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BEN WANTED TO LAUNCH the game then and there. He kept pushing me to do it from my phone, but I hadn’t installed the app, and it felt wrong to do something so monumental from a phone screen. I focused on my fajitas instead, and Ben and I did a little daydreaming together.
When we got back to my apartment, I pulled up the game on my laptop and started a fresh playthrough.
Ben had done a lot of work I hadn’t actually seen. There was a proper intro scene now. As soon as the game kicked off, I saw my character, The Girl, standing in my apartment. An NPC named Dave stood cowering in the corner. He initiated a dialog-screen with lots of screaming.
“HEY!!! What are you doing in my apartment? The cops are coming.”
My character had dialog options for the player to rob him (me), seduce him, or ask for help. I glared at Ben over his editorial choices and chose the last one. The Dave in-game encouraged me to hide in the bathroom, and I knew what to do from there.
“What happens if I choose to rob him?” I asked Ben.
“You get half a buck and end up disappointed.” He grinned. “Same as seducing him.”
“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”
He shrugged. “Players like having choices, but the story has to move. If you talk to any of the neighbors, they’ll send you to the gas station, and the gas station attendant will point you to the bank after the robbery.”
“Wow!” I was impressed. He’d added a lot of story in a hurry. But then, he was my story guy.
I slipped out of the upstairs neighbor’s room and barely missed running into the cops. I asked, “What happens if you run into the cops?”
“Fight,” he said. “If you lose, it teleports you to the police station lockup, but there’s no way out yet.”
“Kinda like real life,” I said. “Just gotta start over.”
He laughed. “You’re making it philosophical. I was planning to copy what we did in the bank security office, but we can use your explanation until we get to that.”
I played for a few more minutes. I sneaked into the back room of the apartment manager’s office and eavesdropped on his conversation with the cops. That added a new quest to my quest log, even though I wasn’t part of the conversation.
I deleted all the overdue rent notices from the manager’s computer and got an achievement and enough experience to level up. That made me grin. “When did you have time to add all this?”
“Today,” he said with a shrug. “You did all the work. It’s the characters and locations that take so long. Story is easy.”
“This is fun,” I said. “This is a game.”
“Launch it,” he said.
I did. It was literally as easy as changing a dropdown selector on the webpage and clicking “Confirm.” A banner popped up congratulating me and promising they would email me with notifications and other tips once players started playing.
“What now?” I asked Ben.
“Nothing to do but wait,” he said. “But, y’know, keep working. Make the police station, and I’ll write quests for it tomorrow.”
“How long until someone tries it?”
“No way to guess. Just keep building it. That’s all you can do at this stage. They’ll send you an email with some tips, but mostly it’s, ‘Keep building!’ I’ll take a look at your catalog page tomorrow and see if I can punch up your description. Other than that, it’s your banner art, maybe a video, and buying ads, but all of those will cost money.”
“I’m not really ready to spend money...” I said.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “Most of the ones in early access don’t have any of that stuff. Most of them don’t even have descriptions.”
Mine didn’t have a description. I didn’t mention it. Ben would write one for me tomorrow. He seemed like he was wrapping up for the evening.
“You leaving?” I asked.
“I’m leaving. But I’m proud of you, man. I’ll bring some champagne or something tomorrow, so we can celebrate. You published a game! You’re living your dream.” He hopped up and headed out, but stopped in the door. “This is a big deal, man. Enjoy it.”
Then he left.
And I was alone.
Again.
That old melancholy started to settle on me. The ever-present dread I spent all my time ignoring. But one thing Ben had said kept ringing in my ears.
“You published a game!” My doubt kept making arguments. Anyone could publish a game on this website. But... mine was pretty good. Nobody knew that, though; it wasn’t making any money. But most games never made money. Ben was right. I was living my dream.
That didn’t make the dread go away, but it shut up all my internal arguments. I poured myself the last of the Pepsi in the bottle and settled in to see how far I could get through Ben’s story line.
I was still playing when the sun came up. And that’s when I got the notification. A new user was playing my game. Cass1884. And three minutes later, I got feedback. It came in an email from the Arcade, but it included the message from Cass.
“fun game. needs chat.”
So I did a little research, watched a YouTube tutorial, and half an hour later my game had integrated chat features. I sent friend invites to Cass and Ben so they’d know.
That finished me, though. Exhausted, I crawled into bed and slept the sleep of the dead. It would be hours before I read all the chat messages from Cass, but that was the real beginning of my adventure.