# disconnecting from david braben's no offline mode universe > a fully offline experience would be unacceptably limited and static compared to the dynamic ever unfolding experience we are delivering > ~ david braben consider the terrible beauty of 22k - the amount of memory taken by elite for the bbc micro conceptually speaking elite is a laser beam proudly shining out from the cold lonely depths of early garming's universe yet 'the concept' that is elite as a whole not only involves carefully constructed code but also includes money fame and power. perhaps it always did david braben and ian bell - a pair of true blue teenage yuppie 1984 thatcherite entrepreneurs at the bleeding edge of the home garming technology supernova what they managed to accomplish technically with the first iteration of ir garme is quite a marvel the problem however arises when technology catches up to / facilitates ambition then egos swell (even more) astronomically the range and reach of one's vision (greed) is greatly expanded; everything becomes possible but nobody stops to ask if it's time to stop; effortlessness minimalist elegance gets pushed out of the main airlock in the garish pursuit of 'the epic' the inclusion of an fps module in star citizen is such an example - cynically cramming in yet another arbitrary feature to a crass product that at its plastic heart feels largely devoid of good ideas the elitist rhetoric of "no offline" mode what being "online" really means for today's rapidly growing 'aaa indie' devs is simply "where the big money is baby" it means control of directed advertising dlc chances for increased pre-order culture hype b.s a chance to display fake worry about 'them thar pirates' and it means a complete lack of recognition and respect for teh garme modding community being 'online only' indicates that anyone wanting to unplug themselves from this loud gross universe of video garmes marketing (marketed in terms of "multiplayer = a better experience for everyone") is somehow a peasant looser peon in this endlessly great and holy digital realm the message is that "you're not wired (to what's hip) if your not online": yet there's noting remotely special about the constantly 24/7/365 online world; in fact the corporate drones over at wired smell like a bunch of smug techno-utopians; "online = freedom" is free(tm) market libertarian doublethink sold as some "people's revolution" **+** the 60s: turn on / tune in / drop out **+** the 80s: jack in / jerk off / log out **+** the 00s: no log off / nobody's home note how the sims / e.a pulled the same kind of stunt // video here ah the irony 400 billion star systems: the galaxy isn't yours dave 400 billion star systems is meaningless; it's empty hype. only the easily impressed care about such casually tossed-around numbers. 400 billion utterly ignores the needs of human scale understanding it's approximately the amount of meaninglessness that can easily fix inside david braben's magnificently swollen head; ir assumption appears to be that 400 billion anything is somehow automatically to be read by players as 'inherently better' than 22k. this seems a delicately laughable fallacy 400 billion orders of magnitude larger than the procedural nostalgia expressed by the first garme it's not (/just) a matter of comparing apples with infinitely bigger melons either; perhaps the idea is to make a 400 billion star system garme that is as conceptually elegant as a 22k garme - to allow a 400 billion star system sized garme to emerge procedurally and not try to hoodwink players with techno-speak about 'considerable compromise' > the problem is that the galaxy mechanics all sit on the online servers. the data set and processes are huge and not something that would translate offline without considerable compromise to the vision. trust me we didn't sit down and think what would annoy people the most! it's a choice we've had to make and so we've taken it > ~ michael brookes executive producer but nobody's asking mike dave and the gang to curb ir (apparently boundless) enthusiasm - to compromise ir epic vision of an all encompassing all singing and dancing naked space bandit-capitalism simulator. they didn't think what would annoy people the most but it seems they do serious consider what can make them the most brilliant famous - and rich developers the garming galaxy has ever seen what would indeed 'translate offline' is thinking entirely differently than they have been about procedural generation perhaps using (pretends like ey knows) 'multi-resolution fractal octree nodes to scale large (online) datasets into smaller lower (offline) resolution player data space'. no need to provide some nerdy one-to-one mapping just a generally accurate flavour - an abstraction layer the point however is that symbolically wonderfully elite's "22k" more truly means and indicates generating entire realities from nothing - 'it from bit' dog fighting cobra mark iii's off the upper starboard bow might be mildly amusing for an hour but it's 400 billion peanuts compared to a true exploration of a computational reality that spontaneously emergences from the living void - something that the middling online-only "planet arse" of elite:dangerous seems unable to consider // republic of bob