New Title 32 (9 page)

At one point, the speaker made the mistake of attacking Spartan for promoting lawless behavior and war crimes. Tim Lawson came out of his chair, punctuating his words with swift, emphatic gestures. “The player has the option of accepting missions from an orphanage, a hospital, and a refugee camp. They can find supplies for these groups and earn goodwill with the locals. That goodwill earns rewards, such as tips on ambushes, the locations of wanted persons, and starting with a good reputation in the next village. Screwing with the locals causes them to support the insurgents. Morality
is
built into our game. We just do it in a way the players will accept.”

The speaker snorted. “That’s not morality, that’s selfish self-interest.”

“Not wanting to get hauled in front of the Hague is self-interest, too.” Tim threw his hands up. “You can’t impose morality on people. You can’t write a program to control it, either. All anyone can do is offer choices and apply consequences, which we already do.”

“You’re just not thinking outside the box enough,” our speaker said.

The steel-haired woman stood up, and eight people in identical suits stood up as well. She said, “Consider what you are saying when you assert games are able to modify behavior to such an extent as to condition someone to abide by the Geneva Convention. Such an assertion would also mean games have the ability to turn peaceful children into amoral sociopaths who see nothing wrong with beating up prostitutes with baseball bats and shooting people for their cars. Are you prepared for a murder defense of ‘playing games made me do it’, and all the lawsuits that would follow? I am not. I reject your thesis and will waste no further time enduring your buffoonery.” She marched out with her entourage following two by two, and the general exodus began. The conversation continued during the elevator ride to the convention floor, but cut off as soon as the doors opened.

Two giant-ass Minotaurs were squaring off under a dueling flag in the middle of the floor. Both had axes far too large to be practical, but they attacked, parried, and counterattacked with breathtaking speed.

The fight ended when one misplaced his foot and got thrown off-balance. The other Minotaur got his axe up, around, and under his opponent’s jaw. Both froze, until the defeated fighter held out the first two fingers of his right hand to give
missio
, the ancient sign of surrender used by Roman gladiators.

The triumphant Minotaur roared, holding his axe over his head, and marched off flexing his muscles. The loser started to walk away, until he got mobbed by picture requests. Unneeded any more, the duel flag zipped straight up into the ceiling. I hadn’t even looked to try to see the wires.

“Holy shit…” Tim breathed. “That was awesome! I could watch shit like that all day.”

I said, “Well, that is why the Romans built the Coliseum.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Tim got a faraway look and started laughing to himself. “Damn, man, now I want to scrap our entire production schedule and make an arena combat brawler.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Will you be able to yank the other guy’s ballsack off like a paper towel?”

“Hell, yeah!”

“Put me down for the open beta.”

We walked past the line of attendees queued up for the doors to open and shook hands all around before splitting up to go to our booths. We had to do a little zigzagging; five groups of actors were doing a last rehearsal of their dueling routines in the open space at the front of the hall.

At the booth, three members of the Spartan team were going through the training villages, commenting on issues they saw and items they liked. There were a bit more of the former than the latter. I got a few notes down, until we got the two-minute-warning over the PA system. The Spartan guys scrambled, people in a handful of booths knelt in prayer, we reset our demo machines, and the ladies did a fifty-yard dash to the restrooms and back.

As soon as Nadia returned, I waved her over to me. “I’m about dying from last night. Can you—”

“Sure.” She tapped me in the middle of the forehead and left me to recover while she tossed empty soda cans and coffee cups into the trash.

“I have to learn to do that,” I muttered as I got to my feet. Again, I felt rested and clear-headed, despite being up and going seventy-two hours on almost no sleep. I’d ask Nadia if she could teach me the spell after the show was over.

Now it was time to go to work.

The clock struck the appointed hour at last. The stars had come right and the Gates of Madness opened, spewing forth the Spawn of Chaos. They came through the doors, a T-shirt-clad tsunami, and they just kept coming. They filled the booths, flowing around the tables and clumping at the computers, while wave after wave flowed past without stopping, and still they came.

