Finally, the day has arrived. Launch day for the most awaited VRMMO in history. The Adaptive Statistic Dungeon Crawling Adventure, or, as the fans have quickly decided to unofficially call it, "Dungeon Quest."
The hardware was shipped to my apartment earlier this week. It's been set up for three days while I wait for launch day. And I feel like I've been waiting for forever. Dungeon Quest is more than just a video game. It's a collaboration between the biggest names in gaming, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality in the modern world, with development teams pulled from universities across the globe. Four years of development, nine months of original beta testing, and then the marketing campaign that ensured every person on the planet knew it was coming. The server has been load tested to ensure that over a billion users can log in concurrently, and hundreds of millions of game gear have been purchased and loaded with software in anticipation.
At the core of Dungeon Quest is the Adaptive Statistics system, or Adaptive Stats for short. Users create characters, but as they show their own personal skill, the game awards them with status upgrades. Feats of strength, intelligence, or perception are rewarded with increases in corresponding statistics.
But it's more than that.
Adaptive Stats started out as just rewarding players for successfully doing things repeatedly that would usually require higher stats - adapting, as it were, to their naturally higher skills. In this way scientists would eventually have characters with higher INT, and sprinters would develop higher AGI based on their real-life selves.
Behind all that is an Artificial Intelligence that was grown specifically to run Dungeon Quest. During the initial design phase, programmers and designers created content, awarded status upgrades, and administered the game, with the AI watching, learning, growing. But as beta testing progressed, more and more of the administrative load was given to the AI, until it assumed 100% of all design and administrative functions. With the exception of the rare choices of a 24/7 emergency team with full override power, Dungeon Quest is now a living, breathing game designed by an AI that promises evolving content, interactive quests, and infinite meaningful progression in a spectacular fantasy world where everything matters. And Adaptive Stats isn't just stats anymore. The game itself creates new content, new rules, new stories, and new abilities based on player interactions with each other and NPC's (non-player characters)... which means a constantly evolving game world that everyone can affect and change. For full launch, the game has completely reset. Everything is new. Not even the programmers know what will happen next, which means that almost anything could happen.
Dungeon Quest is also the culmination of social innovation. With custom hardware that allows full-dive interaction by hot wiring the brain, development was a joint collaboration between universities and researchers worldwide. In exchange for allowing free public access to specifications for the equipment, the sponsoring company reaped the benefits of crowdsourcing for both their hardware and AI. By the time an actual launch date was in sight, efficient contracts to produce the hardware and government sponsorships for the devices convinced the makers to turn Dungeon Quest into a public service. Buy the hardware, and you can play the game forever, for free. The influx of orders for hardware quickly escalated, and the original launch date was pushed back until every single order could be completed. Philanthropists ordered sets for orphanages and hospitals, others set up systems with embedded internet access in slums and centers of poverty. Supercomputers to support the AI hosting universal servers were built in universities all over the world, who benefit by using any spare processing power in their computing labs. And the extra months gave the AI time to create and run the world, "developing historical events and culture," without players to muck about.
And it's all coming together today. It may not be a national holiday, but many businesses have told their employees to take the day off. My family business bought a game gear for each full-time employee and gave them the day off even though it would normally end before the launch. In a few minutes, at 12:00 UTC, the game will launch for anyone who has a connection and a set of gear.
It's only 5 minutes until then.
The game gear has minimal function without being connected. Users can prepare by creating their avatar in advance - I've already made mine - but beyond that there isn't anything else. Since the game is expected to shift and change over time, perhaps even quickly, there aren't manuals. Not even the beta testers know what it will look like. There will probably be similarities though, at least at first, and the desire to get ahead means there is an absolutely massive wiki and crazy forum populated by beta testers and AI professors, according to my brother and best friend. I've avoided both because I want to experience the wonder of Dungeon Quest for the first time myself.
My avatar's name is Gabe. He's a human male and is 5'8" - about my height, with a build similar to when I consistently work out at the gym. Well, maybe a bit nicer. Haha. Blue eyes, dirty blond hair, and a smile that makes me smile. I left him with my own birthmarks - I went in for a body scan to use as a template because I wanted to feel myself as much as possible.
2 minutes left.
I slip the gear over my head and check the connection.
Neural connection: 97% efficiency Internet connection: STABLE, Ping: 352μs
Avatar complete
Engage
I join millions of people across the world watching a countdown timer. Counting down to a new world, a new existence, a new everything.
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I wonder what this world will be like. If I'll be able to really make a difference somehow.
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1
My consciousness of the outside world fades and the familiar logo of Dungeon Quest appears and disappears.
Dungeon Quest Logo [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1092483314847330346/1100082616847302776/konacj_logo_for_VR_MMORPG_dungeon-crawling_game_with_vast_open__a4a47642-1a86-4f98-a0fd-6dbd4844756f.png]
It's begun.
--
Suddenly I am standing in a deep blue... space? In a circle around me are shining silver outlines - weapons of every shape and size. There are swords, daggers, hammers, bows, shields, magical staves and wands. I know that Dungeon Quest was originally based on traditional RPG's with monster battling as a core mechanic... but did I wander into some kind of war game?
