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Chapter
16: hard seats
October 17th, 1994
You
could now play
Swarthy Victor and the Greecian Formula from start to finish. Art was
impressed
with himself. It looked amazingly better than the previous games. The
leap in
graphics were stunning…and the new interface was more intuitive.
It had been
hard designing for the new game engine after using the old, text-based
command
one for so long: MAKE GAME WITH CODE. LIGHT AIRSICK BAG WITH MATCHES.
Now all
the puzzles had to revolve around using your hand or mouth or
feet…or other
point-and-click icons. One thing that disappointed Art was that a lot
of the
objects you could pick up were too obvious. Because of the digitized
painting
technology they were using, moveable objects stood out because they had
to be
painted separately. Looked like a cheaply animated cartoon or bad
superimposing
in a movie, which made it really obvious what you were supposed to pick
up. The
game was still full of bugs and incomplete parts, the inventory
pictures hadn’t
been done, a lot of the character faces were missing during the
dialogue…but
still, it was fleshing out. Despite the few drawbacks, Art was
impressed by
what they had so far.
Tim had heard that Art’s game
had
reached milestone 3. It was still early morning when he entered
Art’s office to
watch him playtest the game. Tim wanted to see how it turned
out…so he could
know how the new Sci-Fi Quest might turn out. Geoff was already there,
hunched
over, hands on his knees, observing with a crooked smile.
Not long after, Will also came in to
watch. He’d just gotten off the phone with Newman. Turned out
there were
several companies eager to jump in on the online-gaming/Internet boom
who’d
expressed interest in buying SupraNet which was good news to Will.
They’d at
least recover some of their costs from the sale and, more importantly,
SupraNet
wouldn’t die. He was more interested in selling it to a company
that would keep
it alive…just under new ownership. Will watched Tim watching Art
play the
prototype game.
It
was good that
a new Swarthy Victor game was on the way. Will had just gotten the
sales
results for HomoSapien Quest 3 this morning from HQ. Not too good.
Though the game
had good initial sales, those were from people who liked the previous
game, the
die-hard fans HSQ was known for. But once the reviews started coming
in…well,
they were lukewarm and dragged sales down with them. Madre hadn’t
lost money on
the project…but they hadn’t made much yet
either…and it was bad to have that
kind of publicity, particularly in this market. Mostly the reviews
complained
about how unstructured and short the game was. Will agreed the
shortness was a
problem…but with all the high-tech graphics and digitized sound,
much more disk
space was needed…and there was only so many disks you could fit
in a box. At
least their new games looked better than anybody else’s. It was
just going to
take people a little while to get used to the new Madre style and
interface…
Henry came in the door behind Will,
following the trail of game music, music he’d composed, from down
the hall.
Listening to it now, he felt a near uncontrollable desire to tap his
toe in
time. Henry loved that feeling. When the music forced you to break out
of your
rigid ways, surprising you with their spontaneity and illogic –
he’d done a
good job. They all watched Art play his game, testing things out and
writing
down notes. Henry spoke up. “I went into Che’s Coffee
Revolution today…”
Everybody pricked up their ears to
listen, but held their eyes on Swarthy Victor trying to escape from a
room with
nothing but a plastic blow-up sheep. As
Will had predicted, Madre employees had started going to Che’s.
They were
resistant…but Che’s was the only game in town…so
what could you do?
Henry continued. “You know, when I
first went in - maybe I was just justifying it to myself, I don’t
know - I
thought, ‘this place isn’t so bad. It’s a little
fabricated, but it still pulls
off the nice, atmospheric café feeling that Naughté had,
even if it was stamped
out of a mould. It’s a little swankier than Naughté Latte,
less local – but
it’s not so bad.’ But every time I went in there, something
bugged me a little
bit. And I think it’s the hard seats.”
People were turning their attention
away from the game now to Henry.
“You
can’t sit
on those things for more than twenty minutes without your butt going
num. I
guess fast food joints have been pulling that for years so you
don’t sit
around, but with Che’s it seems really insincere. There’s
no pretension in fast
food joint that it’s a place to hang out. The whole point is to
eat and go. But
Che’s pretends to be all about relaxing and lounging, feeling
welcome to hang
out. It’s interior says ‘we’re friends, come and
relax and stay as long as you
like’ while the seats bark ‘drink quickly and get
out.’ Naughté Latte’s chairs
were comfortable and locally made, at least.”
Geoff
turned his
attention fully from the game now. “Huh. Kind of like
psychologically induced
customer turnover, right? I don’t know. Could be a city thing and
they’re
worried about people coming in and lounging for hours.”
