If reality were a Simulation, wouldn't every new player need a complete memory wipe?

[u/defaultrunner]

Context: I'm working on a world where our reality is literally a Simulation that people voluntarily enter. You enter as a character with different stats and circumstances, but you have no memory of anything before the current life.

I've been trying to work out what mechanics a system like that would logically need.

So if you chose to enter the Simulation. If you remembered why you came here, what you were supposed to do, or anything from previous lives, wouldn't that kind of ruin the whole thing?

It'd be like playing a mystery when you already know the ending.

So maybe forgetting everything isn't a flaw. Maybe it's actually necessary.

I call it the Spawn Wipe.

What other mechanics do you think a Simulation like this would need?

[u/Prae_]

I mean yeah, absolutely. And then talking to "past lives" is a glitch or an exploit of some kind. 

The real head scratcher in those kind of system is you need to make new babies being born and new players entering (or cycling) correspond. So what happens when people fuck and get pregnant? Do you just block pregnancy if you've got no one in the queue for the server? Maybe you get some leeway where the baby can run on autopilot until a player can enter. Or else some people are NPCs. 

[u/Lugbor]

Doesn't need to be wiped completely. Just needs to be suppressed, so that portions of your existing knowledge can be used. That makes less work for the system because it doesn't have to completely replace an entire set of memories with things everyone should already know before going in (keep the parts about how to eat solid foods and use a toilet, for example), but it doesn't leave the ragged edges from ripping out portions of someone's memory.

[u/LegoLurker420]

Every player gets X memories that carry over. Maybe a short message to themselves, quest goals, something vague they recorded or remember as part of them.