We remember when, at best, you'd get a ratty t-shirt or maybe a poster featuring Maria Whittaker (look her up on the Internet kids) to convince you to get a game. How times have changed, now you're being offered life everlasting and you don't even have to be 'ligious.
Yes, Richard Garriott, the man behind the classic
Ultima games - and to an extent
Wing Commander - is offering immortality to gamers when he visits the International Space Station in October 2008. Well, he and NCSoft are.
According to the blurb, "As part of NCsoft’s 'Operation Immortality', Richard Garriott – the man who created Tabula Rasa, a massively multi-player online PC game that explores the destruction of Earth – is now venturing into space to save humanity."
Perspective anybody?
Yes, it's a way to pimp
Tabula Rasa. Apparently, if you play the game this qualifies you to have you DNA "sequenced, digitised and sent into space on the Immortality Drive". We tend to think of it more as 'The Increduylity USB Stick' but we're cynics.
Apparently, Lord British as was, "will place the Immortality Drive on the International Space Station when he travels there in autumn."
We don't want to continue, we're cringing a little too much at the sheer, bare-faced audacity of the press release. It continues, "In addition, all players worldwide with active retail accounts on September 2, 2008 will have their
Tabula Rasa characters uploaded to the device, giving them the opportunity to go to space virtually."
Yes, really, you have the chance for your game character to go into space. This apparently means that you are virtually also in space. And we are allowing people who believe this to have their DNA sequenced and saved for perpetuity?
Remember though, if you're not from the United States, your DNA is not worthy. According a quote attributed to Garriott,"A select few U.S. players will have their DNA digitised and sent. And, theoretically, if anything happens to the human race, it could be their DNA that is used to resurrect humanity."
SPOnG urges you all - whether you are a heathen, in-bred cretin or you are from the United States to find out more over at
Operation Immortality. Because, frankly, we are too stunned right now.
We, instead, are getting onto the Yorkshire Space Agency to discover how we can get our DNA into a charabang and over to Filey for the afternoon - an afternoon in Filey being fairly similar to eternity.