Gamedec - Definitive Edition News

Welcome to one of the many articles about Gamedecverse - they're not entirely related to the game, but with the lore of the books, so you can understand more while playing the actual game later in 2021. Without further ado:

The story of prolonged life

In Gamedecverse, you're not limited by the flesh. We're here today to talk about the possibilities people can choose from, to prolong their existence. If you want to live in the Net - you're welcome to do so. If you exist entirely in the Net and want to try how it is to have a physical body? We've got you covered!

But what's a Zoenet?

A Zoenet is a person living online. They might be forced or choose it voluntarily and abandon the physical shell. Although there is a way to return to the physical world from the Net, these people have chosen digital life.

Before reading what follows, it is worth remembering that a person who becomes a zoenet, especially in a netrium, has a rapidly limited range of ways to earn a living. While you're inside a Netrium, you can only make money online, and not everyone is competent to do so.

We distinguish several different types of being a "Zoenets":



The body of such a zoenet lies somewhere in the clinic. Still, it is not suitable for anything other than being a metabolic brain-nourishing machine. Those who have decided on such an existence think that their body will provide the brain with oxygen and nutrients and extract metabolites better than a netrium, which runs on algorithms. A body of a zoenet is simply a factory that nourishes the brain. The kidneys, liver, and heart must be in good shape. Lungs, gastrointestinal tract, skeletal, and muscular system all this can be in a total-failure state.

Sometimes there is no choice, but a necessity to become a Zoenet. These zoenets are desperately looking for a way to keep the body alive, to survive in general. They can't afford a netrium, the money is running out, and they will soon be disconnected from the expensive equipment that combines life support and networking. When the money runs out, they will be transferred to an ordinary hospital ward, where they will be put into a pharmacological coma. Suppose the insurance does not even cover such therapy, and there are no relatives who will pay for the care. In that case, they will be disconnected and die after some time.

Brain extraction - beware of the graphic content. Click for a deblurred version.

The annual cost for keeping your body alive when you're a zoenet is about 100,000 credits. Most of the time, being a zoenet is meant to be temporary because sooner or later, you will decide to go entirely artificial or you can't afford it, get disconnected, fall asleep and die.

What if you don't have a body? Prepare to spend some extra credits...



[h2]2.1 With organic brain (in netrium) [/h2]

The brain can be removed from the body or the head (after a drastic decapitation procedure) and placed in a netrium, a gravitational box that takes care of metabolism and acts as a helmet.

The cost of such an operation is 50 000 credits. The costs associated with maintaining the brain in the netrium are broken down into two components:

[h2]2.2 Buying a netrium [/h2]

In 2199, a company called Novatronics is the sole-manufacturer of netriums, and they are expensive. The regular player's luxurious helmet costs about 30 000 credits. Netriums equipped with the same tech specs, plus the technology to keep the brain alive, cost about 60 000 credits. For comparison, Tossan Lambda - a pnemobile used by middle-level managers, costs the same. So it's safe to say that buying a new home for your brain costs the same as a decent new car.



[h2]2.3 Keeping the brain alive [/h2]

To keep the brain alive, the person taking care of the netrium has to replace the trays from time to time. The trays are divided into "to" and "from".

[h3]2.4 TO [/h3]

Nutrients - glucose, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, fats, and everything that the brain needs. One tank, which is enough for a week, costs 300 credits. (14,400 credits per year).

Oxygen - the "drip" that the brain receives is constantly saturated with oxygen, just like an aquarium with fish. The tank adapted for oxygen saturation of the netrium drip is replaced once a month. It costs 500 credits. (6,000 credits per year).

[h3]2.5 FROM [/h3]

The "FROM" tray collects brain metabolites. It does not need to be replaced. It is emptied into aseptic bags (something like a vacuum cleaner bag). Emptying takes place once a week. The price of one pack is 100 credits. (4 800 credits per year).

Netrium must go through service once a year. Service price - 2 000 credits. Netrium should also be insured. The cost of the annual insurance ranges from 2 000 to 3 000 credits.



