Parasites Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that will start as a (2D) social network RPG (also available on mobile) and extend into a (3D) virtual environment.
Background
Parasites Online is a player-driven persistent world set in 2512 (500 years after end of Parasites feature film). Global warming has turned much of the UK into forest (or lake) with only the wealthiest cities able to afford the continual cleaning and deforestation.
The cities are gleaming wonderlands of skyscrapers that are ruthlessly ruled by a governing dictatorship that lives in the Capital. This governing elite spy on the population with millions of cameras and track the population’s location and life history from cradle to grave on national databases.
People in cities live like docile animals, taught to conform and beaten into submission.
The prison population has soared due to psychometric testing of children age 7 to identify possible criminal traits and tendencies. Many tower blocks on the edge of the city have been turned into borstal-blocks or feral “kid cities”.
Parasites
Feared, reviled and worshipped by different Sects, the planet is under constant threat from a virulent nanoscopic parasite that eats human flesh and turns it into metal. The parasites aren’t machines as they are in Vexille - they’re organisms that are dumb individually but have a collective consciousness. Think termites or ants building a nest - they rely on collaboration for their survival. The parasites feed off the host (human) physically (the flesh) but they act like chameleons in changing their collective shape to form objects of desire (car parts, consumer electronics). Slowly they replace the body's organs and perform the vital functions for life until the human can't survive without them even though the consumption continues until there is no human left. The parasites die with the host, unable to sustain themselves without flesh.
Time-travel
The game makes available several Counter-Time Dependency Event Matching Machines (CTDEMM) – or “RevKars” as they are more popularly known. These are time-travel devices that can affect the past and hence rewrite the future. People and things can't travel back in time but these machines use nonparametric regression analysis to identify the smallest possible event to change which will have the desired effect in the present (think chaos theory and the butterfly flapping its wings).
Players use RevKars to affect the Parasites movie, web series, screenings & access to in-game and out-of-game assets.
Actions (notably voting) at live events impact the present and hence the effects ripple through into the future (e.g. the game progress).
Gameplay
Game participants fall into three categories:
- Players: those most active in the game
- Gamers: those recruited to play games-within-games (themed problem solvers and casual games)
- Observers: those who get pleasure (excitement) from seeing progress unfold but take no active role.
Players start the game with full life energy and slowly grow old and die as the game progresses. As they age they lose mental capacity and physical agility although this can be slowed or reversed through progress in the game.
When a player dies he is reincarnated. However, his karma at the time of death will affect how he will be reincarnated. The goal is to achieve an enlightened, balanced life at the time of death. Hence it is for the player to decide the optimal time to die. Players are not allowed to commit suicide.
Mindful positive actions create good karma, thoughtless or negative actions create bad karma. Karma is calculated on a continual basis based on collective action, individual behavior (e.g. compassion, dedication) and success in missions which may include collaborative ambushes, assassinations, gang battles, non-violent resistance and so on.
Players are expected to recruit gamers and observers as this will affect their karma and their ability to perform well in missions.
Reincarantion
There are 6 levels of reincarnation with players starting the game as nubes at level 3.
Players that go through 3 levels of positive reincarnation achieve nirvana and become a special Buddha-type character able to offer special wisdom to other players but can still fall back through the layers. Successive negative reincarnation will ultimately lead to hell and the player will suffer a real online death.
Note that the levels of reincarnation are not those of regular game levels in that progress need not always be motivated towards nirvana. For example, level 1 – the closest to hell – will be dedicated to PvP combat but skills at this level may have been gained at higher levels. Hence players must manage their karma and the time of their death to achieve their own personal objectives.
The Sects
Each participant (player, gamer, observer) must join one of four Sects:
- Kings - a non-elected ruling elite (government) who create the laws (and enforce them) for those living in the cities
- Dark Dharma - anarcho-Buddhists living outside the cities. Masters of Tai Chi, pacifist and reject modern technology and the law of the Kings
- PME - "ParaMachinErotica" - those addicted to the hallucinations caused by the parasitic infection. They fetishize & worship technology. Social outcasts that live on the lower floors and on the boarders of urban and rural living
- Extremist - thrill-seekers/adrenaline junkies hooked on sports like rock climbing, base-jumping etc. These guys live in the tower blocks at various levels
On reincarnation a player is able to switch Sects and may offer the choice to his gamers and observers.
Live screenings of the movie are affected by Sect members physically present and the collective balance of their karma at time of screening