When a struggling video game designer begins seeing his characters in real life, he suspects he’s already playing a game of his own creation and begins searching for patterns to help complete and escape the game.
“After suspecting reality to be a part of his virtual creation, a game designer must…” This is where I’m confused, how will virtual replication of his life be a means to uncover a way out?
The premise and stakes are most exciting but the line of action is virtual replication of his life, where’s the conflict? What’s stopping him from pursuing his goal? How would it look on screen?
Good Luck.
I was going with the idea of reverse engineering. If he can create a virtual recreation of his “real” world he’ll uncover the method he would have put in to escape the game.
>> The method he would’ve put in..
Why does he not know it when he’s the one who made it.
I was thinking as he loses himself to his tests, to prove his real world is fake, he might will start to think of reasons he isn’t finding an exit, then he makes the ultimate mistake of thinking maybe if he created a full immersion game he could have no memory of it being a game
Knightrider:
I think the premise has a lot of potential. Like Linux distributions, it’s robust enough to fork in numerous directions. (It certainly forks in numerous directions in my mind. ) However, I don’t (yet) get the sense that you have settled on one fork, one plot path.
Thanks, appreciate the feedback. The great thing about this site is you often have a direction, but just merely doing some back and forth with others discussing your idea you begin seeing a lot of other directions you could go.
Sounds like the story of a death-spiral into insanity.
What’s the baseline, the protagonist’s initial situation? And what is the worst thing that will happen to him if he can’t figure out whether the “real world” is just another virtual game?
You are right it is a spiral, he will come to the conclusion that for a game to truly feel real then the player has to fear death, and he main end up concluding that perhaps he won’t die, he’ll merely wake up.
I guess if he can’t figure it out, he needs to accept his reality or try to escape. We often hear theories that we might be in a simulation, but what if you felt you were and maybe you created it. Does this make your life deterministic, could you consider anything as real, does denialism work.
His intitial situation is, games in the future are becoming closer to real life, but that line between accepting the game as real vs reality hasn’t been crossed. So he’s working to figure out this problem.
I am new at this so if this isn’t very clear, I’m sorry. I think your concept is really interesting, but I think your logline is wordy. I think you can phrase it a lot more succinctly.
Thanks for the advice, will have a play with it. I am glad you like the concept.
I know this is sci-fi but I still struggle with how could this happen? Is it psychological?
Anyhow, maybe something like…
An unbalanced video game developer starts encountering his own characters in his “real” life, blurring his lines between reality and fiction. The only way out seems to be to play the game.
