Please Note: Statements between % something in italics % are game system messages.

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"Hi and welcome to tonight's show. Tonight we feature Mr. Samuel Collins and Mr. Varun Mehta, cofounders of the company Archesoft and makers of the increasingly popular game Long Island. I am Noah Finney. First of all, welcome to our show."

*clapping sounds, the view expands and two middle aged men wearing suits appear next to the interviewer.

"Thank you." both of them replied.

"I am sure you and the audience must have seen this amazing Long Island game video, now making its rounds over the internet. It originated in the game forums and was uploaded by someone having the handle Raka. The video has quickly gone viral. Copies have been uploaded to youtube and other popular video hosting sites.

The main thing of the video, I would say, is this amazing naval battle between npcs but where players did not play a significant part. We have seen loads of player battles where npc soldiers are being used or where players are playing important parts as soldiers or generals. We have even seen large scale battles fought over the sea between players or between players fighting npcs. But this would be first time where strong npcs of three races fought a battle on their own displaying their own charm, strength and power. This video also shows for the first time, three races available in the game....humans, dwarves and beastmen."

"Alright so lets get started. First question what motivated you to start this company and make this awesome game Long Island?"

"Ah well I think the game came first and then the company," Mr. Collins said to which Mr. Mehta nodded.

"Could you elaborate on that?" asked Noah.

"Well we, that is me, Varun, Nancy and Jiang, were all students at the Stanford University. We started this game, in fact it was not a game then, just a virtual world. We started this virtual world as a project. At that time we had started it for fun, no idea how far we could go with this but then Varun and Jiang did some amazing things with it and somehow we decided to make it into a game."

"Oh so there were only four of you who worked to make this game then?"

"I wouldn't say only. We had more passionate people join after we started the company, without whom this game would not have become a reality. But yes, the four of us did come up with the main idea for this game. Like Varun came up with the idea of how it should look like and behave, Jiang programmed the basic AI, Nancy introduced the rules of magic." Mr. Collins said.

"And Samuel's contribution would be the concept of memories." Mr. Mehta added.

"Too many things I hear. Could you explain them for our interested viewers?"

"Hahaha" both of them chuckled.

"Long Island was started as a simple virtual world creation. You know an earth like environment which could be explored, studied, etc. We had this, then a crazy idea, that it is possible to create species and let them develop themselves. You know how earth developed over millions of years? So we were trying to simulate earth conditions and then looking at the origin of life itself as they say." Mr. Collins started.

"But then, after a night of drunken revelry (*more laughing) Varun here had this even crazier idea to develop an altogether new world and see what kind of species developed there. You know kinda like an alien planet but where the environment is similar to earth."

"Yeah....well the idea was to see if there could be alien planets out there and what would the aliens look like." Mr. Mehta said.

"This was how our project started. After we presented it in class, Jiang and Nancy approached us with some ideas of their own. Nancy was deeply interested in adding magic to this world. See what kind of evolution will happen if you introduced magic. She already had all the rules of magic in her head even then. And then Jiang wanted to make a game out of it. He also made a basic AI which included all of these rules and then we created a new virtual world based on the same concept."

"Ah so your imagination became the starting point for everything? Especially Nancy's? Did something inspire you all or were you always this creative?" Noah asked.

"You could say that we were creative, like I play the guitar and Varun likes the drums. Nancy likes to paint, Jiang is basically the gamer. We were also inspired by creative media, you know manga, anime and stuff like that. Most of them feature unique worlds and it did inspire us in our new world design."

"So that is how the game started. You said something about memories? What is that?" Noah asked.

"Well this is an idea I had after playing a couple of the virtual reality games. The AI in those games used to make history. New history was constantly being uncovered as the players kept developing and moving ahead. If I have to say it simply, its like new stories were made so as to keep the gameplay going. I am sure a lot of you might have found yourself in a situation where you uncovered a quest containing previously unknown history. Before that no npc would know about it but suddenly they would all start talking about it. Now I am not saying that is a bad thing and it is designed in such a way that the information which was basically lost over time was discovered." Mr. Collins said and Mr. Mehta nodded.

"Now that you mention it, something like this did happen." Noah said.

"In our case that was not really needed. We had designed it to study evolution in the first place, so all we had to do was let things develop naturally over the years. The actual passage of time became history in this world. I had this idea where intelligent beings could store information about their life experiences and interactions in the form of memories. The more intelligent the life form, the more memory it could store, like humans."

"Hmm, the game AI does not make history because the characters in it have already lived through it right?" Noah asked.

"Yes, exactly. Every npc lives their own life and have their own memories of it."

"But didn't you have to build the various races? We can see atleast 3 races in the video including humans?" Noah asked.

