Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

Is this a model for ARGs of the future? Will we be asked to aid real-world problem solvers with their agendas? And if so, can such a thing possibly be classified as entertainment?

We’re used to following the whims of puppetmasters, but puppetmasters with real-world policies are another matter. Is this a good idea? Should we follow anyone who provides what they say is entertainment, even if it comes with an ideology?

Does it become dangerous when This Is Really Not A Game?

The chatter of players filled the rooms of the Fajita Hut with a constant roar. Dagmar recognized LadyDayFan, Hippolyte, GIAWOL-and of course Joe Clever, who sat alone at his table. No one, in this highly networked group, wanted to be seen talking to him. Even helping to catch Litvinov had not persuaded the others not to shun him, at least in public.

The Griffith Park event had gone well. Despite a day of drizzle, five or six hundred players had turned out to publicly solve a few last-minute puzzles. Briana, played by the actress Terri Griff, had appeared to thank the players for their efforts and then rumbled away in a vintage red Mustang convertible, the personal wheels of Richard the Assassin, who had lent the car for the occasion.

Dagmar watched the event on the live feed. To attend in person would have broken the fourth wall.

The players, buoyed and sad, their collective dream fading, reassembled in the nearby Fajita Hut, a large fast-food place with obsessively clean counters and containers of freshly made tortillas on the buffet. Dagmar, Jack Stone, the puzzle designer, and a few of the minor actors joined them. The fourth wall had, by this time, crumbled to dust.

“What’s coming up next?” asked a young man with bright red hair.

Dagmar finished chewing her pollo asado, swallowed, and spoke.

“Wait and see,” she said. A puppetmaster never revealed anything, not in public.

“I’ve never done one of these before,” he said. “I’m totally stoked.”

Dagmar dabbed a bit of sour cream from her upper lip.

“Are you Corporal Carrot, by any chance?” she asked.

He grinned. “That’s me!”

“I thought I recognized your voice. Big Terry Pratchett fan?”

“Oh! He’s huge!”

In truth, Dagmar had no idea what game project was coming next. There seemed to be a lull in demand for Great Big Idea’s product. She’d have to get out and start stirring the pot.

And furthermore, she had no idea what might become of her job. She didn’t expect that Mr. and Mrs. Ruff would want to run Charlie’s business. They’d sell their interest to someone else, and that someone would send some stern vice president or other with instructions to “rationalize” the business, which was usually done by firing as many people as possible.

Charlie’s main business was his software, of course. The game business would stick out by contrast-the two game businesses, actually, since Great Big Idea and Planet Nine were effectively separate companies.

Of the two, Planet Nine had already generated eight or nine million players. Most of those had joined for free under the eight-week special offer, courtesy of Briana Hall, but a lot of them had sampled Planet Nine’s pleasures while waiting for updates from Dagmar and would probably stay. Planet Nine would most likely have at least a million revenue-generating subscribers.

By contrast, Great Big Idea had just lost a huge amount of money. Millions. Dagmar could always explain that those millions were lost on Charlie Ruff’s direct orders, and that he had provided the millions in question out of his own funds, but this distinction might well be lost on any Harvard MBA intent on proving his worth by slashing costs and jobs.

She supposed that Great Big Idea might be sold to some other, larger game company, where it would remain a square peg in a round hole or be spun off into a company of its own.

In any case, Dagmar had reason to be worried about her professional future.

She could survive, of course, by theft. Nobody knew about Atreides LLC but her, and there were nearly fourteen million dollars left in that account, even after all her lavish spending. But she had every intention of returning the money to AvN Soft.

When all was said and done, she wasn’t a thief. She was a puppetmaster, and she had blown up a former boyfriend, but it had to be said in her favor that stealing was quite beneath her.

Besides, a forensic accountant could turn up that money without a lot of trouble, and Dagmar had no intention of going to jail, not after all this.

“May I join you?”

She recognized the gamer she knew as Hippolyte-a scrawny young woman with straw blond hair. “Of course.”

Hippolyte arranged her thin body on a chair. Her hair was frizzed by the day’s humidity, and she had a smudge of pale green eye shadow between her eyes, which suggested that she’d put on her makeup in great haste that morning, before she’d quite come awake.

“That was a phenomenal game!” Hippolyte said.

“Thank you.”

“Everyone’s talking about how it staked out new ground, solving a crime in the real world and running down an actual criminal.” Hippolyte smiled. “But then you know that, since you read all the posts on Our Reality Network.”

Dagmar, Woman of Mystery, gave an ambiguous shrug.

“But it didn’t solve all the mysteries, did it?” Hippolyte said. “Those other deaths.”

“You couldn’t help,” Dagmar said. “We didn’t have the clues to give you. Nobody had a picture of the perpetrator.”

“They were all your friends, right?” Hippolyte asked. “Even the bomber.”

Dagmar allowed herself a moment of sadness.

“Even the bomber,” she said. “We all knew each other.”

Hippolyte shook her head. “That’s kind of amazing.”

“We all met in college,” Dagmar said. “We were in the same gaming group.”

And then, in front of that audience, she found herself telling that story, about BJ and Austin and Charlie, and the treacherous, devious worlds they had created, when they were all young and games were all they knew of life.

With thanks to Daniel Abraham, Sage Walker, Melinda Snodgrass, Emily Mah, Ty Franck, Ian Tregillis, Terry England, Victor Milán, Corie Conwell, David Levine, Allen Moore, Deborah Roggie, Ben Francisco, Brian Lowe, and Steve Stirling, who read drafts of this work with their usual active intelligence.

Special thanks to poker buddies Sean Stewart, Maureen McHugh, Elan Lee, and Jordan Weisman, for introducing me to the subject matter of this book.

Walter Jon Williams has been nominated repeatedly for every major SF award, including Hugo and Nebula Award nominations for this novel City on Fire. His most recent books are The Sundering, The Praxis, Destiny’s Way and The Rift. He lives near Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife.