00. Akihiko Kayaba
A visionary, innovator, and pioneer. One of the developers of NerveGear technology, and the mind behind Sword Art Online. He was an intellectual titan, crack programmer, and a nerd of the highest caliber. He ticked all the boxes. The media adored him. Everyone wanted to talk to Kayaba: talk show hosts, popular science stars, journalists. He kept his footprint manageable, sidestepping the moral quandaries and politics politely, focusing his insights on the future he saw for virtual reality and gaming, smiling when his hosts cracked jokes, as was expected. Argus was more than happy to see more investors and partnerships flowing in when preorders for Sword Art Online's limited release sold out within seconds. They had the pipeline for upscaling after the limited release all figured out, truly sexy figures projected for the next few quarters, consumers clamoring to experience the world of Alfheim.
Unfortunate for Argus that all eyes were primed on them on November 6, 2022. Unfortunate for the 10,000 players that god-king Akihiko Kayaba was a complete sociopath. His ultimatum was clear: play the game by his rules and on his terms, live and breathe and die in Alfheim, and perhaps the ten thousand would wake up from their nightmare. Subject-matter experts fought to decide a course of action. How many safeguards did he nestle into his massive code base against tampering? How many lives was he willing to sacrifice? What was this man thinking when he consigned so many to death?
No one could say. But he was fallible. He surely could not have written perfect code. Even with years of development on the hardware, the engine, the game, even with a crack team of the best programmers and engineers on the market, there will be bugs and loopholes sleeping somewhere in Alfheim. Then, the question on everyone's lips: How do we outsmart Akihiko Kayaba?