Hmm, interesting enough, if a bit silly.
My first thought is that our protagonist might meet the avatars of people he knows while in the game/fanstasy world. How does he react to that? Does he try to convince them to stop destroying his fantasy world? Does he get them to help him escape? Does he even let on that, for him, the game is very real?
Belief or disbelief rests with you.
Hmm. That's a good idea. I was thinking of having several characters follow the various gamer archtypes or what have you, but I think it would be more profound if people who knew him met him. "Oh look here comes some NPC". "I'm (insert main character's name here)" "Oh christ. He wrote himself into the game? I thought he had more self respect then that" "(says players names) it's me!" "Oh I get it, he knew our player characters so he programed in a scene just for us" and so on.
Maybe a strategy for defeating (or at least staving off the invaders) could be to get lots of people to crowd around them, so many that people's computers have trouble processing them all and freeze up, leaving the invader frozen-in-time until they're rebooted in a new location.
20 years ago, the world of (insert name here): The Dark Lord is reigning terror over the land with his god like power. The last in a line of ancient wizards summons a gaurdian to save the world.
20 years ago, Earth: a young boy who has a talent for computers, but no freinds finds himself sucked through a vortex by the good wizard. The good wizard tells the boy he is their last hope, but is killed in front of the boy by one of the dark lords minions. The boy goes on a journy with a rag tag bunch of misfits, and defeats the dark lord with the power of love and all that, then saying his teary goodbyes to the only freinds he's ever known and returns home, little does everyone know that the powers of the dark lord and the wizard entered his body on death.
Today, the world of (insert name here): hoards of mysterious warriors have decended on every corner of the world. They behave as mercenaries, actting without thought of the impact of their actions, behaving unpridictably, battling each other on a whim, and slaying civilians without a thought. When they die they are simply reborn elsewhere. Civilization is under threat of collapse, and the freinds of the saviour who defeted the dark lord 20 years ago, in a desperate act, summon the boy back to their world.
Today, Earth: having grown up without freinds all the protagonist had was his skills with computers and his imagination. Together these have given him a lucritive carear in game design. Following much early success, he releases his magnum opus, the smash hit MMORGP "The World of (insert name here)" baised on his escapist fantasies from his childhood. One day while sitting alone in his apartment a vortex opens up. He sees his imaginary freinds from his childhood, all grown up, and tell him he has to save the world of (insert name here) from the hoards of chaos as they have come to be known. But all he wants is to survive, and escape the world of his video game before the debute of the new expansion pack, "The dark lord's revenge".
Basically I'm going for a darkly humorous tongue in cheek type satire, with occasional bits of brutal deconstruction. Everything that happened 20 years ago will involve flashbacks. I need advise on characters, places, subplots what have you. Any sugestions?
edited 10th Dec '10 8:06:43 AM by qqq