan wasn’t used to early mornings, and while he didn’t officially have any ‘office hours’, he did get the impression that there was an expectation of him to be logged in as much as possible. He didn’t mind this since he enjoyed the game and the use of his legs enough that he was perfectly happy to spend every waking moment in the pod. This being just his second full day, he hadn’t figured out what that actually entailed, as early for him might not be the same as for someone else.
Without giving it much thought, this morning his intention had been to sleep in. Any time lost in the morning could be regained in the evening. That was when most other players would be logged in anyhow, so it made sense.
Because of this he was still fast asleep when his phone rang. As he came too, he was sweating hard. He had a bad taste in his mouth, and one of many recurring dreams fresh in his mind. Once he managed to unclench his hand, he grasped for the bottle usually located somewhere beside him, but to his disappointment it was nowhere to be found.
Conscience rushed in and while he was able to ignore the vibrations and the all too cherry ringtone for a while longer, in the end he gave up and grabbed the phone from the nightstand.
“What?” he answered hoarsely. While he didn’t have the normal headache, he still felt dehydrated. He added a mental note to himself that he should remember to drink lots of fluid when he exited the pod to make up for what he should have had while under.
“God morning, Mr. Noble,” a cheery female voice said. Irritatingly cheery, in fact. “I hope I didn’t wake you?”
“You did.”
“Sorry about that,” she apologized.
Perhaps it was the happy tone or her small laugh, but Nathan got the distinct impression that she was, in fact, not sorry. Instead, she sounded amused. What kind of person thought it was fun to wake up others in the middle of the night? A sick person, he concluded. “What do you want? And what time is it?”
“It’s 7 AM, Mr. Noble. I’m calling on behalf of John Moon, to inform you that Mr. Moon would like to invite you to join him for breakfast in the office restaurant in 30 minutes. If that is too early, I could always ask him to reschedule? Perhaps lunch would be better?”
“What?” Nathan tried to sit up, failed, and ended up rolling to the floor. After spitting out some of the sheet he was able to find his phone by following the murmurs from it.
“Mr. Noble? Are you there? What happened?”
“Yes, I’m here. As I was saying, I’m up. No need to reschedule. Tell John I’m looking forward to it.”
“Great, I will do just that! 7.30 AM in the restaurant. Take care, Mr. Noble,” she added as the line went dead.
A quick shower and a change of clothes later, he looked fairly presentable. Since he was meeting the boss, he’d thrown on a shirt and some khakis he’d found in the closet – probably something Richard had provided. When he rolled into the restaurant next door, he was actually early.
Of course, John was already there, sitting in a private booth which the staff guided him to, together with another man. Their table was filled up with rolls, scones and toast, together with different spreads and cold cuts. Their own private buffet.
“There you are,” John greeted him enthusiastically when he arrived at the table. “Glad you were able to make it on such short notice. Nathan, I’d like you to meet Craig Zimmerman.”
Craig stood up and offered his hand. “A pleasure. I’ve heard a lot about you and look forward to working with you”.
Perhaps seeing the confused look on Nathan’s face, John started to explain. “Craig here is the new director of the Immersion show. He’s still building his team, but everything should be ready in time for the first episode in 6 days. Isn’t that right, Craig?”
“Yes, I’m waiting for the last confirmations, but we should be ready to build a preliminary storyline based in the logs tomorrow, and then have the cutters in place before the video feed is ready. We will have to pull some long evenings to catch up now in the start, but as we get used to the work, we are confident this will turn out great.”
“I'm afraid I am a bit lost.” Nathan started. “I had a meeting with a George-something yesterday, and he gave me the impression that he was going to direct the show. Perhaps I missed something?”
“George Walton,” John confirmed. “Unfortunately, we had to let him go. George was hired based on availability more than merits, and perhaps we were a bit hasty and unclear in regard to our expectations of him, and him of us. As it turns out, there were some... creative differences that we couldn’t get past. Anyhow, Craig here was our original first pick, but he was busy with another project and unable to commit. Since George didn’t work out, we decided it would be worth it to buy him free of his other obligations, and now he’s here with us.”
