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Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, working remotely in PA, TechBash conference organizer, former Microsoft MVP, Husband, Dad and Geek.
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When teams start building multi-agent AI systems, the first instinct is to wire agents together with ad-hoc scripts. Call Agent A. Then call Agent B. Add some if statements for error handling. Ship it. That works for a demo. It does not work for anything you need to trust. The problem is not the agents […]
The article 6 Multi-Agent Orchestration Design Patterns Every Developer Should Know was originally published on Build5Nines. To stay up-to-date, Subscribe to the Build5Nines Newsletter.
Looking for gripping dystopian story ideas? Here are 7 dystopian plot ideas to inspire your next dark and unforgettable story.
People are either optimists or pessimists, right? When they’re storytellers, that translates to either Utopias or Dystopias. While a Utopia describes a better version of society, Dystopian fiction describes how society turns into hell. This blog will give you some ideas for Dystopian plots.
Before you continue, it is helpful to know what the genre is about. Here are two blog posts that might help you.
Dystopian Fiction is exciting to read. Have you ever wondered why?
Whenever the world is evolving rapidly (when isn’t it?), the archetypal fear of change rises. Change is frightening in itself because it takes us into the unknown. It forces us to leave our comfort zone.
It’s the writer’s job to see where that change might lead us. What current trends and events will become more important in the future? If you then combine that with some archetypal fears, then you have a Dystopian plot!
Dystopian plots all have a few elements in common. You can read up on them in our blog, What Is Dystopian Fiction And How Do I Write It? Before we develop a few ideas, let’s recap some central themes of Dystopian fiction:
Now all we need to do is take these themes and pair them off with some of the current topics in our society. Let’s see if we can exaggerate and distort them to come up with some truly terrifying plot ideas. Basically, we’ll play ‘What if?’ to create the perfect literary hell.
I won’t give you detailed plotlines, but I’ll show you my premise and how I apply the ‘What If.’
We’ve all seen what AI can do. Right now, people are just playing around with it, and it’s already frightening to see how real fake images can look.
What if…
… Artificial Intelligence has already taken over? What if it has secretly developed a conscience of its own and just lets people believe they can still control it? What would that computer conscience look like? Would it abide by Asimov’s Laws of Robotics? What ethics would AI give itself? Where would it contradict mankind, revealing itself?
There’s always an armed conflict going on somewhere in the world. So far, it’s been a competition of manpower and arms. People have gotten very inventive using drones and cyber-attacks.
What if…
… someone came up with a way to wage war without the enemy even noticing it? What if you could use artificial intelligence to fight the war for you? To infiltrate your enemy’s internet and steer their society to destruction? How would you protect yourself?
With COVID, we’ve all seen what a worldwide virus can do. Many scientists have said that we were lucky, that with the increase in travel and globalisation, pandemics would occur more often. Mankind might not be fast enough to develop vaccines every time.
What if…
… someone developed the deadliest virus to use it as a weapon. What if that virus were accidentally set free before the developers could create an antidote to protect themselves?
The predictions about where climate change will lead our planet are rather detailed. We know what’s in store for us. The laws of evolution tell us that if climate change is not stopped, mankind must adapt.
What if…
… we run out of time faster than we think? What if something unforeseeable happens to our planet, like a collision with an asteroid? It might introduce bacteria to our planet that could be a much greater threat. How do you fight a space virus?
Astrophysicists think that space travel helps us discover new chemical elements and new technologies that might be marketable, and, one day, will help us earn lots of money.
What if…
… astronauts brought home a chemical element that promises to be a safe and unlimited source of energy. How would society change? What if our naïve enthusiasm for that energy source makes us careless? What if that chemical element has hidden features that are extremely harmful?
For the past decades, the big churches in Europe have been complaining about a loss of members. But the world population grows, especially in Africa and Asia. This is why the Catholic Church, for example, has equally grown on these continents. This means that their influence on the church grows, too, in terms of topics related to their culture.
