I wanted to get some theme related ideas posted. The theme seems to be the hardest thing for me to articulate. After ~40ish years of the tech boom it's clear in our actual reality the state of tech and culture is not quite where the promise originally was. I had always spent time thinking about what things would look like had the Utopia the Tech Industry promised would have actually come to pass. In my mind it's not so much worm holes and flying cars as much as it is the end of scarcity, upgrade for the sake of it and over-advertisement. I also have always felt that if it had been fully realized that technology, as it equates to the internet and devices, may have stopped progressing. In my mind the reason our portable technology in phones and wearables has gone the path they have is because the communities around us never helped fully realized the vision for whatever reason. 
There is so much money in delivering personal experiential products and is the reason why despite being able to carry an octo core device with multiple cameras and every manner of communication, we still have homelessness, poor education, violence, poverty, inadequate mental care, etc.. This experiential tech being designed to not quite hit the mark intellectually or emotionally is also why we haven’t seen the end to these things.
Cyberdreams was always a thought experiment for me in theorizing what would have happened if Industry developed a peak experiential platform, it got nationalized (so to speak) and was more a universal service that forced industry to then focus on generating funds through products and services that solved problems.
•	The main city is unnamed currently (Need help with that)
•	Governance is almost completely automated and only exists to oversee the private entities that provide goods and services to people.
•	Police are present but more of a gig worker vs a public employee. (I have a feature object on the MOO in which you can ‘clock in’ as an officer and stop crimes in progress) This in turn gives you credits you can spend on items.
•	Money exists as credits and can be earned.
•	Earning credits and boosting stats can be done in ways other than policing. Certain rooms will have tasks that can be completed. Washing dishes not only earns you credits but then keeps the adjoining restaurant functional for other players to use, etc. There will be lots of little jobs that keep features of the game running. The tasks can be caught up and won’t always need to be done so players will have to run around looking for tasks if they are inclined to ‘grinding’
Much like our present reality in relation to the perception of it in the early 90’s, life isn’t all that different, in fact not as much as it is now. Textua, the core device for the theme so fully delivered on the experiential need of people that the uncontrolled development on personal technology sort of just stopped.
The physical world:
Clean and upgraded but not necessarily new and shiny. The concept of modern/futurism is irrelevant and in some respects a gimmick as the system works as is. This isn’t to say that the tech in CyberDreams isn’t futuristic, it’s just not alien to the reader/player’s comprehension. There are also many technologies/societal conventions that instead of dying off persist or have even gotten better. 
Payphones are no longer a ‘thing’ but in their place are phones used for free with several enhancements. Personal devices are carried but are pretty purpose specific. Music players, phones and computers all still exist separately with limits on companies being able to exist in every domain. This keeps the market diverse. There are also limits on how content is delivered commercially. In the not-so-distant past there was a problem in which rogue psychologists hijacked the worlds content delivery and attempted to slowly erode free will. That being said, content outside of the virtual reality as it relates to official narrative on the outside world is highly controlled. Unlicensed newspapers or online news services are a big no-no. This isn’t to say they don’t exist. (Bounties are place on prohibited material, they can be placed in bins for disposal and you get credits!)
Vehicles exist and the majority are even still internal combustion, however fuel is produced in sustainable ways. One popular method is a hydrogen converter that can be retrofitted to gas powered vehicles with new vehicles being able to run either. This keeps any one industry from controlling the costs of movement. Water from the hydrogen systems although having proven to be safe after conversion is not allowed to be consumed. Drinking water can only come from approved sources. Companies are not allowed to advertise “natural spring water, this would potentially unhealthy, don’t drink it ever”.
Robotics have almost completely removed the need for human based manufacturing. It’s good but not perfect. I have several generic items made in the MOO already as a machine made/hand made parent. Depending on the item the machine made items don’t last as long(will break sooner) than hand made items. Robots are not allowed to perform tasks that are directly impactful to a human’s health (Make food, provide medical care, give advice or information) This has something to do with unpleasantness in the early 2020s with a software bug that nearly brought down the global economy and many service robots failing to safely stop vehicles, make safe food and handed out hazardous advice (much like our own troublesome virus from the early 2020s). The control consoles for robots are highly guarded to mitigate bad actors getting in and running amok. 
Crime and Violence are low. When needs are met, people tend to be docile and more creative. Crime isn’t actively reported on. Most violent offenses are a matter of undiagnosed mental conditions. Crime exists but not really centered around theft or drugs. Between Textua being able to synthesize any desired experience and extremely cheap, rapid manufacturing the need to turn to crime for physical gain is pointless.  Since criminal activity is also viewed as a form of mental disorder and that technology does such a great job of not only detection but prevention, offenders are immediately apprehended and taken to the hospital for treatment! 😊 As a side note, to help past offenders with the shame of breaking the law, upon release rehabilitated offenders are relocated to other communities to start over. Like a nice farm somewhere. There are methods for freeing patients that translate to in-world rewards and punishments. 
Leisure within CyberDreams takes place in the virtual as much as it does the physical. Textua, the all-pervasive virtual reality takes written works of fiction and using a reality engine reconstructs written experiences into realistic virtual realities. I have an interpreter I have written and a series of LUA scripts that when executed allow users to play old Interactive Fiction games right on the MOO. The actual books in the core are nothing more than keys that unlock games you can play. You can share/sell/borrow books that you can take to a Textua and experience whatever is within the pages.
Textua:
Textua is based on a series of technologies that actually exist in real life and is similar to the technology from the 90’s miniseries “Wild Palms”
WP synopsis “Wild Palms is a five-hour miniseries which first aired in May 1993 on the ABC network in the United States. The sci-fi drama, announced as an "event series", deals with the dangers of politically motivated abuse of mass media technology and virtual realities in particular. It was based on a comic strip.” You can read about it. I’m not bridging from this story or associating with it in anyway, but Textua has a similar universal significance as VR did in this story.
The technology Textua is based on:

