Purchase
DAW
August 2010
On Sale: August 3, 2010
Featuring: Dev Logan
352 pages
ISBN: 0756406234
EAN: 9780756406233
Hardcover
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Fantasy
A near-future techno-thriller from New York Times
bestselling author Diane Duane. It's the first quarter of the twenty-first century,
and "massively multiplayer" on-line games have been around
for a couple of decades. In an increasingly wired and
computer-friendly world they've become a form of
entertainment so popular they're giving television and
films a run for the money. And the most popular gaming
universe of all is Omnitopia, created by genius programmer
Dev Logan. For millions of people around the world, Omnitopia is an
obsession, a passionate pastime, almost a way of life.
Omnitopia is a virtual place where dreams come true-players
can create their own universes within the game's structure,
and participate in the profits if their piece of the
universe is a hit. Ten million players routinely play in
Omnitopia, and at any given time, nearly a million of them
are on-line, living in a world more real to them then their
own. Worldwide, Omnitopia is now as much a culture as a game.
Participants can become involved in it in a hundred
different ways. Some game as if their lives depended on it,
spending thousands of hours, or thousands of dollars, or
both, on quests in search of "game glory" among their
fellow players. Some game only to acquire sufficient in-
game "value" to become entitled to become subcreators
themselves, able to build new levels and start raking in
the so-called "one percent of infinity" which is the
leveler's share of the profits. But there are also people
who don't game at all, preferring to use the massive
platform simply to explore its worlds, or to interact with
other participants. Some people do nothing but design on-
line weapons and other items for Omnitopia gamers, and sell
them-or act as brokers, buying and selling game artifacts
to order. Some subcreators do the same kind of design and
creation, but for tailored Microcosms or slices of them:
these are the "unreal estate" dealers. Some players
speculate in game "gold" on the success or popularity of
Microcosms, rather than actually playing in them. And of
course there are thieves and swindlers, cheaters who live
to find the loophole in the game that will outside it in
the real world. Now Dev and his people are preparing to rollout a major new
expansion to the Omnitopia system. And even as players,
staff, the media, and the heavy hitters on the world
financial scene wait eagerly for this fast-approaching and
momentous event, there are others preparing to play a very
different game-one that is meant to strike at the heart of
Omnitopia and bring the entire system crashing down....
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