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[Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

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Thu, 2011-02-24 20:37

Backgammon Backgammon's picture

[Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

So, intergalactic chatroulette... I have to say, I didn't like this. The reason is that the entire beginning of the book (and in fact EP as a whole) explains how it's so freakin creepy that we haven't found ANY live alien civilization so far, even though statistically we should have. So this is in keeping with EP's horror feel of a looming x-risk all over our heads (and is explained in the Game Secrets section, but we shall not discuss this to respect those that did not read that section). The, it goes on to say that if Gatecrashers DID encounter intelligent life, first contact would certainly result is monumental miscommunication due to divergent evolution paths, etc. Again, all very cool. The, suddenly, here is this item that instantly allows perfectly easy communication with thousands of alien species. WTF. It's also a totally not subtle joke about chatroulette, what with 90% of communication being with alien teenagers showing their pee-pees. Horror to comedy? This migh have worked as a single paragraph amidst description of somehting else, but because it IS so massively meaningful that we have communication with aliens, it's not exactly a one paragraph thing, now is it. But then it's so ridiculous, how can it not be. It's like a Bad Idea Paradox. Anyway, I love EP and I'll basically simply completely ignore that section, but I was just left with a feeling of WTFness. I think it's important to tell the devs what we like but also what we don't like.

Thu, 2011-02-24 21:45

Enigma32

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

I felt the same way, at first, but then I started to remember that the Factors were the go-betweens between transhumanity and other alien civilizations. What if there are other aliens out there that are in the same position as transhumanity - they survived their singularity, but just barely? And then I started wondering about whether it REALLY allowed for communication with other aliens. What if it was TITAN tech instead, abandoned on Giza for us to find (a TITAN experiment, like what's going on at Brak Modal), and they were just pulling one over on us, to make us think that there were aliens out there? Or what if the aliens you were speaking with were already gone, and you're just talking to pre-recordings; ghosts, for lack of another word? How unsettling is that to talk with an alien recording or alien AGI that belongs to a long dead race? It doesn't necessarily have to be alien-related. But it's left open enough so that you can pretty much paint any picture you want to behind he black curtain.

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"If we succeed, we're geniuses for doing it. If we fail, we're stupid for trying it. If we succeed beyond our goal and our dreams, we're insane for reaching so high and getting there."

Thu, 2011-02-24 22:07

The Green Slime The Green Slime's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

Yes I balked at this section too. I really liked the buildup of describing the strange black structures and, what with the consistent coolness of all the other entries, I couldn't wait to learn what their purpose was... until it turned out to be lame topical internet satire. Okay, a bit of daft fun amidst the cosmic doom and epicry. I can dig it. I am receptive to horseplay! Ahahahaa! Until it dawns on me that this spot of levity is actually a massive fuck-off compromise to one of the setting's central mysteries - i.e. the present, inexplicable absence of all advanced alien life throughout the galaxy. To piss that away for the sake of a cheap nudge in the ribs? Guh? I'd rather have no explanation for the weird black structures at all. At least I was enjoying the mystery. I think when my deadtree copy arrives I'm going to take a craft knife and slice those pages out. Of the book and my brain.

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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/iso_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/aliens_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]Time will perfect matter.[/i]

Fri, 2011-02-25 10:07

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

The chatroulette joke wasn't the centre of that all. I admit, I, too, didn't like that section, but it wasn't the chatroulette joke; it was that it pissed away the hole "Where are all the aliens?" bit. That's why, in my version, if I ever use it, the thing isn't a communicator, at least not through space. It's through time. No, it's not a time-travel machine, it's a black box. Anyone who touches it has a copy of their ego downloaded into it, and, in turn, can communicate with any other egos copied into the machine. Over time, a vast quantity of minds have come to be collected there, and have either moved on from visiting that place or gone extinct in that time. I still don't like it, though. It's just boring. Sure, it's neat and all, but there's no territory to cover; the device keeps you from learning too much. Anything fun that might be gained from it is redacted. What'd be cooler is if someone finally untangles it, finds a list of alien civilizations with their gate addresses, and visits them all... Only to find that each one is dead. Some long gone, some recent, but all inevitably in ruins instead of thriving, but that's something best left for PCs, not a book.

