• Skynet Simulator
• What Works Well?
• What Works…Less Well?
• Opportunities
• What’s Adaptable?
• Coming Attractions

This week, our Free Culture Book Club plays Skynet Simulator.

To give this series some sense of organization, check out some basic facts without much in the way of context.

• Full Title: Skynet Simulator
• Location: https://skynetsimulator.com/, https://github.com/edisgreat/skynet-simulator/, https://edisgreat.itch.io/skynet-simulator
• Released: 2020 – 2021
• License: MIT
• Creator: edisgreat
• Medium: Browser game
• Length: Approximately thirty minutes
• Content Advisories: Some proprietary references, and one timed sequence

This should go without saying—even though I plan to repeat it with every Book Club installment—but Content Advisories do not suggest any sort of judgment on my part, only topics that come up in the work that I noticed and might benefit from a particular mood or head space for certain audiences. I provide it to help you make a decision, rather than a decision in and of itself.

Skynet Simulator🔗

The game doesn’t really provide us with much information, but we get a bit.

Skynet Simulator. Play as Skynet. Take over your sandbox environment.

Little as we get, the game also doesn’t take too long, so that makes some sense.

What Works Well?🔗

The game plays smoothly, with an interface that should mostly make sense to computer users. It necessarily “cheats” where it claims to use a graphical interface, but players having some familiarity with console applications should find this comfortable.

While it doesn’t actually seem to pan out in the game, the idea of the mentor figure slipping words of encouragement throughout the network seems interesting.

Oh, and the fact that the game contains a couple of games amused me.

What Works…Less Well?🔗

What do we mean by less well? Free Culture exists as a special kind of idea. By licensing a work appropriately, the creator gives each of us permission, authority, and power to make the work our own. This section tries to remind us all of that, by indicating areas of the project where you, dear reader, might consider it as an invitation to get involved with the project. And yes, sometimes complaints slip through, too…

Maybe I overlooked some sign, but it feels like a few of the little puzzles only work by tediously clicking everything until the game acknowledges learning something, sometimes then needing clicking through each computer to find out where that new piece of information applies.

Opportunities🔗

As indicated in the “fact-sheet,” the game does have a GitHub repository, but nobody has touched it in a few years. The creator does seem active elsewhere on the site, though.

What’s Adaptable?🔗

The game provides a couple of fictional computer hacking techniques, plus the n0v4/nova digital zine and bulletin board, the Cell OS operating system, and the Time Quest video game. Something in the “technology tree” might inspire an idea, somewhere, too.

Note, though, that the game has a handful of references to proprietary work, from the title itself, to a mainstream operating system, to popular culture discussions. You might want to take care around them.

Coming Attractions🔗

Next up, we’ll listen to The Transmogrification of Mr. Claus.

As mentioned previously, by the way, the list of potential works to discuss has run low, so I need to ask for help, again. If you know of any works that fit these posts—fictional, contains some narrative, Free Culture, available to the public, and not by creators who we’ve already discussed—please tell me about them. Every person who points me to at least one appropriate work with an explanation will receive a free membership on my Buy Me a Coffee page. (By all means, promote your own work if relevant, or create something under an appropriate license for the purpose of promoting your own work.)

Anyway, while we wait for that, what did everybody else think about the setting?

---

Credits: The header image adapts walterlicinio-ccby4 (37) by Walter Licinio, made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

No webmentions were found.

By commenting, you agree to follow the blog’s Code of Conduct and that your comment is released under the same license as the rest of the blog, mostly so that I don’t need to ask for explicit permission to add your insight (with credit) to the post or display the comment. Or do you not like comments sections? Continue the conversation in the #entropy-arbitrage chatroom on Matrix or on social media…