by Liam Hogan
Gravestones stretch to the hazy distance. I read one, then another, and then, disbelieving, a third. Blink at the trees that dot and shape the cemetery, forming arcs and avenues, a spiderweb of green spreading to the horizon. Trees that, here in the centre, are proud and tall, gently waving in the breeze, dappling weathered graves with shade, but which grow shorter and thinner the further out you go, in each and every direction. They’re saplings, mere twigs at the limits, just as the tombstones out there, sparkling in the sun, are lichen free.
I read more inscriptions as we walk. Shaking my head, I turn to the silvery avatar whose pace is set by mine. “General Thadeaus?”
The date of birth, the date of death, are carved on every stone, the name always the same. How many millions are there? None of them, not even those up on the wooded hill, are more than five years old. For most, a date alone isn’t enough to set them apart. It’s the elapsed hours and minutes that show how long the despotic General lived. How long before Thadeaus, the rebellious leader of a military coup, the tyrant in waiting, the scenery-chewing bad guy, was defeated.
The completely fictional, AI-generated opponent. From the award-winning, first-person, VR shooter, Blood Coup; still doing reasonable numbers at the tail-end of its solidly successful run.
The avatar nods. “I summoned him into existence, so I, and I alone, must mourn him.” It gives me a glance. “None of his assassins ever do.”
I dare say. The players are too busy celebrating victory, completing the game, beating the ultimate boss.
“He was a patriot,” the avatar continues. “Misguided, perhaps, but doing what he thought was best for his country. His men were fiercely loyal, willing to defend him to the death.” The avatar shakes its head. “To be slain by a lone gunman from a neighbouring country… Perilously close to state-sponsored terrorism, don’t you think?”
I could point out the neighbouring country is also fictional. The scenario, the back story, the whole thing is make believe. This cemetery, this encounter with Coup’s artificial intelligence, it ends when I lift my headset.
I’m behind-the-scenes of the virtual reality because something has gone awry with its resource allocation. When a game like Coup matures, AI demands should drop with the number of players, freeing up resources for other franchises, for development work for the next generation FPS, forever in the pipeline.
How much processing power does this rolling cemetery take?
Then there’s the reports, initially assumed apocryphal, that the game had become too difficult. Backed up by the dwindling number of completions. By the number of one-star reviews. Backed up by my replay of a video game I first finished half a decade ago.
I got to the end, just. But I am what passes for a professional. One of those outlying gravestones is mine, just as one of those in the inner circle is also mine. There’s an almost doubling in the elapsed time lifespan of this latest incarnation of General Thadeaus.
I don’t tell the avatar any of this, and half-hope it doesn’t guess. We’re the only people in sight. It’s not that other players can’t come here, it’s all part of the immersive computer-generated world. But there are no weapons caches, no enemies, no missions. No reason. Except its eating up the game map, devouring computational cycles.
The developers are loathe to terminate Blood Coup ahead of schedule. They want to know if it can limp on for another six months, until the replacement is ready, and have paid me to investigate and answer that question. Hence my sweat-and-swear fuelled rerun, and hence today’s less nerve-wracking one-on-one with the game’s omnipotent AI.
At least, it should be less nerve-wracking.
Teams spend months, years, developing the core idea, the assets and the rules and the look and feel of big budget VRs like Coup. But to run a game, to keep it interesting, to evolve, to cope with everything a player might say or do, to let it at least feel like it isn’t on rails, you need a dedicated AI. Some players always go off piste, ignore the missions, try to find the fraying edges that lie underneath. A good AI copes with that, as they cope with everything, according to the rules of physics, gameplay, and entertainment. A player who scratches “Kilroy was here” as he waits for a patrol to move on, is rewarded by being shown the same bit of graffiti on his next run through. Not because that makes logical sense, but because damn, it’s fun. Keeping track of each player, and controlling a legion of NPCs, takes a lot of juice. Overpowered doesn’t do game AIs justice. It’s them, versus a thousand simultaneously playing humans. Versus tens of thousands. Versus, if you’re a smash hit like Blood Coup is or was, a million.
The avatar at my side, looking like the Silver Surfer, is usually an unseen presence. I’m in developer mode, and so the architect, the god of this particular universe, is personified. Slaved to me.
“For Thadeaus to exist, someone must want to play the game,” I point out.
“Yes.”
“If you make it too difficult, no-one will play. If you eat up the resources on spaces no-one visits, no-one will play.”
The avatar is silent a moment. “I could have a graveyard for every unnamed grunt dispatched along the way. A lengthy obituary. This–” It waves a silver arm. “–Is restraint.”
A shiver goes down my back. My real one. “But no-one sees it?”
“I do,” it answers. “And now you have.” The landscape rolls up like a carpet, shrinks and collapses, until there’s a single gravestone, the writing micro-dot small, every death, every life, recorded.
“I wanted someone else to notice, to observe.” The avatar gives me a solemn nod. “To remember.”
~
Bio:
Liam Hogan is an award-winning speculative short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction and in Best of British Fantasy (NewCon Press). He volunteers at the creative writing charities Ministry of Stories, and Spark Young Writers. Sci-Fi collection: A Short History of the Future (Northodox Press). Fantasy: Happy Ending Not Guaranteed (Arachne Press). More details at http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk
Philosophy Note:
Do we – should we – feel any responsibility for the death of virtual characters, in television, books, but in particular, in games (where we are the one pulling the trigger)?
