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Chapter 8: Name Quest
June 9th, 1994
"How about Swarthy Victor: Searching for Lesbos?" suggested Art, his hand to his chin, pacing back and forth in front of his office window. They were down to the final bit of design now. The programmers had already started programming. This was the hard part. No longer could you just throw in wild ideas - you had to focus. FOCUS! Refine! Edit!?and throw away a lot of good ideas. Right now they were trying to come up with a list of possible titles for the game. The working title for the past few months had been "Swarthy Victor goes to Greece." But that was just too blas? to go on the final product - almost embarrassingly so.
"Lesbos?" asked Bill.
"Yeah. It's a Greek island."
Fred, the intern, son of one of the programmers at Madre, was busy jotting their brainstorm down on a yellow pad in his lap. The scritch-scritching of his pencil was ever-present in the room as he tried in desperation to keep up.
"It's funny," noted Bill, "But it doesn't really reflect what's going on in the game."
"Yeah. You're right." Art continued to casually pace his 'orifice' in thought. Today was Friday. Casual day. Of course, casual day at Madre was unofficial - mostly because it was meaningless. Most everyone dressed however they wanted all the time -though a few wore suits: the lawyers, the accountants, the PR people, Will, Henry. But Art had a suspicion that these people didn't dress up for work - instead they dressed up for weekends. Especially Will and Henry. Their normal clothes, what they were most comfortable in, was a suit jacket or pleats. It was what they always wore - but on weekends, well, it's just not acceptable to wear a suit - so they have to dress up - in jeans or sweat pants. The only thing Art did differently on casual Fridays was to wear his loafers without the tassels. No one ever noticed the difference - and that was the beauty of it. It was Art's casual day secret.
"How about Swarthy Victor Gets a Piece of Athens?" suggested Bill.
"Nahhh. It's too much of a stretch for that pun."
"How about Swarthy Victor becomes a Cretan?" Bill countered.
Art laughed. "That's funny. But, again, doesn't have much to do with the game. Hmmm. Swarthy Victor: What a Greek? Nah. Lame. What a Cretan? That's not bad."
"Swarthy Victor plays with his Venus?" Bill offered.
"Whoa. Whoa. Slow down," complained Fred. "What was that last one? Plays with his Venus?"
"Yeah." Fred scribbled madly trying to catch up.
"Ok. Go on," Fred said.
"Ooooh," said Bill. "How about Swarthy Victor: Hex on the Brain."
"Hey?that's not bad. But it's a curse, not a Hex. Still - it might work."
"Swarthy Victor gets Lei'd on the Virgin Islands?" shot back Bill.
"He's not even ON the Vir-"
"I know. I know. How about Swarthy Victor and the Trojan Whores!"
"That's clever, but a little strong - and insulting - for a title," said Art.
"Yeah." There was a pause for a moment as they thought. The mad scratching of Fred's pencil filled the silent room. "Swarthy Victor gets Meduced?" Bill continued.
"Huh?" Art stopped and looked at Bill.
"Never mind. I was trying to mix Medusa and seduced. Too obscure."
"Oh." Art sat down in his chair and leaned back, thinking. "Hmmm." There was a pause as they thought and just as Fred thought he was going to get a break, Art continued. "Swarthy Victor mounts Olympus?"
"Swarthy Victor Angers Uranus?" Bill returned.
Art smiled but, "That's such an overused pun, though" he said.
"Swarthy Victor suffers from a bad case of the Harpies?"
"Ooooh. That's very good," Art sat up in his chair, laughing. "A little long, but relevant. Swarthy Victor gets a bad case of Hermes could also work. Are you getting all this down, Fred?"
"Yep." The pencil was moving so fast it appeared to be alive and Fred's hand was merely trying to stay on - like a bull rider.
"How about 'Women are all Greek to him'?" suggested Bill.
"It works, but it's kind of convoluted. Swarthy Victor Plays with his Discus? Swarthy Victor gets Hermes on his Discus? Swarthy Victor Tries to Hit Uranus with his Discus but gets Hermes Instead?"