What if…
.. the last Western pope feared that the Vatican might one day be obsolete in Europe? What if the nexus of Catholicism shifted elsewhere? What if a secret organisation within the Vatican started a crusade to purge the Church of these influences? How could Asia and Africa be a threat to the Vatican, and what would a modern crusade look like? Would the average church-goer join the crusade? How would you fight in a modern crusade?
The search for meaning is increasingly important in many people’s lives. There are modern ways to find that meaning, for example, in social media. Remember, influencers need to be convincing because the number of followers translates to money in their pockets. But the tools to influence people can also be abused.
What if…
… we watch an influencer rise to stardom, posting valuable information. But then that influencer becomes desperate to keep his followers and resorts to propaganda. What cult could develop? And how does that cult keep people glued to social media, losing their individuality? How could that eventually cause the breakdown of modern society?
You can only write a good Dystopia if you’re on a personal mission. You need to have a cause that’s dear to your heart. How can you find that? Here’s an idea.
Here are some examples of Dystopian novels:
by Naomi Alderman – set in a world where women develop the ability to generate electrical power and upend global power structures.
by Cormac McCarthy – a bleak survival journey through a ruined world.Writing a Dystopia is no small feat. And it’s not for pantsers. Because a Dystopia combines the elements of social criticism with fantasy, writers need to do an enormous amount of worldbuilding.
In fantasy, the fictional world can have very creative laws of nature. Not so in a Dystopia. The Dystopian world needs to be logical and relatable to our own world, or the message won’t come across. This requires planning!
Beware of overused tropes like the wasteland setting, the mousy protagonist with special talents, and the illogical and cruel villain. This doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to use them – but you have to take special care to find a new angle.
Happy writing as you try out these plot ideas!
By Susanne Bennett. Susanne is a German-American writer who is a journalist by trade and a writer by heart. After years of working at German public radio and an online news portal, she has decided to accept challenges by Deadlines for Writers. Currently she is writing her first novel with them. She is known for overweight purses and carrying a novel everywhere. Follow her on Facebook.
Top Tip: Sign up for our free daily writing links.
The post 7 Gripping Dystopian Plot Ideas For Writers appeared first on Writers Write.
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Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of May 3, 2026.
Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter.
Microsoft employees eligible for the company’s first-ever voluntary retirement program learned the details Thursday, including cash payments of up to nine months of base pay, up to five years of healthcare coverage, and continued stock vesting. … Read More
A small team inside Microsoft led by Corporate Vice President Omar Shahine is building “Project Lobster,” an OpenClaw-based agent designed to work around the clock on behalf of knowledge workers within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. … Read More
By combining massive floating power generators with onsite AI hardware, Panthalassa turns the ocean into a self-sustaining computing powerhouse — all without needing a single mile of underwater power cables. … Read More
Amazon VP Yunyan Wang is now Chewy’s CTO; Smartsheet names new CFO; and a longtime Microsoft exec joins NetApp’s C-suite, among other tech moves. … Read More
Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index finds that the biggest barrier to AI at work isn’t the technology or the workers — it’s the organizations around them. … Read More
Beyond massive curtains inside its Everett, Wash., R&D facility, Helion is betting that a downsized testbed can answer key technology questions as the company races to meet deadlines. … Read More
Contrary to popular myths, our taxes are relatively low, haven’t exploded skyward, and are nowhere near the point of creating serious damage to the commercial sphere. … Read More
Amazon launched Amazon Supply Chain Services, bundling freight, distribution, fulfillment, and parcel shipping into a single offering for any business. … Read More
New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is winding down Gaming Copilot on mobile and canceling its console launch, barely a year after Microsoft debuted the AI feature. … Read More
More than 300 members of the Pacific Northwest tech scene packed the Showbox SoDo to honor the year’s top startups, founders, leaders and deal makers across a dozen awards categories. … Read More
In this stream, I'll continue working on adding replacement capabilities to Rocks.
https://github.com/JasonBock/Rocks/issues/410
#dotnet #csharp #roslyn
Hello and Welcome, I’m your Code Monkey!
I'm finally back from my travels, Brazil and Gamescom Latam were awesome but it's time to get back to work, there's so much stuff on my to-do list!
