AGGRO
When thousands are trapped in the world's most popular MMO, a burnt-out game master must learn to play the game she once ruled in order track down a hacker with a grudge, before he uses the first Boss event to threaten the entire server.
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I have seen books along these lines, like “Net of dreams,” but not a movie, so I think this is a cool idea for a movie.
As for you logline how about this:
“When players become trapped in the worlds most popular MMO, a burnt-out game master must relearn the game in order to track a hacker before he unleashes a deadly boss that will threaten the entire server.”
I tried to whittle down what you wrote but even my attempt is a little long.
Hope this helped, good luck with this!
Are the people ACTUALLY in the game, like Tron? If so, maybe you need to be a bit clearer about that. I initially just thought the only thing at risk was them losing their server… maybe something along the lines of ‘When the minds of thousands of players are downloaded into an online game…”
This reminds me a bunch of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_Art_Online
Not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s worth knowing about other narratives like your own so you can avoid cliches.
Maybe to clarify, you could say “when thousands of real people are trapped inside the world’s largest MMO”, or else “When thousands of human souls…” I think we all agree that you need some way to clarify it’s not just their avatars that are stuck, or that they can’t log off, it’s actually their minds plugged into the machine. This inciting incident actually also takes care of explaining the stakes, because we get it from the outset, freeing up your word count for your character and action.
“game master” – just change to gamer. The fact that they’re burnt out tells us that they have played a bunch. Also, you’re wasting words explaining that she ‘must learn’ to play a game she evidently already knows how to play.
“hacker with a grudge” – vengeful hacker?
And maybe, once those elements are in place, just trim it back to suggest that the antagonists goal is destruction of the server?
“When thousands of real people are trapped inside the world’s largest MMO, a jaded gamer must re-enter the digital realm to stop a vengeful hacker intent on destroying the entire server.”
Yes, I’ve watched SAO, and this story kind of grew out of my frustration over all the parts I felt they skimmed over. My protagonist is actually one of the game administers, employed by the game company, so it looks like I’ll have to change the description a bit to help that come through. Thanks!