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Sat, 2011-02-26 11:29

root

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

root@Intergalactic chatroulette [hr] Really? You are fine with a planet kept near absolute zero by alien tech, a station positioned on the rim of a black hole that is modeled after the [color=blue]House[/color] of Leaves, a complete Dyson sphere, and a planet that is covered in a single macro fungus, but you balk at the idea of a black box that appears to be connecting to alien species? The black boxes on Giza are the most easily explained of any of the weird phenomena in Gatecrashing. Transhumans constantly use the mesh, and any device sensitive to em radiation will pick up on it with ease. Parsing the transmission patterns into a grammar is child's play for a technologically advanced species, and finding some psychologically workable representation to interface with transhumanity is easy. That this machine picked chatroulette out of transhumanities databases is amusing, and that it's using models of "aliens" that fit with all of transhumanity's pop culture ideas of aliens from the last several centuries gives it away. You pointed out that it never gives anything of real value, and keeps getting the users to reveal more about transhumanity in the process. The black boxes on Giza are just devices like the Bracewell probes, and the decision to blast the shit out of them despite the apparent promise of tech advance helped define how hardass Firewall is.

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Sat, 2011-02-26 14:50

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

I'm fine with finding relics of alien civilizations because it's like coming across a murder scene and getting to look at the clues. The power of mystery is perpetuated by wondering "What created this?", "What is this for?", "Who caused this?", and so on. The power of horror, on which the game is based, is derived from the unknown and expectations being flaunted. Mystery and horror are two core elements of Eclipse Phase, and things like finding a macro-fungal superorganism, a complete Dyson Sphere (that notably has no organisms on it), ruined cities, Blue Wood, etc. is that they provide interesting mysteries with no answered questions. The Dyson Sphere, for example, has lots of fertile ground. Who made it? Why is it (as far as we know) empty? Why is there a defense system keeping vehicles from flying? We can piece together theories and build our own answers, and the result is beautiful. We get to find the crime scene and be the investigators solving what occurred. Finding the alien chat roulette system just feels... Out of place. "Where are all the aliens? The galaxy should be full of life, yet it's so... Empty..." "I found them, sir! And most of them want to show us their genitals!"

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Sat, 2011-02-26 15:24

root

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

root@Intergalactic chatroulette [hr]

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
The power of horror, on which the game is based, is derived from the unknown and expectations being flaunted.

Ok, I get your point there, but you are forgetting that Eclipse Phase is story of transhuman conspiracy and horror. As you noted, the alien chatroulette seems out of place, even jarring. It purports to offer contact with a variety of alien species of which 15% are able and willing to communicate with transhumanity and give them secrets to the universe.

Proxy A wrote:
It is true that the system almost seems intentionally designed to appeal to greedy, curious civilizations that are likely to destroy themselves. It’s alluring. And that smells to me like a trap.

The black boxes learn, and give nothing in return. They gobble up information about computer protocols, social interactions, what a species finds vulgar and offensive, and most importantly, they learn how a species explores new information. They learn how users explore the limits of the system, and how they work to get around those limits. Giza is called the most dangerous exoplanet in the known universe for a reason: the kinds of treasures it is "offering" to transhumanity are the same sorts of things that the Bracewell probes "offered" to what became the TITANs.

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Sat, 2011-02-26 16:25

Decivre

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

The blackboxes aren't quite the same as Chatroulette. People can't send identifying information of any sort through the blackbox (including photos and images). The blackboxes enforce anonymity, and the big mystery is in understanding what it defines as a violation of its rules (no one knows the rules to these things). So, I doubt you'd be able to send pictures of your genitals. So we're talking about an anonymous network governed by a set of unknown rules by unknown entities. It sounds less like Chatroulette, and more like /b/. Personally, I thought it was an interesting concept, especially since you are talking blind to what you [i]presume[/i] are alien entities. For all intents and purposes, though you don't know. You may very well be talking to intelligences stored within the boxes intended to imitate intelligences from other locations, rather than actual aliens. You might be talking to a scanned version of your subconscious, posing as whatever the blackbox thinks you want to talk to. You might be contacting someone within the ETI itself. Who knows?

