A little cyberpunk plot help please

[Glitchy]

I'm working on a plot for a cyberpunk campaign that will heavily revolve around the use of VR. The idea is that, unlike a lot of cyberpunk, the PCs in this will be largely weak and defenseless in the real world. The corporation have such absolute control of the world that even if the PCs had easy access to guns and hardware, they wouldn't stand a chance against the company resources. However, in the VR world, they can be heroes using hacked rigs that let them bend the rules of the corporate system.

The game is going to pick up as they infiltrate a new VR immersion game the company is putting out. Obviously the game is going to be much more than a simple game.

My problem is, I'm having a hard time pinning down exactly what the evil purpose will be behind the game. So I pose the question -

What nefarious purpose might an unscrupulous and morally devoid corporation use a full immersion VR game for?

[Eldan]

Well, if the corporations already control the real world to such an extent, what do they even still want? It would help if you described your world's political system a bit, perhaps. Are there stilll governments? Do different corps compete? If so, how?

What is the life of the average citizen like? Is it more the Sprawl or Diamond Age, where most of the population is essentially useless to anyone, consuming minimal rations and entertainment, while sitting unemployed in a slum? Or is the majority of people good little corporate drones, earning money, then spending it on corporation products? That will make a difference.

Two things come to mind when thinking about VR games. THe first is gratification: keeping the population placid by plugging them into a better life. Difficult to make that sinister, really, beyond the general "real life should be better than a simulation thing", which has difficulty holding water if reality is a dystopian ****hole. Then, of course, there's microtransactions. They are trying to get money out of consumers by giving them new, better, virtual products. Maybe have an extremely good AI running the simulation, which can make a personalized virtual world for every customer that gives them what they want. The perfect better than life Lotus Eater machine, as long as you are a good corporate drone and can pay your bills.

Of course, there's also mind control or brainwashing. This could go any direction, from simple subliminal "our corp good, other corps bad" messages over virtual indoctrination (maybe time passes faster in the simulation, so you can give everyone years of brainwashing over the course of one night) to full-on brain hacking turning people into obedient zombies.

[Avista]

Evil needs to have a motive.

There's also nothing wrong with taking inspiration from literary works. How about a twist of George Orwell's 1984, where everyone lives in a world constructed by a handful of elite who control every aspect of life? Those at the bottom tire away pointlessly, while the elite handful benefit from their ignorance and stamp out any threat to change the status quo. You could just change propaganda and misinformation with overindulgence of VR to keep a mass population content and pacified.

[farothel]

Maybe check out Ready Player One. If your players haven't seen this movie yet, copy (or use parts) of that plot.

[Schismatic]

Trying to create a pseudo private network that locks players without their knowledge to run psychological experiments exposing subjects to new types of direct brain stimulation, and rewrites their memories of the event.

So the game is merely a hook, the real prize for the corporation is the capacity to run illegal tests on select people with select types of biometric data or behavioural patterns within the game to test new types of VR advertisement, instill political agendas, perhaps even create sleeper agents.

Through these programs the corporation effectively writes human history, can create conflicts, can get their chosen politicians elected, can make or break governments, shape sentiments concerning the marketplace...

[Kaptin Keen]

Look at China.

Having access to what we do and don't, what we think and like and so on - also let's you manipulate all of those things. Stimulating wanted behavior, repressing unwanted behavior, creating a feeling of satisfaction with the status quo, removing opposition to it. It's basically mind control, but better, because it's distributed, and people are really doing it to themselves.

So what does your corporation want? Likely they don't produce everything everyone needs - because then they're already at the top, and all they need is maintainance.

So: If they've not already won, they want to motivate consumers to buy (more of) their products, and not those of their competitors. When they launch a new product that competes with another corporation, they want to make sure they already have customers lining up to switch from Good-Corp to Evil-Corp. And so on.

If they've already won, they want to clamp down hard on any uppity newcomers wanting a piece of the pie.

Also, your first 'quest' should be to secretly, elegantly co-opt part of Evil-Corp's processing power to make runs against them. Cause that's something that always annoyed me - that a decker with even a top of the line deck should be able to compete against the raw power of an arcology full of servers and deckers. So borrow some cycles from them to use against them =)

[Wuzza]

The corporation have found a way to exploit the subconscious of the populace to implant submissive suggestions to maintain their total control via their new immersion game.
A small "resistance" are aware of this and are able to hack into their framework using the corporations own VR system to attack them.

[Great Dragon]

I'm just learning Cyberpunk, so be patient.

DataPools are the new Matrix.
Linked Corps could try some of the things above on Users.
Outsider Corps could send in agents to put in their own VR systems to try and take control of the DataPool.

Stealing from Shadowrun Matrix modules could give some good ideas for both Anti-Corporate and Corp vs Corp shennigans.

The Old Matrix was all but destroyed by The Datakrash Virus. The Old Matrix still exits, since it contains a lot of valuable Data.

The Corps could be using the VR Games to send unknowing pawns into the Old Matrix to retrieve this Data as Game Goals. The Corps don't care if Players die for real in these attempts.

You could also use the Resistance Idea above for this.

[sabernoir]

Maybe check out Ready Player One. If your players haven't seen this movie yet, copy (or use parts) of that plot.

Oh please no. I understand entertainment is subjective, but the book was exceedingly dumb, and the movie somehow managed to be even dumber. Although it does get points for iron giant cameos.

