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Hi everyone, This is about a guy asked to a test a new computer game, where your only control is over a lone voice in a characters head. The tester makes the character scared enough to go to a psychiatrist, who gives him drugs which leads to GAME OVER, because he can't hear the voice any more. I see it as the first part of a novel (the tester's going to come back and try different ways of playing, and the game is going to evolve). I'd love to see what you think about the characters, believability, tone, plot, style, concept — anything! Cheers. ———————————————————————————————— My pocket vibrated. I pulled my phone out and saw a name I hadn't seen in a long time. I sat up in bed, hesitating for a moment, trying to build up enthusiasm. I hated taking unexpected calls. I swiped. “Holy poo poo, Anthony! How are you?” It was the ex-editor of PC PowerPlay, a magazine I'd freelanced for, years ago. “I'm well, and you?” “I'm good!” It was an old joke we had — he was a stickler for the Queen's English. He sounded the same as always, like an Australian Professor Frink. “How's … Canberra?” He'd been writing technical documentation for the government since he got fired. He chuckled, to show he appreciated the effort. “Listen, Ali, I've been playing this game. Play-testing it for an American company, and it's … amazing.” “What is it?” I hadn't been playing much except Bejewelled since I stopped writing. “I can't tell you much about it, I sign—” I laughed, and he broke off. Back in the day PR staff were always trying to get us to sign papers, and threatening anyone who dared to break press embargoes. But journos never kept news from each other — there was always a clear us vs. the industry mentality. I assumed he was joking. He wasn't: “The NDA is pretty heavy stuff. And I get why. Anyway, they're not looking for buzz. They just want testers.” “You testing games for a living now?” “No, of course not!” He seemed embarrassed. PC PowerPlay had been his obsession for ten years, and he'd had to reconstruct himself after he lost it. The man could make a rail gun frag on q3_dm01 seem poignant, but had the office politics skills of a thirsty pot plant. “But this is worth it. I can't say anything else, except that they're looking for more testers, and I put your name forward. If you're up for it, they'll get in touch soon…” “Wait, hang on, you mean like as a full-time thing?” “No, no, just once a week, at nights. And you don't have to do anything except play the game for a while. It's … look, just trust me on this one.” “Okay, Anthony. Sure.” I was a little weirded out by his intensity, but it had been a long while since we'd talked, and I was more used to interacting with normals these days. I wanted to steer the conversation back to easier ground. “How's Jenny?” “She's well. Look, I've got to get the kids into bed. But good to talk.” “Yeah, you too.” He hung up. I ran my hands through my hair and cracked my neck from side to side. Anthony had published my first ever piece, a round-up of barely playable Korean MMOs. He'd taught me not to use the words “really” and “very”. We both sucked at long-distance friendships. I saw dark-greem phlegm dried on the sheets next to me. I covered it up with a pillow. I'd been in bed with a cold for days. I curled up on my side, and opened Bejewelled for another game. ———————— And so on Tuesday night I was standing outside an office block at the Parliament end of Bourke St, thinking about the negative feedback review I had to give to a junior programmer tomorrow. Even thinking about being tactful was tiring. Gold-ish door frame, grimy polished floor, a sign for Dr Strauss's Dental Clinic. The buzzer slot for level four was unmarked. I pressed it. The door unlocked a second later, and I pushed through. The elevator was old, tiny, noisy, and slow. I'd add a “very” in front of each of those, but the Anthony in my head would never shut up about it. I walked out at the top, and saw a young guy with piercings tapping a track pad. I said hi. He didn't look up, so I walked over to his desk and said, “Is this DBM? I was told to come here at 6pm.” “Name," he said, without looking up. “Sorry? Oh, Alistair. But you can call me Ally.” He looked up, and I smiled. No response. The air was stuffy, and I started taking my jacket off. He glanced at my button-down shirt. He reached into a filing cabinet, pulled out a stack of papers, and handed them to me with a pen. “Sign these, then go down that hallway, second door on your right.” His eyes moved back to whatever was on his screen. I began working through the contract. It looked like fairly cookie-cutter stuff, so I initialed each page and signed at the end. I double-checked that it was July the 17th with my new friend, but got blanked again. There was some sort of short psychometric survey, basic stuff about whether I prefer to read a book by myself or go out and see friends, or whether I'm habitually punctual or late. I wizzed through without much thought. I looked up at the