I'll close the giveaway on Friday June 5 so you have 2 more days to participate. I wanted to conclude the giveaway earlier but I'm completely and utterly exhausted after work these days and hardly able to form a thought so I have to choose my next free day to wrap up this giveaway.

Hey there! Hope things have slowed down a bit for you. Just curious if there's any update on this. :-)

High time to wrap up this giveaway! First off, my sincere apologies for the delay, this was supposed to be concluded days ago. Don't worry about me forgetting, I can be slow but I keep my word and will come through in the end. So when's this "end"...? Well, the end is upon us right about now!

My current part-time job is taking a toll on me both physically and mentally. It involves talking to and giving instructions to hundreds of people every day as well as hauling around tons of stuff (literally, several metric tons per shift). If need be, I can do all that but it costs me all my energy. In the evening, I'm so entirely exhausted that I can at best casually browse the forum (and evil sales) a bit and maybe watch an episode of MacGyver and that's it for the day. Haven't had the energy to play any games at all in the last two weeks, not even casual ones. A common notion is that playing games often affects RL adversely, in my case RL affects gaming adversely.

So without further ado, let's get back on topic. I usually like to reply to every post but forgive me if I keep it a little shorter given that I'm practically K.O. (just took a nap of several hours but still groggy)

I had a hard time deciding on a winner and have been contemplating about this for days now. To my minor disappointment, no one went into super duper nano juicy detail but three participants in particular made posts that I found worthy of winning: , [url=http://www.gog.com/forum/general/technobabylon_giveaway_deluxe_edition/post23]Enebias and jcosmocohen

Also, special thanks to drealmer7 for posting repeatedly in this thread, much appreciated!

If I'd choose a winner based on whose cyberday I personally think would be the most fun, it would have to be you. I first read you wanted to go out with an Onion Girl and was like eh?? but then I saw that you meant Orion Girl. I'm assuming that "going out with" includes NSFW stuff and same for "dancing" with an Asari but either way, guess you prefer to sound like a gentleman about it and that's fine, no pressure to share any explicit details in case there were any ;) Although details never hurt imho.

One could subcsribe to all your bullet points and not get bored. Space dragons, dinosaurs, Yoda as digital therapist etc, all very legit!

Since you appear to be a Star Trek fan, I'll make you an offer: Next time Star Trek Judgement Rites & Star Trek 25th Anniversary go on sale, I'll gift you at least one or if possible both of those two games if they are discounted at least 50%, ok for you? You see, both games are on my wishlist and since I have to buy an extra gift code for everything I buy, I might as well save myself the effort of a giveaway and "use" you as my gift recipient when the time arises. It's a win-win for us both! Drop me a PM when the games go on sale, I'll most likely see it myself though since I check the GOG page almost every day.

Thanks for this excellent and entertaining post, this is a model entry! As with Lesterknight99, it made me want to know even more detail but it was already fun to read and a very worthy contribution.

Had to laugh at how you start with food, I didn't even consider that option. A cyber stomach is never full but to start your cyberday on an empty stomach seems dull, at least on a psychological level so why not. To others, it might seem as a waste of one hour of priceless cyberworld experience but it's your choice after all and only you can decide what's fun to you.

Aside from flying a jet around the world I wouldn't have thought of any of your ideas nor would I select those activities if such programs were available as preset routines but I must admit they sound immensely entertaining. No one says that cyberspace has to be a deeply spiritual experience so it's perfectly fine to YOLO your day with rocket launchers and "rainbow .12 gauge shotguns" and whatnot. I also like your take on vigilante justice. You correctly realize that such an endeavor needs to be first and foremost about your personal fun and wanton destruction of property since all the good deeds are virtual and therefor the justice served is entirely meaningless - unless you had fun.

I'd like to gift you a game from the summer sale but your wishlist is not visible, so please let me know if there's any game you'd like. Choose any game you like up to $4.99 as your reward!

Thank you for your several posts here! Your cyberday description sounds very high adrenaline so I took a look at your wishlist and got you a gift code for the most adrenaline crazed game on there: Serious Sam!
It's probably a very low priority wish of yours but believe me, this game is so action packed that there's hardly any comparison, you gotta at least try it out. Check your PM for a free code, enjoy :)

Glad that you decided to participate, Enebias! Your contribution was (unsurprisingly) the most philosophical and thought provoking.

I would certainly like to witness a medieval siege as well, that's incidentally one of the first things that came to my mind as well - not so much for the thrill of violence and certainly not for fun but out of scientific curiosity. When one visits medieval ruins, it's natural to wonder how castle sieges really went down and what it was like. I would most definitely not dare to activate full feedback, too worried about serious pain which is almost guaranteed if you're in the thick of things and even if you're not you can always get hit by a rogue arrow (no pun intended).