[Drakeburn]

What nefarious purpose might an unscrupulous and morally devoid corporation use a full immersion VR game for?

Maybe instead of brainwashing or mind control, how about extracting information from the users without them knowing about it? And what better way to get that info than from the brain?

With this kind of neurotech, the corporation can know how to get people to buy their products, or sell that information to advertisers. Heck, this could even have applications in corporate espionage!

[meschlum]

How evil is the corporation, and how soulless? These are not the same, and can affect what you end up doing (as well as belonging to different genres of cyberpunk).

A classic application of the genre is to have what happens in the VR world reflect issues outside. Use the VR overlay to get volunteers to risk their minds trying to break into the Tower of the Magi in game (and, incidentally, crack the defenses on a secure server with a theoretically tame AI inside, or break into a rival corporation's R&D lab, or hack the banking network and grab a few cents off each transaction made...)

If you're shifting into more alienation, remember that in VR you can look like whatever you want. How nice that all these players with the powerful werewolf class are learning to run the cyberdog bodies they'll be uploaded into! Keep them in VR and they'll eviscerate RL intruders without any hesitation. Other applications are feasible as well, of course.

Why bother with body hacking? Go with Shadowrun's BTL approach, get the players hooked to endorphins released by VR accomplishments, and get your willing drone workers. Or if you assume that meat brains are better than silicon ones in some respects, keep them plugged in to crunch your high tier software.

On a less nefarious but still unsettling level, remember that societies in VR reflect those outside. So infect a few VR characters with vampirism or leprosy, and watch how it spreads and how other players respond. Then use those responses to recommend real life approaches to disease treatment (and say hi to Peter Watts' Echopraxia).

[Ken Murikumo]

It does 2 things:

1) keeps the general lower class populace placid and addicted

2) the programs real purpose is to train soldiers for both cyber security and real world business security

The "game" which can be a competitive shooter or something similar strips the user's morality and personality and trains them to be a solider (think of the S3 program from Metal Gear Solid). Users who are above and beyond the rest get black-bagged at night and are either given cybernetics to enhance their bodies or even have their brain harvested and put into a war machine (robocop style).

Hell, you could go the Ghost in the Shell route and have them ghost dubbing the kidnapped people. Essentially, they create dozens of psuedo-AI copies of a users brain to put into machines; which is fast, easy, cheap, and eventually destroys the originals mind.

[Great Dragon]

Hell, you could go the Ghost in the Shell route and have them ghost dubbing the kidnapped people. Essentially, they create dozens of psuedo-AI copies of a users brain to put into machines; which is fast, easy, cheap, and eventually destroys the originals mind.

This could even backfire on the Corps - Skynet/Terminator style.

[Anymage]

If the corporation is that big and that domineering, why bother creating a mmorpg for nefarious purposes when they could just grab transients off the streets to experiment on?

I'd be tempted to go less traditional cyberpunk here, and more Matrix. The world is a crapsack, and people want an escape. Even if they're aware that the virtual world is pure escapism. The bad guys offering this vr escapism can either be machines (who plan to get us pesky biologicals so enraptured in the fake world that we forget to do things like reproduce in the real one, and die out), or a generally unscrupulous bunch of humans (who do unethical things with people's bodies while their minds are blissed out in vr).

Your cyberpunk heroes will still have to pull off some guerilla tactics in the real world, but mucking up the fantasy world with your hacker skills was one of the cool bits of that flick.

[Eldan]

Well, I guess part of the question here is if you want realistic corporate greed or movie villainy. If you want realistic, it would be an alternate reality game that provides a better life than real, probably without additional hooks than that. Or a gamified work environment. That idea is pretty popular right now, the idea that one day, you could keep employees focused on boring work by giving them a game environment to do it in, with colourful animations, points systems and levelling up.

[Rhedyn]

What nefarious purpose might an unscrupulous and morally devoid corporation use a full immersion VR game for?

To copy the consciousness of players and then use that copy to test various advertisements and other physiological responses to increase revenue via adds and develop patented physiological treatments.

Perhaps the PCs could have been friends with someone with a terminal illness. They die, but can still be found in the game (since they were copied) and the players are trying to rescue their friend when they uncover the existential horror of what the company is doing. The company does not necessarily view themselves as evil because they do not consider the copied psyches "people".

An evolving plot point is that the company starts using memetic weapons to program VR game users to perform real-world missions and espionage for the company without the users awareness. The players would need to get proof of this to get the other companies to put a stop to it, but the players might be hesitant if the game is the only place their friend can "live".

[Pleh]

I think what this story needs is diversity of political factions. The Corporation may be undisputed champs in the real world, but for their iron fisted rule to matter, there has to be someone opposing them (or else it's just a very firm utopia).

Obviously, there will be freedom fighters and rival companies (in a state too small to threaten the top dog and more trouble than they're worth to chase after) that wish they were the top dogs. Then there's always the chaotic political elements that are largely irrational, but zealous. These rebel factions are divided on their motives, but united in their desire to wrest some control of their lives back from the corporation. Since the physical world is a losing battle, they unite in the VR world equivalent of the Dark Web to share knowledge and strategize whenever they can agree to taking action.

As for what the Corporation wants, it feels most right to me that they just want to maintain their absolute job security, which means letting nothing threaten their choke hold on the market. They're the, "you would have done the same" type villains.