Arcadia Manual

Groups Of Interest » Arcadia Manual

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Bushnell was the hotshot of his class in 1964, boasting and bragging about his business ideas. It wasn't long before Bushnell's university friends learned of the Arcadia venture and asked to join; one of those friends being Ted Dabney. They met while studying in the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab and bonded over a shared love of the Go board game and occult rituals. Nolan and Ted saw opportunity in the lab's engrossing electronic games, and they took it.

The most popular game on campus was Spacewar!, a simple space combat game. The pair ripped that off with ease. But that wasn't the only thing they planned on ripping. They'd come up with an idea while they sat together mumbling incantations at midnight. Ted Dabney had conceived of a technological innovation that could unlock the secrets of harnessing the cursed magicks of the underworld. It was a small step to transfer their knowledge and interests over to Arcadia.

That year, President Lyndon B. Johnson woke up in a cold sweat and began frantically sketching out a horrible visage which had come in his dreams. White squares endlessly batting back in forth in deep space forever. This triggered a chain of events which eventually led a mild-mannered engineer named Ralph Baer to take the President's sketch and create an interstellar communication and control device. He dubbed it the Brown Box. Thus began an odyssey of triumph and terror which would last for decades to come.

The SCP Foundation had ears everywhere and they knew of what Dabney and Bushnell were up to. In turn, Bushnell knew of Baer's discovery from public demonstrations of the Brown Box's more mundane aspects. This cross-pollination led to the group's first big break. The Foundation would provide funding for a collective experience-gathering experiment to create a human capable of reliably engaging with the Brown Box. In exchange, Arcadia would supply their technology and occult expertise. The Foundation only needed the former, but Bushnell - ever the shrewd businessman - insisted on providing both.

The money flowed in like water.

Kicking into gear in 1967, Arcadia quickly appropriated connections in order to make their first original product; the Dabney-Syzygy Inhibitor. Partnering with Nutting Associates under the guise of developing a commercial computer game, the Inhibitor inside what would become "Computer Space" allowed them to refine their technique on half-drunk pinball players who didn't understand the ramifications of trading their souls for quarters.

Unlocking the secrets of Hell gave them a new conundrum: Portals to hell are a two-way street. Once you've opened that door you'd better be ready to parlay on the demon's terms. What if there was a way to moderate the energy coming through that aperture? Hold it open just a crack, let the corrupting power flow out without unleashing doom. Harness the energy given off when sending souls back through, double-dipping on a devil's bargain.

It wouldn't be too long before the Foundation scooped up the project assets and cut ties with the darkening hearts of Bushnell and his goons. Looking for more funding now that he didn't have the limitless funds of the men in black, Bushnell grew tired under the self-imposed limitations of Arcadia, and left in 1969 to pursue his own projects. His little cabal left with him. Arcadia was thrust into the hands of Dan "Wolf" Dunn, a recently-hired visual designer and story-writer.

It was under Dunn's management that Arcadia became a household name. Despite having left, Bushnell and co. would frequently collaborate with Arcadia. Dunn used these projects as reputation fodder, to his advantage. Arcadia started to produce games for companies desperately outsourcing projects during the video game boom. Their popularity spiked. Arcadia independently developed hundreds, if not thousands of games in their heyday years.

Working at Arcadia at this time was a tricky proposition. You never knew whether the gal or guy sitting next to you was a regular employee or a devil worshiper in business attire. The drugs had abated but never truly went away. There was never enough money coming in to make everyone feel comfortable. The culture was balancing on a knife's edge.

Nevertheless, Dunn and Arcadia were full of themselves, ego oozing from everything they developed. The quality of their games started to drop as more and more saturated the market. The demonic influences started to peek through.

Arcadia as a whole was totally unprepared for the video game market crash of 1983. This Arcadian shock zapped the market to a fraction of its former value, resulting in the rough and dirty death throes of the company. They weren't quite ready to give up yet.

Organizations/Personnel

Arcadia: The original organization, founded by Nolan Bushnell who loosely led it until 1969, when Bushnell left to work on his own ventures. Originally a high-powered drug-fueled cabal of dark magic users ready and willing to use their magic for fun and profit, it slipped into mundaneness in the late eighties. Reborn in the nineties and the 2000s, modern Arcadia feels like a silent domination - an entirely different Arcadia than the one that openly ruled the video game market with an iron fist.

Nolan Bushnell: Ruthless businessman and marketer who found success after leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Personally charming and charismatic, in one-on-one conversation he can convince just about anybody to do anything. Hair appears to be perpetually greasy no matter how many showers he takes. Left Arcadia in 1969.

Ted Dabney: Occult machine designer responsible for the technology at the core of Arcadia's ability to act in the occult world, the Dabney-Syzygy Inhibitor. He leaves Arcadia with Bushnell.

Dan "Wolf" Dunn: Designer and writer with Arcadia "Prime", and subsequent leader of Arcadia during its glory years and its downfall. A mostly friendly and good-spirited guy, he often can't see his own shortcomings. Will often become hyperfocused on tasks. Always wears a signature orange tie. Left Arcadia in 1986. Purported to be a part of modern-day Arcadia.

Introduction

There's a lot of information here about Arcadia. But what are they? How can I write them? Why are they purple? This section is to answer some of those questions.

In a nutshell, when you boil it down from a bird's eye view this is what the group is. Either:

A cabal of drug-addled witches and warlocks making bank by imbuing video game products with black magic fueled by the souls of children.
A mysterious corporation producing high-quality works and video game products with some sort of anomalous twist - good or bad.
Somewhere in between for the silent years (1986 - 1990).

Themes of drug use, abandonment, corruption, memory loss and reversion to childhood have been used.

Using Arcadia

You don't have to play into all the history I've laid out to use them. That's just there for inspiration and to flesh the group out beyond "dudes who made spicy video games and then died" or however they're going to be stereotyped. You can totally ignore all that. For example, Butthole Surfers is about eels who jump in people's guts and make them run to the ocean. It's triggered by copies of Fishing Derby, then loosely connected through a note to the developer from Nolan Bushnell.

Ultimately, you can ignore all of the background history and lore involved in Arcadia and just write an anomalous game for pretty much any platform, and it's probably going to work. They did a lot of third-party projects, so you're covered in the canon anyway.

Timeline

When you're writing for Arcadia it can be set in any era from mid 1960s~ on. Here's a rough timeline of their power level so you can adjust the depiction accordingly:

1963-1969: Startup of just Nolan and Ted.
1970-1985: Unstable colossus making and hemorrhaging money in equal quantities.
1986-1991: Once-mighty group splintered and deprived of money - just desperate to be relevant again.
1991-Present: A rebirth of values and products, mysterious yet prolific. Modern Arcadia is an enigma within itself.

What About Tone?

Tone-wise, no matter what era of Arcadia, lean towards old-school creep. The feeling you get when it's the middle of the night and you're all alone in your room playing the game past bedtime. The television set's high-pitched whine is the only thing you can hear, that and the chirping of crickets. Out of the corner of your eye, there's a graphical glitch. Maybe Evil Otto here to crush you with a smile? Yars finally coming for his revenge?

The screen snaps shut, and everything goes black.

Hang out with us on Discord!

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