EA's Alphaville goes to the dogs .



EA's online Sim-world sounds like a Hammett novel. Imagine: "In the heat of the digital night, deep in the bowels of the online Alphaville, murder runs rampant, prostitution fuels the digital mafia, and only one spot tells the story straight: the Alphaville Herald. But what befalls its citizens when the uncontrollable tyrants of the city--the programmers--shut down the town's only newspaper?"

So, yeah, Peter Ludlow, philosopher and intrepid chronicler, learns that his Alphaville Herald is no more, scourged by Electronic Arts. The charge: depicting the sad depravity of the avatar addiction & the dark world within. From The Independent's Andrew Gumbell.

"Alphaville quickly turned into a hellhole of scam-artists, crime syndicates, mafia extortion artists and teenage girls turning tricks to make ends meet. It became a breeding ground for the very worst in human nature - a benign-sounding granny, for example, who specialised in taking new players into her confidence, then showered them in abuse. Then there was the scam-artist known as Evangeline, who started out equally friendly and then stole new players' money."

Virtual reality is Hell .

posted. Sat - January 17, 2004 @ 07:34 PM           |

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