Yue

 16th December

09:38 GMT -7

"Thank you all for coming."

Not a huge audience. Only twenty two of the forty I invited responded positively, and three of them didn't actually turn up. Fair enough, really. They're in an industry where when a job becomes available you don't have much choice but to take it.

Kurt Damsen, former Head of Development at a recently downsized computer game studio, takes a moment to pointedly look around the room. His eyes momentarily arresting as his gaze alights upon a former colleague. "I was mostly curious about what a superhero wants to talk to us about."

"I'm hoping that you can help me with something that's been… On my mind." I sigh. "Essentially, I want to offer you -collectively- data on a politically complex and turbulent region of space, with a view to making a computer game based on it."

A couple of exhalations, and I've definitely got everyone's attention.

"The reason I want to do that -aside from the fact that you're all talented individuals who have been ill treated by your former employers- is because I was the one who in real life was obliged to deal with it, and I'm really not sure that I did the best job I could have done. I'm.. curious to see if a player base would -when confronted with the situation- make similar choices or different ones."

Heidi Rose, award winning game developer and programmer with twenty years' experience who quit after her third hundred hour a week month in a row, glances up at the sky. "Is this somewhere close? Are we going to have to worry about extra terrestrial critics? I don't want to be probed."

"No, that's… No. It's extremely unlikely that most of the people mentioned would ever come to Earth, and the few that would probably wouldn't care."

"Are these well armed aliens who could come to Earth?"

I nod. "Oh, very well armed. Then again.. I.. know that several of you have worked on licensed games depicting superheroes before." A slightly wry shuffle from the people who worked on 'Justice League Adventures', a fairly generic action RPG which to this day has the League's founding members wince slightly whenever they see it. Except for Jordan, who got cut in favour of Lantern Stewart, and King Orin, who got cut entirely. "And that contained several alien races who hadn't decided to complain about it."

Kurt nods. "So, where is it?"

"A cluster of star systems about sixty light years-" I point. "-that way." I generate a map, though at this size it's impossible to make out individual planets and the stars are points of light. "As a result of a pact between the Guardians of the-" Ugh "-Universe…" Blank faces. Consider your audience. "The people who run the Green Lantern Corps." A few nods. "And one of its more infamous residents, Green Lanterns aren't allowed inside. How big a deal that is probably isn't obvious, so let me explain a little about how interstellar law enforcement works."

"The first thing you need to understand is that the species of the universe have no common set of laws. There is no Space UN. The nearest thing to a galactic legal authority is the Guardians, and though they're generally respected they don't have a generally recognised universal jurisdiction. There are civilisations who bar their operatives entry, and the Guardians accept that. Beyond that, given exactly how far criminals can run when they have access to faster than light travel, there are networks of bounty hunting organisations of varying degrees of… We'd say 'legitimacy', but in the context of there not being an overall law I suppose that they're technically all as legitimate as each other. Similarly, the vastness of space makes the sort of extradition agreements we have on Earth impractical except between near-neighbours."

Neil Cohen, lead writer on two of Wallace's favourite games and recipient of exactly zero dollars in royalties, raises his right hand. "So it's all handled by NGOs?"

"Courts on particular worlds often offer bounties and have agreements with particular organisations about standards and prices. But generally speaking, a stellar polity will only use its navy to enforce its own laws in systems where it has colonies, and maybe on the routes between them. Taking a fleet towards someone else's territory is obviously an extremely aggressive action. If a regional power is strong enough they might do it, but if all of the local powers are approximately equal then border hopping to avoid capture is quite viable."

"Green Lanterns can and do pursue violent criminals wherever they go, but then they're stuck with what to do with them. Quite aside from the fact that they probably won't know much about any political motivations they might have, they might be in a position where they know that the people they capture might suffer a grotesque punishment, or… Be able to buy their way out of trouble. Depending on local conditions they might return people they capture to one jurisdiction or another, or they might opt to maroon them instead."

"In places of widespread civil anarchy, the Green Lantern Corps might decide to move in in force and restore order. This acts as a sort of encouragement to spacefaring civilisations to maintain a degree of control over their own citizens and keep their interactions with their neighbours at least somewhat civil."

"As a result of there not being a major local power strong enough to assert itself, and the Green Lanterns being excluded by treaty, Vega was until recently a major pirate safe harbour. Two local civilisations were flat out evil, while several others were either cowed by them or willing to go along with it as long as they could benefit too. The nearest thing to a resistance movement was near-useless. And returning to why I'd like a game made, I.. fixed the situation partly by diplomacy with some fairly unpleasant people and partly by outright genocide."

A wave of unease passes around the room.

"On Earth, there are systems of law. Out in the wider universe, it's hit and miss." I take a handful of data sticks out of subspace. "There was no higher authority to turn to, and refusing to make a choice myself would have resulted in far more death… And those deaths would largely have been amongst those who weren't totally monstrous."

"Ahhh…" I focus on Kurt, who realises that he has the floor. "We make.. computer games."

"Yes. I think a modern game would be capable of modelling the relations between different parties in Vega, and having both a trading and fighting game play loop and faction missions to progress the.. main story in the direction of the player's choosing. Even if the finale is some orange deus ex flying in and dealing out frontier justice." I shrug. "Though I personally think that the end game coming out of nowhere is poor writing. Having fought two of the local boss characters myself I'm confident that you could come up with something better."

"No, I meant... Fictional space law is.. one thing and… Deciding to wipe out a civilisation because they're evil in real life…"

"If you were confronted by a xenomorph facehugger-" I generate a construct. "-and you had a gun, would you kill it?"

"If I could, yeah."

"Would you kill a hundred, if you could? They're newborn babies, remember."

He nods. "Yeah, yeah I guess I would."

"Would you have nuked Hiroshima, if it was the only way to stop Pingfang camp? Would you have flattened Dresden if it was the only way to close Auschwitz? Would you order a hundred men to charge a trench line, knowing that it was the only way to take it? And how could you be sure that those justifications were true?" He shrugs. "In my professional work I sometimes find it frustrating that people aren't prepared to make certain types of decisions. I'm hopeful that putting it in a semi-fictional context will encourage decisiveness and the development of appropriate decision making schema. And to make people more aware of what space age civilisations are capable of."

Sharon Pombo, unofficially blacklisted from working in any mainstream game company or games related media company after agitating for trade union membership and worker's rights, raises her left hand. "So.. are you.. hiring people to make this.. game..?"

"Not precisely. I hope that I have here the nucleus of a company. I'm willing to invest considerable amounts of money, do PR work for free and provide background information on the Vega Systems themselves. But it's up to you to form the company. Or not, if you choose. I imagine that your former employers would be quite willing to take the property off my hands."

There's a general tightening of jaws.

"Any further questions, or shall we start going through the data?"