There was laughter from all three of them. That was funny, but obviously unfit for a game title for several reasons. Art sighed and there was a short pause again.
"Swarthy Victor gets Kicked in the Argonauts?" suggested Bill.
The sound of Fred's pen finally seemed to overcome the rapid flow of ideas.
"Oh, well, we've got some now," said Art. "Maybe we should have a name contest around the office. We can worry about the title later. Let's finish up some of the other details."
"Sure." Bill opened his briefcase and started to pull out his idea sheet. Fred flipped to a new page, relieved at the breather. He was going to have to type this up immediately or he'd forget what he'd written down, it was so messy.
"I had a great idea for the painting," said Art.
"The painting?"
"Yeah. The one they steal from the museum. You know how they always have these descriptive names on classical paintings: Still-life with Fruit. People in Park. Man and Dogs. The painting should be of a topless women and the title could be 'Girl with Breasts.' That's funny."
"Yeah. Not bad. Or 'Still-life with Melons.'" Bill wrote these down. So did Fred.
Today Fred was extra happy with his job. For the past three months he had just regarded this job as any other he had ever had - mowing lawns, babysitting, working at Garden Pot - a way of saving up money for future plans - in this case to blow traveling around Europe for a few months before starting college in the Fall. He wasn't even interested in working in the gaming industry - although he knew there must be kids all over North America dying to have his internship. Fred wanted to be a journalist - you know - do something that actually mattered. Defend truth. Break stories. Uncover cover-ups. That sort of thing. He'd only taken this job on his father's recommendation and mother's emotional pressure. There wasn't an internship position, per se, at Madre - but it was pretty common to hire someone's kid once or twice a year as a general helper to give them experience and some money. Games were fun. The work was less mundane. It was a good office experience. Fred didn't dislike the job at all. He just wasn't really into games. They seemed trivial. Also, he'd been worried, at first, about working with and being the office boy to his father's friends. But, as it turned out, he didn't work with the programmers at all. Instead he mostly helped out the designers and they were all pretty cool - like Art and Bill.
But that wasn't why Fred was extra happy with his job today. No, the reason Fred was happy about it today was because he was actually getting paid for it. He'd been in contact with the job placement program coordinator at one of the colleges he was thinking of applying for to learn a little more about the program. The coordinator went through it all - the types of jobs available for students with all sorts of experience from none to tonnes. 'There are plenty of internship opportunities as well - if you don't mind extending your degree,' she had said. 'We even have a few internships where you get paid!' She had said this with such glee - like it was a major accomplishment - a real find?to actually get paid for work.
'What do you mean?' Fred had asked. 'Don't all internships pay?'
'Huh?' the coordinator was stunned for a moment and then laughed. 'Oh no! You work for the experience! Say you want to work for MBC - well, a lot of students want that job, it's a major national television network, so there's heavy competition. But if you've got experience in the field - especially at that network - and have done an internship with them, then it's a good step towards getting that job. Your experience is your pay. All internships now-a-days are like that.'
'Oh.' was all Fred could say. But that's not what he wanted to say. What he wanted to say was, 'Isn't the whole point of an internship that you WILL get the job after? To get PAID experience in that field? Isn't that how the company ensures fresh blood - by hiring interns to train the new breed to take over the shop when the rest are old and retiring? Isn't it a mutual benefit thing?'
'If you do a couple of internship terms there, you've got a good chance of being hired on afterwards!' the coordinator had added enthusiastically.
'Oh.' was all Fred could say. A good chance of being hired on?! After doing two terms - effectively a year and a half of unpaid work - for this company you'd think you had better in hell be hired for sure! What would their excuse be? And what about all the people who can't afford to work 8 hour internships for no pay. Fred's family was fairly well off - but even he wasn't sure how he'd pay to go to school and then work full-time for no pay! What happens to people who can't afford to work for free? The discussion ended then without any of these questions being asked or answered.
