quote of the evening

[cmdr_zoom]

me: Frankly, the computer "science" [in .hack] is on par with TRON.
me: There's a MAAAAAGIC world inside every computer! And sometimes people get sucked into it!
Pyro: TRON at least got some of the acronyms right.

Comments

[jengagne.livejournal.com]

*giggle* I love you guys.

[thecodewalker.livejournal.com]

but, the eight phases are awesome.

skeith, the world of desu.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

I find your lack of faith disturbing, Dave.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Cute.

But seriously? Do watch the four .hack//Liminality OAVs. They are half of the original .hack Project (the other half being the four PS2 games that they accompany) and they really are required watching to get what's really going on. Because where the games and the TV show and the manga are all set in The World, those OAVs are set in the real world of the players portrayed in the games.

It's still fantasy, but it's more like Shadowrun than AD&D.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I think I'd settle for a story in which the creators of an MMO (make that "the" MMO, just like there's only one OS now in the questionably-plausible monocultural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture_(computer_science)) post-DeusExVirus setting) don't respond to inexplicable bugs in-game and multiple verifiable cases of players being found at their computers in comas by doing the logical, liability-averse thing and shut the fucking game down until they can get things sorted, rather than muddling along until a plucky band of ordinary players can collect all the plot coupons and make things right from the user level.

But Then We'd Have No Movie, I know. Instead (continuing in the vein of TvTropes), Adults Are Useless and It's All Up to You.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Dude, shutting down a game that people's minds are trapped in would be mass murder. You want to talk about liability aversion. :)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

When you have minds "trapped in" a game, then we are no longer talking about a computer simulation or even harmful sensory input. We have crossed the line into fucking Fairyland, to which souls are astrally projected, actually leaving the body and being captured by denizens of the Twilight Realm. Then we're talking MAAAAAAGIC and we might as well be back to Users and "identity discs."

And even if you get a bunch of software execs to accept that fantastic premise, is the solution to leave the doors open so it can keep trapping and/or killing more people? "We should probably cover up that giant hole in the main lobby, but we're still working on how to remove the alligators. Until then, um... advise guests to stay out of the lobby if possible. Discreetly; don't want to start a panic, you know."

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

There's nowt wrong wi' Users an' identity discs, lad!

... Seriously, what? Of all the things in the science fiction continuum, TRON exceeds your suspension-of-disbelief limits? Warp drive works for you, you're cool with the Force, but the Game Grid fills you with such vitriol that you're throwing out phrases like "fucking Fairyland"? This has all the earmarks of an incipient case of Fandom Lock, and the only cure for that involves straps, those eye-propping-open things from A Clockwork Orange, and Star Trek V. Don't make me come over there. :)

(Personally, I've always found it amusing that TRON had an inherently better explanation in 1982 for how someone got onto the Game Grid - the MCP hijacking an experimental matter-transmission device - than the writers of The Matrix could come up with 17 years later.)

Regardless, I don't care about people dissing some anime show I've never watched, but equating it with one of the classics of nerd SF to do so is just deuced bad form, old man.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

No, sorry, you misunderstand me. Rather, I find it rather cheap for a anime show multimedia experience 20 years later - when most people should, in theory, know more about computers if only from having them in their daily lives - to resort to such outright quackery in service of its story, when equally compelling points about alienation and fluid gender roles in modern society (online and off), etc etc can be made with entirely accurate depictions of how these things really work. (Yes, including the gold farmers.)

I blame TRON no more than I blame any adolescent for their naivete and inevitable missteps. It's a charming fantasy, a touchstone of my youth and, as you say, a classic of nerd culture, and I still adore its visual style. I loved the game and I'm looking forward to the sequel. Based on the kind of praise I hear for .hack, I just expect it to be a little... deeper and more authentic, y'know? "The World" is a land of fable, but I'd kind of like its underpinnings to not be.

In the end, I know I'm just doing the same kind of probably misplaced bitching that some people (who know even a smidgeon about real forensic science) do about CSI and its spawn. Looking for truth in popular culture.


(there, markup finally fixed. sorry.)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

(addendum, because I'm not revising that comment again)

But you're right, I haven't seen much of the real-world side of things. I suppose that, this being Cinematic Reality, there might be one or more Evil Execs who are stonewalling the rest, because human life is cheap but closing the doors and shutting down the servers for a couple of weeks would cost the company real money.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

World of Warcraft? Microsoft Windows? Vendors who take FIVE YEARS to respond to and fix severe security flaws all the while denying that there is a problem? Dude, .hack is a frickin' *parody* of the two biggest software juggernauts in the world today. Don't take it so damned seriously.