If you’ve never watched Sword Art Online, here’s the quick version: There’s a VR-based MMO that became popular but then trapped everyone inside of the game and forced everyone to live inside of it, because anime. That’s fine. A new VR MMO based off of the series is apparently going to be tested in Japan in early March. That’s something less than fine; “bizarre” might be the word you’re looking for.
Also, it’s being tested in a secret location with a very limited pool of people, which is when the irony becomes so thick that you can no longer chew on it.
There’s no word on whether or not the game in question, Sword Art Online: The Beginning, is meant to serve as a full game or just as a proof-of concept. IBM’s Watson and SoftLayer are both on tap, meaning that this may very well turn out to just be a technology test. Or it may turn out that this is the equivalent of a new deep-space company starting up and naming itself Weyland-Yutani before advertising for high-risk missions, who knows.
