Catchily titled Prologue: Go Wayback!
I had a chance to try a WIP build earlier this month, and came away quite beguiled.
Go Wayback doesn’t feel nearly that grandiose in the moment.
It feels quiet, crafty and receptive to deduction.
I like that pan of water.
It’s a pleasing little designer’s goad: was somebody making tea, before you arrived?
Again, I like the unassuming deftness of all this.
Little environmental clues tally up in your head, stockpiling themselves for subsequent runs.
One thing I noticed early is that moss grows on the northern flanks of tree trunks.
During nocturnal thunderstorms, lightning bolts reveal the landscape in stop-motion bursts.
There’s a stock-footage feel to some of Go Wayback, perhaps a touch of Center Parcs.
“I do believe that the world’s getting more isolated,” Greene told me.
“I think, like most people, live in small boxes with noise all day.
It just worries me a little bit.
His “3D internet” will be different.
he told me, “And all these corporations are trying to create these bubbles.”
Greene wants people to do as they yo with whatever technologies and tools emerges from Go Wayback and Artemis.
“We’re giving you examples of what’s possible with experiences that we hope you enjoy.
Which brings us to the possibility of PUP’s games letting you buy and sell things with cryptocurrency.
“Should we go down that route?
Is that the kind of addition Go Wayback’s players might be invited to vote on, I asked?
“Oh, they have to have input,” Greene said.
But I think, like for me, it has to be fair and equitable.
So that means, like, a stable currency, that’s the way it has to be.
I confess, the more I hear the sourer I feel about PlayerUnknown Productions' grand ambitions.
Let’s start with some familiar topline objections to the metaverse concept.
I don’t think we need a “3D internet”.
I think the internet has enough dimensions.
Have you ever gone beyond page 3 of Google?
It’s an absolute bloody circus down there.
Or worse, like a Trojan horse for the above web3 initiatives.
Still, it feels like the overarching tech and vision come first.
I thought: a survival game.”
“And that’s really where it came from, right?
We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, the survival loop.
It’s having a new world every time you press play.”
Again, I quite like Go Wayback in itself, though I’m suspicious of its machine learning.
Among the things PUP have added recently are rivers, which are very useful landmarks.
