"It's raining cats and dogs today, I wonder if there was any warning issued".
"Sir, I did checked news this morning, and there weren't any serious warnings being issued nor they predicted any floods, although I have an app that notifies me immediately of weather department issuing any serious ones, I'll inform you at once and drive you home."
Takeshi Sakata was a 26 years old tech entrepreneur. He was a Japanese immigrant currently living in Austin, Texas in United States of America. He had just founded a game development start up there.
"Sir, we have reached your office"
"Thank you Jacob, please inform me if there is any weather warnings, I don't want to get stuck in office".
"Of course I will."
Jacob drops Takeshi in front of Takeshi's office and drives off towards the parking lot. While Takeshi walks towards his office.
Takeshi was not new to gaming industry. In fact the initial investment for the start up came from selling an old game he developed to S-box making him a millionaire in the process.
Well he didn't technically "developed" the game. He was involved in it's concept and storyline. Most of the work was done by engineers who he hired with financial help, or an "interest free loan" from his multi millionaire father.
After success of this game his father as a gift forgave the loan his son took.
Takeshi may have it easy in life, but he recognized that he comes from a place of privilege. He never took credit for work other people did. He was also not some idiot, he was actually a very productive and a competent manager. He had a knack for business. He was also good in school, performed good in Academics and was good in math too. He completed his MBA from University of Hong Kong while working on this game instead of working in his dad's company. Although he still ended up taking interests free loan from his dad, who then didn't even asked to pay him back.
Takeshi also enjoyed VR MMORPG games as well as FPS settings in these games. He played them regularly. Which was the reason why he was able to recognize difference in what market needed and what was available, thus was able to make a successful game.
There were many factors which motivated him to leave his home country.
He decided to move to USA from Japan for cheap high skilled labor.
US also had an easy migration policy which meant if he is unable to find skilled labor he can always hire someone from India or China and bring them to US more easily.
It was in general a capitalist friendly country with numerous ways to evade taxes. Most of buyers of his previous game were US citizens, and the new game being developed had US players in mind as target market.
Takeshi's company has a total of 31 employees who were basically coders, game design experts, graphic designers, and a sound artist etc. They were working on a game depicting WW3, which luckily hasn't happened yet.
As soon as Takeshi walked into the office he is greeted by two employees who were about to leave. They greeted him in a Japanese manner, while bowing. He thought to himself if they were mocking him.
Damn, this flexible working hours culture, if these guys were in Japan..., Takeshi thought to himself.
He greeted them back but immediately got hold of them and started asking whether they have completed the gun design of M16 and fixed all the bugs.
The employees knew that their day was ruined.
"The weapon mechanics are working fine but we are experiencing some glitches".
"What kind of glitches?"
"We are unable to properly make graphics respond to backend, there is a delay, and it becomes very noticeable as the physical structure is in sync with backend. Both sound and graphics have an issue".
"Well then that means most of the work is done, I'll look into how good the weapon is performing, you can leave, enjoy sleeping in morning".
Takeshi loved learning knew things and now after working for 5 years in game development, knew basic technical terminology. He knew enough that if backend was working and is in sync with physical structure most of the work is done. He was not a coder after all, his field of expertise was finance, and maybe suggesting games to someone.
Both employees immediately vanishes before he could ask them anything else, they were afraid if he gave them some other task.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Takeshi was indeed a business man. He didn't treated his employees too badly, but he still made them worked pretty hard. It was not because he was Japanese, he still didn't wanted to overwork them to a point where they start to despise their job. Plus Takeshi actually gave out a lot of bonuses throughout year as well as holidays which was uncommon for a fairly small company, very uncommon in Japan.
Takeshi then goes into his cabin wears the VR.
"Virtual Shell loading", a voice said.
"Please enter username and password".
========================================================
The new generation of VR had really revolutionized gaming industry. He thought to himself.
AI had been a very controversial technology from the beginning of 21st century. Many experts predicts that if this technology is not restricted and regulated, it can one day enslave entire humanity.
After public pressure, governments around the world had put heavy regulations on it's research, testing and application to prevent it from accidentally leaking into the internet. Which can be disastrous as AI could do God know what. But this didn't stopped capitalism to play with it. Although, love capitalism or not, it was able to find AI's application in gaming industry in a somewhat safe way.
S-Box introduced a 7 layer system for application of AI in VR gaming industry. It was approved by US govt. to be used in US 15 years ago. There were also a lot other benefits to this 7 layer networking system.
Generally networking is done based on two models, OSI with 7 layers, TCP/IP with 5 layers.
7 layers system that S-Box uses is basically a modification of TCP/IP system. It's layers are as follows. The first 5 layers of this 7 layer system is the same as TCP/IP layer. The above two layers are Virtual Shell layer and a User Interface layer.
Basically VS offers a shell that can contain any leaks from the AI who might try to act smart. Although many engineers believed that this is not a 100% secure system.
AI was important in VR games for lots of reasons. Dialogue trees for NPC's, changing environment when players interact with it.
Designing games like these was not an easy and cannot be done by a team of 31 people, AI makes things easier as it can take care of a lot of technical issues that arrives when players interact with the world especially in open world environments with multiple endings, fixing everything so it made sense with the physics of the world. AI basically managed the entire game world.
