We need a lot of exposition

Author’s Note:

I’m creating my own interpretation of this setting based on reading most of the other branches of this story.

It looks like mostly, people logging out isn’t really covered and that people seem to be able to spend days in game. The related story has players swapping with AIs that control their characters’ bodies but I’m going to assume that people actually stay in game 24/7. Basically, extrapolating from the AI rights presented especially in the “Critter” section, I’m assuming an increased level of basic necessities are available to everyone. However, in contrast, luxuries are quite rare. As a result, it is cheaper for most people to live and work entirely in a virtual environment that minimizes their presence in the physical world. The game servers that the story follows are connected to a hub world that includes virtual work and meeting places and many people do nearly all of their work in various digital worlds.

One of the Critter threads claimed that it is cheaper to give an AI a rather luxurious life in a simulated world than a basic one in the material world and I am extending that to people as well. The principle being, that acceptable conditions for someone living in their actual body costs the government more money than just subsidizing virtual worlds. Now, many companies maintain virtual worlds and compete for government funding as well as private denizens. It’s clear that admins do most of their work in avatar form and it seems rational to me to make offices in virtual space because you could make them larger and give everyone a virtual office instead of a tiny physical cubicle. In addition, there are apparently AI systems that even the designers may not understand. I suppose it’s a sort of transition toward the singularity where AI are starting to develop on their own? I’m not sure where I’ll go with this but assume the Argent Chroniclers are working remotely as their game avatars because it’s somehow more convenient to have their office space in someone else’s game world instead of paying for extremely expensive futuristic real estate. Instead, they have a bunch of adventurers sitting at computer desks and working from inside a game. Somehow that’s cheaper and that’s why they seem to live in game full time and this is normal. And then on their lunch break, which they still need even though they don’t need food the same way as digital avatars, they go hunt monsters.

To summarize, combining capitalism with a legal minimum standard of living has created a network of government subsidized virtual worlds that can give people a comfortable life for less real world resources and it is now normalized to just live there in the virtual world where you can have a mansion for less than a real world sleeping capsule and cubicle would cost.

Also, You as Xilmomoth know this because either it’s innate as part of having access to standard AI stuff or maybe you just spent some time on a terminal (think a simulation of a laptop computer so people can do office stuff from inside fantasy land).

So, assume the Argent Chroniclers are a small business headquartered in the guild HQ of the same name inside someone else’s game because it was cheaper than a real office.

Exposition dump, done for now.