“And happy to be here,” Craig added. “While I was briefed earlier, everything is still very fresh, but also very exciting. After all, we are creating media history. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?”
They took a small pause in the conversation as a waiter came over to take drink orders. Nathan briefly considered ordering a beer but decided instead to ask for a pot of coffee. He took the opportunity to sample some of the food while the other two made their own orders.
“So, I expect you also have some instruction for me, then?” asked Nathan when they were alone again.
“No, not really. The way I figure it, whatever you do, it is my job to make it exciting. Based on what John and others have told me of the world and you, I can’t imagine that will be very hard. If anything, you should instruct me.”
“Oh? How so?”
“Well, if you have any long terms plans or strategies or something like that which you don’t want us to show, so that others won't be able to take advantage of it. I realize that might not be the case all too often since everything will be shifted a week, but you never know.”
Nathan gave it some thought. “Now that you mention it, I guess I would prefer if you don’t show anyone my character creation or build in general.”
“We probably have to briefly show some of the character creation, but we should be able to do that without revealing any stats.” He looked over to John, who nodded. “Anything else, just let me know.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“I will, thanks.”
“So, how has the first day been? Eventful, I hope? What do you think of the world?” John enquired.
“The world is amazing. The realism is of the chart. I know you said it would seem real, but I didn’t realize just how real it would be. From the physics to the people, it’s like being transported to a different but similar world. A dangerous world, though. Compared to other games, the initial introduction to combat is very hard. I could easily have died, myself.”
“The situation you find yourself in as you first enter the game is based on your path. If you select a combat focused path –as I expect you did–, the game delivers what you asked for. If you go for crafting or something like that, the introduction will be very different.” John took a quick gulp from a large glass of juice and continued before anyone else could comment. “But you bring up a valid point. We have received several complains from players that have died – not just about the difficulty, but also the death penalty. The forums are filled with it. We are considering if we should make changes going forward, but we also don’t want to trivialize violence and death. It’s a game, yes, but considering how real it can be perceived, we want players to be aware of the risks associated with killing monsters. And the rewards will be the sweeter for it.”
“Will that not drive away some of the player base?” Nathan asked.
“Some of the traditional player base that are just focused on leveling, sure. But we aim so much wider than that. We want everyone to be able to enjoy the game, even if they just like hiking or fishing, and there are areas where they can do that without any risk. Just like with the technology we use to make it happen, only the imagination is the limit. We don’t know ourselves what is possible or not. We have created a sandbox with a certain number of rules, and we are eager to see how the players sculpt the world to their liking. For good or bad.” John was gesturing wildly as he explained, almost knocking over his glass in the process.
“And with your help, those not playing will still have the best seats in the house as they will be able to see the world being sculpted alongside you”, Craig added. “Sounds like a hell of a show to me.”
“Yeah, I think they’ll be entertained. I have some other questions, though,” Nathan said to John. “The NPC’s.”
“What about them?”
“Just as the world itself seems really realistic, so do the world’s inhabitants. Talking to them is almost like talking to the players. They are ignorant of the game meta, of course, but besides that their responses seem natural. But how?” Nathan asked perplexed.
John seemed really happy with the questions. “Ah, yes, the NPC’s behavior is another place where we are pushing the envelope. Although, just between us,” he leaned forward as if reveling a great secret, “we cheat a little.”
He leaned back again and let out a small laugh. “No, but seriously, I’ll tell you how we do it, but keep it to yourself. It’s like with magic, once you know the trick it’s no longer that impressive.”
John looked like he was about to say more, but instead he fished out a toast from one of the baskets, added some butter, and had a bite.
Craig, who hadn’t even known NPC behavior was a thing, was both curious and impatient by nature. As he watched John enjoy the toast, he could help himself. “Come on! You can’t keep us waiting like that. What’s the secret?”
One last bite, and John was ready to continue. “It’s a mix of things. A combination of different methods. The obvious one is a self-learning algorithm that evolves based on earlier interactions – not just for the individual NPCs, but for the NPC class. As an example, if you are speaking with a trader, the trader's responses will not just be based on what we have hardcoded or the trader's earlier interactions, but also the earlier interactions of all other traders. And not just what they say, but also how they say it and how they move when they say it. They do have their own personality and quirks as well. This functions as an overlay that can change or enhance some of their responses, but the majority of it comes from the general trader class.