end, and notice the guy's wearing a Propagandhi t-shirt. It's an obscure Canadian punk band from the nineties, and I all but yelled out with joy. “Hey, Propagandhi!” He looked up with mild interest for the first time. “They were my favourite band when I was fourteen!” Only too late did I notice the patronising nature of the comment, the implict “… before I grew up.” We made eye contact, and I swear he could somehow tell that I owned a robot vacuum cleaner and a memory foam mattress. I tried to ask him what I was supposed to do now, but he wouldn't say anything. I sighed, left the papers on the desk and headed down the hall. —————————— The room contained nothing except a desk, a PC and a chair. I sat down, and tapped the keyboard. It was one of those ergonomic Microsoft ones with a split in the middle, and seeing it gave me a little start — it'd been a long time since I'd touched a keyboard not Designed in California. The screen grew bright, and then I was looking at a typical secondary school classroom. Boys in blazers sat bored in front of a teacher pointing at a poster of the periodic table. Anthony roped me in to testing an edugame? There was one boy the camera focused on. His elbows were on his wooden desk, his chin held up by his hands. I tried moving him with WASD, and then the arrow keys, but they did nothing except fill a little chat box in the lower right hand corner of the screen. When I moved the mouse, it just rotated the camera around the boy. I took a look at his face. The graphics were just okay, cutting edge for about five years ago. He looked tired. I turned the volume up so I could hear what the teacher talking was saying. Sounded like he was actually giving a lesson, not just speaking in gibberish Sim-talk. “… and that would mean Hydrogen has how many protons, Matt?” The boy in focus lifted his chin off his hands, and several boys turned to look at him. One sneered. He started making an “Uh…” sound, and the teacher looked impatient. I cleared “WASD” from the chat box, typed “1” and hit enter. The boy looked surprised for a second, and then said “… one?” “Good guess, Matt”, the teacher said, and the other boys laugh. I frowned, trying to guess what the point of this was. Was someone trying to make virtual learning more realistic by adding in bullying? I tried some other key combinations while the teacher went back to talking about atomic weights, to see what else I get my character to do. But all I managed to do was reset the camera to pointing at the back of the boy's head. So I typed “put hand up” into the chat box. Nothing happened. I couldn't see or hear any change in the game state. I tried to imagine what kind of games company would go to the trouble of recreating a realistic classroom environment and then not let you do anything except occasionally answer boring questions. I typed “stand up”, “pick up pen”, and “punch person next to you”, but nothing worked. Then I keyed in “this is a loving stupid game”. The boy lifted his head up and looked from side to side at his classmates before holding still. I panned the camera around to his face, and saw he was looking a little freaked out. “So you can hear me?” The boy swallowed. There might be a low polygon count, but the animation was pretty impressive. And how were they responding to me? They must have someone listening for my chat messages in another room and controlling the action. “Okay, so, I'm really bored. How long is left in this section? Can I fast-forward?” His eyes widened. “I want you to make the character stand up, and walk out of the classroom so we can go do something interesting.” His brow furrowed, and his mouth starts twitching. Maybe they wanted me to stay in character, to pretend I'm actually talking to the kid. “Okay, look, just put your hand up and ask to go to the bathroom. And then we'll find a quest or something.” He looked from side to side at the boys around him, opens his mouth and closes it. Then, finally, he puts up his hand. Success! The teacher stopped mid-sentence and said “Question, Matt?” “Can I go to the toilet, sir?” The teacher pursed his lips, nodded and said, “just be quick about it.” Matt stood up and walked towards the door, a little unsteady. A few of the other boys sniggered and gave each other looks. I expected to see some sort of notification that I'd moved onto a new section or gained some experience points or something, but there was still zero UI except for the MMO-style chatbox. The only other game I remembered trying that was Black and White, and at least it had menus and gestures. Matt walked down a hallway. The walls were covered with posters about ancient Egypt. He got to a bathroom door, and I typed “Wow, hold on, I don't want to see you pee. Seriously.” He stopped. “Go outside. Let's get out of here.” He went into the bathroom anyway, and splashed water on his face, again and again. He looked at himself in the mirror, squinted, dried himself with paper towels. Tried to clean the papery residue off the fluffy hair on his cheek. “Hey, I know you can hear