User Unfriendly is a 1991 young adult novel by Vivian Vande Velde, the first of three books concerning a fictional company, Rasmussem Enterprises, that produces Virtual Reality role-playing games (the Inside a Computer System variety) in the near future. The novel is narrated by Arvin Rizalli, who with a group of friends is playing a pirated copy of a Rasmussem game set in a medieval fantasy world. Unfortunately, the lack of company technicians monitoring the game proves a bigger problem for them than they anticipated, especially when they realize they need to quit before the end but are unable to, putting pressure on them to win the game as quickly as possible.
The book was followed by two others set in the same universe, Heir Apparent (2002) and Deadly Pink (2012). All three books function as standalone works, and Vande Velde has said they can be read in any order.
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: After they finish the game, the players are too preoccupied with getting Arvin's mother to the hospital to check their final scores. Later, the game is confiscated so they never find out. They do know, however, that Arvin was the one who bested the Big Bad at the end. In any case, Arvin is relieved his mother is going to be okay, so the loss of game information doesn’t bother him much.
- Always Introduces Themselves: Feordin feels compelled to recite his full name and a long list of his ancestors at every opportunity, even when no one asked.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Arvin feels this way about his mother being in the game with him and all his friends. He gradually gets over it as the game progresses, especially after he realizes his mother's health is in jeopardy.
- Anachronism Stew: Nocona is a Native American, which doesn't fit the medieval European setting of the game. That's how Arvin immediately knows Nocona is a player and not an NPC, as players can choose to be a character from any time or place.
- And I Must Scream: Dorinda paralyzes most of the players as she plans to turn them into a painting from which she can suck their Life Energy.
- "Angry Black Man" Stereotype: Feordin is perpetually grumpy. It isn't clear whether this reflects the personality of the player, Cleveland, or if it's merely a conditioned trait of his character in the game—and in the context of the game, it seems more a dwarf stereotype than a black stereotype.
- Artificial Intelligence: Especially from the perspective of when the book was first published (1991), the NPCs display a highly sophisticated ability to interact with the human players in a natural-seeming way. They engage in naturalistic conversation, pick up subtle cues in body language, adapt to unexpected narrative shifts from the players' choicesnote , and show apparent understanding of new concepts as they arise.
- Artistic License: When one of the NPCs begins saying the same thing repeatedly and becomes nonfunctional, Cornelius explains to the group that the program is "looping." He incorrectly defines a loop as a set of instructions that get repeated endlessly. In reality, a loop simply means a set of instructions that get repeated any number of times—which is perfectly normal and an absolutely essential part of programming. It's only a problem if there's no exit condition for terminating the loop. This is known as an "infinite loop"
, a common pitfall in programming that causes software to freeze or get stuck. Furthermore, because the first NPC gets into an infinite loop after Robin says "It's just a stupid game," and the second one does so after Cornelius starts talking about programming, the group concludes that what triggers these loops is referring to the game as a game or making anachronistic references in front of an NPC—even though there's no particular reason to think that would be the case. Cornelius's point is that they said things the programmers didn't anticipate, but it's hard to believe the programmers wouldn't have anticipated that the players might occasionally talk about "the game" or make references to the modern world. - Belligerent Sexual Tension: Throughout the game Arvin and Giannine are constantly trying to outmatch each other. Arvin thinks it's due to the game's conditioning, as their characters are elves from rival clans. Some time after the game is over, Giannine asks him out on a date, effectively admitting her attraction to him, though given that he first turns her down and only agrees to go out with her after she beats him in a card game, it's not clear the feelings are reciprocated.
- Bittersweet Ending: The players win the game with Arvin being the one who bests the Big Bad at the end, and they do it in time to save his mother from a potentially fatal aneurysm. Unfortunately, their theft becomes public and the game is confiscated from Shelton before any of them find out their scores; Dominic is refusing to speak with Arvin due to their fight during the game, and their friendship may be irreparably damaged; Cleveland's parents aren't letting him socialize with the group anymore; and overall Arvin reports that the group is more or less broken up. Giannine, though, wins a date with Arvin by beating him in a card game.
- Bottomless Bladder: Averted in one scene where Arvin/Harek looks for a place in the woods to urinate, only to be knocked unconscious by attackers. It's apparent that the players possess full bodily functions within the simulated world of the game. But the issue of players having "nature calls" within the game is never addressed again, which is a little curious given there are several scenes where multiple players are packed in a cave or prison cell together for lengthy periods of time, where it would be difficult to get much privacy for relieving themselves.
- Butt-Monkey: Arvin sees himself as one throughout the game, though it's mostly due to an inferiority complex and oversensitivity to the other players' criticisms, combined with his being on edge due to his mother's medical emergency. After the game is over, he's surprised when Giannine describes him as having been one of the more impressive players in the group.
- Cold Iron: In the game, elves are injured by the touch of iron. Two of the players, Arvin and Giannine, are playing as elven characters and have this vulnerability.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The crystal they find at the troll statue turns out to be the missing piece on Dorinda’s magical staff.