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Sun, 2011-02-27 13:01

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

I enjoyed the joke, myself. I probably won't ever use the section, but I don't take offense to its being there. Frankly, I find the most compelling argument being that, yes, it isn't active, living aliens, but a library of static, stored egos (if that). There's no reason to assume the most obvious solution is the real one.

Tue, 2011-03-01 17:33

#10

Rasumichin Rasumichin's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

Enigma32 wrote:
I felt the same way, at first, but then I started to remember that the Factors were the go-betweens between transhumanity and other alien civilizations. What if there are other aliens out there that are in the same position as transhumanity - they survived their singularity, but just barely?

Well, the Factors are an example for this themselves, aren't they? And it's interesting to note that they use neither the pandora gates nor something as the objects on Giza. As if they'd know better or something like that.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
Mystery and horror are two core elements of Eclipse Phase, and things like finding a macro-fungal superorganism, a complete Dyson Sphere (that notably has no organisms on it), ruined cities, Blue Wood, etc. is that they provide interesting mysteries with no answered questions. The Dyson Sphere, for example, has lots of fertile ground. Who made it? Why is it (as far as we know) empty?

But it isn't empty. It has dozens of continents that are populated by completely unrelated ecosystems from entirely different planets. There's alien ruins everywhere, and probably intact civilizations. The only reason people don't know anything specific about it is that distances are so insanely large and you can't set up satnets.

Wed, 2011-03-02 10:34

#11

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

Rasumichin wrote:
But it isn't empty. It has dozens of continents that are populated by completely unrelated ecosystems from entirely different planets. There's alien ruins everywhere, and probably intact civilizations. The only reason people don't know anything specific about it is that distances are so insanely large and you can't set up satnets.

Empty of intelligent life, and that's what matters. It also has a guided weapon's system that shoots down anything that goes up. Something full of life, devoid of intelligence, and actively preventing you from checking it out smacks of mystery and intrigue, but answers no questions.

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Sat, 2011-03-05 18:19

#12

Decivre

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
Empty of intelligent life, and that's what matters. It also has a guided weapon's system that shoots down anything that goes up. Something full of life, devoid of intelligence, and actively preventing you from checking it out smacks of mystery and intrigue, but answers no questions.

You mean devoid of intelligent life as far as we know. Not much of Olaf has been explored... it's a friggin' Dyson sphere, and we probably haven't traversed even a significant percentage of it yet.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Sat, 2011-03-05 20:37

#13

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

"As far as we know" is the point. It's a mystery. We don't know if it's there and THAT'S the point.

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Tue, 2011-03-08 22:51

#14

Rcarter

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

To me it seems like its largely open to personal interpretation and leaves it for individual groups to decide what direction to take. From a practical setting standpoint it seems like the first step towards an almost inevitable space opera setting .

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www.intangiblefire.com

Tue, 2011-03-22 10:36

#15

mack2028

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

So a less than obvious infomineing device left in the ruins of a dead world doesn't freak you out because it camouflages itself as something innocent. P.K. Dick postulated that there were forms of camouflage like those we have discovered in lower life forms that were designed by higher life forms to fool us, this could be one posing as something not just ordinary but silly but with the promise of great reward to simultaneously lull us in to a sense of security and make us hungry enough to expose ourselves. Personally I think this is one of the most horrifying and insidious concepts ever proposed.

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[img]http://alfedenzia.com/eprep/?r=0&g=0[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/immort_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/info_userbar.jpg[/img]

Tue, 2011-03-22 11:29

#16

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: [Gatecrashing] Intergalactic chatroulette

Ted Chiang's novella "Story of your life" comes to mind. A great first contact story where humanity meets some very alien and obviously advanced aliens. After their strange language is deciphered, negotiations for tech transfer ensue. Yet in the end the meeting seems to be a complete disappointment... although the protagonist knows better.

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