This article originally appeared in issue 348 of our glossy magazine. You can get it delivered right to your door by grabbing a subscription, which will also net you special subscriber-only covers.
The 1980s were a halcyon age for playground liars, yet to be thwarted by the instantaneous fact-checking power of the internet. Some claimed they had an uncle at Nintendo; Swen Vincke’s friend made up a computer game where you could do anything. He spun a tale about a D&D-style adventure on which he had met an AI character who could not only speak, but respond to questions. “He was having me on,” Vincke remembers, “but I believed him.”
Even once the deception was revealed, Vincke couldn’t let go of the game that had been planted in his head, like one of Baldur’s Gate III’s brain tadpoles. He clung to the dream for years, until he discovered Ultima VII.
“There was so much freedom,” Vincke says. “It was non-linear, and you had to interrogate characters to know what you needed to do. You…