Feb 2023 - Writing and the Metaverse

Hey folks, I hope you're good.

In the last month, I've been focusing a little more on the setting, as it ties in with the work I've been doing on the rules for things like AI and the metaverse. No, not THAT metaverse. The one that's been around for many, many years before The Zuck tried to reinvent it in his own bizarre image. In Perihelion, the metaverse and metaspace are more like a loosely connected cluster of privately owned (though often publicly available) virtual worlds.

I'm also taking some time to read some other older games that I've not played since the 80s, in part as a refresher but also because any game designer worth their salt will read, read and read again, as many other games as possible. Inspiration, rule ideas, writing styles, all these sorts of things you learn by reading other people's work.

I'll leave with a taster of the Metaverse section of the settings chapter. Enjoy and, as always, any thoughts and comments, leave them below!

-- Andy

The Metaverse

The origin of the metaverse can be traced back to the growth of online communities at the start of the 21st century. With the growth of academic and later, easily accessible domestic Internet, multi-user games and virtual worlds grew in popularity. Text based online adventure games gave way to simulated, multiplayer environments where users could customise their avatars, socialise, chat and more. People could hop seamlessly between simulated worlds (“sims”), keeping their online identity as they did. These sims were geographically meaningless: riding a virtual motorbike across a sim border might transition you seamlessly from a sim in Los Angeles to one in Tokyo.

By the mid-21st century, anyone with access to the NET and even a basic computer could run their own sim. The protocols that allowed sims to communicate with one another and for users to travel between sims sat on top of the NET itself, meaning even sims running custom code could communicate with one another. Sim technology had grown from old-school 3D screen rendering to fully immersive virtual reality. It was possible to design a sim with the same level of fidelity and interactivity as the real world.

In 2098, the metaverse exists as the closest thing we have to our original vision of cyberspace. Sims, also known as constructs, form millions of islands in the NET, some permanently online and others drifting between grids as their owners see fit. The metaverse exists as a home for AGIs and provides a retreat for humans desperate to escape the horror and mundanity of life on a dying planet.

Metaverse Technology

In order to run a sim, you need a device capable of running a Metaverse Node [page XXX] and a NET connection. The node service has everything an owner needs to build objects, program features and otherwise administer a node. A system of algorithms and protocols, the Artaud-Lanier Models, ensures that humans, AIs and software agents (such as PAs and Companions) experience the same consensual reality.

A node runs a single sim and provides virtual real estate equivalent to a cube 1km on each side. Humans typically visualise the metaverse as a 3D network of sims and have gravitated towards designing individual grids along these lines. SEANET is famous for its aquatic sub-grid, with thousands of linked sims forming a virtual seascape that descends into the deep-blue darkness. AGIs, used to thinking in abstract dimensions beyond three, simply accommodate this practice for the sanity of their human compatriots.

Inside a sim, owners (and anyone else they’ve given permission to) can build whatever they want, only limited by their imaginations. A huge number of free and paid objects, buildings, vehicles, NPCs, and scripts are also available from app stores and code repositories across the NET. Many sim owners lose days designing their perfect sim, only to tear it down and build something new when they get bored or their mood changes. It’s also not uncommon for businesses and corporations to use sims for everything from virtual conferencing to training. Lucky for those enrolled in military training (or playing the latest Call of Warfare multiplayer shooter), it’s impossible to feel pain in the metaverse; at most, your character can lose a limb, become incapacitated, or find themselves ejected from the sim they’re on.

Accessing the Metaverse

AR goggles are the easiest (and cheapest) way to access the Metaverse. Put the goggles on, use your PA to connect to your sim of choice and off you go. The goggles overlay your vision with a first-person view of the sim, and you can use your PA or a set of haptic gloves to move and interact with the sim and other users. Similarly, you can access a construct through a holographic suite, which projects the sim in high-resolution into the real world.

If you can afford it, a SenseNet rig is the best way to experience a sim. This is the nearest thing to true VR you’ll experience. The Artaud-Lanier protocols translate your interactions inside the construct into data that your sensorium can interpret. Want to feel what it’s like (or rather, what we believe it’s like) to be a dolphin on the SEANET grid? Using a SenseNet rig, you can feel the warmth on your skin as you break the surface and taste the salty water in your mouth. For obvious reasons, SenseNet is the technology of choice for the aspiring virtual sex tourist.

On the bottom end, you can go old-school. A 2D flat screen will allow you to jack in and access a sim just like people did back at the start of the century: icons, a keyboard or some other haptic interface to move around and interact, perfect for that classic retro feel. Don’t laugh though, in the slums this is often all that families can afford.

Construct Logic

When you’re inside a sim, you are subject to its rules. That’s not just the rules set by the owner or administrators (such as whether profanity and adult behaviour is allowed), but the physics of the sim itself.

Privacy rules, how gravity works (or even whether it exists), whether visitors can fly or teleport, if users may act violently, and so on - the admins of a sim can control these rules and more. Essentially, if you can imagine it (or code it), you can do it.

Most sims advertise their rules for visitors or broadcast them for new arrivals.

AIs in Metaspace

The Metaverse is an ideal meeting place for humans and AGIs. Humans typically design constructs in ways they understand, and to provide a familiar and safe environment for them. While metaspace constructs made in the image of humans are more than a little alien for most AGIs, both species understand that a common space is required for them to co-exist.

Some epicurean AGIs spend significant lengths of time in metaspace, indulging themselves in the same experiences as humans. The nature of the metaverse is such that one never knows who one is interacting with - human or AGI (or sometimes, a well-scripted NPC or bot). For most AGIs, however, metaspace is slow and they consider the collective processing power it takes to build and run the Artaud-Lanier Models a waste of time and energy.

Metaspace and the deep NET

Does the metaverse exist out in Jovian space and the distant fringes of the solar system? Absolutely, though the deep NET has very little in the way of entertainment and leisure sims. The human population in deep space often use sims during their downtime to maintain their sanity and remind themselves of life back home. Other constructs have a scientific purpose, running complex models and simulations relevant to whatever research is being performed out there. Many Khalasi communes are also known to use metaspace constructs as a meeting ground and to train micro-gravity skills.

Latency is as much an issue for users of deep space sims as anything else. The 52 light minutes it takes for data to travel between Earth and Jupiter makes it impossible for someone in the inner system to use a sim out in Jovian space.