Buying netrium is about 60 000 credits. Extracting your brain and transferring it to the netrium = 50 000 credits. If we'd like to exchange it for US dollars, it would be around the cost of a well-equipped Toyota Avensis. The yearly cost of running a netrium is 29 200 credits. It is the equivalent of a brand new Toyota Aygo you'll need to buy every year.



Who can afford to maintain the netrium? People from the upper-middle-class can get 90,000 credits for the initial transfer [netrium + the brain extraction], and then each year, they pay an additional 30,000 credits so they can stay" alive."

It should be remembered that a zoenet sitting in a netrium is entirely dependent on the person who is taking care of it. Usually, it is someone from the family. Still, if the zoenets have no one to deal with the netrium, they must pay for a guardian or buy full service from Novatronics. His or her netrium is then located at Novatronics headquarters. The annual Novatronics service costs 50 000 credits.



There is just one competition for Novatronics. A Texan organization called Zoenet Labs offers zoenets at better prices, but there is a catch. If you use their netrium, you will have to pledge an association in the organization and loyalty to Zoenet Labs.

Let's remember that zoenet using netrium can't move around the real world. It only lives in the Net.





The cheapest Rendan (artificial brain, producer: Novatronics) costs 100 000 credits, but its maintenance is more affordable. The safe is sold together with this artificial brain, and its maintenance is simply electricity.

The Rendan safe can stand in any place where there is access to electricity. The annual service costs 1,000 credits. The procedure of transferring the psyche from the organic brain to the rendan costs 10 000 credits.  Rendan's insurance (with a safe) costs about 3,000 credits per year.



Mobrium is a human-shaped robot-like machine capable of carrying both organic and synthetic brain.

The cheapest Oscar-type mobrium costs five times as much as a netrium - 300,000 credits. Neo and Digit cost 400 000 credits, and Doom is priced at 500 000 credits. Mobrium can accommodate both an organic brain (you need a special, smaller netrium, m-netrium, costing 100,000) and a safe for your rendan

Only zoenets with a mobrium are really free - they can be both online and in the real world and move around them as they please. Mobrium service costs 3,000 credits per year. Mobrium insurance costs 3,000 - 10,000 per year.

[h2]4.1 The average cost of using the cheapest mobrium: [/h2]

• Mobrium – 300 000 credits
  
• Rendan – 100 000 credits
  
• Service of the Mobrium – 3 000 credits
  
• Service of the Rendan – 1 000 credits
  
• Mobrium insurance – 3 000 credits
  

TOTAL – around 407 000 credits
Then annually – 7,000 credits





As you can see, the 22nd century brings a whole new definition of being free. You can be free of your mortal shell or choose to be present in both real and virtual worlds as long as you can afford it, of course.

How did you like the article? Would you decide to leave your organic body and live entirely in the Net?

Be sure to add Gamedec to your Wishlist on Steam to be always up to date with our news about the Gamedecverse!

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If you'd like to talk with our team members, want to ask a question to the Author of the Gamedecverse (Marcin S. Przybyłek), or chat with enthusiasts like you - join our Discord channel.



Stay safe!
#TeamGamedec

It's been a while, but we're back with good news! We are about to be on many well-known events and prepared a new dev-diary to celebrate.




First of all, We have been nominated for the "BIG FISH GRAND PRIX" award at the Polish event called Pixel Heaven 2020! Gamedec was selected from over 140 titles - that's a huge honor, and we are happy we have made it to the final three! Congrats to the other nominees: Ghostrunner and Green Hell 😎 Cross your fingers!




Secondly, Gamedec will be presented at the Escapist Games Showcase, and at this same event, we will debut our newest dev-diary about something you've been asking for a long time. Be sure to follow the event from the 10th of November!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Website and more details


And finally, our isometric, cyberpunk RPG will be featured on the DevGAMM at the Unreal Engine Dev Contest. This event is aimed at developers, publishers, game designers, programmers, artists, business development managers, recruiters, journalists, and everyone involved in the game industry in any way.



Gamedec's page on DevGamm: https://games.devgamm.com/2020/games/gamedec
You can find more details here: https://devgamm.com/

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If you'd like to talk with our team members, want to ask a question to the Author of the Gamedecverse (Marcin S. Przybyłek), or chat with enthusiasts like you - join our Discord channel.