AI could also run in UI, a layer deeper then VS, as per requirements of a particular game. Developers could make their own AI which can run on 5 layers in UI layer. The game can have one AI managing the entire world, multiple AI's, multiple AI's on multiple virtual machines interacting with each other through socket programming.
A developer could edit code in real time while in the game and see the changes then and there as the code in the game is running on the general 5 layer TCP/IP. So developer doesn't need to worry about entire world crashing because of some error in the code. The world is somewhat separate from the objects in it.
AI required a lot of memory and even now heaviest cutting edge games don't run multiple AI's in UI, we haven't achieved neither that level of hardware, nor developed code efficient enough to do so. Right now all the games only have one AI managing the entire world. It's easier giving NPC same AI and a dialogue tree for some conversation instead of providing an AI for each. Plus AI is not complex enough to be able to hold human level conversation. After talking to a very realistic NPC for more than 2 minutes one will realize that it's an AI.
Actual game code is written as well as compiled in UI layer. UI is basically the game world.
The players as well as developers still needs a console to interact with UI beyond physical interactions. This console could be a general console provided by VS, or some customized console developed for a particular game.
One can have any preferred console, usually people choose a smart watch, the choice had to be made before going into any game, i.e. while sitting in a lobby in VS. Upon entering UI of any game a dedicated chip is embedded in players avatar's upper neck or some important body part if they don't have a humanoid body. Now if they attempt taking it out they have to die.
Reason being that this chip basically keeps a connection to VS layer. If the player is able to take it out and walk freely, they won't be able to connect to VS layer, log out or chat with people outside of the game UI like their friends who are sitting in VS. Now the player's only option is to die to walk out of the game, since a logout signal cannot be sent. When Avatar dies in a game, the player automatically comes back to a VS lobby from where he/she can enter the game again.
The chip is not meant for player to play with. But there is no danger if anything happens to it, all player needs to do is to kill himself/herself in game world and get logged out. It's that easy.
This chip also allows to monitor activity of the player within the game, so as to make sure they don't go around either bullying other players, or raping them or attempting as such unethical actions in games they aren't allowed to do so.
In fact there are also heavy government regulation of what is allowed in the game to stop this kind of virtual rape of another player. There are heavy ethics regulations on games which parents across the world managed to pass as bills after themselves enjoying unregulated games.
There are also heavy regulations on what can be portrayed in the game. Like one cannot play in favor of some genocidal maniac or as one. Games cannot portray gore, although splash of blood is allowed. Players cannot experience any pain, only like a small shock as someone hits the body. Game must have to remove NPC and other players dead bodies after 10 minutes. Sex is allowed, not rape, including NPCs. NPC not made to have sexual contact, won't have necessary graphics to do so. Only way nudity can be portrayed is when NPC is meant to be portrayed as such, otherwise their bodies has to be just blurred out if clothes are taken off of them, better if one keeps clothes attached as if it was their skin. No torture allowed of not just other players but NPCs. Players by default has their bodies blurred out, and can view their virtual bodies naked only when a specific dedicated sex scene arrives.
Although Takeshi kind of agreed with these regulations.
Right now there is a cut throat competition between two companies that control this 7 layer networking system. One of them is S-box.
Takeshi's avatar in VS is a 6.1 feet silver hair silver eyes man, with athletically muscular body. The avatar looks as if he was in his early 20s. Young but not like a teenager. He looked like an adult.
Another benefit of VS is that S-Box has introduced some convenience to players as well as developers. S-Box provides developer tools and libraries in VS for developing UI of the game as well as AI's. Developer can have partnership with S-Box, so players of the game can just walk into a game with their avatar's data without needing to sign up and setting up avatar each time they play a new game.
Avatar's may change graphics in accordance with the game's graphics but then AI will change their looks so they look closest to their Shell Avatars.
Takeshi then requests to walk in the game they were developing through his console. His vision now only have the word "Loading" written on it. Which disappeared soon enough.
"Let me check that weapon these guys were working on."
Takeshi's avatar was wearing a military officers uniform, dark navy blue in color, with white shirt and matte black tie. He was also wearing boots. It was a ceremonial navy uniform.
He looks at his watch, a holographic screen appears, he navigates it with his mind until M16 appears. He put his hand across hologram, and pulls out the gun.
His console was basically a smart watch that conjures a hologram, which had a call to VS lobby button, logout button, email button, a notepad for taking notes in it. It had inventory button which opened inventory, which had list of all objects he can pull out.
Almost all the weapons were actually complete, all the guns, tanks, anti tank missiles, helicopters. The M16 gun wasn't, the guy responsible for developing these range semi automatic rifles quit his job which left the team behind schedule. Most of the rifles are complete. AR15 variants like HK416, AK47 variants were the one last to complete. M16 is still not completed yet. Apart from few more minor gun, everything was there.
"The shooting is correct, but I feel recoil before the guns graphics depicts it."
As soon as he attempts log out, his vision again goes blank with some words appearing.
"Logging Out".
After showing logging out for some reason it kept saying "Error While Logging Out", "Session Failed", "Reattempting To Logout". Then suddenly he felt a sharp pain at the back of his neck, suddenly now there is nothing in his vision, just darkness and excruciating pain in his neck and head like someone is driving a nail inside his head. He opens is mouth but nothing comes out of it. His brain was no longer working, it was just experiencing pain and he was no longer aware of anything.
"H...h...help", and then he fell down unconscious.