I got back Wednesday at 6am, took a quick nap and got right to work on building challenge #4 for my Game Dev Practice Lab, this is the first 2D challenge which a lot of people have been asking about. It is already live and later today I will publish the FREE YouTube video talking about challenges #2 and #3. So whether you can afford it or not it doesn't matter, go learn by DOING!
Game Dev: Unity AI useful
Tech: Make your own Steam Controller
Gaming: Fight your unplayed Games!
Fun: Glue THIS to THAT!
Unity AI has just entered into Open Beta, meaning anyone who wants to try it can, no need to request access, you can try it out here.
I'm currently researching Unity AI for a super detailed tutorial and so far in my research I am finding the tool is actually genuinely helpful! This is not mindless AI hype, and it's not even focused on AI generation, but rather is capable of building genuinely useful things like custom editor tools, helping you analyze the profiler, taking actions in your project, it can see your project visually, it can do basic level design, helps you organize your codebase, fix bugs (with context of your project) and a bunch more.
Like I said I'm still in the research phase but thankfully Unity actually invited me to be a guest of their Unity AI livestream showcase which was quite educational to me. They showed how they built a really nice demo and included a ton of useful hints for how to get the most out of these tools.
The demo is a vehicle combat game in an arena where the player controls a car and the NPC trucks spawn and try to destroy the player. The demo was built with a handful of the developers WITH AI, not replaced by it. Meaning in order for this AI to be useful it required actually developers who know how to get the most out of the AI.
You can watch the full livestream but here are the main useful takeaways that I got myself:
Build systems and learn. At 13:00 they showcase terrain deformation which I personally found really nice. And they describe how they used AI to help come up with that system. Personally this is something that I've wanted to research for ages and I think AI is super useful in this process, you can ask it to help you build such a system like they did, and then importantly ask it to help you understand WHY it works. The fact that this AI exists inside Unity means it has context of Unity itself and game development, so it's much better at building systems like these that rely on shaders and rendering as opposed to a generic LLM.
Use it for editor tools. At 18:00 they showcase a simple editor tool made with AI that helps position all the modular pieces to make an arena of any size. Super important takeaway: Ask AI to give you tons of sliders and settings so you can manually make it perfect, because the AI output will not be perfect.
Great for research. At 26:00 they wanted to have some robots cheering, but did not know which approach would be best, so they just asked AI and it gave them 3 possible options with their pros and cons, another great learning example. And after picking an option (in this case Vertex Animated Textures) the AI helped implement that system (with another custom tool)
Profiler Analysis. At 33:20 the game was having performance issues, so they asked AI what could be the cause and it identified a very niche issue, one ProBuilder mesh had super insanely long triangles which apparently tanks performance. This is one of those things that is hard to find and easy to fix, and "finding" things is where AI excels.
There's a lot more uses they showed in the livestream, like making a Hexagon shader to protect the robots, generating the UI and the code behind it, generating the statue and vehicles and more.
Some general best practices:
Break problems down. Don't ask "build me an entire game", instead ask "help me with this tiny specific task", then ask for another one, etc. Many tiny tasks instead of huge ones.
Be as descriptive as possible, the more detail the better
Generate characters in T-pose to make them easier to animate.
When generating sprites, ask for a solid color background (like green) to make it easier to remove later.
Ask for editor tools with tons of fine-tuning sliders
Ask it brainstorming questions instead of asking for a specific output. "I have some robots in the stands and I want a shield to protect them, give me 5 possible approaches for solving this problem"
Use screenshots and images to visually guide the AI if you want a visual task (like level design or particle effects)
Drag related prefabs and assets to give more context to the AI
Use Plan mode to come up with a plan before you attempt any changes
Again the main thing here is this is NOT "AI will make the game for you" but rather "your skills + AI will help you make better games faster". As always it's a tool meant to help you, not replace you. So give it a try here and see how it helps you in your workflow.