“Still,”
Henry
said. “Naughté Latte never did that. And this isn’t
the city.” Henry went on
now, caught up in his thoughts as they occurred to him, cascading off
of each
other, “You know what also drives me nuts? How they stamp their
logo on
everything. I mean, I liked the local glazed ceramic mugs
Naughté had, but even
the mugs you buy at Che’s have their logo on it.
Everything in that
place is stamped out of some factory in Chicago. And if
you order to go
it’s all styro-poly-ethylyne or whatever…again with their
big fat logo on the
side.”
“You know why
those stores do that?”
Tim jumped in, “You’d think it’s a big waste of money
to print your logo in
full colour on the side of all your cups and napkins, right? People
just throw
it out, right?”
“Well,
it’s basic advertising,” Will
joined in. He was used to having to be the devil’s businessman
with this group,
to defend business & marketing practices. Maybe it was an artist
thing. They
all had a healthy suspicion of money and sometimes Will wondered if
they
wouldn’t be making games for free if he wasn’t around to
stop them! That was
where he came in. As a business man it was his job to focus on money.
He tried
not to let it interfere with their creativity. Ultimately, making games
was
more important than the money…but only so long as they
didn’t run out of money!
“But it goes
beyond that,” Tim
continued, “When you toss that stuff in the garbage or on the
ground or some
careless slob leaves it in the park…it’s free advertising.
Even the garbage sells
to you these days! The town would never let Che’s put up a big
billboard in Berney Park…but
walking through it yesterday I saw three discarded Che’s cups.
Guerrilla
advertising: you can’t escape the revolution. It’s a pretty
safe plan for
them…nobody’s going to start blaming Che’s for
littering, right?”
“Huh,”
Henry considered
this.
Will
dropped out
of the conversation. He wasn’t up to
playing devil’s
advocate for Che’s. He wasn’t against them being popular,
or making money. He
didn’t really even care that they were mass-manufactured - though
he found it
tacky - as long as they didn’t interfere with his desire to seek
out the
authentic, the unique, the local and independent. But they went beyond
that,
stormed into town and crushed the pretty flowers growing on their own.
Will
liked business and would gladly argue in favour of it. But Che’s
wasn’t
business. It was something beyond. Something corrupt. Places like
Che’s gave
business a bad name, created the sentiment prevalent in his artistic
staff.
“How’s
the coffee?” Geoff asked
cheekily, noticing the logo-laden Styrofoam cup wrapped in logo-laden
cardboard
coffee slip in Henry’s hand.
“Yeah.
The coffee’s good,” Henry
said. “They don’t have as much selection or cool little
variations like Naughté Latte…but it’s pretty good. What
can I do, anyway? There’s no other
coffee place around.”
“I’m
going to get a cappuccino
machine for the kitchen.”
All
heads turned toward Will.
“Really?”
they all asked.
“Yeah,
we’ll get a nice one with a
couple of nozzles on it…get someone in here to train people how
to use it. We
can all be programmer/baristas.”
Tim
and Geoff looked at Art, Art
looked at Henry, Henry looked at Tim and Geoff. Then they reversed
their gaze:
Henry to Art, Art to Tim and Geoff, Tim and Geoff to Henry. Then they
all
turned their heads to Will.
“Wow,”
said Tim. “Now that’s a REAL
revolution!” Will’s the greatest boss ever!, Tim thought.
“When
are you going to get it?”
asked Henry, not quite convinced.
“Right
now,” said Will. It had been
an impulsive decision. He’d forgotten all about the cappuccino
machine idea
since his meeting with Newman almost two weeks ago. The Che’s
discussion had
refreshed Will’s memory. He hadn’t officially decided to
get it…it just came
out. And since the decision had already been made by some independent
micro-neuron
in the back of his brain, why wait? Why not get it now?
“I’ll go get Gladys to
find a cappuccino machine seller.”
Tim
and Henry could hardly wipe the
grins off their face. Art wasn’t much of a coffee
drinker…but a cappuccino
machine in the kitchen…now that was classy. Art could brag to
his
brother-in-law about that: ‘Do YOU have a free cappuccino machine
in YOUR lunch
room?’
“Oh,
there’s Ron,” said Tim, excusing
himself and taking off to ask Ron about borrowing his bong for the
weekend.
“Well,
that’s my cue to go too,”
Henry said and headed off with his hand-sized billboard full of coffee
to his
office.
Will
stepped over to the screen.
“It’s looking good,” he commented.
