their startup’s principal technology workable, and once they had that, investors would pour in to help them fund the rest.
“The rest” was a game. PIVOT might be founded on virtual reality and reading brain waves, but all that scanning technology wouldn’t do jack if they didn’t create themselves a world. All three of them had worked on PIVOT, in fact, in order to make their dreams of truly living in a game world come true.
The problem was, while a crack team of three MIT-trained engineers could absolutely build a prototype of an immersive VR experience given several years and some funding, it turned out that a team of three could not make a sprawling, immersive MMORPG. There was simply too much to do.
This game, for instance, had made incredible waves when it came out—its AI and voice recognition software were top-notch, and the sheer depth of each of the quests was breathtaking. Instead of being stuck on one questline or having to choose between a few dialogue options, you could approach problems in your own way—it was why Nick could try to talk it out with the orcs or Amber could simply go in with fireballs.
The PIVOT team needed to make a game that could rival some of the best games out there, and they needed to not do what Forever Echo had done and piss off a number of big industry players. The second one, as far as Jacob could tell, wouldn’t be a problem because they had no way to accomplish the first.
They needed to find solutions for that one.
He kept his character moving and took the time to appreciate how twilight looked in this zone. After a magical explosion of some kind, the area was bathed in drifting fallout—gorgeous, like embers on the wind, but also dangerous if you were touched by too many. The village behind them had tall walls and, even in the middle-ages aesthetic, an abundance of pseudo-greenhouses kept vegetables safe.
When Jacob moved around the bend in the road, however, he stopped in confusion.
“Guys.”
The conversation on the voice chat stopped and the other two took the corner at a sprint.
“Orcs?” Amber had her staff out.
“No, look at the sign.” Jacob started his character forward again and the three of them crowded around the sign and clicked it.
DEAR PLAYER-
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME IN OUR WORLD. UNFORTUNATELY, WE CAN NO LONGER AFFORD TO KEEP MAKING THIS GAME. WE ARE GLAD TO HAVE SHARED THIS MUCH OF OUR WORLD WITH YOU AND HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED YOUR TIME. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ENJOY EXISTING COPIES OF THE GAME, BUT OUR MULTIPLAYER SERVERS WILL SHUT DOWN ON JANUARY 31.
SINCERELY, THE FOREVER ECHO TEAM
“Wait.” Amber sounded lost. “The game’s shutting down?”
“The game can’t shut down,” Nick said. “So many people love it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Nick, not everyone is motivated only by that. It says they can’t afford to keep going.” She sighed regretfully. “I knew their subscription numbers weren’t good but damn—I’m gonna miss this one, guys. This sucks. It sucks so hard.”
Jacob turned to look over the valley behind them. The game was one of the most amazing he’d played in a long while. It had an immersive feel to it, real enough to hook you in but unreal enough to be an entirely new world.
Then, something occurred to him. “Wait.” His brain had shifted into overdrive. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait.”
“Wait, wait, wait?” Amber said.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…” Nick chanted now. “Wait! Wait!” He laughed when Amber joined in.
“I’m trying to think and you’re not making it easy!” Jacob called over the sound of their chanting. He pushed his headset off his ears and lowered his head into his hands. Yes. This could be workable—it could be very workable.
He put his earphones on and grimaced when he heard the other two still chanting.
“Hey, listen here, kiddos.” He flicked the microphone a few times. “I have an idea. It means we don’t have to stop playing this game.”
“We hide their servers so they can’t shut them off,” Amber said. “Excellent. I like it.”
“Or,” Jacob said, drawing the word out, “we buy them.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, kiddo, we’re broker than broke right now. We can’t simply buy games for—ohhhh.” Amber caught up. “Oh, that could work.”
“Look, I haven’t slept in a while,” Nick interjected, “so I want to make sure I’m parsing this correctly. You two want to buy this game…and start some kind of paid, worldwide Thunderdome thing, right?”