So to start with I want to share the list of what I think are the main inspirations for the setting in terms of aesthetics and themes:
- MegaMan Battle Network
- Digimon
- Cyber Sleuth Dualology
- Monster Hunter
- Shin Megami Tensai
- Digital Devil Saga
- Devil Survivor
- Log Horizon1
From this, I have the core pitch:
Sometime in the far future, the internet has become an entirely separate world that has its own series of sentient life created from the information that passes through it on a daily basis. Eventually, a bunch of tech bros tried to perform a ritual (directly ignoring people telling them not to) directly in the internet world as part of some scheme to cheat people out of money. It went bad and opened portals to other places. So now the people of the internet have to contend with the stuff coming out of the portals in addition to the problems that they were already facing.