“Yeah,
it’s coming along. Playing it now, I’ve thought of a lot of
great stuff we
could add…and a few things to take out. The new icon-GUI trips me up a bit. I’m still used to typing in
commands.” Art wiggled the mouse around using the hand icon on
all the pillars
of the coliseum. He laughed to himself and wrote something down on the
pad.
“It’s
looking great. I look forward to testing out the final version before
vacation.”
“Vacation?”
Art asked. “You’re going away this year?”
“Yeah.
Kendra and I are going to take an extended holiday just after
Christmas.”
Usually the staff at Madre worked hard through December, pushing games
out for
the Christmas season. Madre itself didn’t have any games to go
this season, but
Synapse did and Will wanted to stick around to help supervise those.
But he and
Kendra, long overdue for a vacation, were going to hit up Hawaii for a couple of weeks just after
Christmas dinner, he told Art.
“January.
Isn’t there the Annual General Meeting and board vote on the 3rd
or
4th? I thought you had to be
around for
that.”
“Yeah, but
it’ll be fine. Newman
will be there. I need a break. Besides, we just opened a new head
office. Stock
prices are up. It’s going to be a no-brainer vote. As long as
stock prices are
going up shareholders don’t care what happens. They’re as
snug as a bug in a
rug. I doubt most will even show up.”
“Yeah. Hell, you
know better about
all this stock stuff than me,” Art said. “You look
like you need a vacation.”
Will believed it. He
couldn’t
remember the last vacation he’d had without having to pause to
reflect on it,
count on his fingertips. But with the new HQ…and Kendra between
games…they finally
could afford the time to do it. It
felt like the first
vacation they’d taken since starting the company.
It made Art a little
uneasy, though,
with Will not being there. Art didn’t like the shareholders. It
was like Madre
was working for a big fat boss who smoked cigars and didn’t know
anything about
games and only understood large bags of money with dollar signs on
them. The
kind of boss who would say, ‘Why don’t you put more hot
dogs in games? Everyone
loves hot dogs. It’s a multimillion dollar industry!’ or
‘You know what this
game needs? Product placement! We reach a large audience. I’m
sure Goke or
Kepsi would pay handsomely to have our main character drink their
product.’
Ugh. Art shivered at the thought. He was surprised product placement
hadn’t
happened already. It was only a matter of time...to bring costs down
and
shareholder profits up.
Ever since they had to
issue more
shares to pay for the SupraNet project, since staff ownership of Madre
stock
dipped below the 50% mark, work felt different to Art. It wasn’t
different on
the surface: Madre ran the same, made the same decisions as it always
had. All
employees together still had the majority share, some 37%, and as long
as the
share price increased shareholders didn’t complain. But still,
work felt
different. To Art, it felt like they weren’t quite working for
Will anymore.
They were working for Will, but under the loyalties of some dark lord
in a
distant tower that Will had to appease…Puppet Will…and
everyone rued the day
that Will and the puppet master would have a conflict.
Art would be glad when
the amount of
non-staff shareholders was diminished again. In a move to remedy the
situation
Madre had introduced stock options for the employees - putting more
control
into the hands of people who actually worked at Madre, who knew the
industry,
who cared… Art knew that, with the recent profits, Will had been
buying back
shares. But together Will and Madre employees owned significantly less
than 51%
of the total shares. Not enough for Art to feel safe yet. And so,
secretly, Art
was waiting for the day when Will would come back from the AGM and
announce
they had to put the MacClownBurger burger-of-the-month in all their
games.
Direct order from the Dark Lord.
But
this was being pessimistic…which wasn’t Art’s strong
suit. Why worry about
something that hadn’t happened? Art was enjoying his prototype
and that was a
strong sign that they were still doing quality work. Maybe it would
have better
sales than HomoSapien Quest. It had better
have better sales than HomoSapien Quest, Art thought.
“Well,”
said Will, trying to break
away from watching Swarthy Victor’s antics, “I’ve got
to go make sure people
are working.” He laughed at his
little joke. Art smiled back and Will left the room. As Will walked
down the
hall he thought, hey, the music in that
game is pretty good.
Passing
the kitchen Will’s eye
suddenly caught the familiar green of a Che’s Coffee Revolution
mug peeking out
from the top of the garbage. Will stopped, furrowed his brow and stared
at it a
long time, infuriated by the infiltration of this menace into his moral
stronghold. Che, the ready-to-serve-coffee rebel, just beamed that
winning
smile out from within his trash jungle. Despite himself, despite how
wacky he
thought radical Tim’s theory on garbage advertising was, Will
quickly reached
into the trash when nobody was looking and turned the cup around so
Guevara
faced deep into the pit of rubbish. Will covered the back end with a
paper
towel and continued to his office.
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