Underground tunnels, baby holding pens, and, of course, lizard people.

Just something from one of the creators of a game that I love. The podcast episode linked was great too of you want to hear the perspective from the people who made your games your come back to.

  • deranger@sh.itjust.works
    27·
    2 months ago

    It’s the best immersive sim ever made, and the predictions it made way back in 99 are pretty amazing. There’s a sick conversation with an AI in a side room in the last level that is one of the best video game dialogues IMO.

    Tap for spoiler

    • JC Denton: I don’t see anything amusing about spying on people.

    • AI: Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.

    • JC Denton: Some people just don’t understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.

    • AI: The need to be ovserved and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.

    • JC Denton: Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.

    • AI: God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary.

    • JC Denton: No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.

    • AI: The human organism always worships. First it was the gods then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.

    • JC Denton: You underestimate humankind’s love of freedom.

    • AI: The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government. You will soon have your god, and you will make it with your own hands.

    • 1984@lemmy.today
      11·
      2 months ago

      That one was really good. I’m impressed by the level of insight here. Feels like we were a smarter species back in 2000.

    • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
      3·
      2 months ago

      Ah thanks for the vivid trip down memory lane. It’s sad you have to really search hard to find such pearls nowadays.

    • WamGams@lemmy.ca
      2·
      2 months ago

      This comes up a lot in science fiction circles: did PKD predict the future, or did he invent it?

      Much of his work seems to have been the basis for technological revolution.