by Jay Howard
~~~
The bar was busy but Harry and Dave were just grabbing a newly vacated table when they arrived. Jack pushed her towards them and signalled over that he’d get a round in.
“Hello, Harry, Dave,” she nodded to each of them and sat down. “I haven’t seen you for ages. How did the exams go?”
Dave wrinkled his nose. “OK, I suppose. They’re over, anyway, so now we just wait and see.”
“Mrs B,” Harry said, kissing the back of her hand before sitting down, “I still salivate when I think about that beef stew and if I hear you’re making another paella I’ll be there before you can turn round.”
Martha smiled at such enthusiasm. “You know you’re both welcome, any time.” She draped her shawl over the chair back then searched their faces for clues. “So, what’s all the excitement about?”
Jack returned with a tray and four drinks so there was another delay while they all got settled. Martha found she was starting to get excited too, just from the vibes coming off the three close friends. They’d been inseparable since first meeting at the local university for their computing course. Harry and Dave were far from home and had appreciated the home comforts that Martha offered, whilst Jack had made full use of their student accommodation as crash pads, away from his mother. She understood his need for a private life and was happy with the situation, provided he let her know he wouldn’t be home.
“Mum, you are looking at three geniuses,” Jack said with a huge grin, then a mock-puzzled face. “Geniuses? Genii? What’s the correct plural of genius?”
“We are!” They chorused and clinked glasses before taking large swallows from their pint glasses.
“So what,” Martha said, “is Argot?” Jack opened his mouth but his mother held up a hand, knowing him too well. “Apart from group slang,” she said sternly.
“It is the most incredible game that will keep players hooked for years!” Harry said.
“And we developed it!” Dave chimed in, punching the air and displaying a gaping hole in the armpit of his Lamb of God tee.
“OK,” she said. “Is it anything to do with slang?”
“Well, yes and no, Mrs B,” Harry said. “There’s the double strand - the adventure and quest side, Jason and the Argonauts kind of thing, but for those in the know there is the added power that comes from realising there’s a secret argot, sort of a Masonic inner circle you can only enter if you learn it.”
“Right, so what’s the game all about?”
“Well, you know I’ve been a gamer ever since I could hold a joystick,” Jack said, “and I’ve tried just about all of them at some time or another.” He nodded to his friends. “Harry and Dave are much the same. We’ve played the shoot ’em ups, and city building, and racing, and world domination… You name it, we’ve tried it. Nothing was exactly what we wanted. Nothing held our attention for that long on its own. What we’ve done is create a game that can be played on many levels of interest for years, getting more and more complex the longer you’re in it.”
He stopped to take another drink and gather his thoughts. Martha sat quietly, giving him time.
“The basics of it, at the start, are that you can define up to five avatars, and as there are five planets you can have one on each, or concentrate on building your power base on just one planet, or any combination you choose at any time. You can have a worker to earn Peta, currency, to pay for another’s actions, you can thieve, you can manipulate outcomes as a politician or leader of military forces, or spy, or form a guerrilla terror group - whatever you can imagine you can do.”
“Yeah,” Harry added, “and the sneakier, more selfish, more power-hungry and corrupt you are-”
“Like you in real life then,” Dave said. A brief grapple nearly had them off their chairs. “Aw, stop it man!” Dave said, between laughter and a groan.
“- the better you’ll succeed,” Harry continued, with Dave’s head in an armlock. “The whole point is to be the puppet master of as many other players as you can. You can’t just choose to be at the top of any heap, though: you have to earn your right to get to that position of power.”
“The really addictive bit, though,” Jack told her, “is it’s a network game so you have to get inside the heads of the other regular gamers, get to know who you can form alliances with, who will stab you in the back the first chance they get. And you can interface with the real world, exchanging real life items, even cash, for Peta another player has earned.”
Harry interrupted. “This is going to make us millionaires, Mrs B! We’ll be able to retire at thirty and live a life of luxury if we want.”
“Or run a really cool company for games developers,” Dave added, his eyes sparkling.
“Or be so addicted to your own game you never come up for air,” Martha said drily. She surveyed the eager faces round the table. “I’m not a gamer -”
“That’d be the day,” Jack said.
“- so I can’t comment on the idea or the impact it might - or might not - have on the gaming world. I think you might find, though, that you’ve just completed the easy part.”
“Easy part?” Jack’s wasn’t the only incredulous reaction. “We’ve devoted over two years of hard slog writing this software! We’ve missed countless parties and hours of sleep developing it.”
“I have no doubt of that, just as I didn’t doubt I’d done the hard part when I finished my first novel and published it.”
Harry and Dave looked at each other. “We didn’t know you’re a novelist,” Dave said.
“It’s a hobby,” Martha said with a shrug of her shoulders. “My point is that, as a self-published author, I then investigated the next stage, specifically the marketing and promotion. For myself I decided that was all a terrible bore and I wouldn’t waste my precious free time doing something that didn’t interest me. You won’t have that option if you want to become millionaires from it. Now you might be lucky and have it go viral, but that relies on an initial push in the right direction from the right people. How well do you know your demographic? Is that likely to happen?”
