Project Mithridates Preview

Today, I’m announcing my new video game, Project Mithridates. Unfortunately, I’m unable to release it. Even providing more details would be dangerous.

As I was wrapping up development, I recruited a few people on social media for playtesting. Each tester sent an initial positive report, and then nothing. I sent emails, I messaged them on the sites I recruited them from. Radio silence. Was it that bad? Were they all busy? I couldn’t figure it out. But I needed the feedback, so I sent the game to a local friend—let’s call him Steve—mostly because I knew I could bug him until he told me what he thought.

Steve followed the same pattern—he loved the gameplay, the storyline, the graphics. Steve’s normally a pretty subdued guy, but he was gushing. And then he went dark too. Same as the other testers—no updates, no responses. Finally, after a few days, Steve sent a bug report that ended with, “Fix it now, or I’ll kill myself.” I dropped everything to push the fix, and then drove to his house. His wife—we’ll call her Clara—answered the door in obvious distress. For the first couple of days, Steve was able to handle it, but then it took over. He stopped going to work, he stopped showering. If Clara hadn’t been placing food and water in reach, he would have died. Steve will likely be let go from his job next week, and Clara is contemplating leaving him. If we interpret his euphoric exclamations correctly, Steve is unconcerned with either.

I feel terrible. I knew it was fun, but I had no idea it would be this fun. I was fortunate to play it during development and inoculate myself against the effect of its final form. This alone saved me from the crippling pleasure Steve is experiencing.

It would be irresponsible to release Project Mithridates right now—humanity can’t cope with a game this good. The irresistible and addictive joy people experience while playing would cause a widespread social breakdown and severe economic depression. My top priority is to keep this technology out of the wrong hands. Sadly, distribution of this game would not constitute a crime today, despite the obvious harm that it causes. Development of frontier games has moved significantly faster than the legal frameworks needed to contain them. I urge governments around the world to pass legislation for the effective control of advanced games, like Project Mithridates. I pledge to work with any lawmaker willing to put forth such legislation.

Further, less scrupulous game developers are working, even now, to catch up to Project Mithridates. We must understand how to counter the effect. That’s why I’m announcing the Project Mithridates Preview program to release the game to select researchers willing to develop the safety protocols necessary for games this advanced. It may be too late for Steve, but I know that together we can make sure that my state-of-the-art game development skills are used only for good.