Vaporware

Vaporware

By

Richard Dansky

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright
©2013 by Richard Dansky

All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping
or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission
of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews.

This
is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations,
and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously.

JournalStone
books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

JournalStone

www.journalstone.com

www.journal-store.com

The
views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby
disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN:                    
978-1-936564-77-4
            (sc)

ISBN:                    
978-1-936564-78-1
            (ebook)

Library
of Congress Control Number:
  2013935627

Printed
in the United States of America

JournalStone
rev. date:  May 24, 2013

Cover
Design:                     Denise Daniel

Cover
Art:                            Vincent Chong

Edited
By:                            Dr. Michael R. Collings

Endorsements

Imagine you’re sitting at a
bar, surrounded by videogame industry veterans. They’re telling war stories
about their past projects, the kind of stories you’d never see repeated in
interviews or online magazines, the kind that are insider legends. Everyone’s
laughing out of shock or horror at some of the stuff we go through to release a
game before Richard Dansky launches into his tale. That’s when everyone shuts
up, because Rich is telling a story, and when Rich starts talking, you know
it’s going to be a hell of a ride…. - Lucien Soulban, Writer,
Far Cry 3

Nobody knows the messy
collision of writing and game development better than Richard Dansky.  And
for anyone who's ever poured heart and soul into a creative project only to
watch it die, Vaporware is hauntingly, and almost uncomfortably, familiar. -
Jay Posey, Writer,
Ghost Recon Future Soldier

Dedication

To anyone who’s ever crunched,
fought feature creep, planted an Easter Egg (or dug one up), playtested,
playtested some more, killed bugs, done level reviews, checked in code after
midnight, cleaned up after someone who checked in code improperly after
midnight, watched their feature get cut or their project get killed and gone
back for more because, damnit, we’re making games - this one’s for you.

And for the loved ones -
spouses, children, parents, siblings and dear friends - who are there as we do
it. It’s for you, too.

Thank you.

Acknowledgements

This book
would not have happened without the help of an awful lot of people:

First (and
second and third and other bits) readers Leanne Taylor-Giles, Zach Bush, Erin
Hoffman, Lillian Cohen-Moore, Michael Fitch, Crystal Muhme-Fitch, Jaym Gates,
Jay Posey, Mike Lee and Olivier Henriot, for their invaluable feedback and
endless patience.

The Bastard
Sons of Mort Castle. Don’t ask.

My agent,
Robert Fleck, for finding the book a home and regularly whupping me at
Scrabble.

The late Janet
Berliner, very much a mentor and very much missed.

The fine folks
at JournalStone for taking a chance on something a little different.

The team at
Red Storm Entertainment, as talented and dedicated a group of developers as
you’ll find anywhere. Special shout-out to the Design Department and all those
who’ve been part of it over the years- someday, we will all meet at Circus
Burger again.

The folks at
Ubisoft Paris and all the studios around the world I’ve had the chance to
collaborate with.

Patricia
Pizer, Noah Falstein, Kevin Perry, Brian Upton,  Alexis Nolent and the other
experienced developers who were generous enough to take me under their wings
and show me the ropes of game development when I was starting out.

The members
and leadership of the IGDA Game Writers Special Interest Group.

My family, for
encouraging me to write, even when it’s books about scary blue people crawling
out of monitors.

And most of
all, my beloved and brilliant and patient wife Melinda, without whom, this
would never have been.

Chapter 1

The
woman onscreen was blue. She was also faceless, lithe and predatory in her
stance and graceful in her movements. Her softly glowing flesh was covered,
barely, in what looked to be skintight body armor, beetle-black and iridescent.
In her hand was a lethal-looking pistol, smoke drifting from the barrel as she
gazed down upon her victim.

He
lay on the floor, limbs contorted like overcooked pasta. A big man, he’d taken
several shots to kill, as evidenced by the multiple scorch marks scattered
across the surface of his powered armor. The faceplate of his helmet had been
smashed in, revealing a dark and indistinctly bloody mess underneath. His left
hand twitched once, then released its grip on the pulse rifle he’d been
holding.

It
clattered to the polished steel floor, and, casually, the faceless woman kicked
it away. She stood there a moment, her head cocked to one side as if she were
waiting for instructions from some outside voice, and then suddenly she moved.
With serpentine grace, she swung one leg over the corpse and lowered herself
onto it. Her movements were undeniably lascivious, her intent clearly to grind
herself into the dead man’s face in a way that wouldn’t be allowed on basic
cable.

Which
is when I decided I’d had just about enough. I leaned over to the man next to
me, whose eyes were plastered on the screen, and elbowed him in the ribs.

The
wireless game controller he’d been clutching like his favorite teddy bear
dropped down into his lap, and the shock of the impact straightened him up in
his seat. “Hey! What’s going on?”

 I
pointed to the television hanging on the wall, a 72” flatscreen monstrosity
that cost more than some cars I’d owned. “What the hell are you doing, Leon?”
Onscreen, the action was frozen, the female figure caught mid-squat. A blinking
error message announced that the game had been paused and told us that we
needed to press the X Button to continue; blorp-heavy dubstep played softly in
the background.