“That is the basic part. Don’t get me wrong, though. There is nothing basic about it. The algorithm we use might be the best and most complete ever created, and no current game has got anything like it, but it is still not enough for our purposes. The trick to getting them to behave so lifelike is quite simple in comparison. The personal touch of actors! Already in the alpha phase of the development, we hired a bunch of actors and trained them to quickly be able to jump into any situation with minimal preparation and take over the role of an NPC. The actual NPC will stall for a bit while the actor gets up to speed, and then the actor will continue the interaction as naturally as possible. This is very useful for situations where the NPCs don’t have any historical data to rely on. The best part is that the algorithm analyzes how the actors act and can use that in future interactions. In the beginning we had to use actors for almost everything, but now... Now they can spend their time as unique NPC’s that are used to push the worldbuilding forward, while occasionally being a guard captain or a trainer, as needed.
“I am simplifying somewhat, as an NPC trader is not just a trader, but a combination of different characteristics –or tags- that together creates its personality. Age, sex, physicality, social standing, temperament and many other variables are all fused together to create what the players see.”
“Wow!” While Nathan didn’t necessarily understand the complexity of it all, he was still truly impressed by the explanation, and he’d seen the result firsthand. “That really sounds great. Your idea, I presume?”
“No, not at all.” John chuckled happily. “Sadly, I’m not able to contribute anything in those areas. The AI system is the brainchild of my genius colleague Dave Johnsen. One of many inspiring people here at Immersion Inc. You will probably both meet him later, but he’s been really busy these last couple of days as he is the top responsible for the game.”
Craig had followed John’s every word. “I, for one, am looking forward to meeting him, whenever he has time. And thanks for that great explanation. It sounds like Immersion really is a living breathing world. I can't wait to explore it further, even if it has to be through a screen for now.”
“Which reminds me,” said Nathan, “before I digressed from the whole conversation, I was supposed to tell you about my experience so far. Well, let me give you some details.”
As they continued to enjoy their breakfast, Nathan gave the two others a rundown of what he’d been doing so far, interspersed with some questions from Craig. Both Craig and John agreed that it sounded like he was off to a good start and was eager to find out what his next step would be.
Just before 8 AM, a darkhaired woman in her thirties walked up to the table and coughed lightly to get their attention. She smiled warmly at Nathan and Craig, before giving John an impatient stare. John immediately wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up.
“Sorry, Isabelle. Time flies in good company.” He apologized before addressing the others. “Thanks again for joining me. I really enjoyed this. Hopefully we can do it again soon, but as my assistant Isabella here often reminds me, there is always a meeting, and they are all urgent.”
He let out a sigh as he walked away. “I should really delegate some of this stuff.”
“You always say that, sir,” replied Isabella as they exited the restaurant, “yet, you never do”.
“Can’t start later than the boss, can we?” joked Craig as both he and Nathan also concluded the meal and got ready to leave. “Although I think we would have to work long hours to keep up with that guy.”
“Work? I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m just here to play games.”
Craig walked beside Nathan’s wheelchair as they headed for the exit. “Really? You must be good, then?”
“I don’t know about good, but I’ve been told I’m gone be famous, so that’s something.” They were all smiles as they walked.
“That is something!” confirmed Craig as they stopped outside. “But seriously, don’t think you need to take a lot of risks just to make an exciting show. As you said, it is a dangerous world, and I’d much rather show you picking carrots than having to show flashbacks of the first two days for a week in a row.”
“I’ll try, but honestly... Without some risk, what’s the point? I need adrenalin to feel truly alive, and earlier today, I had that feeling! And let me tell you, I haven't had that feeling for a long time. Not since...” he stopped and indicated his legs and wheelchair. “Well, not since this. I get you. This show is important, and I’ll do my best to deliver. But at the end of the day, I’m not playing this game for you or John. I’m playing it for me.”