As for the temporary memory erase, sounds very dangerous and I'm not sure how viable that would be. Could quite mess up the brain even if there's a safety timer that logs you out after so and so many minutes. Keep in mind that even if the experience is virtual, your brain still gets flooded with dopamine and whatnot in RL, more so if it can't differentiate between real and unreal. I just had a first aid course refresher and was taught not to tell injured people that "everything will be fine" because then some people can die on the way to the hospital because they think they're all safe instead of actively focusing on survival. Apparently, this does happen. The mind can be a killer! Anyway, this reminds me that I haven't watched Total Recall in a while.

It could also be quite the remedy for present-day warmongers, I agree on that . Personally, I would at least try to defend my country (only on the soil of this country, never beyond the borders) so I guess I'm a patriot to some degree - not out of stupid bravado or gratuitous nationalism but simply because in any case war came to where I am right now, the rest of the continent is already screwed and there would be nowhere to run away to. Even if I'd like to run, it would make no sense. Better to die trying than to die without trying. The thought of facing battle scares me though, anyone without fear is likely a psychopath. It's not so much a fear of death - which is inevitably anyway for all of us - but a fear of dying, in an unpleasantly slow and painful way that is. On the other hand, not being part of the active defenses one would probably be even more scared because you'd have more time to play sitting duck and make yourself go crazy with obsessive worrying.

Interesting point about not seeing the cyberspace session as a closed off program like the holodeck in Star Trek but as the Internet on steroids. That is btw exactly what Trance is in Technobabylon, it ties in with RL and quite a number of puzzles play on that.
I wouldn't even have thought of that, all that comes to my mind is fun and crazy stuff but what if your cyberspace was connected to others around the world? Hacking and manipulation would take on an entirely different level, again this is a main aspect of the story in Technobabylon.

Your cyberday wasn't as specifically and clearly outlined as the posts by LesterKnight99 and jcosmocohen who in some ways fulfilled the task more dutifully but I guess it's how your mind works (very non-linear) and it would be a bit petty of me if I'd penalize you for not sticking to a certain structure, I'm not a control freak in that way plus I made no ultra precise demands in the first place. Your thoughts and ideas seem to sync with the game most, this wasn't a requirement to win but I've given it a lot of thought and decided to give the Technobabylon code to you. I'm quite certain this is exactly the kinda game for you. The game is more linear than your thought process but there are some instances where the player can make choices and I'm sure you'll enjoy sniffing out all the variations, limited as they are. Anyway, Congratulations!

See, it was worth changing your mind and entering after all! Participating can never hurt :)


And thanks to everyone else who entered or just participated, again apologies for not replying to every post but it's 4:30 Am and I need some sleep. Rest assured that I carefully read and appreciate every post in any thread I make. Thanks again!

Hey, it was a fun thinking exercise, even if mine wasn't all that imaginative. :)

Congratulations to the winner!

Congratulations to the winners! This was really super fun!

No worries, the part about experiencing cyberspace as the opposite gender (as a female in your case) sounded interesting, I wouldn't have thought about that option. In this particular case, I'd be quite curious to see how a -regular- day out in public would go differently. For example, if I'm painting outside would I get disturbed a lot more? I'm 99.999% sure that I'd get disturbed drastically more often if I was a woman, on the other hand some things would clearly be easier - e.g. hitchhiking, not having people call the police on you because they think you're doing something illegal etc :D

I also appreciated the honesty about saying that you'd use the cyberspace opportunity for sexual purposes, I think that's something almost all of us would think of as one of the first things if not the first thing. People who have freshly fallen in love in RL or suffering from acute severe depression or have just lost someone etc might not be having such ideas but virtually everyone else sure has some sexual fantasies that are unfulfilled in RL, that I'm certain of. Even if they are committed or religious or otherwise brainwashed. There might be exceptions but due to human psychology (biology really) and the fact that I personally know no one who is so spiritually advanced that they no longer think of earthly desires, I'm calling BS on statements of denial. I do very much understand though that compliance to social codes is normal behavior in public conversation.

Haven't share my own cyberday yet but will do so tomorrow (going off to sleep in a minute) but rest assured, it will definitely feature NSFW situations.

I'll also explain why I would very strongly prefer to opt out of the experience altogether but if I had to spend a day with no chance in hell to opt out then I'd not shy away from using the experience for anything and everything. When in Rome :)


It was, wish I had spent more time moderating this thing as I usually like to do but one does what one can!

Anyway, Evoland code in your inbox, enjoy your prize :)

Well done evreyone, and thank you for the giveaway awalterj! +1

Your'e welcome and don't forget to message me when the Star Trek adventures go on sale so that I can send you your prize.