"Actually we did nothing except make the world, put in the basics of life and add magic. Natural evolution did the rest. I think the main difference between the evolution in Long Island and the planet Earth is the introduction of magic. It remarkably influenced evolution of creatures and races, but that is what we wanted. If Earth would have had magic this might be happening in our world too, probably!" Mr. Mehta replied.

"In that case I would like to be an elf. (*more laughing) Ah but then evolution happens over millions of years. How did you achieve it in the game?"

"Its not that difficult really." Mr Collins started speaking. "Its like watching a video. You watch the video at a particular speed but the actual decoding of the video data by the computer takes place much much faster. The world and its inhabitants in the game are basically computer programs. If we are not interested in actually watching evolution take place or being part of it, the process can be sped up a lot. Millions of years of evolution can happen within human time. It still took us around 10 years of keeping the world running, including the time we were in college, to achieve this state of evolution where we can introduce players." Mr. Collins replied.

"And that is how folks this amazing game was made by the passionate people of Archesoft. Next I would like to ask about the features. People can only select the human race? Why is that?"

"That is something we decided to do to explain the world to the players. It is a bit different than the other games, having no classes. Being human would make it easier to adjust till more information about the game comes out, atleast that's what we thought. Funny thing is we might not have ended up with humans in the evolution in the first place. In that case, we would have needed to pick out some other race which could have looked like an alien." Mr. Collins replied.

"Hahahaha! And when are you releasing that information?"

"Ahhaha....never actually. You see all the information of the game system is locked and stored within the game itself. The players will have to unlock it. Once someone does, it becomes known to everyone through a system announcement otherwise.... It was Jiang's idea to implement it this way. I am guessing it was more fun like this." Mr Mehta said. "Non game system related information can be released though. For example, we are going to be launching the item auction system and the hall of fame portal soon. We believe that the players have reached a point where they will want such things."

"Do you mean to say that these were not there before? Or was it one of the locked systems?"

"No. We had planned to launch it with the game itself, but some issues had come up which needed to be resolved. Also game money to real world money conversion is not easy to decide. We were not sure how the game would be received and how many players would be interested in playing even after like 4 months. As I said previously, the game is different from other standard games in a lot of things. Whether that helped the game to keep interest of the players or adversely affected it, was a major question. After all the amount of money flowing in would be related to the worth of the game currency. But now we can safely roll it out."

"That's nice. So is the 'age' system in the game also one of the locked systems?" Noah asked.

"No, we can talk about that. You see, in older games people had this concept of gaining experience through doing something, like fighting monsters, doing quests, etc. But that left an element where interactions with npcs are not considered. Also learning about the game itself, you know its history, geography, its system, etc was not part of it. We decided to include this and created 'Age'. So unlike levels, having a higher age may not mean that the person is simply stronger than the other but it will mean that he/she knows more about the game, its world and its inhabitants. There are other things involved as well but that's the main thing."

"Hmm...food for thought indeed. So how do you see the first naval battle of the game? Considering your game advertises itself as being primarily sea based? Some of our experts have commented that this is magic intensive, like if you are not good at magic you probably do not want to get involved in such battles?" Noah asked.

"I am not sure how to explain this without revealing a lot of information. Lets just say that over the years people have developed as many ways of fighting as there are instruments of war. Even in Earth's history, there are samurais on one end and the viking longships on the other. But we don't claim to know everything either. Like the players, we are also not sure of the extent of everything in the world we have created. It will be a process of discovery for both them and us." Mr Collins replied.

"Oh..so we can expect other such awesome videos soon?"

Both gentlemen smile but say nothing.

"Well that's all the time we have today. Thank you Mr. Collins and Mr. Mehta for coming to our show tonight."

"TV, switch off."

Swamy laid back on his couch and stretched. He had been intently waiting for this show, ever since it was scheduled. 'That explains a lot.' Especially important was the thing about 'age' and game system information. Real world skills, with subtle differences, could be used in the virtual reality games was common knowledge. The development of the world in this manner also opened up a lot of other possibilities.

'Though the thing about no significant part was unnecessary, even if true.' Swamy sighed.

His inner musings were interrupted by a phone call.

"Hello.."

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It had been a few days since the battle with the pirates. The fleet was making its way back to Thelmova. Considering it took more than a couple of weeks to catch up to the pirates, Raka expected around the same time to get back. He was back with his duties, namely mopping, cooking...massaging. In addition, he was trying to learn the mapping skill.

While at open sea, where you could not see any land, Raka could not make any maps. But now that the island was back in sight he could start working on his mapping skill again. His drawing sucked though, especially free style. He would try making a cove but it would look like a mountain which would confuse the Captain and he would fail to learn. 'No choice but to keep trying though.'

Raka did want to learn more skills. But once he started learning from someone, he could only learn from them. The game would not allow him to change his teacher later. Starting to learn more skills on the remaining voyage may not be a good idea. Especially when any potential skill might take a long time to learn. Sailors and ships had this habit of going away for long periods of time. Waiting for them to return would not be too practical. It was much better to discover skills than learn them, atleast when you couldn't guarantee that your teacher would stick around.