me. Look, you're clearly as bored as I am, so let's go outside. I've got at least another forty-five minutes on this thing, so it's not like I'm going to stop bugging you until you do.” I waited. “In fact, I can even SHOUT IN ALL CAPS to annoy you.” He shook his head, exited to the hallway and walked away from the classroom. He entered some stairs, dragging his feet up a few flights. I told him to hurry up. Being outside made my screen three times as bright, and Matt and I both blinked at the onslaught of light. I told him to go out the exit. He started shuffling off somewhere, and I sighed. This is slow going. I wondered if there was going to be any feedback session, or if they were going to ask me to write up some notes at the end of the session. I was definitely going to suggest a fast-forward button, and direct control. And maybe that that they just scrap their whole weird project. A voice came through the speakers, “Young Matthew, what are you doing up here?” I panned the camera, and see a stern little man with a beard and glasses matching towards Matt. He plants himself squarely in front of Matt, and put his hands on his hips. “Uhhh…” said the boy. “I …” I quickly typed, “just needed some fresh air”. Matt finished his sentence with my suggestion. “Isn't that what lunchtime is for, young man?” said the teacher. “Tell him to go gently caress himself,” I wrote. I could see Matt blinking rapidly. “We could probably take him, anyway. He looks like Professor Flitwick.” Matt tried to hold a laugh in. Flitwick noticed, his nostrils flared, his eyes went wide. “Is something funny, Matthew?” “I just had a thought, sir.” “Well, I just had a thought, too: you need to get back to Mr Henderson's class, right now.” Matt stopped laughing. I didn't want him to give in, so I tried giving him a little pep talk. This game sure made a lot of work out of convincing your avatar to actually do things. “Just ignore him and walk away. This is dumb, you're wasting time, just tell him to go gently caress himself. Trust me, nothing bad will happen.” Matt started walking away from the teacher, whose eyebrows rose. Those animators were truly on their game. “And just where do you think you're going?” The game's camera followed the boy as he turned and walked towards what looked like the entrance of the school. The little angry teacher started after him. I could hear a low rhythmic sound coming out of the speakers, which I guessed was Matt's heartbeat sounding loud in his ears. The teacher reached Matt, and grabbed his arm. Matt spun around and said, his voice breaking, “Go stuff yourself!” There were tears in his eyes. He started running towards the exit, and the teacher just stood there shaking his head. There was lots took look at outside the gates — big old mansions, beautiful trees with school-sounding birds in them. It felt like that bit in Oblivion when you emerge from the starting dungeon into the world outside, and realise that you're now completely free to explore. But the boy was still sobbing a little. I said, “Hey, good work back there. That place was incredibly boring. And it's going to be fine!” Matt stuck his hands over his ears and shut his eyes tight. “Shut up! Just shut up! You're not helping!” “Come on, it's really not a big deal. Just put it down to someone bullying you, you'll get away with it.” I realised what I was doing – pretending to talk to a teenage boy, but actually talking with a company rep sitting at a terminal somewhere. But I knew it wouldn't go anywhere if I tried to address the “actor” directly again. The camera started moving again, and I watched Matt walk towards a train station. I asked, “So where are we going now? Is there a city nearby? Do you have money? What are we currently carrying?” But he just boarded the train and sat down with his head in his hands, and nothing I could say would get a reaction. ————— I couldn't believe they made me watch his commute in real time. I was seriously considering walking out of there or asking the guy on reception to fast-forward it. But I knew that of all people Anthony had the same weird taste in games that I do, the same impatience for mediocre bullshit. So I stuck it out, sat back in my chair and checked out the other passengers on the train. How many environments have they already rendered up? So far we've had the classroom, the school, the way to the train station, and now the train. With a bunch of different character models and voices. Someone had either invested a poo poo, tonne of money into creating assets for this, or had come up with nifty procedural generation algorithms. My guess was that it was a mix of both. Luckily Matt's house was right next to the train station. He walked in, and a woman's voice called out straight away, worriedly, “Matt? Matt, is that you?” When he made affirmative noises, she asked “What on earth happened? I just had a call from Mrs. Planchett. Is it true that you swore at a teacher?” She was still walking down from the kitchen towards the front door, and when she got there and saw how