Through the Looking Glass Sharply - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 235

a dual locus of activity—the physical U.S. (primarily L.A. and Alaska),
which has fallen into dire straits—the only activities in which it has a com-
petitive advantage are music, movies, software and high-speed pizza deliv-
ery (1992, 3) and infl ation has increased disastrously; people are tempted
to use billion-dollar bills as toilet tissue (1992, 267). Fortuitously, a virtual
development has occurred (the Metaverse 3 ) where people can access and
spend time—in a manner in which multiplayer online games can be consid-
ered present, primitive models.
Into this dual setting a supervirus is introduced. The impact upon com-
puters is to produce a system crash, i.e. snow crash, which is the derivation
of the title (1992, 39). At the same time, users, upon viewing the crash,
become comatose. The villain behind this development is L. Bob Rife, an
individual who became fi lthy rich as a consequence of the transition in
U.S. fortunes. The hero is Hiro Protagonist, a onetime software developer
and co-developer of Metaverse. He is assisted by Y. T., a streetwise, teen-
age courier, and Juanita Marquez, also a developer of Metaverse—onetime
girlfriend and apparently still a romantic interest. They receive assistance
from Ng, a mechanically assisted individual, and Uncle Enzio, head of the
local Mafi a. Raven, an early bad ass, has an epiphany of sorts and plays a
critical role as a decently good guy in the fi nal resolution of the problem.
The novel plays a role in not only anticipating where the virtual world
of video games may be headed, but also suggesting technological develop-
ments in the physical world. These items are collected in Table 12.3 and
are divided into two sections—video games fi rst and the physical world
second. First, there is a description of Metaverse, the parallel virtual world
that plays a critical role in developing the novel. It consists primarily of a
crowded street of length longer than Earth's circumference. Access is lim-
ited only by purchasing power—the novel indicates sixty million individu-
als had the proper computer to access the virtual world, but another sixty
million can get in with public access capabilities. At publication (1992)
that size made it much larger than MMOGs of the time, but it was and is a
general description of virtual worlds with access limitations . 4 Secondly, the
term avatar is frequently considered to come from this novel; in MMOGs,
this term is now base-level stuf , but recall that the publication occurred in
1992. An anticipated advance over present capabilities is facial expressions
on the avatars. This ability permits a form of non-verbal communication;
the description on page 393 indicates the expression may be non-voluntary,
but comes even on of -the-shelf models (1992, 35). Moving along, there is
the suggestion that life in the virtual world is a pleasant escape. Hiro shares
a rental storage bin in the physical world, but can escape to his luxury abode
in the Metaverse. Certainly, escape is not new—Mitty, in fact, escapes
from his life. In terms of MMOGs, however, escapism may be a motivat-
ing factor in the extension of use in developing markets. Finally, research
in the virtual world, as described by Stephenson, represents an incremental
step from present technology. Naturally, research is now common on the