Soul Bound

1            Soul Bound

1.1          Finding her Feet

1.1.4        An Intriguing City

1.1.4.11     Rebel with a cause

A few minutes later, resting in a ruin near a well, Bulgaria started speaking:

{Thank you for being so patient with me. Get comfortable, this will take a while.}

{Initially, this game and the problems within it seem very different from those in arlife. Undead pirates, magic artifact smuggling, nobles with swords in Renaissance clothing.}

{But look around you. There are also many similarities. Poverty. Inequality. Oppression. Exploitation. Greed, fear, anger and corruption. Lack of hope.}

{That’s unsurprising. The people creating this game drew upon their experiences of arlife and past human history, when trying to make the situations in the game relatable for their players.}

{There’s an unintended consequence of this. It means that habits learned here, solutions that work here, can affect how people behave back in arlife. Tell me, have any of you had an experience here that made you think ‘I want to try that back in arlife’ ?}

Kafana: {I experiment a bit more with my cooking.}

Tomsk: {I used a move from fighting the bandits in a stunt.}

{What if we could get the world’s population to bring more back from velife than just cooking skills? What if we could get them to bring back a new approach to solving problems?}

{Our arlife world is not a happy world. Due to advances in technology, most of the jobs that used to be done by humans can now be done more cheaply by robots and expert systems. We can’t turn back time on that. We can only adapt. And different areas of the world have tried different approaches to the resulting unemployment.}

{Northern European Union makes employers pay a 90% or higher punitive tax on salaries paid to people who work more than 16 hours a week. They pay everyone a pretty good universal income.}

{Little Britain has reverted to an aristocratic model where anyone in employment will have up to a dozen personal servants acting as cooks, nannies and butlers. Those dismissed from their positions usually end up starving or in robot-supervised work houses.}

{Southern Europe is nominally controlled by a succession of incompetent populist governments who promise cake tomorrow but fail to deliver anything but the blood of scape goats. A few successful companies remain, inside gated enclaves, but most have moved abroad.}

{America has gone in the direction of a full blown corporate state, with zero welfare. Need food or medicine and can’t afford it? Sign up for medical experimentation, indenture yourself or become a contestant in Battlematch.}

{The Common Heritage Belt covering China, Russia, and much more, bans the use of robots in farming and certain other professions. They are large, ruthless and expansionist enough to absorb the inefficiency. The average standard of living is the highest in the world, and they are rigorous about using examinations to give equal opportunity to bright children of poor parents; but it comes at the cost of any personal liberty or privacy.}

{And so on. The point being that unemployment is a problem that all of them have had to adapt to, and the stress of adapting has led, at the moment, mainly to societies that have high levels of inequality and poor social mobility. And because of the ruthless use of surveillance and expert system controlled mobile weapon platforms, it seems nearly impossible for the disadvantaged section of the population to do anything to change that state of affairs. They see their choice as fighting, probably futile fighting, or living an unfulfilling life, good to neither themselves or others.}

{We, as Wombles, believe in looking for third options. Each of you has done that in your personal lives, in different ways. Alderney, you’ve helped set up sea steadings where people can live independent of government control. Bungo, you’ve worked on similar land-based projects. Wellington, you’ve worked tirelessly to set up systems enabling people in China to break free from surveillance. Tomsk, you’ve used earnings from your job to give to charities supporting civil liberties. Kafana, you’ve chosen to live in an area that is nearly robot free. You all see the problem. You all know how to look for solutions.}

{But passing on that sight, that knowledge, is a problem. Few people will read more than a few paragraphs or listen to hour long lectures. They’re habituated to having their information chopped into small pieces and candy coated in entertainment.}

{The adage goes “Show, don't tell”. What’s needed isn’t to tell people, yet again, to think outside the box. What’s needed is to show them how, show them it works, and make it entertaining. Draw them in. Embed it into an ongoing live narrative that will bring them back time and again to discover ‘what happened this week?’.}

{To show them, in an environment that is similar enough to arlife that the approach to finding solutions in one will have obvious applications to the other, and yet is different enough that people will be entertained rather than feel they’re being lectured to.}

{An environment like this one.} Bulgaria gestured to the buildings around them.

{To show them you also need a group of people, so you see plan formation as a process not something that pops whole from a superhero’s head. People who are fun, who get on with each other, who have the skills to find outside the box solutions and put them into practice effectively.}

{People like you.}

{A few months ago, while this game was still in Beta, I happened to speak with Tomsk who was doing motion capture for XperiSense and he told me about how flexible the questing structure was going to be and how realistic the NPCs were. I realised this might be the opportunity I’d been seeking, and I contacted Wellington and Alderney to make certain preparations. They put up a site on part of the net that governments can’t block access to, where we can distribute sense record files from, and where we can host discussion forums that can be connected to untraceably. And they also created tiaras for us all, that use the same non-standard communication route, to keep our identities safe. Because, if we do this right, we are going to disturb the vested interests and some of them would find it convenient to quietly dispose of us.}

{But hopefully, that won’t become apparent for quite a while. The plan is to just be a bunch of popular gamers sharing their game play experience who are a bit different in their approach. We don’t make any reference to arlife politics. We stay purely in-character, and let the people rooting for us learn from us.}

Wellington: {Why do you believe we can achieve those sort of viewing figures? Many try, and the odds are low.}

Bulgaria: {This world, Covob, has just opened; the guilds haven’t moved in yet and there’s still time to get a first-mover advantage. If we do interesting stuff over the next few days, we set people’s expectations of what the game can be like. Right now, there’s a lot of new people out there searching for “How do I play Soul Bound?”}

Bulgaria: {This isn’t without risk. Even arlife risk to your persons. But it is a chance to change the world. Are you with me?}

Tomsk: {You have my sword.}

Alderney: {My bow.}

Bungo: {And my axe}

Kafana, exasperated: {Gamers!} then, more gently {Yes, Bulgaria my teacher, we are with you. All the way.}

Wellington: {Bungo, you don’t even have an axe. And of course, I said yes months ago, when we first discussed this. I endorse Bulgaria’s plan. I think it has a 40% chance of achieving at least some good. Which is better than any other option I’m aware of.}

Kafana: {So who is going to be the main viewpoint character? Tomsk, Bungo or Alderney? I’d vote Alderney, I think.}

Bungo: {I vote Kafana.}

Kafana: {My name’s not on the list.}

Alderney: {Kafana.}

Kafana: {Alderney, you betrayer. You owe me for posting that recording just now. I demand you change your vote.}

Wellington: {Kafana, obviously. She’s the logical choice.}

Kafana: {No. I don’t like it.}

Bulgaria: {Kafana, you are the only possible choice. This will not work without you.}

Kafana: {What? Why?}

Tomsk: {It is your emotions, dearest one. I’ve viewed the Flash Gordon scene from all 6 recordings that Alderney received. Yours is leagues ahead of the others. You immerse yourself in this reality, in a way that the rest of us do not. Perhaps because this is your first modern experience of velife. Your concern for NPCs is sincere. In a world where people want to escape from arlife, you’re an addiction. You get totally into role. You always have.}