So even though he eagerly wanted to learn how to sail and navigate a ship, he persevered and did not ask. He was sure sailing and navigation couldn't be an easy to learn skill owing to the fact that he even lacked the skill in real life. 'Maybe I will get a chance to go on another voyage someday. Learning the skill at that time would be more convenient.'

Raka focused on his other duties. Finally his shipwright skills were being put to use. There was some damage caused to the ship by the ramming pirate ship. Not much, just the railings and a bit on the hull by the side which got hit. Salmon had been tasked to repair it which obviously meant Raka had to bear the burden.

He worked the planks into the right shape and then hung from the upper deck using ropes. Hanging above the sea besides a lurching ship, he hammered the pieces at the right places to repair the hull. And then he went on to build new railings. All according to precise instructions being given by Salmon, who still criticized him.

"Hmph. Looks like amateur work. Look at that shape!"

Raka sighed.

He knocked on the door and entered the room.

"Ah you are awake. How are you feeling now?" Raka asked.

"I am fine now thank you." Lady Verina replied. Lady Verina had fainted during the battle with the pirates. Raka had suspected that it had something to do with overuse of magic or mana but he couldn't be sure. 'Why would consuming mana make you faint?' He had often asked himself. He was pretty sure running out of mana was a pretty common occurrence. He himself had run out of it so many times without any physical effects like fainting.

"So any side-effects of fainting still?" Raka asked. Well you couldn't be right as rain after fainting. Lady Verina had gained consciousness after a few hours but she had felt slight weakness after that. A few days of rest was prescribed by the Captain and Lady Altia which she had gracefully accepted.

"Um...maybe a little." She said moving her head side to side. Her luscious blond tresses swayed along.

Raka took a seat on the opposite bunk.

"Maybe you could give me a neck massage..." she looked at him and smiled expectantly. Raka smiled involuntarily. He knew of Lady Verina's playful nature but he still couldn't help blushing everytime.

"Um ok. But only if you answer my questions first." Raka added. "You doze off everytime during the massage."

"I can't help it. It always relaxes me so much that I fall asleep. Ok ask away." She replied giving a bright smile.

"First of all why did you faint? I don't think it had anything to do with running out of mana."

"Ah! No it doesn't. Its got more to do with how much energy you transform. I did say when you transform more energy you need more focus, right. To keep transforming large amounts of energy, you constantly need high focus which causes stress. Not stress on the body but stress on your mind. If you keep using large amounts of energy for long periods of time, the stress may cause effects like fainting." Lady Verina replied.

"So the Kraken magic requires a lot of energy. No wonder only you can use it. So I will have to make sure not to use a lot of energy." Raka commented.

"The magic does require a lot of energy but that does not mean only I can use it. If you talk only about the amount, a lot of people including Altia often use that much energy. Its just that the level of fine control required is sometimes beyond them. Didn't I tell you about aptitude for magic? It is just that the amount of energy a person can control without causing stress is directly related to their aptitude, that is, how they think about it. You can take Altia as an example. She can use a lot of energy quite effortlessly in magics which she likes. She sliced through the oars in an instant using air magic. Even if they were not protected, the air magic required to slice through several thick pieces of wood will need a lot of energy but she did it effortlessly. Similarly she sliced the pitch with water magic." Lady Verina explained.

Raka nodded listening.

"So Lady Altia has an aptitude in air and water magic?" Raka asked.

"No. She finds it difficult, relatively, to control the launching stones even though its air magic and uses less energy."

"Um...then I don't get it. What is aptitude then?"

"I just told you. Aptitude is how you think of magic. Altia likes using weapons, specially a sword. So any magic which is similar to the effects of using a sword or imitates a sword, she can do quite easily even if it will need a lot of energy. This is what doing magic intuitively means. Magics which do not act similar to a weapon becomes a little difficult for her, like controlling flying stones. I, on the other hand am not quite so fond of weapons and try to approach magic as a series of controlled steps. It allows more control but also adds more stress. In summary, any magic which you can do intuitively will be less stressful."

Raka nodded understanding.

"Well I also wanted to ask if you could teach me the recovery magic, or healing magic, or whatever it is called. After the fight all I did was serve food and a little bandaging. If I could learn that magic I could be of more use, atleast that's what I thought." Raka finally asked his million dollar question.

It was not like he had been hesitant in asking about this magic but he had found out early that not everyone knew this magic. Initially he had assumed that only people knowing advanced magic could know this and hence did not ask about it, planning to learn when he reached a higher level. But then after the fight with the pirates, he had found a few sailors who could also do recovery magic. 'If you had a high level in magic, would you be a low rung sailor?' Raka didn't think so. On the other hand, actually he had just noticed it, Lady Altia never used recovery magic.