There are two devices in combination I’ve played with for lucid dreaming, listening to audio book while using these devices, yielded amazing results!

 
The DAVID is an innovative portable hand-held device that offers a non-pharmaceutical approach to wellness using Audio-Visual Entrainment (AVE) technology. By using flashing lights and pulsing tones, the Delight provides a non-invasive way to achieve peak mental and physical well-being.
 
Cranial electrotherapy stimulation (CES) is a form of neurostimulation that delivers a small, pulsed, alternating current via electrodes on the head. CES is used with the intention of treating a variety of conditions such as anxiety, depression and insomnia. CES has been suggested as a possible treatment for headaches, fibromyalgia, smoking cessation, and opiate withdrawal.
The one thing I found is that I had to supplement chemically to get the effects to really be noticeable. For Textua to really be convincing and take over I’d imagine the same would need to happen on a large scale, think medication in the water supply (wink wink).


A player should be able to come into CyberDreams and carry the status quo and generally be social, play vr games and explore. The other game play mechanic is not linear and triggers/tied to events or actions initiated by players. These events have direct real world impact on players just “hanging out”. These actions will make some player’s the villain to other players but not necessarily a bad guy.
Did you accept credits to help release patients that ended up burning down the café? You were only trying to help..
Did you turn off the water processors that condition the water to the city and now the player’s aren’t able to use Textua or see disturbing aspects of the world they didn’t notice before? You are only trying to get them to see..
Did you find banned books and put them in the library for people to experience with Textua? Why are we banning materials anyway?
Did you help distribute newspapers with objectionable material in them for a fee? These things were going to get out into the public anyways!
All of these actions that run counter to the theme or narrative of them game will be designed to become a bigger and bigger rabbit hole for any player that starts to research uncovering a storyline in which people are being controlled with the distraction of utopia dangled in their face. 
I want to design this aspect of the game so that the more you engage the less and less access to the comforts of the city become available to you, to the point you don’t even live within the city and have to actively hide from on duty enforcement and must source foot outside of the restaurants or markets. 
There is no good or bad side, either have their own pitfalls or benefits and ultimately the direction the game goes is up to the players that inhabit it.