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PART 1: The Pre-Rendered Intro Sequence
Welcome to the wondrous, certifiably fucked world of the video game biz. Or,
at least, that was what I thought every morning as I stumbled out of bed,
made a half-assed attempt to springload the toaster with moldy bread, and
wandered aimlessly out of the door, onward and upward, on the 15-minute
hearse ride to work.
It was easy to spot where Devilfish Software’s offices were. It was the
motley collection of Jay and Silent Bobs smoking outside which really gave
it away. As wide-eyed, immaculately-dressed accountants sidled past to their
own offices in the high-rise, their backs to the wall, the black-clad,
alternately wannabe-goth and already-geek occupants of Devilfish’s cubes got
their air for the day – albeit nicotine-stained air. They looked, well,
happy - being let out of the fishbowl for a few seconds, gulping on some
deliciously flavored death sticks, gossiping about the latest enticing
imports (Japanese GameCube, temp agency into reception.) I was pretty
tempted to take up smoking, just to meet new friends and influence people.
But I wouldn’t, at least, not yet. That might interfere with my work time.
And my work, although testing, was also, well, about testing. I was the
co-ordinator of the small test-lab at Devilfish – the link, if you will,
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the Neanderthals and the
Creators, the bug-spotters and the bug-squashers. Sure, I was looked up at
in the grimy world of testing, but in the heady world of development? Just a
peon.
Sometimes, though, I was a little more crucial – the veritable Missing Link.
And while Devilfish’s new title was way past Beta and looking to lock down
gold master - before the financial quarter ended, our publisher’s projected
revenues plummeted, and their goodwill towards us completely evaporated? I
was the crucial on-site link to all the glitches our small in-house team
could find. Oh, and all the garbled, incomprehensible, semi-filled-in bugs
the large publisher-based test team could fax us. I secretly suspected their
test lab was located in some kinda of madhouse – probably a
non-English-speaking one, possibly located in an era in which computers were
some kind of palpable magick. Still, on the testing island of the blind, the
one-eyed test manager is king – especially the one-eyed test manager who
could screen their external bugs and pretend that we’d found the choicest
ones ourselves.
But, onward and upward. First stop? My cluttered cube, filled with
print-outs, last year’s McFarlane toys, a wrestling poster here and there,
the requisite set of freebie, ugly-ass T-shirts, and any other number of
clichéd cube contents. If I liked Gilbert and Sullivan or lusted some Pedro
Almodovar lobby cards in my own personal space? Not a good idea. Only by
embracing the mainstream could you catch the attention of the higher-ups,
and graduate to assistant producer, the next rung on the ladder to Hell. I
was very keen to get there – it sounded airy, and devilish, and positively
schmooze-some.
Looking on the desk, I spotted some of the more exotic bug reports from last
night. The ever-comedic Justin had tried to slip one in – ‘Spilled Pepsi on
controller, stuck going in circles, could reproduce, up to the point I ran
out of Pepsi.’ Well, at least he tried to reproduce the bug, although it
probably wasn’t one of the more crucial ones Sony would be looking for. More
likely to upset the higher-ups were a few holes in the world, a
mashing-buttons-while-loading glitch, and a true show-stopper involving
activating in-game powers and then triggering cut-scenes. Max would love to
see this. Love it, then fling it at the wall, gibbering maniacally. Why did
I love giving him bad news so much?
Max, you see, was the lead coder on the project. You could tell he was the
lead coder by the large amount of facial hair, plus the tiny amount of
actual head hair he sported on his not-inconsiderable frame. Some said his
hair was ripped out by himself, then liberally re-applied to the cheeks.
Others said little, scared that Max would rip their head off and liberally
apply the gushing bloodflow to his cheeks and general person. I could see
their point – he didn’t mean to be, but he could be pretty scary if you
taunted him the wrong way.
So I took the walk of pain, all the way up a floor, along the corridor
decked with posters of Devilfish’s previous ‘successes’, and into the
darkened sanctum that was Max’s office. Could you tell this was a coder’s
den? Well, lack of personalization? Check. Multiple monitors providing only
light, un-natural or otherwise? Check. Large, un-opened manuals populating
every possible surface? Check. Slightly odd odor, reminiscent of old tacos?
Check.
But there was something out of place. There was a mass on the floor. It
couldn’t be a nerf gun – too large. And it certainly wasn’t the mattress Max
used to curl up on after one Red Bull too many, late at night. It was…
solid, distressingly solid. I reached for the lights, hoping nobody was
around to see me violate the cardinal sin of illumination, and flipped them
on.
It was Max, but not entirely how I expected him to be. He was lying on his
stomach, his face pressed against the ground, a trickle of blood venting
from his mouth, and a pool of red all around his body, anchoring him to the
ground, matting the cheap carpet. Jesus. But that wasn’t all the sudden
fluorescent lighting revealed. Daubed on the wall crudely, and dripping
macabrely, in what appeared to be the coder’s blood, was a straightforward,
but now deceptively difficult to accomplish message. It simply read:
‘FINISH THE GAME!’
Oh, and next to the body... jeez. I picked it up and turned it over in my
hands. How could they use this to finish him off? Even for someone in the
games industry, you’d have to be a sick fuck to even try something like
that. I held it to the light, and… well, that was when Jane, the producer,
swept into the room, seeing Max’s body, my hands held melodramatically
aloft, the horrified look on my face. Shit.
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The best suggestion for a suitable murder weapon will be included in the
next part of Alpha? I Nearly Beta, and the submitter credited. Please send
suggestions to abrahamo_linconi@hotmail.com
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