The excitement had reached a fever pitch. It was hard not to get swept up in the excitement, after all this meant that lives were going to change and the fact that an almost if not third world country like Nigeria was going to be Invested into the list of approved countries for online virtual reality gameplay was quite a bit deal. It was like independence, and for those of us who have followed the virtual reality gaming scene for years on end it very well might be.
But then again as far as online games went, only one game truly mattered, and that’s was [Paths Of Divinity: Revelations]. The game was actually a sequel to the first path of divinity game; Genesis. It wasn’t really accepted worldwide the first time as the game had been seen as nothing more than religious propaganda, and to a certain extent it was. But even with that, Genesis had made quite a lot of money and it was a single player RPG with Limited multiplayer functions. But it set the ground work for what would later come to be it’s overly ambitious sequel.
So that’s why I’m here, standing in front of a counter with my 13 month old son in a carrier in front of my chest. He’s been quite well behaved in the one hour that we have spent in line waiting for our turn to get to the counter, I could have left him at home but… his mom and I were no longer on speaking terms, even if we were living in the same house. I shook my head and looked down on him with a smile as I passed on my National Identity card to the man behind the counter. He looked up and smiled back with eyes that were already drooping. I smiled, he was quite tired from the look of things.
“Mr. Orion Afu.” The man behind the counter called out to me as I raised my head up. I didn’t reply, but blinked enough to let him know he had my attention.
“You’re in the system as a Diamond lottery winner, do you have the winning code?” he asked me, as a wave of mummurs broke out from behind me.
It was understandable, about a year ago Romantic; the company responsible for the Paths Of Divinity games, announced that five African countries would be allowed to join the game. It was the way Romantic made updates to the game, by adding more countries into the game and opening up a whole slew of quest chains, lore, skills, classes, dungeons, and more levels to the game itself. But seeing as most African countries, especially three of the five that had been chosen weren’t really the kind where it’s average citizen could afford the VR-RIG required for the game, a 5000 player lottery was implemented with prizes from bronze all the way to Diamond. The bronze winners would be 3000 out of each countries, winning a basic VR-Headset. 1500 get the silver prize of a headset and three month free subscription for the game. 400 get the gold prize of a full-dive rig, three months subscription and a small house in-game. 90 winners will get the platinum grade with a Dive-Pod rig, five months subscription, a house and three acres of land in-game, a gold grade lottery ticket and a 1000 gold coins.
10 people get the diamond lottery of which for some mysterious and strange reason I’m one of them. I only bought the basic lottery ticket almost but not quite more than a year ago. In fact I bought the damn thing the day Leon was born. Kind of like my way of celebrating the birth of my totally unexpected but still welcomed surprise son. At the time I was going through a rough patch and I absolutely wasn’t ready for fatherhood. Leon changed everything as his birth brought me much more luck than I would have expected, enough for us to move into a better one-bedroom apartment from the self contain we lived in and open a small stall for his mom to run a business and help us survive… a decision I have now come to regret.
“As a diamond Lottery winner, one of the ten in Nigeria, you get a full-dive stasis pod with parental and disability features, the return of the money used to purchase the diamond lottery ticket with a 200% bonus added on top of it. A full year’s subscription to [Paths Of Divinity: Revelations] online. A choice of a unique path immediately you start the game, a diamond Lottery in-game ticket, a manor with just about 10 hectares of land, and 10,000 gold coins. You can have the pod delivered and set up within the next 2 hours, just in time for the launch in three hours. Congratulations sir.”
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I was besides myself with excitement, I’ve been sleeping on the couch in the living room of our one bedroom apartment for a few months now. There was enough space there for the rig and since they would be putting it up in under two hours I at least have a few hours of play to myself. Especially since said rig has parental features in it, I made arrangements as I left the queue, refusing any attempt at an interview. I had a game to play, especially when you consider I also had money to make from playing it. There was no time to dawdle, real fame and fortune awaits.
Thankfully I could follow Romantic’s moving truck as I don't have to take the metro back home to Mararaba. That was on the other end of the capital, technically it wasn’t even a town of the capital but the final town of the next state. But it was hard to differentiate and Mararaba was sometimes addressed as being in Abuja rather than Nasarawa. It was about 11 am now, it will take 40 minutes or there about to get home from the the company’s headquarters in Gwarimpa. But that’s if we did not get caught in a traffic jam, but who knows I’m hoping for the best.
I didn’t like to talk, it’s not as if I don’t talk or I was a mute, it’s just that; the part of your brain that made you want to reply or give answers to a question was a bit slow for me. Not that my words slurred or I stammered or whatever, I just always, not sometimes, always felt too lazy to reply. The doctors my parents took me too said I was autistic, I say they're stupid. I functioned just fine thank you very much, I just didn’t see a reason why I had to talk all the time.
But I was excited enough to make small talk with the driver and his partner. They asked a lot of questions, and I tried my best to answer them all. Leon slept through most of it, but he woke up once and I had to feed him before he passed out soon after. He was a year old but he still pretty much slept like he was a few month old, he slept a lot, ate a lot and pooped a lot. But every moment with him was a blessing in and out of itself.
As we left the higrise buildings of the capital and into the less than stellar ghettos of Nyanya and Mararaba after it, my eyes landed on a billboard advertising Paths Of Divinity Revelations Online. It took my mind off the journey as I thought about what to expect from the game that has been running for the last 5 years and still remains on top up until now.
The first game was based on the book of Genesis from the bible, it was a multiplayer game that has you trying to survive getting thrown out of Eden. It was a survival game, with Resource gathering, dungeon diving and strategy as you will most definitely find yourself leading NPC’s to battle against the onslaught of the fallen angels turned demons. The lore and most of the storyline didn’t sit well with a lot of people. In a world that was now mostly atheist, things like religion was now looked on as a tabboo the way people used to look at racism, rape, murder, gays and gossip. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but you no longer heard evangelists preaching the gospel on the streets.
It’s better Romantic and the game did things a little differently. This time it went after the last and final book in the bible… Revelations. A demonic apocalypse in a world that suddenly became meshed with dozens of others, allowing the propagation of races. But not the kinds from fantasy… rather the kinds that come from History and lore. So just like the first game you had Resource gathering, dungeon diving and strategy against hordes of demons attacking villages, towns, cities or entire kingdoms. Except of course what you now have to start facing are not just the biblical demons and monsters, but those from every other religion in existence.
The Paths and skills in the game were so varied and so spread to other religions and not just the Christianity angle the first game focused on. It calmed a lot of naysayers and brought even more traffic to the game as each day brought a new story with NPC’s so real and fleshed out they were no different from real people. And the thing about this game was that it’s endgame content had already been revealed and it was laying right in front of anyone to go complete it.
“We’re here sir.” The driver said to me as I looked up to notice we were in front of the gate of my apartment complex, I’m surprised; I was lost in thought for that long, but I was home, let’s get this show on the road.