- The troll boots end up saving Robin’s life when he’s about to be pulled into deadly quicksand, and he says the magic word just in time to be transported back to the troll statue.
- The key Nocona receives from a dragon after he requests “whatever we’ll need to complete our quest” later enables them to enter the castle where Dorinda is staying.
- The magic rope Feordin receives from the dragon helps them trek across the desert with the horses being magically levitated above the burning sand.
- The gauntlets of power Marian receives from the dragon enable her to separate the prison bars to rescue her friends.
- Copy Protection: The protagonists are playing a pirated copy of a Virtual Reality RPG Rasmussem. Unfortunately for them, discussing the game in front of an NPC initiates an infinite loop in the relevant AI which can only be terminated by customer service representatives, who unfortunately are absent due to the game being played illegally.
- Cross Player: Everyone in the main character's party is a real-life friend of his, but he doesn't know which person is behind which character. He thinks he has it all figured out early on, but his assumption that the character's sex must match the player's turns out to be wrong.
- Delightful Dragon: When the group temporarily splits up, the half that doesn't include Arvin encounters one of these, much to Arvin's disappointment. He's especially frustrated because they got stuff from it by solving riddles, and Arvin considers himself skilled at riddles.
- Dem Bones: One of the enemies the heroes face is a giant rat skeleton.
- Didn't Think This Through: No one in Arvin's party, not even the one adult, considered that a pirated copy of immersive VR may have long-term complications for anyone involved. They beat the game just as Arvin's mother is about to succumb to a fatal aneurysm.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil: The entire plot is set off because the protagonists acquire an illegal copy of the game, and inadvertently trap themselves inside it because the game can only be terminated prematurely by a customer service rep.
- Eating Solves Everything: The main character swallows a MacGuffin in order to prevent the villain from getting her hands on it.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: In-Universe. Dorinda has named her pet chipmunk that is actually the High Mage transformed Chipmunk. Arvin comments, “Clever name.” The sarcasm is lost on Dorinda.
- Exact Words: The boots they acquire feature the inscription: "Northward, Southward, Eastward, Westward, / Inward, Outward, / Always Homeward, / That is the Magic Word." It takes the players several tries before they figure out by accident that the magic word is "that."
- Extremely Short Timespan: The entire game takes only an hour in the real world, though time is compressed in the Rasmussem machine so that the players experience it as five days.
- Faux Flame:
- Cornelius uses an illusion spell to scare the townsfolk into believing there's a fire-breathing dragon (as a distraction so the party can steal some horses). Soon the buildings and some NPCs are apparently being engulfed by the dragon's flames, and it causes mass panic in the town even though no one's being truly harmed.
- Cornelius uses another illusion spell to create a fake torch while in the orc cave. It not only isn't a real fire, but doesn't even really illuminate the cave, just helps the group make out just enough details on the cave's walls to make their trek a little easier. It has one advantage over a real torch, though, which is that it can be submerged in water without being extinguished.
- Foreshadowing: Early on Nocona gets shot in the leg by an arrow. The wound heals quickly, a sign that the game doesn't allow players' injuries to languish. Not only is this an early clue that Arvin's mom's headache (which isn't going away) isn't part of the game, it foreshadows Nocona's werewolf bite later on, which he hides by telling the group it's a sprained ankle, an excuse that looks increasingly suspect because they know game injuries aren't normally supposed to last that long.
- Ghost Memory: The players all possess artificially implanted memories relating to their characters in the game, including biographical details, specific skills, and overall knowledge of the world they're in.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: At one point, two of the players encounter a location in the game where they briefly find themselves trapped in nothingness, apparently a bug in the program resulting from their using a pirated copy. Normally the game is monitored by technicians who quickly fix any bugs before the players become aware of them.
- Good Luck Charm: When several of the players meet an old man who directs them to a troll statue, he tells them people rub the statue for good luck. They're skeptical and don't bother. They later find out that the other players who reached the statue did heed the old man's advice, and wound up having much greater success in their adventure than the first group.
- Holodeck Malfunction: Well, a virtual reality, but similar enough.
- I Am X, Son of Y: Dwarves introduce themselves this way. Feordin Macewielder calls himself son of Feordan Sturdyaxe, grandson of Feordane Boldheart, etc.
- Inside a Computer System: In the version of VR presented in these novels, users are unconscious and in REM sleep, with the game world being essentially a computer-generated Shared Dream. The danger is that users can't exit the game prematurely without outside help.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: Early on the players decide to split into two groups to save time while exploring different parts of the realm. They eventually rejoin one another.
- Meaningful Name: Wolstan is a werewolf.
- Moral Luck: While Arvin does use skill and quick-thinking to defeat Dorinda (as when he swallows the crystal to keep her from taking it, and then pretends to be vomiting it up as a distraction), he finds out afterward that his success depended on the far end of the staff being pointed at her when he broke it, something he didn't know he had to do and was simply a coincidence from how his tug-of-war with her turned out.
- Not a Game: Marian uses this phrase when first airing her suspicion that there may be real-life ramifications to what’s happening.
