Sakaki

[Punished "Venom" Pepe]

Vol 3 spoilers below:

Isn't Sakaki supposed to be like 10 years old? How does CC Corp even think of putting him in charge of the whole game? What the ♥♥♥♥? Are they that desperate?

I know the guys at CC Corp aren't the smartest ones but still...

[Sekkuar666]

So apparently they are fully aware of that

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1342442034

[Avarice]

I think "criminally incompetent" would be a fair assessment of CC Corp in general over the course of the series. But yes, one could argue they were that desperate at the start of volume 3, since by then there was visible fallout from AIDA and they had to do something...as to why they'd trust that a ten year old had any means of actually helping them, well...criminally incompetent.

On a somewhat related point though, Sakaki offered, in an official announcement, a rather substantial cash prize for the volume 3 tournament, so CC Corp also owes Haseo that, though everyone seems to forget about it right after the arc is resolved.

[Punished "Venom" Pepe]

Originally posted by Avarice:

criminally incompetent.

To be fair, when a tech genius randomly gives you a whole game free of charge for you to publish, you usually don't expect it to come with that many problems.

At least this time they aren't considering setting the servers on fire so that's something.

Originally posted by Avarice:

On a somewhat related point though, Sakaki offered, in an official announcement, a rather substantial cash prize for the volume 3 tournament, so CC Corp also owes Haseo that, though everyone seems to forget about it right after the arc is resolved.

I doubt they ever expected to pay it. Probably just expected Taihaku to kill them all and have them all in coma.

[Avarice]

Originally posted by Punished "Venom" Pepe:

I doubt they ever expected to pay it. Probably just expected Taihaku to kill them all and have them all in coma.

That's true, but then Taihaku is a player too, and would be entitled to that prize. As far as I can recall they wouldn't have known he was infected and violently insane...it may have been obvious to the players (as in us, not Haseo and that band of idiots), but within the context of the game he apparently hid his AIDA infection quite well.

Also, as I have surprisingly enough argued elsewhere (about entirely unrelated material) in the past, you are not released from obligation to provide a prize simply because your tournament organizer picked an ill-advised fight then failed to win it. Not even if he ended up transforming into a bird then exploding.

[Punished "Venom" Pepe]

Originally posted by Avarice:

Also, as I have surprisingly enough argued elsewhere (about entirely unrelated material) in the past, you are not released from obligation to provide a prize simply because your tournament organizer picked an ill-advised fight then failed to win it. Not even if he ended up transforming into a bird then exploding.

I suppose if this matter went to court, CC Corp could argue that Haseo used illegal modifications (Xth form) to win the tournament and they could probably exempt them from having to pay the prize.

However if there was any kind of legal or judicial system in place on the .hack world CC Corp would probably have been shutdown and all the executives arrested during the events of the first 4 games...

[Avarice]

Originally posted by Punished "Venom" Pepe:

However if there was any kind of legal or judicial system in place on the .hack world CC Corp would probably have been shutdown and all the executives arrested during the events of the first 4 games...

They could always resort to the age-old method of setting all the evidence on fire then blaming the person who set the fire for everything. Actually, I think the in-game news segments do suggest at some point that someone will take the fall for that fire, though I may be mis-remembering.

Or you could read it as a dark prediction about where the gaming industry was (and is?) going, to the point where people randomly end up in comas in ways directly related to a video game, but everyone looks at the issue, thinks something to the effect of "maybe the company behind this is actively malicious...or so incompetent it could be legally interpreted as malice", only to then shake their heads: "nah, they're just trying to make money and any comas that may occur are incidental at best and probably unrelated". That's a much darker take though and I prefer to be silly.

[Punished "Venom" Pepe]

There have been a couple cases of people who died playing online games (usually for playing for days without eating or sleeping) in real life.

It seems in the game's universe, the actual coma cases reported are always associated with fatigue even when there is no basis for the claim (like in Alkaid's case).