In terms of pricing, here is their page. On the Free Unity Personal plan you get 1000 free credits you can try out, and after that you can pay $10 per month. If you're on the Unity Pro tier you get 2000 credits per month. Then you can buy more separately if you need them. Different tasks require different credits, for example generating a sprite is 5-10 credits, and a quick query is 2-5 credits, so it feels like 1000 is actually a pretty decent amount. Example: This demo which had very heavy usage of AI (with lots of trial and error) was built with around 1800 credits.
At the end of the livestream I asked if this demo would be available for download so we could inspect all of it and they mentioned how they hadn't considered it but maybe.
 | I am very very curious to see how people adopt these AI tools. From my limited research so far (and AI in general) I would say learning how to use these tools is the most important thing. Knowing the best practices for how to break tasks down and knowing how to prompt correctly are crucial to getting the best results, so I look forward to seeing how those best practices come to be. Stay tuned for my dedicated video tutorial coming out in the near future. |
Unity is running an surprising bundle! Surprising because I instantly spotted how it contains one of my most recommended assets of all time, that I definitely did not expect to be bundled!
It’s worth it for that asset alone (Asset Inventory) and on top of that getting all the other assets is just an awesome bonus. The whole thing has a huge discount and it’s mostly made up of new assets so you probably don’t have any yet. (I only had one asset myself)
Get it HERE!
The Publisher of the Week this time is Daniel Ilett, who makes a bunch of useful URP shaders.
Get the FREE Toon Shaders Pro for URP which is a really nice toon shader with a ton of rendering options.
Get it HERE and use coupon DANIELILETT at checkout to get it for FREE!
Looking for Characters and Weapons in a realistic style to make your games? Check out this awesome HumbleBundle!
It’s made by Bugrimov Maksim which is one of the best realistic publishers. This pack has a mountain of characters in all styles, alongside a ton of weapons with first person animations.
It’s 98% OFF! Get it HERE!
Valve is such a weird company, but usually weird in the good way. (although I do wish they would lower their 30% cut for indie games)
They just released their latest piece of hardware, the Steam Controller, and pretty much instantly it went out of stock. You can't buy it on the official site for $99 (although there are already scalpers on ebay selling them for $300)
While you wait for more official stock, you can actually build one yourself! By that I mean that Valve has just released the CAD files for the Steam Controller and its Puck under a slightly restrictive Creative Commons license, which means people can now freely download the official shell files, modify them, 3D print accessories, and make all sorts of weird custom creations, as long as it is non-commercial.
They also included engineering drawings and "keep out" zones so people do not accidentally block things like the antenna or other critical areas.
Now technically you can't really build your own complete Steam Controller, these files are for the external shell and not the internals, but still this is pretty fun for them to do! Usually things like console shells are proprietary so it's nice to see a big company just put them out for anyone to build third party accessories for. There's a nice Valve-like message on the GitLab page: "Your Steam Controller is yours, and you have the right to do with it what you want."
| I am now curious to see what people will build from this. A giant Steam Controller? A cursed ergonomic shell? A phone mount? A clever puck holder with flashing lights? This is one of those stories that is just fun, and I really hope the community goes crazy with creativity. |
Glue (or more technically, adhesives) is a fascinating thing. How do you connect one thing to another thing? It is also a surprisingly complex topic since you need different glue types to glue different objects. Gluing a Hat to a piece of Wood? You need something different than if you were gluing Metal to Plastic.
Here is a fun website that shows you what you need to glue THIS to THAT. You just pick the this and that from the dropdown menu and it tells you what works best, neat!
Plus there's a Trivia page! Did you know that "The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings"?
| I love super niche websites like these, so silly but so useful when you really need it. Now I know that if I ever want to glue Ceramic to some Rubber that I should be using Household Goop |
RollerCoaster Tycoon Optimizations are Insane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZANFhJ9HYsM
Another great video on just how good Chris Sawyer is.
AI Learns To Park Vs 2 Humans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkvKWIk6MoY
AIA's scenarios are always so much fun, the visual scripting tool he has built for these videos seems quite impressive!
Get Rewards by Sending the Game Dev Report to a friend!
(please don’t try to cheat the system with temp emails, it won’t work, just makes it annoying for me to validate)
Thanks for reading!
Code Monkey
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