It was as though every meme on the Internet had exploded into physical being. Space Princess Slave Girls, both slinking alone and grouped-up for self-protection. Thunder Gods and Combat Billionaires linking arms with Deadly Ladies in Chainmail and Gender-Swapped Chaos Lords. Gamines in jester’s motley comparing the size of their hammers. Dream Lords and Knights of the Dark Cape. Royal Daughters of the Mouse. Pocket Monsters and their trainers. And on, and on, and on.

I’d been to conventions before; many times, in fact. But that was as an attendee, not an exhibitor. Looking at products, not offering one of my own to be weighed and found wanting. These were my people filling the exhibition hall, and the specter of their disapproval terrified me.

Geeks can smell fear, and this is one environment where the old picture-them-naked idea just wouldn’t fly. I thought happy thoughts and tried to keep smiling.

Our greeters were a hit, and not just with the guys. The lack of cheesecake appealed to a good number of women, as several made a point of telling me. Once I noticed who was across the aisle, I couldn’t imagine using the ladies Mitch had hired.

The booth belonged to a charity called TCAI—The Children’s Arts Initiative—a program intended to give kids from low-income families and homeless shelters around Las Vegas a chance to create an art career. It took up eight booths of space, providing activities and seminars for the kids attending the convention. How to draw monsters, demos by artists from various television cartoons, design your own superhero, and things like that. It also had around two dozen children from the program showing off their artwork. It sounded like a great cause, and I made a note to drop off a donation before the end of the show.

I circled the booth, talking to the visitors and collecting comments. By noon, some solid patterns were emerging from the responses. We had heavy favorable ratings from the teenage male crowd and a roughly even response from the ladies in all age groups. Adult male responses tended to be negative from the twenty to thirty-five demographic, but older men flipped back to trending positive. The big issue was not having Player Versus Player combat in the demo. I had a team of people who liked PVP working on the system, but it wasn’t ready for prime time yet. I put all the “this sucks” comments down as stemming from testosterone poisoning and kept moving.

Mister M and the Brick came through as we were taking turns feasting on freshly slain pizza. I nodded to him and stood back, letting our greeters handle him. He wore blue jeans and a plain polo, showing no signs of wealth. Good plan for getting a look at the people asking him for money.

He was asking a lot of questions, though, and it wasn’t long before Frisco waved me over. Mister M pointed to the character creation menu, tapping one of the sliders. “This adjustment for female characters, ‘Endowment’. Why was it included?”

Not the first time I’d gotten the question. “We wanted to allow players total control over their character’s appearance, and breast size is one of those factors. If we set a default size, it will always be the wrong one. Now it’s the player’s choice and they bear the consequences.”

He chuckled. “I see the logic. But, why then no endowment for the men? All men are not equally blessed.”

“I’ll show you why.” I waved him over to my laptop and pulled up a screen shot of Mitch’s infamous Package Slider in action. “We cut it because no guy is going to have it at less than max. This is what happens when the character puts on armor.”

Mister M and the Brick both burst into laughter, covering their eyes. They looked again and lost it once more. Mister M said, “Tell me, please, how did you get the camel into his pants?”

“I said pretty much the same thing when I saw it.” I closed the picture and the laptop. “It’s a geometry issue. The leg armor was trying to conform to the body and failing. We could have fixed it, but after that meeting, the idea got laughed into the trash can.”

“But you could do it?”

“If you wanted to have guys shaking bulges the size of a medium watermelon in your face, yes. It makes behavior that will offend people possible. It’s a mass of trouble tickets waiting to happen, and every trouble ticket raises your cost of doing business.” I shrugged. “In the end, it costs much more than it brings in.”

“That is the best reason not to have it.” Mister M went back to his character and did some training combat before having another look at the character options. “I like what I have seen, but I have seen all this before. Can you show me what I have not seen before?”

I nodded. “Click on the command line and type a backslash, the word ‘delivery’, and hit Enter.” He did, and a window opened with links to several nearby restaurants offering online ordering. Well, nearby if you’re in Grand Rapids.

“Places you like and your login ID for each of them are part of your account profile. You can have the game store your password and a credit card if you want. All you have to do is point, click, and answer the door.”

