I had the coolest dream for months last night. As you may have heard, I’ve been testing the Nokia N810 internet tablet for work recently, and of course I couldn’t help but add Duke Nukem 3D to the application list. It takes some getting used to using a stylus for shoot-em-up, but I was surprised at how easy it was.
Tonight I dreamed about a game that was running on a similar handheld platform. I had access to it, you had access to it, it was easily considered the most popular horror-like mystery/RPG game for ages. BUT what most people did not know was that there was a gaming mode and a reality mode of playing. The game was actually running in real life simultaneous to the server game, and I was one of the chosen characters in the horror story that had privileged access to the Real Game. I don’t remember much of it except that killing people in the game (we used some kind of needlie-like blades) would destroy them in real life as well.
The game was in 3rd person view, in gloomy old mansions, with manlike demons trying to take control of the souls of the gamers playing in regular mode. It was serious business, as we moved like shades or ghosts in a separate dimension between the avatars of kids from all around the world. Some of the creeps were really scary guys, with slime-like skin you could see through, and others were akin to the vampire-ish bloodless aliens in the film noir Dark City. Having figured out the truth about the game, I realized there was no winning it. I was among the good guys, but we were just as shady as the bad guys, more or less what real life’s all about. I can remember some of the older men playing the RL mode who were my mentors, very much like Cog in the Spawn comics, and just as deadly serious about The War. But my alarmclock released me from what had probably become a nightmare if continued.. Very inspiring!