Thanks for participating!

Ok, will do! Thank you for letting me enter! :D

awalterj - an excellent giveaway! I love a non-random, thought-required giveaway! Reading the entries has been a lot of fun and of course coming up with my own was a great exercise. I may even spend some more time with mine to extend it. Thanks so much for Serious Sam - it looks like a riot that I will enjoy!

Congratulations Enebias, you deserve it!!!! Also congrats to LesterKnight99 and jcosmocohen! Good showing, all!!!

You're welcome, enjoy the nonsensical mayhem that is Serious Sam. It's not the best game ever but people who haven't played it are missing something in their gaming education and perhaps even a sort of dadaist/nihilist revelation of their true purpose in life.

I also enjoy non-randomized giveaways but I fully understand why most giveaways are randomized, it's less time consuming and I'll probably have to resort to at least making some future giveaways in a simpler format for time management purposes. Whenever possible, I always prefer non-randomized though.

Thank you, awalterj, for both my prize and all those you sent to the other winners!

I didn't think about that... now that you mention it, being unaware of the fictional world could really be a bit too much dangerous.
I think I would still keep an high level of feedback, though, as I am more interested in the psychological point of view than on the historical one... besides, as strange as it may sound, I also think that struggle, strain and pain are fundamental elements to learn anything. After all, since childhood we all grow up making mistakes and paying for them in some unpleasant way: avoiding this is (imo) exactly what pushes us to avoid repeating our errors and to continuously improve ourselves. Defending one's country (or values, or life under every possible meaning) is only commendable; what I'm criticizing (rectius: violently attacking) is more the ridiculous concept of post 9/11 “preemptive defense”. Today, many people think it is wise to just eradicate everything that might prove to be dangerous in the future, most of the times without even thinking about why they should represent any kind of menace.
People who know absolutely nothing about war start discussing about it like it involved some sort of common knowledge, like everyone was perfectly aware of what war means – and I think there is nothing farther from the truth. Their self righteous stupidity has been the ruin of too many, yet why would they stop acting like that when they have never even heard the sound of a bullet?
I think the current situation in North Africa and Middle East -combined with the media coverage of the matters in the western countries- can summarize my points better than a thousand words. I couldn't think of it in any other way, and I'm quite sure this is what the future holds for humanity. Judging by the recent technological developments and -most of all- the use we seem to want from them, a “live” Internet seems the natural evolution of the current situation, regardless of how long it will take for it to become a reality.
Considering the amount of control those few known corporations already have in the field, though, I can't say this kind of “cyberpunkish” perspective fills me with joy, regardless of how great I think that kind of technology could be.

You're very welcome!

I really and deeply wish one could learn without having to experience unpleasantness or physical pain so I have no intention to willingly expose myself to more pain (above a reasonable threshold) just for learning effect, even if cyberspace pain is less dangerous than RL pain. Unless you experience cardiac arrest due to massive pain, I think that could happen if your body thinks the pain is real, even if your conscious of being in a virtual sim.
Minor pain could be helpful for learning effect but anything seriously painful would only make me avoid the whole thing altogether and avoidance is often neither a sensible solution nor an option. Case in point: Riding a bicycle through busy traffic. I don't think we need to experience a painful cyber accident in the sim just to pay attention in RL, might make many people more tense and more prone to getting into an accident in the first place. Difficult to say what is best for whom.

My sentiment exactly but I'm probably a bit more jaded about it - I see wars as inevitable regardless of what one thinks about them because in my opinion human nature has not advanced one tiny bit since the Dawn of Man, we just have tanks instead of femur bones nowadays, the territorial posturing and fighting for resources is the same as in the early days of Mankind. I just think we should call a spade a spade and not say it's to defend freedom or democracy or whatever lofty idea. It's really just one "tribe" of humans gaining the upper hand over another tribe, because they can.

Preemptive action is a tricky topic though, one could debate this for hours but in the cases that I believe you're alluding to, I don't see much justifiable cause for self defense via preemptive strikes.
The difficult thing is accurate threat assessment, it's an elusive thing and proven to be very prone to mistakes, whether it's one nation against another or an individual against a prospective mugger.

Same here, I certainly don't look forward to it. It already alienates me how everyone except for myself and a few misfits/holdouts has a smartphone and has their face buried in it many times throughout the day. Even if they're sitting at the same table with you at a cafe. Can't get used to that, I find it rude to check smartphones while you're out having a drink with colleagues.

