‘What the meta verse should have been’: Man exposes ‘Oblivion’ mod that orders a real-life pizza to your house

Not many people have realized this yet, but we are barreling towards cyberspace singularity at an ungodly pace. The PlayStation 5 launch fiasco was just the beginning; gamers are going to demand better and better graphics, the resources to supply them are going to get more and more scarce, until the line eventually ends with one, objectively perfect gaming PC. And it will collect dust in Elon Musk’s attic.

So when we say that ludological salvation is going to come by way of the games of yore, you’d better believe it; when that dust in Musk’s attic settles, the GameCubes, PS3s, and their contemporaries will light the way. In fact, they already are; Baldur’s Gate 3 may let you have sex with the NPCs, but 2006’s The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion lets you order Domino’s with the NPCs. And folks, real calories will always be better than fake orgasms.

The mod, “Nickies’ Pizzablivion,” has been live since 2022, but TikTok‘s @itswill_unhinged has taken it upon himself to show the mod in action. As you can see, Will seeks out a brightly colored NPC by the name of Pizza Nickies Black, and asks him for “the usual.” Once the interaction has ended, Will finds that $19 dollars has been extracted from his bank account. Roughly 20 minutes later, Will’s doorstep is greeted by a 12-inch thin-crust pizza, an order of garlic bread, and a can of lemon iced tea from Domino’s.

The thing is, if we had a nickel for every classic fantasy RPG that was capable of delivering real pizza to your real home, we’d have two nickels. You see, back in ancient times (2005), EverQuest II struck an official deal with Pizza Hut wherein you could type “/pizza” into the game’s command box, and the Pizza Hut website would boot up in-game, allowing you to order yourself a pizza without even closing EverQuest II.

Suffice to say, then, that the golden era of gaming is pretty firmly behind us. Prior to the popularization of the medium and the subsequent influx of hypergrowth opportunists and a billion-and-one open worlds where your choices matter(!), games were well and truly about play. These were honest, robust games that were built with the intention of getting the job done in their own little corner of the world rather than impressing anyone; EverQuest II knew this back in 2005, and it took pride in that playfulness by pulling an absolute meme of a business move, and it paid off.

And now Oblivion is here to carry that torch forward. Viva la early 2000s, gamers; viva la early 2000s.