Stay safe!
#TeamGamedec

Grab a cup of coffee and dive deep into the mind of Marcin Sergiusz Przybyłek, the author of the Gamedec saga. Marcin will explain his view on creating the gamedecverse and determine the genre in which Gamedec books fit in. Enjoy!

by: Sebastian Brzuszczak
A word from the author: I’m no literary scholar. I’m a writer. After I write something, I get to know “what that was”, usually from reviews. Sometimes I hear that I wrote cyberpunk or hopepunk or even solarpunk. I read some articles on what they are, and I don’t know what to think about.

You can imagine my confusion when I wrote the first stories about gamedec in 2002 but finished the whole saga in 2015, and learned that the term “solarpunk” was forged in 2008, and hopepunk word was cataloged in 2017. So, I did not know these terms when I wrote the first three parts of the big story.

The definitions of cyberpunk, solarpunk, and hopepunk are broad and narrow at the same time. Broad, because they concern things globally: solarpunk novel, as I understand it, should stress the renewable sources of energy, the “green” direction, generally. Hopepunk is about fighting for values, about kindness towards others, about hope.

from: Gamedec video game trailer

So, if there are some atomic powerplants in a novel, it is no longer solarpunk, and if some characters in a story don’t show kindness, it is no longer hopepunk? Of course, those questions are wrong. It is more about the mood, the reception of a novel/story/game: is it more solar-ish, hope-ish, or cyberpunk-ish (where you should show the bottom of society, “hight tech – low life” and a rebellion)?

The definitions are also narrow (as I understand this word) because they suggest that you can describe society stratification, climate changes, or values things only within their genre. Of course, that is not so. Science fiction was always about that.

I am a creator, not a follower. So frankly, I never wanted to write stories and novels in any trend. In my opinion, creation should, or to put it better, can be free, not trendy.

I wanted to write about games in the future. In the first part of the “Gamedec” saga anyway. Was it cyber, solar, or hopepunk? Or did I create a new genre, “gamepunk”? Hm, and what if I don’t think it was “punk” at all, because Torkil Aymore, the main hero, was a detective, not a low-lifer, and his clients were mostly wealthy? Is it a “Gamedec” trend? I get lost. Are genres like solarpunk, hopepunk, or cyberpunk unnecessary because their traits are present in most contemporary science fiction movies, novels, and games?

solarpunk city by Steven Wong

But people like to label things. It is easier to say:

- You know, it is a little cyberpunk, with a pinch of noir, detective stories, there is sun there, it is not only dark, and it is not like everybody is unhappy there, the author stresses values and shows meaningful solutions, so quite a bit of hopepunk.
- I see, so to keep it short: cyberpunk, noir detective mood, and hopepunk, yes?
- Sure. And a lot of games, the future ones. Like in the Matrix movie.

No doubt that conversation took less time than telling the whole background of Gamedecverse and the history of the main hero.

One of the most eminent Polish poets, Julian Tuwim, in one of his witty poems, asked a question: “How does the peppermint smell?” Then he tried to answer the question: that it smells like toothpaste (but it is the opposite, he replied to himself: it is the toothpaste that smells like peppermint!), that smells like some healing elixirs (and again, he noticed it was the other way round), and so on. Eventually, he concluded, that peppermint smells… like peppermint.

from: Gamedec video game trailer

There are two kinds of authors (of course, there are more, but for the sake of this article, let’s say there are two categories). The first are those who say: “I’ll write cyberpunk!” or “I’ll write space opera!” or “I’ll write a postapocalyptic novel!” or “I’ll write a fighting fantasy thing!” and so on. Then they keep to the trend, just filling the known channel with their story.

The second type says: “I want to tell an interesting story; it swells in my heart! I have a vision I want to share!” The trend doesn’t matter to them that much. Of course, they see their story in a given setting, but it is more a product of their imagination. I don’t want to say that the first kind of writer doesn’t have interesting stories or vision. All I mean that the primary incentive in the first group is to write something in a given trend (sometimes the one that sells best in a given time, or is most, well, “trendy”). The second kind thinks about an idea, the story, the hero, the vision first, and then constructs the world around those ideas.

