IO

GAME THEORY

Eislingen, Baden-Württemberg, 2001

Just as Renu was exploring The Scene for the first time, 500 miles away in southern Germany another young computer user had stumbled across the same mysterious community.

Fifteen-year-old Matrix001 had fallen in love. Not with a girl. Matrix was infatuated with computer games. At first, they were just one aspect in a balanced and normal adolescence, competing for his spare time with gymnastics and the school orchestra in which he played the clarinet. There was nothing outwardly unusual about him. His secret obsession with games was easily hidden. Nobody knew – not his friends, not his parents or his siblings – except perhaps for his younger brother.

Not only did he adore games, but he was a skilled practitioner too, and as his final high-school exams approached, his sessions at the keyboard began to extend deep into the night. Keeping up with the latest games proved an expensive affair, especially if (as among Matrix's gaming peer group) there was kudos in announcing that you had played and beaten those games which had only just been released.

By the year 2000 new games with dazzling graphics were cascading onto the market. The Pokémon series rolled out thick and fast, while at the more extreme end, WWF SmackDown 2: Know Your Role was proving a big hit, along with Grand Theft Auto, whose storylines were forging their violent and pornographic hallmarks. Matrix was always desperate to get his hands on the latest game, but he just couldn't afford them all.