Mister M looked at the stack of pizza boxes poking out from behind the backdrop curtain. “I have never ordered pizza in my life. It seems an option best left to those unfortunates who do not have private chefs standing by.” He stroked his beard, staring at the ordering interface. “This seems clumsy. Why not have a townsperson do it? Speak to a grocer, have him provide the menu options and place the order. Then the character can get food also. Good, rewarding food, not available otherwise. What do you think?”

“Interesting idea,” I allowed. “I’ll bring it to the programming team and get an idea of what it would take to implement. If it’s reasonable, I’m happy to go with it. I’ll try to have an answer for you when we meet Friday.”

“Good, good. Now, tell me about housing.”

I pulled up another set of screen shots. “Housing is still being worked on. It won’t be persistent in the world but you will be able to bring other players with you to see what you’ve built. Rare creatures and boss mobs will drop souvenirs you can craft into house decorations. Kill a giant werewolf, for example, and you might get a hide you can turn into a fur rug and put on your floor.”

“Excellent. I have wanted for a long time to hang Grendel’s arm in my own Heorat!” He laughed and clapped me on the back. “Goodbye, my friend. Do not be late tomorrow!” He and the Brick joined the mad press flowing between the rows of booths and let the current sweep them away.

I had just finished explaining why we wouldn’t add an I-want-to-do-the-nasty emote to a kid who should have been in school when Nadia tapped my shoulder. “I think I just saw Auntie Josephine coming this way.”

Oh, wonderful.
I told the kid, “You’ll have to rely on your winning personality to get girls. Good luck with that.” I waved Rose over and asked Nadia, “Any suggestions on the best way to deal with her?”

“Don’t be a pussy.”

I snorted. “Roger that. What does she look like?”

“An evil overlord with a retinue of lieutenants, all wearing the same suit, same hair, and the same face, as though something went horribly wrong with a photocopier.”

I spotted the steel-haired woman I’d seen at breakfast. She’d spotted me in return and was plowing through the crowd like a battleship. “I think we’ve met,” I said.

Josephine didn’t bother slowing down until she reached for my hand, and then she just…stopped. Even her hair didn’t seem to have any momentum. She shook my hand the way some people thump melons—trying to find a reason to put that one back.

“David. I’m Josephine Llewellyn. Did my people get your game back on schedule?” She pushed past me to look at one of the demo systems.

My three Llewellyn guys all bowed their heads toward her and intoned, “
A’Tavi
” before returning to work. Josephine afforded them a brief nod as she scrolled through the character options.

I stepped up next to her. “They did. They’re quite impressive. I’m glad we could work out an arrangement.”

Josephine paged back to the sample Elven avatars and looked them over again. “I’m glad to see you didn’t inflict Human proportions on your models of other races. It’s a detail that annoys me no end with most fantasy artwork.” She closed the window and turned back to me. “Time is pressing. I need an answer by Monday.”

“Our agreement was two weeks. I need you to abide by it.”
Don’t be a pussy
.

She leaned in, almost nose to nose with me. “Monday, or I will withdraw my people.”

I inclined my head toward her. “Two weeks, and I keep your people as agreed. Or is a contract with Josephine Llewellyn just empty paper?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I should flay your skin from your bones and wear it as a mantle.”

I came back with, “And I’d look just
stunning
wearing your hair as a wig. I’ve got the perfect dress for it.”

That broke her concentration. I caught a fleeting glimpse of a smile, gone in the blink of an eye. She got her scowl back in place and said, “My word is steel. Two weeks, as agreed. If you do reach a decision earlier, please advise me at once.”

“Agreed.”

Behind me, I heard a woman say, “Aww, you didn’t even manage to leave him a quivering sack of meat on the floor. You’re losing your touch, Auntie.”

I turned around. The woman taunting Josephine could have been Nadia’s younger sister. She was moonlight pale, with grey eyes and midnight-black hair fanned over her shoulders. She had fine, even delicate features and a grin that seemed to say,
come on, at worst we wake up in jail
.