Daemon by Daniel Suarez (not the race car driver, the
ex-Microsoftie defense & finance software engineer)
Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer—the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company's stock price. But Sobol's fans aren't the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol's secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it's up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy—or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control....
Already read it years ago, pretty good, but reading it again now that I finally ordered the sequel "Freedom(tm)". Kind of a 2 part story, but the ending of the 1st book was satisfying enough. Hope it doesn't "pull a Matrix". Daemon is one of those books (like so many) where you pick up more things the next time through. That sort of "recursive" storytelling is something I think more gamedevs could practice to add replayability for diehard fans. Basically, you go back through and put in stuff that can only be fully understood once you've gotten further in the story, and don't try to shove the references or foreshadowing down the audience's throat, just let it slip by as a treat for the observant. Shouldn't be "hiding" major stuff that way unless you just want folks to miss most of the plot the first time through.
Meh, who am I kidding? Game mechanics are "King", story is the Court Jester, and the Queen is a guerrilla marketeer. Just listen to legendary game dev John Carmack: "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." -- And we should heed his sage advice since his games all had amazing plots, not to mention he's the world's best engine dev who utterly fucked up his ONE job, the BFG-9000, by making its
invisible death rays shoot out of your ass. (fire, run away, turn around, BFG damage comes out your ass, or side, etc. unpredictable places, miles away from the blast site, totally ruined the weapon (quick fix: use player look vector, derp; Better fix: Fire damage in a radius OUT OF THE BLAST SITE, NOT THE PLAYER POS), but millions of filthy casuals have zero clue and STILL think the mechanics of that broken ass BFG-9000 are AMAZING -- note: didn't even fix that broken shit in Doom2). Mechanics are "King"... I fucking wish! I would bet my first born child if Carmack hadn't made a game about killing Nazis he'd still be a nobody. You want to succeed in this world? Reinforce government sanctioned propaganda narratives...
What was I saying? Oh yeah, good book about a rich & famous gamedev who kills from beyond the grave. IMO, this already happened to us and we all live in indie gamedev hell.
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