But Fred didn't believe it after hanging up. It made no sense. Taking a trip down to the local student centre on the weekend he checked out the handouts on internships from several major continental companies. Sure enough, the coordinator had been right. The applications were more like magazines: four-color, slickly papered, photo-ridden brochures explicitly describing how cool and fun a place (insert company name here) is to work for and how lucky you should be to be chosen to work even for free! Fred brought them home and showed them to his mom. He couldn't quite believe it. It seemed so...so...sleazy. And they were all like that!
That night - last night - he had lain awake in bed thinking about it. Maybe he would go into the games industry. At least it wasn't run by corporate sleazebags. But nah, it was so trivial. People don't go down in history books for making sex adventure games? That would be it! The idea suddenly came to him and he sat up in bed. He'd write a story exposing to the world this new trend in abuse of young people?the non-pay internship racket! And he was getting the real experience to write that story here at Madre! And he was getting paid for it!
"Hey, speaking of art," said Art offhand as they wrote, "We got another Victor script from a production house for Tantamount pictures."
"Another one?" Bill looked up. "Really? That was fast. How many is that now?"
"Six...no...seven with this one, I think." Art said sitting back down in his chair.
"You think Will would ever go for it?"
"Go for what?" asked Fred, curious.
"Swarthy Victor: the movie."
"Really?" Fred was amused. They were going to make a movie of this game?
"It's been Hollywood's idea all along. They're really eager. They've been approaching us about it for a few years. Actually, I'm pretty sure Will would go for it, despite the bad scripts, but every time it gets down to negotiating profits, they want to split it 80/20 - they claim it will be advertising for us. We always say no because it's OUR game, but these production houses keep coming back...and still never want to offer a fair price. Anyway, they keep sending scripts, mostly just to show they're expressing interest - or they're hoping by showing us the right script we'll jump on a terrible deal."
"Have you read it yet?" asked Bill. Wow, he thought. Art's creation, Swarthy Victor, was being sought after by Hollywood! He could never get over this. Swarthy Victor was hot property. Even Hollywood thought Art was a genius.
"Nope. But I'm looking forward to it!" Art said with a grin, and then as an aside to Fred, "They're usually so terrible. Some of them are grossly inaccurate - even insulting sometimes - stuff I wouldn't even put in the games. These Hollywood types?get their hands on a property and then want to change everything that made it good in the first place. Also, these scripts are just treatments so they're hardly polished. Ever read a terrible script? It's fascinating. There's been a couple half-decent scripts though."
"Video Game movies seem to be all the rage now," said Fred. "There's two out in theatres at the moment, I think."
"Yeah. It's getting nuts. It reminds me of before the crash."
"The crash?" asked Fred.
"Oh yeah. I guess that would be before your time," said Art with a nostalgic smile. What a great time for a war story, he thought, sitting up and rubbing his hands together. "The crash of '83," he began. "This was before computers were a big player in the gaming market, but the video game industry had just boomed after the introduction of Pong and the Odyssey home gaming systems in the late 70s. Profits were just booming and everyone was getting into it. God, I couldn't count all the Pong clones there were. Who would have thought you could have so many variations of a white bar bouncing a white ball across a screen? Anyway, by '82 - about the time I was hired on at Madre - the market was just nuts. Incredibly over-inflated. Everybody and their dog was making games. There must have been 20 different home video systems - Colecovision, Odyssey, the Atari 2400, Intellivision, Channel F, Astrocade... all being updated and improved and resold within months of the last release. It was crazy. Everybody started jumping on the bandwagon. It got so bad that they started putting free game cartridges in cereal boxes - or at least you could send away with your cereal tabs for one - it was considered advertising. I remember there was a...a Cornflakes game. Even MacClownBurgers had a game out!"
"I played that! It was terrible!" said Bill suddenly laughing, remembering. "You had to get all the fries in the box? Talk about training the MacClownBurger employees of tomorrow!"
