Occasionally, if a defect yielded interesting results, I’d argue to leave it unfixed as Easter eggs for users to discover. This didn’t feel like that kind of defect, but I loved playing with unintended consequences—when the code didn’t do what I thought it would do.
A tap on the door distracted me from the game long enough for the swarm to extinguish the last of my life, and I exited out with a grumble.
Reynold came in and took the extra chair. This didn’t bode well. I hadn’t spoken to him since I’d flubbed the demo over a week ago. He was busy with his other investments, including a locally sourced designer jean manufacturer, a wholesale vape distributor, and a sunglass vendor. From what I could tell, the sunglasses were his most profitable. We were his least, but he believed we had the most potential. Otherwise, he would have dumped us or sold us ages ago. Still, I knew we were on borrowed time.
When he visited our offices, he didn’t waste time on pleasantries.
“How’s the game coming? Will it be ready for Gamescon?”
“Most definitely. Most of the bugs we have left are edge case.”
Unlike the rest of us, he dressed the part of a professional, wearing a nicely tailored suit and tie. He unbuttoned his jacket and leaned his elbows on his knees. “How edge?”
Reynold didn’t know code, so there was no point giving him a technical answer. I’d learned how to speak to him at his level.
I tilted my head side to side. “Like you’d have to be trying to break the game to find them.”
“Our users are always trying to break the game.”
“You know what I mean. We owe the testers a bonus.” I raised a brow at him in response to his darkening expression. “And not pizza this time. Actual money.”
Reynold hated to shell out for perks before the cash flow offset his investment. His role here was different from everyone else’s. When Aida pitched the company to him, he’d agreed to become a hands-on investor because he believed we had potential, but he didn’t think we had the experience to bring our products to market in a way that would pay dividends for him. His condition was to stay involved, in charge of the money and the business strategy, but his end goal was to sell us to a bigger development company eventually. Unless we could begin to turn a sizable profit on our own. Until then, he made sure we all earned a fixed salary while he took on the risk of failure. Hence, his reluctance to reach into his own pocket to fund extras.
Although he owned us, he was a beneficent despot, letting us run wild with our imaginations when it came to the actual work. He considered himself a rudder steering the boat, but the artists and developers were the waters below.
True to form, he groused, “We wouldn’t need testers if the developers coded right in the first place.”
Ouch. I laughed. “You know developers test for the happy path. We need the testers and their devious minds to look for the holes.”
That shut him up for a moment. He stood and moved over to my credenza, where my family of Funkos and other assorted kitsch gathered like a coven of sorcerers plotting a devilish uprising. He picked up my Mishiko figurine, the only toy I’d collected from the Roundhouse line. “This looks like something out of the Matrix.”
“Actually, Mishiko was based off Kirito from Sword Art Online.”
“I have no idea what you just said.” He turned the statue around in his hands, either admiring the sleek design of the long black coat and elegant longswords, or stalling for time.
He put Mishiko down. “About last Friday.”
Stalling, then.
I took an elastic band off my wrist and pulled my hair into a ponytail just to be doing something with my hands. I waited for him to finish.
“That was an interesting thing you did.”
“Interesting?” I wouldn’t know where Reynold was going until Reynold arrived there. It was pointless to answer his non-questions until he asked questions.
“Interesting. Unusual.” He bit his lower lip. He had a soul patch that morphed from triangular to trapezoid whenever one side of his mouth defied the other. Combined with his eyebrow-like mustache, his facial hair looked like a third eye. “When Aida told me what you were doing, I had to come see for myself.”
“Ah. Aida’s who I have to thank for your presence there.” I set my hands on my lap and looked at him straight on. “And?”
“And I think it’s good. Not a traditional approach, but you seemed to manage with the material you’d chosen to present.”
This was where I was supposed to plead my case to him, but he had that scheming look. There was more to this visit than my overcoming the obstacles of my painful anxiety.
“What do you want me to do?”
He laughed. “You were always a step ahead of me. What gives me away? Or am I just that predictable?”
“You’re never predictable, Reynold.”
He scratched at the part of his chin that remained clean-shaven. “I want you to find a way to promote one of our products next week.”
“You want me to pitch our game between guys telling stories about sharting?”
“Think of it as practice. Show me you’re ready.”
“You realize I’ve been reading from my diary, right? None of these products existed then.”
“So make it about some other game. I just want to see you sell something.”
Reynold was a pain in the ass, but he was my path to Gamescon and I needed to impress him.
“Fine. I’ll squeeze in some product placement next week. Okay? Will I get to go to Germany if I do that?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. His mustache-beard continued to stare at me. When he fixed me with an actual steely gaze, I stiffened.
“Aida may not have told you how much is riding on the demo. Our last game has been losing market share to our chief competitor, and sales are flat. We need to build excitement with this next title, and a lot of game reviewers will be at the presentation. We need to blow them away.”
Oh.
The implied or else was that he’d start to find a bigger company to absorb us so he could cash out, or, worst-case scenario, we’d fold. If he sold the company, there’d be no guarantee any of us would still have jobs under a new regime. It was the gamble we’d agreed to.
My desire to travel to Germany suddenly felt selfish and immature. Surely, Reynold would rather send a powerhouse.
“So why aren’t you hiring some big salesperson to go to the convention?”
“Believe me, I’m thinking about it. But Aida has convinced me it would be better to send someone who knows the game rather than an outsider. I want you to show me you have the chops. Otherwise, I’m sorry, but I’ll have no choice but to look elsewhere.”
“So if I can show you I can pitch one of our products, will that be enough?”
He shrugged. “I think we’ve got a little ways to go. But think of this as a part of your redemption journey.”
“Level three. A quest.” I almost got goose bumps at the visual.
“And that reminds me. Please don’t leave any Easter eggs behind in the game this time.”
“Sure,” I lied. He might know business, but he didn’t know gamers. Easter eggs turned serious gamers into fanatics.
When he left, I considered how I could satisfy Reynold, and the same option presented itself again and again: I’d need to fabricate a diary entry.