MC may potentially be the only "real" person. Is this a terrible idea?

[UltimaBahamut93]

I have been getting lots of great advice on my story idea about a MC who intentionally traps himself inside a video game. He's a beta tester for advanced technology that links his mind with the game world. He consumed harmful substances right before linking up so that the only thing keeping him alive is his brain function being active in the game world, so that the company couldn't just log him offline. He's using this game world as an escape from reality because he's so overcome with depression and hating his life that he saw this as his escape. The point of the story is for him to reevaluate the question of are comforting lies more important than an uncomfortable truth?

My issue that I am having a hard time dealing with is that he is the only person hooked up to his world. Every other character is an npc and essentially not real. I'm not sure if I like this, or if the reader will like this. I'm concerned about it making the story feel hollow since he's the only actual person in the story. I am considering changing this to where it is a shared beta world. That option though is raising all sorts of issues and concerns on the stakes. If the protagonist dies, his brain function ceases and he dies in reality. Even if that still only applies to him, if everyone else can just keep respawning then I feel like it ruins that tension. And then what's to prevent the other players or even the company from just interceding for him all the time? The original idea was that because his mind was in such a fragile state, the company couldn't interfere or interact with him for fear of killing him, thus forcing the MC to be alone.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[A. E. Lowan]

If it were my team, we'd start asking questions of the characters and the story. The What If Game has launched like half of the Books of Binding. Why would a corporation worry about killing him? What are the real stakes, for everyone, and how do they conflict?

Also, I read this a while back. It vibes a bit on the same lines as your idea and it might be interesting to check out.
https://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Die-Fantasy-Novel-Caine-ebook/dp/B001MYA38W/

 

[Mad Swede]

A. E. Lowan has already suggested asking what-if type questions. I'm going to suggest some other questions. What is it that convinces your MC that uncomfortable truths must be faced and accepted? How might NPCs help him with this? Does your MC form any relationships with the NPCs? This last question matters, because what would happen if the NPCs in this environment had their own personalities and in some way were real? Could it be that your MC falls for one of these NPCs and if so would your MC want to take them back to the real world?

 

[UltimaBahamut93]

A. E. Lowan has already suggested asking what-if type questions. I'm going to suggest some other questions. What is it that convinces your MC that uncomfortable truths must be faced and accepted? How might NPCs help him with this? Does your MC form any relationships with the NPCs? This last question matters, because what would happen if the NPCs in this environment had their own personalities and in some way were real? Could it be that your MC falls for one of these NPCs and if so would your MC want to take them back to the real world?

I'm going to have this set in a world where AI is very advanced, to the point where AI can be coded to follow parameters but also evolve and be their own individuals. Basically ChatGPT 1000. I'm not sure exactly how it will work yet, but I'm planning on having him become very close to a female npc that has a resemblance to a woman he loved in reality but died (I might create a system like Dragon's Dogma's Pawns where he could actually recreate her himself). She is one of the main reasons he refuses to leave because if he leaves the game, it means he has to wake up in a world where she is gone. I'd like for him to form strong relationships with these characters which will help him grow but might also make it harder in some ways to perceive reality. Are they real people, or just AI? And if they are AI, what does it mean to be a person? Is all this just happening in my head, or is this real? (Borrowing that line from Harry Potter)

@A.E. Lowan, I really want the focus of this story to not be the mc vs the company, but the mc vs himself. There will be a scene in the very beginning where an avatar of the company appears in the game world and speaks to the protagonist. He tells the MC that he needs to come back but he refuses to, claiming they shouldn't care and that he doesn't either. The representative warns him that his mental connection is becoming more unstable, and that he's already aware of glitches and things in the world breaking and messing up.

Also early on, there will be scenes showing that the mc's mind is becoming numb and desensitized to the game. He can't taste things anymore and is losing his sense of touch. The first chapter is showing clues to the reader that something is not right, that he mc doesn't belong in this world and they'll be able to piece together themselves that he is in an artificial world.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

There is already some very interesting anecdotal evidence of the impact AI chatbots and "girlfriends" are having on mostly men around the globe. A little research jaunt down that alleyway should prove fruitful.

 

[JBCrowson]

Couple of thoughts:

Might the fact that he can tell he is only interacting with NPCs in this datadrome, be the reason he eventually wants to face his issues back in the real world? Something along the lines of "a bad relationship to a real person is better than a good relationship with a non-person."

Can you end it in such a way that the reader is left unsure which is the true reality?
e.g. they go through the book believing he is a human in a game world, but he might have been an advanced-AI-controlled-NPC interacting with real people,
or when he returns to what has been set up as the real world, we find it is not any more real than the game world after all.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I saw a story once on Amazing Stories, maybe? It was about a woman on a peaceful, romantic picnic in a sunny park. But as the picnic goes along, we start seeing flaws in the reality around her, until it comes clear that the park isn't real. Instead, the woman is on a mining station, in a pod that's projecting the scene for her as a relaxation thing. And the hook?