I have a sensation that Frank Herbert’s Dune was like that. I am pretty sure he didn’t want to write a space opera nor any post-apocalyptic story (in a way, Dune’s world is a post-a-great-war thing) nor, eventually, a religion treaty. He wanted to write a story of destiny, sandworms, and sand. An ecological drama. Why? Most probably because he was interested in that.

book character, Torkil Aymore by Tomasz Maroński

Why George Lucas created Star Wars? I am almost sure it emerged from his most profound dreams. He did not think of creating a space opera. The space opera surrounded his ideas. Well, that was the case, in my opinion, anyway.

So why did I write “gamedec” saga? Gamedec is about a game detective in the first part, but in the next installments, that detective has to face the realium (reality). He observes and participates in the reshaping of the world as he knows it, and in the fourth and the fifth parts of the saga, the story changes to military SF and a solar utopia? Why did I do that?

I wanted to write a story of a human in a changing world - a human that has to change. Adapt. Develop. It was a kind of an RPG story: he got new skills and entered new realities in an ever-evolving world. It was my dream to write something like that.

Oh. And I loved video games.

That’s why I created the profession of a game detective. I wanted to show how complex and exciting the situation of gamers of the future can be. How deep and intricate the entanglement of realium and sensory worlds could go. Is it possible that a gamedec will accept payment for his job being a spaceship in one of the games? Will he discover who in realium is the woman his client met in a Paradise Beach game? Will he learn to control pain during Goodabads matches? Will he enter a forbidden game where it is possible to die? Like: really die? Will he help a group of young players to finish a cooperative game to win the prize? You see, the more games of the future I created, the more problems and questions I wanted to put. Is it hope, solar, or cyberpunk?

from: Gamedec video game trailer

Torkil lives really high, on the 342nd floor of a liner (a standing-hanging building) on the outskirts of giant Warsaw City. Every day he can see the sun shining off the towers of the town he loves. He drinks whiskey pondering the cases he solved, looking at sunsets. But he knows that there is no sun deeper within his city, and at the bottom of Warsaw City lie ruins of old Warsaw, where wild tribals live, where mutated bats and rats dwell, and it is very dangerous to go there. Oh, and sometimes he recalls that all the polis (cities like Warsaw City) are surrounded by ABBs (Anti Bios Barriers). The climate, fauna, and flora are so aggressive that it is impossible to go beyond the barriers and survive. Only Out-Rangers go there. Is it hope, solar, or cyberpunk?

Humanity is on the brink of immortality. You can buy a beelbie – your very young body without a brain, undergo a brain graft surgery, and in two weeks become young again. Remarkable, isn’t it? There is another planet that is terraformed – Gaya. A globe without mutations, without wild climate, a sunny new world. You can emigrate. Well, of course, if you can afford those luxuries: the new body or the ticket. So, you see, the fantastic new world and life await you if you have the money. But it is not impossible to earn it (although it is pretty hard) or get a loan from the bank. Of course, if your life decisions were reasonable and you could foresee, you would need some extra cash just in case. Is it h-, s-, or c- punk? Well, as far as I know, many science fiction approaches describe social stratification and unequal goods distribution.

In one of the stories of the first tome, Torkil starts to hallucinate. He begins to see a demon, who knows more than him, and sometimes says things that help Torkil a big deal. The creature’s name is Lee Roth, and it appears when Torkil plays The Abyss game. The problem is that the demon reappears after Torkil finishes the game session. Then another spiritual hallucination appears. Torkil meets people who can see such phenomena as well. Is it medical fiction or fantasy now? Well, all these events have a scientific explanation, but the reader has to wait for it till the end of the saga.

Torkil Aymore by Tomasz Maroński

I thought about a beauty business, cooking, transport, food making, gaming, space travels, law, corporation wars, and, believe me, hundreds of other little and more significant things and described them on thousands of pages. It is just the gamedec world. Gamedecverse. And it is just Torkil Aymore who's the main hero. At the end of the big story, he has friends, quite a lot of them, a big family too, but, at the end of the day, it is his story. And a little bit of mine, because I've spent the best period of my life to create it. What is it then? H-, s-, c- or fantasypunk?

