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A Second Sunrise: Taiwan of 2020 Sent Back to 1911

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The dominant thought process for believers isn't "the priests were raping kids and God didn't stop them, therefore God doesn't exist," but rather "the priests were raping kids and the church covered it up, therefore the church is corrupt."

They still, for the most part, hold the same beliefs; it's just which clergy they look to which changes. A Catholic is still going to be looking for a religion that believes in one god.
 
Just caught up with the timeline; the Downtimer fears of Chinese hegemony have more than a kernel of truth to them (technology from a hundred years in the future, plus the mainland's population and resources), but the Uptimer government seems to understand this, at least.

I hope Italy won't fall to Fascism a decade ahead of schedule, though.
 
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Ulmicola said:
Just caught up with the timeline; the Downtimer fears of Chinese hegemony have more than a kernel of truth to them (technology from a hundred years in the future, plus the mainland's population and resources), but the Uptimer government seems to understand this, at least.

I hope Italy won't fall to Fascism a decade ahead of schedule, though.
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Yup, the main mindset that has been (usually not literally) beaten into China/Asia's leadership is that they won't always have such a large technical or economic advantage over the world, so they ought to not go "Wolf Warrior Diplomacy" on them.

Sure, China would probably dominate global politics, economics, and any technological race they entered, but the long-term strategy is basically getting on everyone's good side.

This can take many forms, such as modernization in Latin America, reconstruction in Europe, nation-building in Africa, and mutual respect with America.

Sure, there will be CIA-style shenanigans against dictators, but the big "conflict" right now is getting the rest of the world up to speed.

That, and couping dictators, but we don't talk about that.

Oh, and Italy isn't going fascist anytime soon. The world's powers are too-invested in preventing things like that from happening.
 
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ChrisProvidence said:
I'll add more to this later, but I've got some work to do.

Also that last game is called "Asbestos Cleanup Simulator."
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I thought for a second that there was actually a game called Second Sunrise on steam in Real Life. Rip my dreams for a new RTS.

It would be nice though, to play as a faction that had an overwhelming technological advantage over everyone else and you had to hold onto power while the rest of the world is catching up. Someone should make it into an RTS.
 
VinnyMoneyHo said:
I thought for a second that there was actually a game called Second Sunrise on steam in Real Life. Rip my dreams for a new RTS.

It would be nice though, to play as a faction that had an overwhelming technological advantage over everyone else and you had to hold onto power while the rest of the world is catching up. Someone should make it into an RTS.
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Must… not… develop new game prototype…
 
ChrisProvidence said:
I'll add more to this later, but I've got some work to do.

Also that last game is called "Asbestos Cleanup Simulator."
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How many AAA game publishers can Taiwan support? How big a supply of PCs capable of running such games did they manage to provide and build an online distribution network for them on top of everything else drainiung their coffers? How did they even find enough programmers for all that?
 
PossiblyEnos said:
How many AAA game publishers can Taiwan support? How big a supply of PCs capable of running such games did they manage to provide and build an online distribution network for them on top of everything else drainiung their coffers? How did they even find enough programmers for all that?
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The short answer is that it's been twenty years of economic recovery, growth, modernization, and education.

The long answer:
  1. These are mostly indie games. Semi-Indies, tops. Games like Co-Prosperity, Levee En Masse!, Second Sunrise, and Asbestos Removal Simulator are all indie projects made with teams of a dozen people or less or solo-dev games (made by one person).
  2. The ones that aren't tend to be total-conversions, with MVP Baseball being based on community support mods that have been updating MVP Baseball 2005 for nearly two decades, while Metal Gear Solid 0 and Assassin's Creed: Res Publica are an Unreal fangames that took off in support and use dormant IPs in the public domain.
  3. PC's are pretty widespread in New China in terms of cafes. Despite a bit of technological stagnation in the 1910s due to limited supply chain issues that have been dealt with over 20 years, the average PC in 1930 would be equivalent to a PC a decade ahead of our own, if not a decade and a half, so they can run most indie games as well as AAA-inspired "sequels" pretty well.
  4. Steam had gone from being held together with duct tape to actually-functioning after 20 years through a combination of angel investors, public grants, and hobbyists-turned-professionals.
  5. It's been 20 years. These things take time, but 20 years in a rapidly-modernizing society is a lot of time, and a whole generation of programmers, hobbyists, and independent solo devs has developed.
 
Random832 said:
What does the computer landscape of the rest of the world look like?
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Less-widespread the further you get from China and the later you started trading with them.

So places like Korea and Japan are fairly big with cafes and personal ownership, albeit not to Chinese levels.

The Philippines is probably like when I visited when I was a kid in 2007, with cafes being the majority.

America, France, Russia, and the Ottomans are mostly with cafes and libraries being the main locations of non-work computer use, but you do see some middle-class and upper-middle class buying them, and they're going through a sort of '90s dot-com surge in PC ownership.

But in general, the majority of computer use outside of that is mainly governments and business. Especially with France, who intend to use simulations and real-time data analysis to further the socialist cause in Europe.

While there is some lag here, we need to remember that electrification, supply chains, and networks take time to build, and the 1930's will likely see a rapid surge in PC ownership and usage.

And that's before we get into the issue of smartphone proliferation.
 
Seeing that the "Big Three" console manufacturers effectively don't exist anymore and console gaming is kinda-undergoing a period of rebirth (Think the rise of the NES with 8th-generation-equivalent consoles) in the postwar era, video games tend to take three forms:
  1. Arcades with game consoles. The latter is largely-done through a proliferation of memory cards that players use to load and save data at the cafe's consoles.
  2. Mobile gaming (but not as many friggin' base-builders and ads with porno-level acting).
  3. Internet cafes and personal computers. A combination of MOBAs, Steam, and MMOs are the most-popular, with games akin to Runescape and World of Warcraft being the most popular.
 
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I do wonder happened to WeChat.

Because WeChat in real life is heavily used in Mainland China.

What is the chance of something like WeChat existing in this timeline?
 
Now discussing a more Taiwan-related topic
How many Taiwanese websites were affected when Taiwan was sent back in time?
 
The mention of MMORPGs makes me wonder, what would Tolkien think of RPGs as a whole, since his influence runs through many of them? Lovecraft might like Call of Cthulhu, too, since he and his peers were big on shared universes. :p
 
Tolkien was a huge nerd - one of the larger reasons for LOTR in the first place was he wanted a universe to place his conlangs in - so he'd probably approve.
 
SirKaid said:
Tolkien was a huge nerd - one of the larger reasons for LOTR in the first place was he wanted a universe to place his conlangs in - so he'd probably approve.
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AFAIK, he could be kind of unconventional as a teacher, too - especially for his time period. I think he'd personally come up with homebrew D&D campaigns adapted from early medieval epic literature for the enjoyment of his son, his students and, of course, himself. :p
 
So I might be trying to develop a physics-derived explanation for the island going back in time, so that in-story characters can try and replicate it.

Because that will definitely go well and totally won't end with inter-timeline shenanigans.

Oh dear God please help me.
 
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