No Awakening for Gamers

The Seattle Times

'Seepage' Bug Re-Emerges for Awakening: 1949

Date: 2085-12-15
By: Rowena Marshal

ON one fateful Thursday evening, when Tabitha Tanaka logged out of her favorite online game "Awakening: 1949," she brought back a little more than she'd intended.

"She was acting strange, confused," says Chihiro Tanaka, Tabitha's mother. "She said she'd never been here before. She was scared; that's honestly what hurts most, was looking into her eyes and realizing she was looking at me like a stranger."

The revelations kept flying. She claimed not only that she had no memory of being in her home, but of being in this time at all, let alone her body. She was confused by the Matrix and unable to log back online, and claimed she should be able to cast spells, though she had no inkling of a spark before.

No, it's not Cognitive Fragmentation Disorder, though you would be forgiven for making the assumption. It's called 'seepage,' a phenomenon more commonly associated with Better Than Life users than girls playing video games, where users will incorporate and even become overridden by the dominant personality represented in a previously-used Better Than Life simulation. Despite no evidence of BTL purchase or use, scans of Tabitha's brain revealed patterns more commonly associated with BTL addicts, let alone users, than innocent high schoolers. At time of writing, Tabitha is still hospitalized and under observation.

This isn't the first time "Awakening: 1949" has been in the news for seepage - in 2078 it was brought to the attention of the Grid Overwatch Division of the Corporate Court that Parity Control Studios, the game's developer, had been lacing its simsense with lines of BTL programming against common Matrix guidelines, heightening the game's sense of realism - and real world danger. Several hundred users reportedly had their personalities overlaid with those they had defined for their characters for hours to days at a time. The snafu resulted in a one-hundred-thousand nuyen penalty, and a promise to utterly remove any and all traces of Better Than Life technology from its end product. The result of their investigation, along with continued public criticism surrounding the imagery of dragons portrayed as fascistic enemy combatants in a magical World War II, led to the total abandonment of its original premise. One year later, "Awakening: 1949" would relaunch as "Awakening: 1949 - Noir," a reimagined take on its setting as the story of an urban fantasy in the throes of a chronologically early Awakening, and one that has enjoyed relative success since.

Still, a cloud hangs over its legacy, and never so darkly as today. Over the last week, over three dozen cases of seepage have been reported, skyrocketing from the game's otherwise spotless record over the last seven years.

"It's unexplainable," says Ryan Tessouat, COO for Parity Control Studios. "We've done annual audits since the relaunch, and there is absolutely no trace of the original [code] left. Whatever is happening is not caused by Awakening: 1949, you have my absolute word - we are fully dedicated to preventing a tragedy of that scale ever again."

In many ways, however, the present situation is already even worse. While previous incidents of seepage saw a return to normal only hours or days after the inciting incident, the oldest cases of this new outbreak are now two weeks into their affliction with no signs of recovery. At time of writing, thirty-eight users of various ages and genders have been hospitalized due to Awakening induced seepage.

The elephant in the room, according to Professor Ayako Tomiko of the University of Washington, is AI.

"From our limited perspective, outside looking in, this reads to me much more like psychotropic feedback, reprogramming of the mind, than it does BTL usage. It used to be more commonly used in intrusion countermeasures, and is still a favorite tool of hostile AI now, though usually to a much more limited extent. That, to my knowledge, is the only technology that could make such permanent changes without utilizing nanomachines to directly rewire the brain, as we're all very well aware already. The field of artificial intelligence is still very much in the wild west of discovery, despite marketing claims - though whether there could be something emerging within that host causing these users' brains to be overwritten is pure speculation without the confirmation of the associated parties."

When asked for comment, EA-Activision, Parity Control Studios' parent organization, as well as Ares Macrotechnology, which hosts the game on its global grid, both declined to respond. For the moment, Parity Control Studios has not closed the doors on its Awakening host, and currently has no plans to.

"We've added a disclaimer on login regarding the potential for seepage, but we assure you, our game is not at fault," says Ryan Tessouat. "If you need any reassurances, please feel free to log in and check it out for yourself - a subscription makes a perfect gift for the upcoming holiday season."

More as this story develops. From The Seattle Times matrix-cast, this is Rowena Marshal.