It occurs it is not only a literary scholars problem, but also the game developers one. Designers of Anshar Studios, who decided to create a “Gamedec” game, had to face it and decide how to “position” their creation. Who to address? How to label it? The times are complex, but the thinking of clients became simpler. Designers knew people like to label things. Labels give them orientation, like stars to ancient sailors.

So how did they create the game?

• A pinch of detective, noir mood,
  
• A bunch of Matrix games of the future,
  
• A punch of cyberpunk atmosphere at the bottom parts of Warsaw City,
  
• Some golden rays of hope / solarpunk at the top parts of the polis,
  
• And a lot, a lot of good, profound stories to tell.
  

It is the fruit of their effort, dreams, and imagination. Well, I work with them too, so let me say it is our effort. I hope you will like it, no matter what proportions of “punks” you prefer.

text by Marcin Sergiusz Przybyłek, the author of the Gamedec saga

[h3]Which genres associated with the futuristic vision of the world do you find most interesting?[/h3]
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If you'd like to talk with our team members, want to ask a question to the Author of the Gamedecverse (Marcin S. Przybyłek), or chat with enthusiasts like you - join our Discord channel.



Have fun!
#TeamGamedec

During the Kickstarter Campaign, we were fully open with our decision to make Gamedec a community-driven project - we wanted you to be an active factor in helping us create the game you would like to play. We try to keep you informed about the production status and provide you with information about our activities as often as possible.

Right now, two months after the Backer's Build release, we sat down and discussed the feedback many of you provided in the surveys or previews both by press and content creators. We realized that they were sincere, sometimes rough, but always beneficial and mind-opening, hence our decision to postpone the release date.

This made us understand that we're heading in the right direction with the game's production, and our branching system works well, but there is still room for improvement and much work to be done. We know that the decision to delay the release will help us deliver the consistency in the quality of the premise you've backed.

Click this link to see the image in higher resolution

We are iterating many different aspects of the game to be sure they meet the high standards our community anticipates. We know that the dialogues (and their translation) need to be improved– That is one of the most commented problems from the Backer's Build Survey, and we want to deliver the quality we've promised during the campaign. Most of the in-game locations are done, but we are still iterating the meta-scenario factors and polishing the narrative branching. We will provide you with more information about that in the future, with more dev-diaries, content videos about the progress, and more.

As for user-created input – we promised space to deliver community-made assets that will find their place in the game's final build (graffiti, voice recordings, naming NPCs, or companies), and it is still a work in progress. In the following weeks, we will be reaching out to gather the input/content from you to process it into the game. Expect some emails/check the Discord Backer Channels for more info on that.

When it comes to physical rewards - they will be sent out to you shortly before the game's release so that you'll have them on the launch day, and at the moment, we are working on them to have the highest possible quality to satisfy you fully. You can also expect various updates on this matter, as we will try to show you the process of their creation and tell you a bit more about what it looks like "behind the scenes".

Gamedec is still set to debut on PC. Switch and other consoles are still confirmed, but we can't promise a simultaneous release.


Thank you for being such a fantastic community and for your continued support.

#TeamGamedec

[h3]Join our Community Manager, Mateusz Greloch, on his journey through the virtual world of Twisted & Perverted.[/h3]

For those who don't know what Gamedec is - welcome! Here's a quick pitch for you :)

Gamedec is a single-player non-combat cyberpunk isometric RPG. You are a game detective, who solves crimes inside virtual worlds. Use your wits to gather info from your witnesses and suspects, get to the bottom of deceptive schemes, save lives, and investigate the extraordinary relationships between virtual worlds and their inhabitants. The game continually adapts to your choices and never judges – You are the sum of your choices.

This stream will be available only on Steam, as a part of the Steam Game Festival celebration. Be sure to ask questions and type fast, since Mateusz will leave some of the decision for you to make :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/917720/Gamedec/