Austin Grossman - You

“I’m just really looking forward to this Spin-a-Thon,” Jared said.

Ryan got all of us invitations to the different corporate-sponsored parties. Sony’s was in a parking garage and featured a band that I thought seemed addicted to doing Soul Asylum covers, until I realized they were Soul Asylum. Wasn’t one of them dating Winona Ryder? I looked around for her. Anything seemed possible. Nintendo had the B-52s.

I was picking up on things everybody else already knew. The booths were built out of marketing budgets to impress the journalists and most of all to attract retail buyers, the representatives for Walmart and Best Buy and Software Etc. Microsoft and Sony and SEGA and Nintendo were at war, rival hardware platforms gearing up to capture the upcoming sixth-generation console market. Activision, Acclaim, Eidos, Capcom, Electronic Arts, and the other big software publishers were fighting over different pieces of the software market. The hardware giants used high-profile game releases as lures to grab market share. Mario sold Nintendo game consoles just as Sonic the Hedgehog and Soulcalibur sold SEGA consoles. I began to see how much money was involved, and that we’d lost control of the whole thing. Not that we’d ever had any. This wasn’t about kids trading floppy disks anymore. As actual game developers, we were the only amateurs in the room. We were wandering around, thinking we were the point of it all, when the real contest had almost nothing to do with us. The grown-ups were finally in charge again. No, they’d been there all along, and I was just the last to notice.

The speaker room was just another conference room with slightly nicer snacks. Coffee, bottled water, bagels, and pastries. The other tables were occupied by small groups, mostly huddled around laptops, mostly engaged in serious conversations. All of them looked like they were making deals, or were demoing, secretly, the next big tech advance, or like they at least knew what was going on in the world. It was six thirty in the evening—dinner hour, not exactly prime time for a product demo. But then, I wasn’t exactly ready for prime time.

That morning I’d stood in the doorway and watched for a few seconds as Darren ran through his act at the Vorpal press event. Darren was onstage with a headset mike, being interviewed by the editor of a prominent gaming magazine.

“Simon and I were like brothers, you know? And the games we did, they have their niche, right? We love them, we really do.” There was a pause, staged or not. There was an industry rumor that Darren could in fact cry upon command.

“But games have changed, it’s bigger now. I want to make games for everybody. It’s about more than just action, it’s about telling a story. It’s about character. We’re up against the big guys, the movies, right? We’re ready to take our place in the world. And we will, and we’re going to kick their ass. That’s right, Spielberg. I’m calling you out!”

I left as the applause line hit and dissolved into laughter. I knew what I was up against. I knew enough to understand the media narrative they were hoping for: Black Arts Studios sells out, loses the genius duo that made it special, falls on its face. That was the story worth showing up to cover. The presentation hall itself was like an enormous engine specifically designed to leach charisma from the person speaking at the front of it. Pale bald developers dragged themselves onstage to deliver a marketing presentation with the stumbling cadence of a man dribbling an underinflated basketball.

The hall was more crowded than I expected, about two-thirds full—two hundred people, maybe. I guessed it was an even split between hard-core franchise loyalists, people (journalists, particularly) who’d come expressly to see us fall on our faces, and people making sure they got a seat for the Sony press conference that followed us in the same venue. But there was a buzz to it. There was a narrative here, and we were going to get written up. I was going to get written up.

A woman from IT gave me a small microphone to clip to my collar. I typed RoGVII.exe at the keyboard tucked inside the podium and pressed F8. The demo splash screen came up on-screen behind me. I torqued half around, in the awkward characteristic pose you get into, demoing a game on a screen above and behind you. The demo was on two screens, and on a third there was me. I was seeing myself on a forty-foot-tall screen. I swayed a little. I wasn’t hungover; rather, I thought I might still be a little drunk.

“The latest game—this exciting new entry—in our award-winning Realms of Gold franchise, Realms VII: Winter’s Crown, is designed to appeal to those new to gaming and hard-core gamers alike. Whether you are new to the Realms or a longtime resident, it will offer familiar delights and a few new surprises.”

Most of the first four rows of the hall were full, with a few stragglers standing at the edges and back.

“The time…” It seemed a little too soft, so I started again, leaning into the microphone a little. “The time”—too loud!—“is late in the Third Age of Endorian History!”

I gestured up at the screen showing the calligraphed words WINTER’S CROWN as the music built to a climax and the hall lights dimmed.

The screen cleared to reveal a young woman standing in a city square, a crimson-and-violet sunset behind her. The inevitable joker in the audience gave a wolf whistle, but she wasn’t much of a pinup figure. She wore a gray cloak over worn and scratched leather armor. Her idle animations were set to “nervous,” meaning that if I weren’t issuing any commands she’d stand where she was and tap her foot, glance around, touch her sword hilt just to make sure it was hanging right. As the sun set she was illuminated more clearly by light spilling out of a tavern window.

“As you can see here… the Realms engine has been enhanced and updated…” I panned across the square and instantly regretted it as the frame rate chugged a little while the renderer choked on all those polys. For a moment I was paralyzed by the thought that I can’t take a breath or speak a word that isn’t going to boom through the hall. The microphone felt like a bee stuck to my lapel.

“…improved magic system… an array of weapons…” There was an agreed-on and exhaustively rehearsed list of features. In the course of the ten-minute demo I had to hit them all. I was saying something about mipmapping that a programmer had told me to point out. Did other games have it? I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what it was, but I could feel the collective boredom of the audience. The journalists had been to, at the minimum, a dozen of these press events in the past three days, each one pushing to be bigger than the last, each one in its own way at once technically dazzling and utterly boring. Every year the technology got better but the stories were the same recycled Joseph Campbell or knockoffs of two-years-ago hit movies. When was the last time something surprising happened at one of these?

“We’re at a point midway through the game. By the time you get here, a dozen adventures, chance meetings, and decisions brought you to this city. You could be anyone, depending on the life you’ve led and the choices you’ve made.” I underlined the words by cycling through a few different sets of possible starting conditions for this scenario, each one randomly generated.

“It could be you…”

We saw the exact same scene, but this time it was dawn and rainy and you were a stocky, pale man with a black beard and a battle-ax and an expensive-looking coat, navy blue with brass buttons.

“…or you…”