The pod's failing and they can't get her out. Moreover, she doesn't want out, and she herself may be causing the failure in order to stay at that picnic.

 

[Prince of Spires]

You do know that all the characters you write in your novel aren't real, right?

That might sound like a silly question, but it isn't. All your characters are fictional. The reader doesn't care that some are more fictional than others, unless the character cares. There are plenty of examples out there of stories where a "real" character interacts with a fictional one, and the reader (or viewer) doesn't care one bit. Why? Because to the characters those people are, or become real.

If anything, a common trope in these stories is the real person falling in love with a fictional character, and at the end they are separated because the real character has to go back to the real world. That feels as heart-aching as a character death.

 

[UltimaBahamut93]

You do know that all the characters you write in your novel aren't real, right?

That might sound like a silly question, but it isn't. All your characters are fictional. The reader doesn't care that some are more fictional than others, unless the character cares. There are plenty of examples out there of stories where a "real" character interacts with a fictional one, and the reader (or viewer) doesn't care one bit. Why? Because to the characters those people are, or become real.

If anything, a common trope in these stories is the real person falling in love with a fictional character, and at the end they are separated because the real character has to go back to the real world. That feels as heart-aching as a character death.

I do want to have each of the major characters (npcs) represent or remind the MC of some sort of trauma or insecurity that made him want to escape reality. After spending time and going on an adventure with them, he is able to overcome these flaws within himself, which is why at the end he wants to return home. So even though the characters aren't "real" they are very important to the protagonist, in the same way fictional characters are important to us.

 

[pmmg]

I dont think it will be a problem that some/all of the other characters are not real. If the AI is rich enough, it might be hard to tell anyway...and the MC might find it hard at times to know if a character is real or not. Suppose all the characters are AI, but he comes to think some of them may be other players? Would he know the difference? If its vague for him, might it not also be unclear for the reader?

I can think of like 1000 directions you could take it, but so long as the story is something to say about all us human types, I suspect it will connect. I've been sad at times when fictional characters die...why should AI generated ones be any different?

 

[dollyt8]

I have been getting lots of great advice on my story idea about a MC who intentionally traps himself inside a video game. He's a beta tester for advanced technology that links his mind with the game world. He consumed harmful substances right before linking up so that the only thing keeping him alive is his brain function being active in the game world, so that the company couldn't just log him offline. He's using this game world as an escape from reality because he's so overcome with depression and hating his life that he saw this as his escape. The point of the story is for him to reevaluate the question of are comforting lies more important than an uncomfortable truth?

My issue that I am having a hard time dealing with is that he is the only person hooked up to his world. Every other character is an npc and essentially not real. I'm not sure if I like this, or if the reader will like this. I'm concerned about it making the story feel hollow since he's the only actual person in the story. I am considering changing this to where it is a shared beta world. That option though is raising all sorts of issues and concerns on the stakes. If the protagonist dies, his brain function ceases and he dies in reality. Even if that still only applies to him, if everyone else can just keep respawning then I feel like it ruins that tension. And then what's to prevent the other players or even the company from just interceding for him all the time? The original idea was that because his mind was in such a fragile state, the company couldn't interfere or interact with him for fear of killing him, thus forcing the MC to be alone.

What are your thoughts on this?

I had a very similar idea, and the way I solved this is that there is only one other person in there with him. It's not normally a shared world, but the company allowed one other person to enter in with him to try to convince him to find a way to come out. However, the MC doesn't know that, so there's a bit of mystery about who this person is and why they keep talking to him. I never actually wrote the story; it was just an idea, and I think I would have a hard time stretching it out to a full novel.

Another idea could be that someone else invades the world as well; maybe someone who just enjoys hacking decided to see if they could hack the game and ended up in his world because they saw something strange about the code. Or maybe they're a white-hat hacker that was specifically hired to see if they could help the situation without risking killing the protagonist.

I think it's fine if you want all of the characters to be fake. I do think some people complain about this mainly when it's hidden, as in suddenly it becomes obvious that it wasn't real all along instead of that being established from the beginning. Because then everything that's happened doesn't seem to have stakes. Vs. if you knew from the beginning that it was fake but there were still real stakes (the protagonist's life in this case.) So I think it can be done. That said, I personally would have less interest in a story in which there's only one real character, mainly because I've never been one to ask "what if AI had sentience" or "what if AI could be alive," so to me the other characters would just be code and that would detract from the experience. I think some people are interested in exploring whether AI can/does have feelings though, so that wouldn't be the case for everyone.