- Not Disabled in VR: Cornelius's player, Shelton, has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair in the real world.
- The Nothing After Death: Death within the game is experienced by a player as a "cool gray gauziness" for the remainder of time left in the game.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The game has dwarves that have really long introductions about themselves, mainly with a long list of I Am X, Son of Y variations.
- Our Orcs Are Different: The orcs in the game are stupid, smelly, and cowardly—though Common Tongue-speaking—creatures who can see in the dark.
- Our Goblins Are Different: The goblins all have lumpy, Play-Doh-like faces and the players have a hard time telling the genders apart.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: One of the NPCs turns out to be a werewolf. He can transform at will, command ordinary wolves, and has a chance to infect those he bites.
- Phantom-Zone Picture: The villain uses magic to trap victims inside of portraits and drain their Life Energy.
- Prejudice Aesop: Arvin/Harek repeatedly makes sexist assumptions about Marian—thinking of her as "bossy," with "dippy girl's reasoning." He's forced to rethink those assumptions when he learns the real-life player is Noah, and not Dawn Marie as he had assumed.
- Present Absence: Nigel Rasmussem is the founder of the company to the game they’re playing and is frequently talked about, but he doesn’t make an appearance in the trilogy until the second book, Heir Apparent.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Apparently Nigel Rasmussem was this offscreen. After learning the pirated game was used to save the life of one of them, the company lets the group off with a warning, understanding they had gotten in over their head and that it wouldn't look good to prosecute a group of teenagers and a sick woman. Shelton plans to file suit against the company because he wants his copy back.
- Running Gag:
- After Abbot Simon becomes nonfunctional due to a software bug early in the game, practically every NPC the players run into tells them they'd be better off if they had a cleric with them, much to the players' increasing annoyance because they're unable to explain to the NPCs why they lost their cleric, and they know it isn't even their fault.
- Whenever Feordin introduces himself, he always feels compelled to recite a long list of his ancestors. It's mentioned early on that dwarves have been known to kill people who try to interrupt them when going through this routine, so everyone is forced to sit through it whenever he starts. The final payoff comes when the High Mage quickly cuts Feordin off and tells him "Nobody cares"—presumably because he's too powerful a magician to be afraid of Feordin retaliating.
- Save the Princess: The main quest of the game the heroes play is to rescue a princess, Dorinda, after she goes missing and a member of her Royal Guard is found slain by orc arrows. The princess actually turns out to be the Big Bad in the end.
- Schmuck Bait: When they come upon signs that say "Beware of Sand Hands," Robin thinks the warning is too ridiculous to take seriously, and ends up getting himself dragged down into the sand by the "hands" as a direct result of his impudently flouting the warning.
- Situational Sword: The player characters find a sword that glows in the presence of orcs. Since the players have artificially inflated their combat stats, the sword turns out to be more trouble than it's worth.
- Shout-Out: The sword that glows in the presence of Orcs is a reference to the sword Sting, from The Lord of the Rings, that does the same.
- Stab the Scorpion: At one point, Nocona, who was previously bitten by a werewolf, swings his knife at Thea. This causes Arvin to think Nocona has succumbed to lycanthropy and turned evil. However, it turns out Nocona was actually stabbing at a goblin behind Thea.
- Token Minority: Arvin correctly guesses that Feordin is his friend Cleveland due to the game character being black, seemingly implying that Cleveland is the only black player in the group. Also, Arvin's comment that Nocona "looked like a native American Indian" suggests not only that Nocona's player Dominic isn't Native American, but that none of the other characters in either the game or the outside world are.
- Tomato Surprise: Shelton has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. The main characters know it the whole time, but it isn’t mentioned explicitly until the final chapter after the game ends and they return to the real world. It is merely hinted at in the opening chapter when it notes that Shelton is "parked" in front of the computer.
- Took a Level in Badass: Arvin sees his mother this way when she ferociously battles a sea monster to save her son; he can scarcely believe it’s the same woman who always seems so timid in the outside world.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card: dwarf characters in the game introduce themselves by listing their name and title, followed by the names and titles of all their ancestors. For example, the dwarf member of the party is Feordin Macewielder, son of Feordan Sturdyaxe, grandson of Feordane Boldheart, brother to Feordone the Fearless, great-grandson of Feordine Stoutarm who served under Graggaman Maximus. After he is first introduced, the protagonist points out that this is a relatively short list of titles for a dwarf in the setting.
- Twofer Token Minority: In the game, Feordin is black and a dwarf. His player in the outside world, Cleveland, is also black, though not described as having dwarfism.
- Unconventional Food Usage: The miller uses overbaked bread as doorstops. The party is so famished they convince the miller to sell it to them as food, though they need to soak it in water before they can eat it.
- Win to Exit: A partial example. The game will inevitably end after a five-day period (which only takes an hour in the outside world), regardless of whether they win or not. However, winning enables them to quit before the five days are up, which becomes important once they realize one of the players is having a potentially life-threatening medical emergency.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: The game only takes an hour in the outside world, but the players experience it as five days.