much the boy had been crying she gasped. “Oh, my poor baby, come here!” She wrapped him up in a big hug, and he started sobbing again. “Shh, shh, it's alright now, it's alright now,” and she started rubbing his back slowly. After a while he explained to her about hearing a voice in his head that was trying to make him leave school, and how it had told him to be rude to Mr Rogers, and he didn't know what was going on, and, and… etc. The whole time I was typing “Hey, don't do that, you're going to make them think you're crazy. Cut it out!” But he wouldn't listen. Then the phone call to a doctor, the referral to a psychiatrist, the long, slow drive to her offices. All the while he was ignoring me, and his mum was looking worried and scared. I checked my phone. I only had fifteen minutes left before the testing session was over. I wanted to see where this was going. I had genuinely thought it was an educationl game, but now it looked like some sort of adventure title, but an artsy one making a comment on the nature of control and free-will and all that jazz. Cool, but I'm so sick of these one-shot art pieces which just have a single point to make and hit you on the head with it. After a while the boy was let in to see the doctor. Is this the only path you're supposed to go down? Is that why they were able to render the intermediate scenes with so much detail, because they knew which way you were going? Is it inevitable that trying to talk to the boy makes people think he's crazy? How are you even supposed to win? The psychiatrist introduced herself as Doctor Arbeitman, and asked some simple questions, apparently trying to make Matt comfortable. Maybe the aim of the game was to get control of the character? If so, I didn't want him talking to a shrink, who was bound to tell him not to listen to the voices in his head. So tried: “Whatever you do, don't say that I'm still here. Tell her that the voice stopped, that it was just a once off thing, and that you're feeling better already. Say you're going to apologise to that teacher, and you're sorry for wasting her time.” His face was all balled up with grit and determination, and the doctor couldn't help but see it. She asked, “Is everything okay?” “The voice is telling me not to tell you about it.” I hit my palm to my forehead, and wrote “You idiot! You're doing it wrong! You're just going to get yourself thrown in an asylum. Just trust me on this one. DO NOT TELL HER.” The doctor nodded at Matt. “That's pretty normal, you know, Matt. I'm really glad you're being honest with me — that's the most important thing. Don't worry, this is something we deal with all the time, and just like a headache or a virus, we have medication to treat it. Do you want the voice to go away?” “Yes!” Matt looked up at the doctor hopefully. “No!” I typed. “Cut it out!” But there was nothing I could type that would stop him from telling her all about what I'd written before, and everything that had happened that day, and how much he hated it. She nodded and listening politely, and then called his mum in and wrote a prescription for some anti-psychotics. I tried threatening him and trying to argue that it was in his best interests to keep me around, but they still went to the pharmacy and got some pills and a bottle of water. On the car ride home, the screen started to fade, and blink, and lose contrast. The quality kept fading, until there was nothing left on the screen but darkness and a small GAME OVER. I looked at my phone. Right on the hour. There was a text from my girlfriend saying she'd be home late and did I mind if we just did our own things for dinner. I stood up. The game was an interesting concept, well-executed, but why had anyone spent so many resources on what was clearly a one-shot art game? And how were they expecinting to sell something that clearly needed a staff in the background monitor the player's behaviour and making the scene react appropriately? It was madness. I walked out to reception, and asked the guy if everyone gets GAME OVER when they play. He just picked up one of the empty contracts sitting and pointed, one by one, to the worlds “Non. Disclosure. Agreement.” I got the point, and moved towards the elevator. I wanted to make an empassioned defence of robot vacuum cleaners and prove that I knew more about Propagandhi than he did. I just pushed the elevator button. My game testing contract was supposed to last for a few more months, but I honestly had no idea what else they expected me to do. Would I be testing a different game? Or would they have a different level? It was bizarre. But it was nice to be thinking about games again. To be thinking something other than office politics for a while. I knew I'd come back next week, despite the jerk on reception, despite the lack of a fast forward button. I had to see what came next.
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Jul 21, 2014 12:57
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| # ? May 14, 2024 21:14 |
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