"Anyway, you can imagine how popular that game was. And that was the problem. Suddenly there were games everywhere and most of them were crap. Companies figured they could just make a quick buck by putting out a game. Any game. Suddenly the market share dropped - people got tired of playing crap games and within months the market bottomed out. Like everyone decided overnight not to buy games anymore. It was huge. All these massive companies went down within months. People predicted it as the end of the video game 'fad'. Well, that wasn't true - now Nintendo rules the home console market with an iron fist - but it took a few years for stores to even start carrying game consoles without assurances from the manufacturer that they would buy back all unsold stock."
Fred was definitely learning on this internship. Being paid to learn. What a concept. What a job!
"Well," volunteered Art. "Things aren't that bad now, I guess. Just?the adventure game arena has bloomed. It's like every company out there is putting them out. And they all stink." Art laughed. "Well. I guess that's not fair. But most are pretty lackluster. It makes it harder to sell our games. Actually, not all the competition's games are bad, though. Caprafilm Games' Ape Atoll and Return to Ape Atoll were pretty good. I wish I had made those. But that doesn't help us sell games either! Now this whole 3D shooting thing is going nuts?" Art threw his hands up in the air to suggest it was anybody's guess as to what was going to happen to the industry.
"I wonder...," started Bill. He always started off with this when he had an idea that he thought was a little bit controversial and Art might not like. "I wonder if we should have an action sequence in this game."
"An action sequence?" asked Art.
"You know. Something non-puzzle like. Like a race, or a shoot-em-up. Maybe do something with 3D graphics - a shoot-em-up like Heather H?terguns - but with a sex twist."
"Hmmmmmmmmmm," thought Art. "You think we need it?"
"Well, all these 3D shooters are all the rage. Maybe if we had a bit of something like that, we could compete."
"Compete?"
"Well, not compete?but snag a bit of the interest in that," Bill qualified. He could already tell Art wasn't quite going for it.
"Hmmmmm," Art responded. "The problem is our players are looking for a puzzle game. A game with a story, that involves critical, logical thinking, puzzles. Anyway, when we put that hippo-chase action sequence in Swarthy Victor 3 - well, you saw the letters we got. People find that stuff really frustrating - when you move from puzzles to quick arcade-reflex action. A lot of our players are older - adults - especially those who play Swarthy Victor. They weren't born with 8 knuckles per finger like their kids allowing them to play these super quick Blam! Blam! games."
"Yeah. I know," said Bill. "But we could always have a skip?option - allow them to skip it. Or a trial thing. If they don't get it in, say, five tries, the game automatically skips the arcade sequence?Or we could have a difficulty setting of some kind."
"Yeah. That's not a bad idea. Still, I really don't think an action bit will have much advantage to us. If our whole game was an action shooter - THEN we'd be able to capture some of the popularity surrounding action shoot-em-ups, but that wouldn't make any sense for us. A little action scene would hardly make any difference in sales because no one would know about it until they played the game. Besides, I'm not even sure we'd have the programming experience to make a game like that. I mean, we've been making puzzle games forever! We can all play Gloom, but no one here is Adam Clayburn. I don't know where we'd begin designing one that had that level of addictiveness." Art laughed. "I think we're too old!"
"Yeah," said Bill. "I still can't believe the average age of the guys at EGO. Their oldest member is, like 24. I read somewhere the average age there is 17. 17 year olds designing platinum selling games! It's crazy. And Adam Clayburn. I couldn't even type with all my fingers at 17 and here this guy single-handedly creates the most revolutionary game engine in years! It's craziness!"
Art laughed again. "I feel outdated. Even the guys over at Synapse games are all under 30. God. Everybody in the industry is so young now." There was a small pause and both Art and Bill spontaneously turned over to look at Fred the 17 year old intern who was busy rewriting some of his messier notes. Fred looked up and caught them both staring at him. "What?" he asked. "Did I miss something?"
"But the 3D game thing is not a bad idea," Art said turning back to Bill. "Maybe just a bit late in the design stage to add it in. We could do a lot of good stuff with that idea, though. We could either do a quickie 3D game release later with Victor as the main character...or we could put a bit in the next game. Could be pretty funny. Remember that for next time."
Bill smiled and wrote a reminder down on his pad. Art was right, Bill thought. Art's always right.
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