SOMETHING METAPHOR SOMETHING SOMETHING LATE CAPITALISM

March 10, 2017 9:38 PM

Inside the cruellest RollerCoaster Tycoon park ever created.
posted by Sebmojo (24 comments total)

That's a fascinating read. I'm glad the author didn't decide to try to anthropomorphize the bots TOO much. In other hands this could be pretty maudlin.

I do hope someone finds their way out, though.

I have both a fascination with and fear of mazes. I like the idea of being a tad lost, but being TOO lost makes me a bit panicky even to think about. I grew up in the age of maps and city map books, so I know how to find my way around using those tools. That is fun. No clue whatsoever? Do Not Want.
posted by hippybear at 9:54 PM on March 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

so this is what roko's basilisk was all about
posted by indubitable at 10:23 PM on March 10, 2017 [10 favorites]

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
posted by stanf at 10:43 PM on March 10, 2017 [15 favorites]

Hot cholcolate and seafood? I don't know if it's worse to be inside the maze, or outside of it......
posted by triage_lazarus at 11:17 PM on March 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

Put Beeftank in there, he could solve it. Then sell the rights for an episode of Black Mirror.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:26 PM on March 10, 2017 [9 favorites]

When I was a little boy I was at the beach with my grandfather and on the boardwalk was one of those mirror maze things, where the walls are all mirrors or clear plastic. Anyway, we walked by and inside was girl a little older than me that was crying and yelling for help. My grandfather goes over to the teenager who was running the thing and tells him the girl is in there freaking out. Teenager shrugs and goes back to his comic book (or Walkman or whatever we did back then, hard to remember). So my grandfather tries to go into the maze to help the girl out and the teenager yells at him and says he can't go in without paying.

Wow, looking back on it for the first time in like 30 years, it might have been a great marketing technique.
posted by Literaryhero at 11:46 PM on March 10, 2017 [14 favorites]

If she'd 'ave kept on goin' down that way she'd 'ave gone straight to that castle.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:32 AM on March 11, 2017 [19 favorites]

(although, curiously enough, the guests all have steel bladders)

Or rubber drawers.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:35 AM on March 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

more like roko's minotaur amiright?
posted by ardgedee at 3:04 AM on March 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

I WANT TO GET OFF MR. BONES' WILD RIDE.
posted by fifthrider at 5:06 AM on March 11, 2017 [9 favorites]

These violent delights have violent ends.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 5:16 AM on March 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Technically, all mazes are the same maze.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:13 AM on March 11, 2017

Or rubber drawers.
posted by The Underpants Monster

Again with the monstrosity....
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:47 AM on March 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

I remember seeing a meme going around about a guy who launched his guests off an unfinished coaster into the rival park, so they'd die in the other park and decrease its rating, causing guests to flock to his park. It's a horrible world.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:54 AM on March 11, 2017 [11 favorites]

> I remember seeing a meme going around about a guy who launched his guests off an unfinished coaster into the rival park, so they'd die in the other park and decrease its rating, causing guests to flock to his park. It's a horrible world.

SOMETHING MEME SOMETHING SOMETHING 21ST CENTURY
posted by lucidium at 9:44 AM on March 11, 2017

I'm still more impressed by the mind that created this one.
posted by flabdablet at 10:48 AM on March 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

So what was that argument about living in a simulated universe and simulations creating their own simulations...

I'm glad that's not a real thing.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 11:19 AM on March 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

I sometimes worry the player just put in the wrong copy protection code on SimTheWorld 2017
posted by Sebmojo at 12:09 PM on March 11, 2017

Don't worry Hippybear there is a simple algorithm to solve any maze (assuming static walls) just pick a wall the left or the right. Now follow that wall. You will eventually get out. This has come in handy at work where we are building a mirror maze and sometimes you forget where you are in it.
posted by MrBobaFett at 3:21 PM on March 11, 2017

That's how Batman did it
posted by thelonius at 3:37 PM on March 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

Left-hand (or right-hand) navigation of a maze is trivially defeated by designing a maze with a ring of contiguous corridor around either the entrance or exit. In this case, we don't know where the entrance and exits are, but the checkpoints within the maze are ringed. The designer did their bastardry homework.
posted by ardgedee at 4:08 PM on March 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

"After 47 years, Regina makes it to Checkpoint 2."
....
..
this is hitting too close to home.
posted by wibari at 6:15 PM on March 11, 2017 [7 favorites]

You cannot construct such a ring if both the entrance and exit of the maze are on the border of the maze. Which they must be, as they must both lead to the park entrance/exit. I see no reason you should have to pass through the checkpoints to complete the maze.
posted by Bobicus at 1:18 AM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

“O king of time and substance and cipher of the century! In Babylonia didst thou attempt to make me lose my way in a labyrinth of brass with many stairways, doors, and walls; now the Powerful One has seen fit to allow me to show thee mine, which has no stairways to climb, nor walls to impede thy passage.”

Then he untied the bonds of the king of Babylonia and abandoned him in the middle of the desert, where he died of hunger and thirst.

Glory to Him who does not die.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Two Kings and Two Labyrinths.
posted by runcifex at 8:34 AM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]