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THE COLLABORATION SETTINGS were really cool. I shared my game with Ben, and it immediately showed up on his dashboard next to the other three games he had started. I checked some boxes so he could add and edit assets on his own, but he could only delete the ones he created. If he wanted to delete one of mine, I’d get a notification that I could approve or reject.
It felt very much like I’d always imagined it would feel working in a real game development studio. I could limit his changes to certain locations or specific characters, but I gave him free rein, and he ran with it.
By mid-afternoon he had three proper quest hubs operational at the apartment complex, the grocery store, and the gas station. There were main quests, side quests, and even transition quests to prod players to move on and check out the next zone.
I read the whole Getting Started page and scrolled through the Advanced Techniques wiki for as long as I could stand it. When I got to “Clocks and Calendars,” I couldn’t restrain myself anymore, and I dove back into development.
Half an hour later, I had a day/night cycle and day-of-week tracker installed, and I’d added the hot dog vendor to the grocery store on Saturdays. Ben went through all my random encounters and made them much harder at night. I went location by location, deciding who would lock their doors and when.
We broke for dinner at six. Ben suggested something Tex Mex, so I took him to my favorite place around the corner. While he was devouring the free chips and salsa, I found myself staring at the tabletop, thinking about the game. When he noticed, he reached across the table to poke me. “What’s on your mind?”
“Our game,” I said, still lost in thought.
“Your game,” he said. “I’ve barely done anything.”
“I wouldn’t even know about the Arcade if you hadn’t told me.”
He laughed. “You’d know about it soon enough. This thing is going to be huge.”
That’s exactly what I’d been thinking. “It is,” I said. “It feels too good to be true. I keep trying to figure out what the trick is. It can’t really be this easy.”
Ben put on a thoughtful expression as he finished another chip. Then he shrugged. “This is how it is with books now. Anyone with a finished manuscript can make an account at Draft2Digital.com and have their book for sale on Amazon and B&N later that afternoon, competing side-by-side with Steven King or Harry Potter. The hard part isn’t publishing anymore, it’s getting discovered. It’s writing a book worth reading.”
I was silent for a moment more, considering that. Then I nodded. “You’re right. And you’re right.”
“About what?”
“About our game. It’s good. It’s not Blizzard good. It’s not finished, either. But it’s fun to play.”
“Yeah it is!” He brightened up like a sunflower. “You ready to go live?”
“I’m ready to go private beta.”
“Compromise,” he said, “Public beta.” He saw that I was going to argue, and he leaned in. “Trust me! I’m right about this, too. It’s good enough for public beta, and we’ll improve it as we go along.”
“What if everyone hates it?”
“Impossible,” he said. “Anyone who hates it will just move on to something else, and you’ll never get enough plays to hit the recommendation engine. You might get some mean feedback from some jerks, but it’s no worse than posting your opinion on Twitter. And the people who like it will message you, too, asking for more content. They’ll tell you what you need to add, and you can learn on the job.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
“It is,” he said. “Just like with books.”
“And you said they’re adding a way to get paid?” My heart fluttered at the thought of it. “It could be my job?”
“Well, that’s the hard part,” he said. And then, sadly, “Just like with books.”