Leon
swiveled his chair around so that he could face me, his long legs kicking
against the floor to speed the turn.  “What’s the problem, man? I was just
doing what comes natural in multiplayer. You get a kill, you hump it. End of
story.” He held his hands up in a gesture of innocence and good faith. “You’ve
got to admit, it looks good.”

“Yeah,
if you're fourteen,” I said, disgusted. “Haven’t we moved past humping
animations as a feature by now?”

He
grinned. “Only in games that suck.”

“Yeah,
yeah. Give me the controller.” I held out my hand.

Leon
shrugged and tossed it to me. “Suit yourself, man. Not my fault you're pissed
off because you're old and whipped.”

I
caught heavy plastic and hit a button, quitting out of the action. Onscreen,
the faceless female figure simply evaporated as I worked my way back up the
series of menus to the main game shell screen, a throbbing azure logo that read
Blue Lightning over a list of options. “I'm not old,” I muttered. “Just a
little more experienced than the XBox Live kiddies on daddy’s credit cards.” A
thought struck me, and I looked up. “Where the hell did that animation come
from, anyway? I never figured you for necrophilia.”

Leon
grinned, white teeth showing in a wide mouth that didn’t seem to fit on his
long, sharp face. “I stole ‘em from the bar sequence in mission four. You
remember the pole dancers you cut out of the level? The data’s still in there,
and one of the animators merged it into the main character’s set. Pretty
smooth, don’t you think?”

I
took a deep breath, opened my mouth to say something, and then thought better
of it. Instead, I took a moment to rub the bridge of my nose in the hope that
it was going to keep my brains from exploding out of my nostrils in sheer rage,
and turned back to the television. “It’s very cute,” I said, smiling in a way
that I suspected didn’t get anywhere near my eyes. “And when you get back to
your desk, I want you to disable the action and pull the animation.”

“Aww,
come on, man! It's beautiful. Hell, it's cool!” Leon was up and out of his
chair, eyes wide, smile gone. Half a foot taller than me,  he looked like they
hadn’t used quite enough material to make him and nobody had bothered to
correct the mistake. Shaven-headed where I was dark-haired, bony where I
carried a few extra pounds, he looked like he was auditioning for the role of
the Scarecrow in a prog-rock Wizard of Oz. Everything about him except his
mouth was vertical, from the way he held himself to the folds of his black
t-shirt, a souvenir of a Rush tour from the mid-90s that was positively
flaunting its age.

I
stepped around him, and dropped into the chair he’d just vacated. “Look, Leon,
the demo looks great. The physics rock. The particle effects are gorgeous. The
gameplay is so goddamned there that it hurts, and we’re not even at alpha yet.
Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

There
was a pause. Leon licked his lips and thought for a minute. “No.”

I
sighed. “What I’m saying is this: the game looks great. The game plays great.
The game looks and plays well enough, as a matter of fact, that marketing is
planning on leaving a copy of the alpha build with some of the bigger gaming
sites and magazines so they can play with it on their own and really try to
build buzz.”

I
paused, took a breath, and turned to point at the screen. “And what sort of
buzz do you think we’d get the second someone took our game, a game with a
strong female lead character, and made her hump a dead guy?”

Leon
looked down at the floor. “It’s not like we’d give them the cheat code.”

I
shook my head. “If it’s in there, they’ll find it. They found Hot Coffee in
GTA, remember? And the last thing we need is for Blue Lightning to be known as
the game where the hot blue chick dry-humps dead robots.”

“But...but
it looks awesome,” he said weakly, even as the screen cycled into attract mode,
a short movie showing the best carnage the game had to offer in an endless
forty-five second loop.

“Come
on, Leon, I’m not pissed. I’m just trying to look out for the game.”

Leon
blinked, and then nodded. “I know, man. I just thought it was cool, a little
awesome for the multiplayer kids.”

I
grinned, to show him there were no hard feelings. “The kids are ungrateful
bastards, and you know that as well as I do. But do me a favor and tell the
rest of the guys in Engineering that it looks freaking brilliant?”

Nodding,
Leon headed for the door. He reached it, leaned on the handle, and looked back
at me. “Hey, Ryan?”

“Yo?”
I didn’t look back. I was too busy retracing the sequence of button presses
that got me out of the game and up to the main menu. Too many, I decided. It
needed to be trimmed down by at least two.

“I
know there was a design reason for it, but I still don't get it. Why doesn’t
the lead character have a face?”

“Officially,
it’s to keep the air of mystery around her. Once you put a face on her, she’s
just like every other game character, and all the fanboys will be arguing over
how hot she is and which celebrity we supposedly ripped off to make her.”

Leon
shook his head. “I know that. But we’re not saving anything on facial
animations, ‘cause we need those systems for the NPCs, and I have to tell you,
it’s kind of creepy. So what’s the real deal?”

