This Is Not a Game
Encyclopedia
This is Not a Game is a 2009 thriller written by American
science fiction
author Walter Jon Williams
.
games (ARGs) for the company Great Big Idea which is run by her college friend Charlie, a software millionaire, and is financed by another college friend Austin Katanyan, a wealthy venture capitalist. Dagmar, Charlie, Austin, and another friend BJ, had all been friends and role playing enthusiasts in college. After college Charlie and BJ had started a software company together but Charlie had forced BJ out and the latter now works a dead end job at a computer help line.
At the beginning of the novel Dagmar has just completed a successful ARG and heads to Jakarta to take some time off. Instead she gets caught in the chaos of a revolution as a currency collapse, blamed on Chines traders, causes the city to erupt in violence. After escaping, Dagmar returns home to LA where she is scheduled to begin a new ARG to promote an MMORPG
in which Charlie is invested. Soon after the game gets started she sees her friend Austin gunned down in front of Great Big Idea's offices. With Charlie in hiding and the police apparently stymied, Dagmar writes Austin's death into the game, hoping that the thousands of players will act as a human flesh search engine
and discover the killer. The players do in fact discover the killer's identity, a Russian hitman who works for the mob. As the police try to track him down Dagmar becomes more discontented at Charlie as he forces her to make clumsy rewrites to her game in order to promote several products including cryptography software and a water testing device. Partly to piss off Charlie, Dagmar brings in BJ as a writer for the game. BJ explains how their company nearly failed but that at the last minute Charlie came up with a mysterious bunch of financial backers who saved them. Dagmar becomes suspicious that these backers are the Russian mob, or at least that Charlie is involved in illegal activity.
With news that the Argentine currency is in crisis, Dagmar confronts Charlie with her suspicions and he confesses to the truth: Back during the early days of his company he and BJ had created self replicating bots which were supposed to play the financial markets. As the company was collapsing, Charlie released them onto the internet, hoping they might do something. In a few months the bots had made enough money playing the markets to save Charlie's company. Due to fears that BJ might find out, or that he would sabotage something, Charlie forced him out. Now, however, the bots have grown too powerful to control. Somewhere along the line they had stolen some money from an account controlled by the Russian mob, who shot Austin in retaliation. The bots have amassed a fortune of twelve billion dollars for Charlie but they were also responsible for the Indonesian currency collapse and the instability of the Argentine currency. Charlie is worried that the bots will eventually cause an even more massive financial crisis, such as attacking the dollar. He and Dagmar set out to stop them by using the players in their ARG to distribute a patch to the various servers where the bots are located. Before it can be completed though Charlie is killed when a bomb explodes at the hotel he is hiding at. Dagmar realizes with horror that she mentioned Charlies location in front of BJ and that the later is responsible for Charlie's death. She also realizes that BJ had sent out messages to players of the ARG, who he used to deliver the bomb to Charlie and that BJ has hacked into Great Big Idea's system and has created a patch which will make the bots loyal to him. Dagmar, after undoing BJs software patch, discovers a bomb intended for her and instead places it in BJ's car. When he goes to detonate it he ends up killing himself.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author Walter Jon Williams
Walter Jon Williams
Walter Jon Williams is an American writer, primarily of science fiction.Several of Williams' novels have a distinct cyberpunk feel to them, notably Hardwired , Voice of the Whirlwind and Angel Stationn...
.
Overview
The novel is set in the near future where Dagmar Shaw works as a producer of augmented realityAugmented reality
Augmented reality is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is...
games (ARGs) for the company Great Big Idea which is run by her college friend Charlie, a software millionaire, and is financed by another college friend Austin Katanyan, a wealthy venture capitalist. Dagmar, Charlie, Austin, and another friend BJ, had all been friends and role playing enthusiasts in college. After college Charlie and BJ had started a software company together but Charlie had forced BJ out and the latter now works a dead end job at a computer help line.
At the beginning of the novel Dagmar has just completed a successful ARG and heads to Jakarta to take some time off. Instead she gets caught in the chaos of a revolution as a currency collapse, blamed on Chines traders, causes the city to erupt in violence. After escaping, Dagmar returns home to LA where she is scheduled to begin a new ARG to promote an MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
in which Charlie is invested. Soon after the game gets started she sees her friend Austin gunned down in front of Great Big Idea's offices. With Charlie in hiding and the police apparently stymied, Dagmar writes Austin's death into the game, hoping that the thousands of players will act as a human flesh search engine
Human flesh search engine
Human Flesh Search is a primarily Chinese internet phenomenon of massive researching using Internet media such as blogs and forums. It has generally been stigmatized as being for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals to public humiliation, usually out of Chinese nationalistic...
and discover the killer. The players do in fact discover the killer's identity, a Russian hitman who works for the mob. As the police try to track him down Dagmar becomes more discontented at Charlie as he forces her to make clumsy rewrites to her game in order to promote several products including cryptography software and a water testing device. Partly to piss off Charlie, Dagmar brings in BJ as a writer for the game. BJ explains how their company nearly failed but that at the last minute Charlie came up with a mysterious bunch of financial backers who saved them. Dagmar becomes suspicious that these backers are the Russian mob, or at least that Charlie is involved in illegal activity.
With news that the Argentine currency is in crisis, Dagmar confronts Charlie with her suspicions and he confesses to the truth: Back during the early days of his company he and BJ had created self replicating bots which were supposed to play the financial markets. As the company was collapsing, Charlie released them onto the internet, hoping they might do something. In a few months the bots had made enough money playing the markets to save Charlie's company. Due to fears that BJ might find out, or that he would sabotage something, Charlie forced him out. Now, however, the bots have grown too powerful to control. Somewhere along the line they had stolen some money from an account controlled by the Russian mob, who shot Austin in retaliation. The bots have amassed a fortune of twelve billion dollars for Charlie but they were also responsible for the Indonesian currency collapse and the instability of the Argentine currency. Charlie is worried that the bots will eventually cause an even more massive financial crisis, such as attacking the dollar. He and Dagmar set out to stop them by using the players in their ARG to distribute a patch to the various servers where the bots are located. Before it can be completed though Charlie is killed when a bomb explodes at the hotel he is hiding at. Dagmar realizes with horror that she mentioned Charlies location in front of BJ and that the later is responsible for Charlie's death. She also realizes that BJ had sent out messages to players of the ARG, who he used to deliver the bomb to Charlie and that BJ has hacked into Great Big Idea's system and has created a patch which will make the bots loyal to him. Dagmar, after undoing BJs software patch, discovers a bomb intended for her and instead places it in BJ's car. When he goes to detonate it he ends up killing himself.