GameCyte

Okay, so technically he wants you to play Tabula Rasa first. But, if you do, he’ll take a copy of your virtual character with him when he goes up to the International Space Station in October. If you’re very lucky, he’ll also take a copy of your sequenced DNA, and leave it there in space. Richard Garriott, Lord/General British himself, is going to be the sixth private citizen to visit space, and what better way to celebrate one of mankind’s most awe-inspiring feats of science and technology than with a marketing stunt for an MMORPG?

Here’s the deal: All active players in Tabula Rasa during the month of August will have their characters backed up and stored in the “Immortality Drive,” a device Garriott intends to carry with him on his space flight and store at the International Space Station in October. There is no cost for this privilege; NCSoft is supplying free trials of the game in a “no purchase necessary” approach to intergalactic storage. Just download the trial and make a character, and you will rest secure in the knowledge that future generations will have a copy of EpicNinjaLootPantz420{-xxl-}, should anything happen to you.

Furthermore, Garriott intends to use the immortality drive to store valuable information about the human race, including the answers to online polls like “What is the greatest song of all time?” and “What is the greatest technological breakthrough of all time?” Finally, every week in August, eight lucky Tabula Rasa players will receive an invitation to have their actual human DNA sequenced, to be stored on the Immortality Drive alongside the DNA of today’s greatest minds and culturally relevant celebrities.

In theory, this will help repopulate the human race should we all be killed by angry aliens or An Inconvenient Truth, but I think we all know where this is going. Either Garriott intends to build a breed of people who are genetically predisposed to like his games, or else our DNA is going to be launched into some sort of space-portal to hell and Sam Neill will bring an army of doppelgangers from space to slaughter us all. It’s happened before.