In some way, I find the idea of low life dystopian future very romantic, the same way as one might romanticize living on a deserted island Robinson Crusoe style. It's really just a daydream to get away from taxes and bills etc towards a more simple life, even if such a life would be tougher to bear in reality.
I sometimes have dreams where I am in a dystopian situation where I don't have to worry about this and that, just a kind of very basic start from scratch existence.

Ok, so I haven't share my own cyberday program yet. I wouldn't trust cyberspace to hold any deeper truths to explore so I'd just pragmatically and entirely unapologetically focus on personal pleasure. Knowing this, I would strongly refuse the opportunity to begin with because full feedback cyberspace sounds like drugs to me and I'd rather stay clear. Given that one can only do it for 24 hours in the scenario of this thread, there would be no risk of getting addicted but I think that it would be in no way contributing to life in a positive way, much to the contrary I suspect. If the technology existed, one would surely strive to experience it again, perhaps even by illegal means.
Also, anything experienced in cyberspace would be meaningless no matter how much fun it might sound like. For some people fun doesn't have to be meaningful at all, for me it does so there's nothing cyberspace can really offer me in terms of true fun. Fun isn't fun to me unless there is some form of personal achievement in RL and regardless of how good the technology is, it wouldn't be able to give me that.
My first thought, even before anything naughty, is to fly to space because that's what I wanted to do since I was a little kid. Years before I was even able to form a naughty thought. But as I said, as long as I'm aware of things not being real (even if it feels real), I would not be having fun so there goes all the spaceship and rockets and FTL traveling etc, wouldn't make any sense to me.
If I really had to put together a program and spend time in cyberspace, say under viable threat of death if I don't, then I'd choose something that is outlandish enough that I'd unlikely get a chance to do it in RL but not so outlandish that you'd think "this sucks because not real" every two seconds.

Here's my scenario, and I think it's something quite many people could subscribe to:

I have to fly a supply mission up to MIR III, the hypothetical new space station of the hypothetical New Soviets. It seems their cosmonauts who - due to the high cost per kilo of sending stuff into space - are all female and not fat. For propaganda purposes, they're also all very attractive and due to the length of their mission, all unmarried and single. But now they have run out of vodka and have gone on strike, threatening to throw themselves out of the airlock unless they get resupplied. The New Soviets can't risk that and because they don't want to worry their population, they hire an outsider from outside the New Soviet Union: Me!

Once I'm up there and inside the space station, the cosmonaut babes will be so happy that they will most willingly throw themselves at the savior which just so happens to be me. The usual BS and hindrances that precursor "party time" can be forgone since this isn't RL but just to make things more interesting, I'll tell the cosmonaut babes that only the winner of an oil wrestling contest among themselves can have the prize (me). I did bring the oil which is part of the inventory in this cyber program, but you could customize this to any other things if you wished to. So now we have an all-female oil wrestling contest among cosmonauts on a space station, ultimately all of them will be -most mercifully- allowed to be winners though. Even though I'm kind of a teetotaler myself and don't drink alcohol nor would make anyone drunk in RL, it would make the scenario more believable if the cosmo-babes were drunk. How many of them would be there? I think 5 is plenty, we don't want to be greedy after all. As for the rest of the day? I don't know, this could take a while :)

To get a little more real, I don't think I'd want to do the above in the first place, not for moral considerations of which I'd have none (it's just virtual reality) but I doubt this kind of activity would be healthy for the brain. Your brain would get flooded with dopamine and whatnot, killing off plenty of dopamine receptors in the process and this would mess you up for a while. Nothing permanent from one-time use but still, I think it's a bad idea to seek pleasure and thrills that way plus I don't think it would be all that convincing anyway. I just can't imagine cyber reality to ever compare to RL no matter how advanced the technology. Maybe for flight sims and such but for hanky panky stuff? Nah. maybe, who knows. Either way, I'd opt out on second thought.

Which means that I would forgo tempting pleasures and thrills altogether and focus on using the experience for practical research. The one thing I'd really like to try is full contact sparring with no holds barred and fully realistic self defense scenarios, this is something that isn't viable in RL due to high risk of injury, including the permanent kind, or even death.
There's so many things I'd be curious to test out such as how much pressure my joints (or those of the opponent) can take before dislocation, how effective certain techniques are and so on. Feedback would be necessary but needless to say, I would never ever activate full feedback with no pain limit. Ideal would be full feedback with a pain cap so that you feel everything but won't experience pain above a certain level.
Unlike scenarios that are just for pleasure, shits & giggles I'd be able to take away some valuable data from a day spent in virtual hand-to-hand combat. So many questions that need answering, stuff that one really can't test out otherwise. That's a much better use of cyberspace than oiling up Russian cosmonaut babes imho, even though the latter is tempting and I'm sure I could sell the program routine Millions of times, assuming that in the future one could download scenarios like we download games right now.