Neon Vape: Dragonine City

Neon Vape Worldbuilding: Dragonine City

 

Dragonine City is one of the major locations in the world of Neon Vape: A Vaporwave Odyssey. The game developers created it to be a destination for any and all gamers interested in partaking in fictional criminal activities and living the life of a lawless fugitive. Below is a quote from the manuscript describing the Dragonine City:

The Dragonine City was a replica of the Kowloon Walled City - or, at least, inspired by it. The developers had realized that some players enjoyed the ability to play as criminals in virtual reality - to lead a life vastly different from their own - and to that end had hoped that by providing them with an entire city within the world of Neon Vape, these particular players would remain occupied and keep their criminal activities constrained to this geographical area. They felt that most hard-core ‘criminal’ characters would, in this way, keep away from causing trouble in the rest of the vast world of Neon Vape. When they had explained all of this to Ramona, she had pointed out that it would certainly make for an interesting social experiment.

Kowloon - the actual city - had long since been demolished, and while the real city of almost three hectares was slumlike and dark, everyone knew that gamers would soon tire of a grimy playable location, no matter how much freedom it afforded them. There again was where Ramona came into play. She had spent months on the designs for this city. She had created marketplaces, artillery shops, apartments, organized crime hideouts and safehouses, illegitimate banks, an entertainment district - and all of this PG-13, as per open-world VR regulations and at the constant reminder of VeAre’s legal department. She had even gone so far as to develop a range of NPCs that acted as shop clerks, a group of freelance real estate brokers for gamers seeking housing, illegitimate medical professionals, and a single postman to deliver all of the mail to residents of the city. Ramona had spent long hours researching Kowloon and understanding its layout, as well as what made it the infamous city it came to be, and had done her best to improve upon all of the less desirable aspects of the location.

As a result, Ramona created a bright, neon-blazed city with a particularly grungy yet high-tech atmosphere. She had done her best to design Dragonine City so that it was a place where players could explore for hours on end - days on end - and still not tire from what it had to offer. She was proud of the end result - a city bathed in technicolor, the only darkness in which was the darkness of its inhabitants and the players that passed by, eager to fuel their evil alter-egos.

As for the game developers, they shared with her interesting decisions they had made as well. For example, there was no way for players to contact authorities once in the city and apartments in Dragonine were low-rent and tax-free. They created possible factions – different gangs that could be created or joined by players – but placed a limit on how many of them could be housed within the confines of the city. They were hoping that the flexibility of their game would allow players to create entire functional communities that could be studied from a sociological perspective.

This post was first shared over on my Tumblr on May 24, 2020.