I
turned, frowning. It was one of the more controversial decisions I'd made on
the game, and not everyone was on board with it, even inside the studio. “The
real deal, and it doesn’t go any further than this room, is that the publisher
wants us to explore a custom facial construction system so players will be able
to make their own face for the character, or scan in a picture from somewhere
else, and really put ‘their’ face on the game.”

Sputtering
ensued, at least until Leon could get himself back under control. “That’s
stupid. There’s already plenty of games that let you do face customization, and
trying to add one in at this point in production is just going to make a huge
freaking mess. You’ve gotta tell them no, Ryan. There’s no way we can do it,
not with the time we’ve got left, and not have it look like ass.”

“Plus,
there’s always the possibility that fourteen year old boys will take pictures
of their balls and use them for the facial image, which would cause all sorts
of trouble.” I made what I hoped was a calming gesture. “Don’t worry, I’m with
you on this. I’m not going to risk slipping on our ship date, or let anyone put
a picture of their ass on our baby.” I looked back at the screen for a minute,
then up at where Leon stood, expectant. “Besides. I kind of like her this way.
I like her this way a lot.”

“Uh-huh.
Do yourself a favor and don’t tell Sarah that.”

I
shook my head to the negative. “Yeah, because the girlfriend so loves hearing
about what I do all day.”

“Then
may that be your salvation, bro.” Leon’s tone was non-committal. “So you want
me to take out those animations. Anything else?”

I
thought about it. “Naah. Run the build past Eric, but I think we’ve got
something we can send to HQ for pre-alpha milestone approval. It looks good,
man. It really looks good.”

Leon
grimaced. “I hope BlackStone feels the same way.”

“They’re
a publisher. They like making money. This game will make a shit-ton of money.
Ergo, they’re going to love it.” I stood up, leaving the controller on the
chair as the attract mode started again. On-screen, the main character poured
herself out of a wall socket behind an unsuspecting guard before liquefying him
with a lethal combination of firepower and kung fu. “New play mechanic, great
graphics, and a strong lead character they can build a franchise on when they
take the IP away from us down the road. If they market it at all, our baby is
going to be a hit. A huge hit.”

“Yeah,”
Leon said, looking less certain. “If.” He shuffled out, the door slamming shut
behind him, and then I was alone in the room with the game.

I
watched the door for a moment, to make sure Leon wasn't coming back with any
more questions. A ten count, and then another ten left me sure enough, and I
settled back in with the game. The attract sequence cycled through another time
as I watched it, mentally ticking off features to make sure we were showing off
the best of each one. Moving reflective surfaces to make characters literally
gleam? Check. Advanced ragdoll physics to let bodies flail and twist as they
flew through the air? Check. Destructible terrain and objects to let the player
take apart the world brick by brick if necessary? Check. Independent muscular
system animations, designed to make our models look like they were uniquely
alive? Check. All present and accounted for. It looked good, it looked cool,
and once we posted the attract mode loop online, it would get gamers salivating
over the possibility of playing.

At
least, that was the hope. But the attract mode was just chrome, a dog-and-pony
show designed to encourage people to get their hands on it. The real proof was
going to be in the game, as it always was, and that meant putting it through
its paces without any of Leon's juvenile bullshit.

“Let’s
see what you’ve really got,” I said to the screen as a new session lurched into
its still-too-long loading process. “Let’s see what kind of surprises you have
for the guy who dreamed you up in the first place.”

The
loading bar reached the far side of the screen, blinked once, and vanished. In
its place, the words “Press Start” throbbed, bright blue and white against the
black background. I pressed the Start button. Somewhere in the virtual
distance, alarms started going off. I caught myself grinning wickedly, and then
the killing began.

*  
*   *

“Blue
Lightning,” I said, standing at the front of the room, “is a first-person
shooter for the next generation of consoles, with unique gameplay, a compelling
story, and up to 32 player online multiplayer.” I waved at the screen on the
wall behind me, onto which had been projected an image of the game’s central
character standing in an aggressive yet faintly suggestive pose against a
gunmetal grey backdrop. In the corner of the screen was the game’s logo, a
jagged affair that was mostly readable and instantly distinctive.

I
paused for a moment, looking around the room to make sure that what I'd said
had been given enough time sink in. There were six people in there besides me,
all seated in various degrees of slouch in the black leather chairs around the
room’s central conference table. On the walls were posters and mounted blowups
of magazine covers and articles, reminders of games that we'd made in the past.
Normally they were bright and cheerful, a constant reinforcement of the quality
of games that the studio made. In the dim, low light that the presentation
required, however, they looked murky and a little old.

Down
the long wall on the right hand side was a whiteboard, scribbled over in mostly
orange and brown. One column held dates; another risks, a third names. Green
lines were drawn back and forth from one list to another, establishing which
names (hopefully) would be able to fix which problems (ideally) by which date
in the development process. At the bottom was a single phrase, written and
circled in red: “SUBMISSION SEPT. 1.” It wasn't hard to notice that everyone in
the room kept sneaking glances at it. That, after all, was the important
information — dates and deadlines. I was just telling them what they already
knew.