“We have a big enough social network between us to start things off. Word will spread pretty fast on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,” Jack said. “Globally we’re looking at tens of millions.”
“Globally,” she repeated. “So how many languages are you going to release it for?” Martha asked. “If it’s not just for the UK, Australasia and America you’ll need a professional translation service; do you intend to concentrate first on China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia? Or EU countries?” She could see reality starting to kick in and took pity on them. “Look, I don’t want to piss on your firework tonight. You’ve done well to get this far and deserve to celebrate your achievement, but just take away a few thoughts from it to ponder over tomorrow.”
They nodded solemnly.
“I suggest you write this down as you may not remember - or even believe it - by tomorrow.” She gave each of them a pen and a page out of the notebook she always carried in her handbag.
“1) See a solicitor to set up a company officially and sort out how to go about internationally copyrighting your game.
“2) Define how many gamers will be in the user testing group and how you will recruit them, remembering to factor into the testing all the various devices players will want to run it on.
“3) Decide on translation issues.”
“Slow down, Mum,” Jack complained, glancing round to see if he was the only one struggling to keep up.
She gave them a few minutes then continued, pausing when necessary.
“4) Pay for registration of a company domain name.
“5) Find a really good web designer as you’ll need something that looks exciting and provides fast and secure payments and downloads.
“6) Consult with an expert on piracy prevention.
“7) Define a timeline: you’ll want to start building the buzz a month before release date, and ideally you want to be in position for the Christmas sales mar
ket. Are you going to rely on social networking or is there a possibility of getting a mention on TV shows like that BBC one - what is it? Click? And maybe radio interviews, magazine articles, that kind of thing.
“8) Decide if it will be purely online sales from your web site or if it will need producing and distributing to physical stores and/or online stores like Amazon.
“9) Find out what company start-up assistance is being offered by the government, central and local.
“10” She paused and stood up, straightened her blouse then picked up the tray. “I’ll get us all another drink in before I tell you number ten.” She went to the bar, wondering if she was about to really drop herself in it with her number ten.
When she returned they were looking very doleful.
“You weren’t wrong when you said we’d done the easy bit,” Harry said mournfully. “How do you know all that stuff?”
“A combination of work and my writing,” she said. “Just because I don’t do it doesn’t mean I don’t know about it.”
“We’re dead in the water,” Dave said. “There’s no way we can fund all that.” He pushed his piece of paper away from him and his shoulders slumped.
“So much for celebrating,” Jack agreed.
Martha sat back down and distributed the drinks. “You haven’t heard number ten yet,” she reminded them and waited until she had their full attention. “If Jack reckons the game is that good, if he’s got that much faith in it, then I’ve got enough faith in him to back the three of you. I’ll finance you to the tune of £100,000 for a 10% share of the company,” she said.
Jack’s jaw just dropped. “But, Mum... We’re piss poor, have been since you lost your job. Where will you find dosh like that?”
Martha blushed. “I’m finding that I might do quite well in some aspects of your game,” she admitted. “I, er, didn’t tell BioMed they’d made a mistake when they paid me my redundancy money. With the time I’d been there and the salary I was on when I left, it should have been twelve thousand, eight hundred and fourteen pounds and fifty six pence paid into my account. Someone at some stage put the decimal point in the wrong place, though, and my account was credited with one hundred and twenty eight thousand, one hundred and forty five pounds sixty.”
As realisation dawned a big grin replaced Jack’s look of hopeless defeat. “You sly old thing, you,” he said.
“Less of the ‘old’ if you don’t mind,” she said and slapped his arm.
“Hear that, lads? My ever so honest mother has kept shtum about money she’s not entitled to. Would that count as theft in a court of law, do you reckon?”
Martha’s blush deepened. “It’s not like I spent it,” she protested. “I know I lost my loyalty to the company when they decided the cheap option was more important than the people who were making them all that money, but I don’t intend stealing it. I was just earning some interest while waiting to hear from them, but I guess it’s not been noticed, what with all the upheaval of moving to Czechoslovakia.” She took a big sip of her wine. “I guess it won’t come to light until the accounts go to the auditors next April, so…” she took another gulp of wine, “umm... until then I’m willing to risk using it.”
Jack looked sober again. “And if I’m wrong? What will you do next April if I lose that money?”
She took both his hands in hers. “Jack, I trust your judgement. If you tell me this is one of those chances in life you should grab with both hands, then I believe you and the next thing we do will be to toast the new company.”
Jack straightened in his chair. Martha felt great pride in her son and could almost see the mantle of manhood settling round his shoulders. He raised his glass.
“To embee games,” he said solemnly, the question in his eyes.
Harry and Dave looked at each other and nodded. “Good name,” Dave said.
They all held their glasses together a moment, then Jack whooped loud and long, turning all heads in their direction.
“Let the party begin!”