Vaporware Read Free

I snapped back, more
defensively than I wanted. This wasn’t a fight I could win, particularly not in
front of witnesses. Yelling was just going to help me lose it that much sooner.
    “You
haven’t defined the game. You’ve rattled off the same old back-of-box bullshit
bullet points that we get on every project, that’s all.” He levered himself off
the table and started walking around it, clockwise. “Come on. Immersive story?
There are solitaire games that claim that. FPS? There’s a million FPS games out
there. 32 player multiplayer? Nice, but not unique. What we’re missing,” and by
this time, he was within a couple of feet from where I stood, with only the
still-visible projector beam between us, “is something that blows the doors off
from minute one. Something that makes them know how amazing this game is, and
why they have to publish. Something that says Blue Lightning, and not ‘FPS with
interesting feature set.’”
    I
tried not to glare at him. “Eric, you know these guys. If we don’t come out and
say it, they may miss the fact that it’s an FPS entirely. Remember what
happened when Virtual Vineyard tried to pitch that robot janitor game?”
    Eric
rolled his eyes. It was urban legend in the game industry, the story of a small
dev team having basically shot its wad to present a pitch for a comedy
platformer starring a wacky robot janitor to one of the major French
publishers. Virtual Vineyard had pulled out all the stops, flown half their
staff to the meeting in Marseilles, had put on a four-hour-long sell session
that by all accounts had been legendary, and had been politely told thank you,
but we’re not interested.
    Later,
through back channels, the head of the studio learned that the word “janitor”
didn’t translate into French, and so none of the suits he’d been pitching to
had the faintest idea of what he’d been talking about. And of course, none of
them had, at any point during the process, bothered to mention this.
    That
was the scenario that every small development house lived in fear of, the thing
they all took wild steps to avoid, and everyone in the room knew it.
    “It
doesn’t matter,” Eric said softly. “They know it’s an FPS. They’ve been funding
it for a year now. What we need to show them is why they’ve been funding it.”
He grabbed the mouse and started clicking through slides. “Here. What’s this?”
    I
looked back. It was a screenshot, a moment captured from gameplay, showing the
lead character essentially pouring herself out of a light socket in order to
materialize inside a locked room. “It’s wrapping up the circuit movement
system. The player is jumping from inside the circuitry to the outside world
and—”
    “Exactly.”
Eric was nodding, the first hints of enthusiasm visible on his face. “Something
cool that no one else has. Now, do we have a slide in here of the circuit
movement?”
    I
nodded, my face hot and flushed with embarrassment. “We’ve got a capture of
some of the gameplay, too.”
    “So
you’re saying we move that up front in hopes of giving the suits a stiffie?”
The voice that came from the side of the room was the last one I wanted to hear
chiming in.
    “Jesus,
Michelle, we're trying to save the presentation here.” Inwardly, I
groaned.  There were very few women at the company, especially on the
production side of things, which meant that even if Michelle Steiner had been
the shy, retiring type, she would have stood out.
    “Shy
and retiring” was not how anyone had described Michelle, not now and not ever.
    Eric
looked over at me, his face an eloquent mask of “You deal with it.” I shot him
back a look that promised bloody vengeance, and then put on a grin as I turned
to face Michelle.
    She
wasn't facing me, though. Instead, she was busy sketching something on a
notepad, not looking at anyone. “What you want,” she said, “is simple. We need
to stop thinking of this as a project review and instead start