I would like to believe that even though the players and the community in general would remain skeptical, at least the news outlets or some government would start to investigate if cases of coma/death would raise to more than a dozen. (I'm not sure of how many actually are in the game, but if you count only the ones that we know for sure that happened thanks to PK and tournament kills from AIDA infected players, I think it goes well over a dozen).

It's hard to believe such a thing would go unnoticed. Specially when a few years back the same company was associated with even more coma cases in the past.

Like I said, if anyone was actually paying attention, CC Corp would have been shutdown completely during the R1 days.

[Avarice]

I believe that in the world of .Hack, at least by the time of GU, CC Corp's parent company controls the internet and all the world's computers (not in the shaky "we police the networks" sense, but in the sense that after the second network crisis [second? I think it's the second one] only their computer systems work at all), and by extension has its claws so deep into the government of Japan (and possibly other countries) that CC Corp itself would basically be immune to government scrutiny, and likely also to scrutiny from mainstream media. Which I guess also explains why only Salvador Aihara seems to even bother with investigating what you'd think would be a huge news story, and is seen as a lunatic for doing so.

In a slightly less corrupt world (or in the world we live in), you are 100% correct that CC Corp would probably be charged with at least something by halfway through the IMOQ games and likely would have been shut down before the GU series even started. Though I'm actually not sure how many comas a large company these days could cover up before it gets noticed...you don't hear about too many, so that either means very few or more than are currently happening depending on your outlook on life.

Somewhat unrelated, but most of the instances of people dying or becoming seriously ill (in our world that is) have been ruled as not being the fault of the game companies involved. I guess Square Enix back in Final Fantasy XI came the closest to actually being liable, insofar as I can tell, but no one ended up in a coma or dead in that particular case.

[Punished "Venom" Pepe]

I think Almint and CC Corp are different companies.

Almint is the one that does the operating system ever since Pluto's Kiss (which happened prior to the events of any .hack)

[Avarice]

Originally posted by Punished "Venom" Pepe:

I think Almint and CC Corp are different companies.

Almint is the one that does the operating system ever since Pluto's Kiss (which happened prior to the events of any .hack)

Turns out based on my half-hearted attempt at research that we're apparently both wrong, sort of. Altimit WAS the company originally responsible for The World, but CC Corp is an independent company that broke off from Altimit at some undisclosed point between IMOQ and GU (it's also usually called ALTIMIT, in all-caps, but I don't want to do that) and is the one that produces/manages/puts people in comas in The World R2. It also seems to have been retroactively made responsible for the events of the first four games, in that case likely as a named division of ALTIMIT.

That being said, in spite of being government-mandated as the world-standard operating system in this world, Altimit seems to sort of fade out of the plot in GU and CC Corp takes on the entirety of its role as the evil but incompetent corporation and the Altimit name is used inconsistently in various materials so I honestly don't know at this point what, if anything happened to it and what role it plays. ALTIMIT Mine OS (used in the GU series) is allegedly made by a different company as well (Mine Systems), though whether they're another splinter company, a named sub-division or just a plot hole is never covered in any .Hack materials as far as I can tell.

Also, it turns out the .Hack lore gets changed, a lot. I probably should have known this.

[Punished "Venom" Pepe]

Sounds convoluted.

Just like real world corporations.

[BlackRibbon]

Mireille was only 4 when first met and she is a child genious.
Rare item! Rare item!

[BlackRibbon]

Originally posted by Punished "Venom" Pepe:

Sounds convoluted.

Just like real world corporations.

Just a lot of damage control. It's all for their investment in control and the creation of an ultimate A.I. that they can control.

C.C. Corp's true aim seems to be world dominance through the use of the system and A.I. Unfortunately for them, it never seems to work.

[Obdilord]

that comment in the games boards wasn't cc corp being aware. it was the developers throwing in a little joke for us to catch.

honestly given how smart sakaki is i wouldn't have a doubt that he probably fabricated something in order for him to appear older. I mean he was one of the leaders of Moontree at one point.