1 The Launch

When thinking about the future, high-end technologies such as artificial intelligences, spaceships and extra-planetary colonies often comes to mind. What would the future really holds for us, nobody could clearly respond to that. As of the year 2032, space colonization was still being discussed while artificial intelligences were a subject of dreams.

However, during the last few years, there has been several breakthroughs in the entertainement sector. Lots of interesting ideas came up, and Virtual Reality was developped to such an extent that players could now control their character only using their mind.

This technology was called 'Simulated Reality', or 'S.R.' for short, and although there were some concerns regarding the safety of their users, headgears using this principle were vastly developped while their trademarks were bought by large-scale companies. Since these devices were designed to intercept the signals produced by a user's brain, every headgear had to go through multiple tests before being accepted by each country.

Today, October 16, 2032, the game 'Project Overworld' would release its first server to the public. This game has been extremely publicized along the few past months and mainstream medias even started talking about this ambitious game.

Developed by the company 'Advanced Simulations', Project Overworld aimed to exploit the technologies behind S.R. devices in order to simulate an entire universe to their customers. The developers of this game recreated the Earth as the starting planet for everyone, and explained that everything would be possible to accomplish through this simulation. If one wanted to create a firearm and use it to plunder other players' base, nothing forbad him to do so.

Eventually, players would be able to progress by exploiting different kind of resources and reach beyond what humanity has accomplished up until now.

Regarding the release of their game, 'Advanced Simulations' contacted many streamers, videographers and other people of influence with the intention of bringing hype to their creation.

Their first server would be limited to a total of 20.000 spots at first, for testing purposes. After a bit of time, Advanced Simulations would eventually increase this limit, but those who did not make it into the public launch would have to wait at least a few weeks before having access to the game.

'Ah... I can't wait anymore!' The young man breathed out.

Keith was one of the few who were able to register into the first release. Project Overworld's main screen was floating before him, while the usual background theme kept him distracted.

Every now and then he would try and connect to the game, hoping that the server would be running a bit earlier than initially planned. However, to no avail. Everytime, an error message showed up, saying that connecting to the server was impossible.

Thus, he decided to sit down under the shade of a tree, enjoying the gentle wind that rippled the grass around in a seemingly infinite plain. This scenary was really beautiful, and Keith was shocked about the prowessed that could be accomplished within S.R. devices.

In reality, he was just lying under his bed covers which warmed up his body while he was playing. Yet, his brain was ignoring these informations since there were much more important informations being sent to his brain by the headgear he was wearing.

S.R. devices were forbidden to intercept information from one's brain because essential signals could potentially be messed around with. What if the headgear intercepted signals controlling breathing or other vital signals?

As such, the only way S.R. headgears could simulate anything to its users was to send information to their brain. This process was also heavily restricted so not to overload a person's brain with extra information. Sensations such as pain, touch and every other feelings unnecessary for a game were not allowed to be generated by such a device. In the end, only motion signals were being subsituted by neutralizing signals to prevent a player from moving in real-life when they meant to be moving in the game.

In any case, Keith was being really impatient since the launch was supposed to take place at two in the afternoon and he only had a few more dozen of minutes to wait around. The server aimed for some cultural diversity by letting access to people from around the world and launching at a time convenient for everyone.

'Saturday in the middle of the day... I've got the whole week-end to have a head start in this game.' Keith meditated.

He has been somewhat lucky to have a complete day to start off in Project Overworld. The fact that he was residing in America and that Advanced Simulations was also an American company did play a role into it, though.

Nonetheless, he was really excited to get his hands onto this game, as he considered it to be one of the most ambitious ever created. The developers promised a lot of functionalities, and seemingly endless possibilities that could be encountered inside this large universe that they had generated.

Keith really tried to lower his expectations, though, as many projects in the past got backed down after failing to reach the goals they initially engaged to.

He knew that a game could not simply generate an entire universe without conceding on optimization, or even worse. They could have used some cheap tricks to make Project Overworld playable, such as lowering the rendering quality or rendering distance of the server. They could also have limited the actual size of the universe or made it towards most of the processing would be left to the player's material. In such a case, most lower-end computers would not be able to keep up with the S.R. device which was connected to them.

But now was not the time to reflect on these thoughts. Keith had prepared for it quite a long time ago and his few-months-old personal computer should be able to keep up with the most recent S.R. games.

Finally, after waiting for almost half and hour within the loading screen of this game, a boastful announcement stated that the server was up and running. Once this message appeared before his eyes, Keith immediately pressed down the connection button.

Everything went black around him, and he could not see anything for a few seconds as his computer was rendering this new world.

Finally, land appeared under his feet, and parts of the landscape emerged in the surroundings. Thousands of other players materialized as well, making Keith react immediately. He had to start moving as soon as possible. He quickly chose a direction and stuck to it while running in a straight line, only dodging a few tree that appeared on his way.

Back at the spawn area, some people started punching each other to death, fighting over some basic resources. It was a bloodbath, but Keith was already far away.

He did expect this kind of behavior because he had already played some survival games in the past. It seemed impossible for things to be handled peacefully when this many players and personalities were confronted into the same area, at the same time and over the same resources.

Thus, he ran and ran, for several miles straight, in order to get to safety. After he was satisfied about the distance he had put between him and the spawnpoint, he finally decided on picking up some resources in a nearby forest.

'I really don't understand these guys...' Keith thought for himself. 'There's no point in killing players having absolutely nothing on them. I guess no matter what sort of game they joined, some player just want to have fun beating each other to death.' He concluded.

In Project Overworld, a player's death would only be temporary. They would leave everything they had in their inventory behind, but they would be able to respawn after a few seconds at the world spawnpoint, an area covering several square miles of distance.

Players could potentially set their own spawn point by sleeping onto a homemade bed, meaning that they would have the chance to respawn there if they ever died. However, this method of respawning was severly restricted because it could potentially lead to abuses of the respawn mechanisms to defend a specific location. As such, players would have to wait several minutes before respawning at their bed if they died by a player's hand.

As the world spawnpoint was not affected by this countdown at all, players could be respawning there as much as they wanted. This also meant that the spawn area could remain the same bloodbath for an hour or so before people would eventually get bored of killing each other over and over again.

On his side, after continuing on his journey, Keith managed get quite far from the world spawnpoint. After making sure no one was around, he took a breather while contemplating the landscape before his eyes. It looked unbelievably real, as if he was just strolling in the nature, and he was deeply moved by that.

'I actually got into this game.' He realized, a smile slowly etching onto his face. He finally let out a sigh as he started looking for essential resources such as food and wooden sticks. Each player had access to a personal inventory where they could store a total of half a ton of materials or other items.

Having found some sticks and some berries to eat, Keith started looked for sturdy rocks that he could be using to smash open some larger rocks. His goal was to make some sharp looking pebbles that he could be using as ruidmentary tools.

As such, after getting his hands onto everything that he needed for now, Keith proceeded to craft tools which would be helping cutting down some barks off the surrounding trees.

This was the typical progress of a survival games. Get your hands onto some basic resources and turn them into tools before collecting different types of resources. Having made everything he needed for now, Keith decided to continue running in the same direction that he followed since the start of this game.

He estimated that the distance he had put between him and the rest of the players was nowhere near enough for him to be totally safe. If he wanted to have some breathing room, he would have to run for at least a dozen miles more.

Thus, while running for several hours straight, Keith looked around for the perfect place to establish onto. He was kind of despairing because the landscape he has been passing through has been so plain up until now. However, Keith finally stopped in his tracks after finding a really promising place.

'Well, looks like I'll be establishing there for the time being!' Keith exclaimed in his mind.