Silvery weapons across a blue sky [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1092483314847330346/1100085906578354196/konacj_hundreds_of_ethereal_silver_weapons_including_bows_stave_8f72578b-2e27-43e2-9758-738a35d2cd90.png]
I guess I can learn magic. But as I reach for the wand, a blue box pops up in my vision.
Choose starting combat proficiency: Wand? (Not final decision)
My hand jerks back involuntarily. No. I'm not looking for combat proficiency, even temporarily.
I reach for a cool-looking wizard staff.
Choose starting combat proficiency: Staff? (Not final decision)
Not the staff either then. The shield next to it is a combat weapon too.
This is getting old, and the fact that all of these are weapons makes me not really want to pick up any of them. But maybe there's an exception to the rule? I touch each weapon one by one; every time, the familiar dialog box appears in my vision and I reject the associated combat proficiency.
*sigh*
Yeah, every single thing here is a weapon. Even the hands are
Choose starting combat proficiency: Unarmed? (Not final decision)
I look for a way out, but the only things around me are weapons. No exit or even a menu or status screen. Apparently everyone in Dungeon Quest is expected to be able to fight... and choose a starting weapon. I force log out, pull the headset off, and lie in bed wondering what I should do.
It's not something new. I've faced this before, and I'm actually sort of excited to see what comes next.
I mean, when it comes to games, I'm a pacifist. People give me grief about it. But there are people who play naked runs, or itemless runs, or speed runs of games across the world. I'm just always a pacifist. I do what I want, ok?
--
The realization that pacifism in a game was an option actually happened when I was a kid. I still remember it clearly. We were going on a road trip to visit my grandparents, and I had the brilliant idea to bring along character creation sheets from a popular pen-and-paper role playing game so we could play in the car as a family. I had always been interested in playing, to the point that I read dozens of monster manuals and instruction guides... but never had anyone who had the desire or time to play with me. This trip would be different. I had 6 hours, so there would be plenty of time. And I tried my hardest to talk up the experience so everyone would play.
So we did it. After a short explanation, each person chose their race, their role, rolled dice and discussed stuff to figure out their stats, and then we set out on an adventure.
It took us an hour to set up our characters and gear up for our first quest. Pulling the suggested quest dungeon and monsters from an online site, we were right on schedule as we walked into a mad scientist's lab. On queue, he laughed and began attacking us, and our characters went into battle formation.
And then Mom spoke.
"Wait. Why is he attacking us? Is there something wrong that we can help with?"
My little brother tried to explain that it was part of the story - the mad scientist attacks you and you defeat him to move on - but something clicked inside my head.
Yes, his name was "mad scientist." Yes, he was a "monster" I had found in an online guide, complete with attacks, stats, and likely inventory drop items.
But that didn't force us to attack him. Here in this role-playing game, I had automatically accepted the monsterization of someone... without even questioning why.
The game ended as soon as it started. In retrospect, an excellent dungeon master probably would have been able to make the game fun for a car full of pacifists. I was neither at the time, but the latter was very soon to change and make a difference in my life forever. In all honesty, I doubt my mother remembers the experience. But it has stuck with me. I learned there was another way to play games. One that required a lot more than point & click or hack & slash. So you fought the final boss and won? Cool. I fought the boss without a weapon equipped and still won. Or I convinced all his subordinates to join in a coup and won by default. Or I healed his sick daughter and helped him go through a life changing event that allowed me access to his power without even needing to fight.
But video games are sometimes different.
Most video games have experience points which are awarded upon killing something. You kill, you get rewards... and the stronger the monster you kill, the greater the rewards.
But those "monsters" are often extremely social creatures. They live in specific areas, with others of the same kind, sometimes in families. Games do a great job at glossing over the fact that monsters are part of an ecosystem that can support life... but since that day it's always come to mind.
So, in games, I'm a pacifist.
Like a real pacifist. To the point that... well:.. many games I just can't play. Or if I play them, it's in a truly broken ultra-hardcore way. Like trying to defeat the final boss after only ever picking up shields and doing perfectly timed shield blocks.
...so what's gonna happen now? This game is different. At least that's what it's supposed to be. Dungeon Quest was built for me. Perfectly for me, Move over, basic gamers and monster slashers. It's time for the Pacifist to play.
--
My phone vibrates slightly on the desk. I check and it's a notification from the in-game app. Since the game happens in randomly accelerated real-time, it can be useful to connect with other people while they're in the real world. I had two friend requests, from user IDs that were probably my little brother and best friend. We each bought the gear and the game, and my user ID, like theirs, was always the same for each game I played.
I accepted the friend request from each of them.
"Where are you at? What did you choose?"
That was the message from my little brother. No message from my best friend; he prefers playing on his own until he gets the hang of things... and then playing with others once he's there.
I slide the headgear back on and re-enter the world of blue swirling weapons.
"Just made a character. Haven't chosen yet."
"Well, hurry up! Join my party and come to the Tutorial with me!"
layzor259 has invited you to join his party. ACCEPT / REJECT
A screen pops up and asks if I want to join my brother's party. I accept, and the upper left part of my vision gains another status bar - it must be my brother's life.
Then another screen pops up, the weapons still slowly rotating around me.
Your party member layzor259 is in the waiting room of a Special Instanced Dungeon. You may teleport to him. Enter Tutorial Dungeon
I wonder...
I click to enter, and the room goes black.