Basic premise:

Players in a per­sist­ent vir­tual world inhabit two states — two par­al­lel lives.

When not act­ive in the world, play­ers take on the role of NPCs, their bod­ies under the con­trol of basic AI routines that go about daily life in any of the towns and vil­lages that scat­ter the world. The ful­fil the roles of mem­bers of a com­munity — under­tak­ing pro­duc­tion, vend­ing, civic duties that play­ers would for the most part find unsatisfying.

When a player becomes act­ive in the world their char­ac­ter under­goes a trans­form­a­tion from their mundane life into an agent for change in the world. It’s the player’s choice what form this agency takes — they could choose to ful­fil their role in a soci­ety act­ively under­tak­ing tasks that the game’s AI would oth­er­wise per­form — or they can act out an altern­at­ive role bey­ond the bound­ar­ies of nor­mal life and fol­low the course of hero’s jour­ney that the game allows for.

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