Chapter 1: The very beginning. Part 1/2
Why did this happen to me? Many people have tendency to ask such questions. And overwhelming majority never would have received a response. I was different. I got a response. Although one that I absolutely cannot accept.
To understand the situation, we must first, go back few years in time. I have just finished high school. And without false modesty my scores were great. So much that I even were given offer of a very high scholarship. My parents understandably were ecstatic. Of course that ecstasy only lasted until I rejected it. Afterwards not so much. That night was tough, to say the least. Argument with my parents escalated to the point that concerned neighbors called police on us. Well I say concerned now, though that was not adjective I used to address them back then. But I digress. The point is that after burning almost all bridges possible, I slammed the door on my furious father and left home.
From there I went to work for a friend. The guy didn't have much problems in life. He was the very definition of a young master with a filthy rich background. So when he decided to stop pursuing any higher education and instead open his own game development company, he received enough support to immediately skip tedious process of creating it from zero, instead receiving almost complete team ready to put his vision into a reality. And in some strange turn of events I became this team's leader.
Yup. My first real job ever and immediately I was the second most important person in this huge company, right after someone who might even be even more inexperienced than myself. As you can imagine it wasn't easy. In the short period afterwards I picked drinking, fired thirty percent of the staff, arguably veterans of the field, who refused to cooperate, and replaced them with people similar to us. With zero experience, yet with ton of talent and vision. Again, modesty is unnecessary.
After this somewhat shaky start, we finally started our real work. And we refused to start small. We picked old, yet classic single player RPG game, bought it's license, and then fueled by enormous funding and even bigger ego publicly vowed to make it into greatest MMO of all times.
As a testament to our inexperience, we didn't try to limit our creativity in any way. In the same time as hundreds people followed our chaotic directives, for the sake of expanding already massive worldbuilding and hype, we contracted a bunch of people in other fields. Novels, remake of original game, animated series. We built franchise around the game we were making, and which majority of observing experts dubbed impossible to finish. And based on constant overstepping of budget and changing estimated release time they seemed to be right.
Yet, six years after we started working on it - we did it. Maybe with two years of delay, and with numerous problems, but we did it. 'Secrets of the Origin' was shown to the world. It went viral. And we kept our word. There were experts who seemed to not have any better activity than picking faults with it, but still they had no choice but admit that it is simply a masterpiece.
And we weren't done. All of the next updates only cemented this view and position of the game in hearts of the gaming community.
But of course everything had to meet it's end. Eight years after the release I couldn't go any longer. I was one bottle from going into rehab, carried half of the pharmacy in my backpack, and when I heard game's opening song I was getting physically sick. So with a huge grin on my face which barely masked my overwhelming grief after leaving the team, I sold my share of the company and in good atmosphere, with good wishes both from community and colleagues left. Of course only after politely telling dozens of headhunters who were trying to destroy my newfound freedom to go fuck themselves. But it was only a minor matter.
The major matter was that after I left, a bunch of core members of the team followed my example. And people who came to replace us were getting into even more conflicts than I did at the beginning of my career. After all who publicly declares that they are the best and that their game would be better than anything ever produced before? Only morons could do that. My case doesn't count since I had absolute confidence in myself.
And as one might imagine the final product was a total crap. When the final update spearheaded by the new team came out, all hell broke loose. The game was full of bugs, plot was confusing and in direct conflict with everything that we did before, worldbuilding that until now was pride and joy of the game now was only skimmed through and worst of all: main protagonist of the original game - at this point practically an icon, and all time favorite, possessing numerous independent works only about himself - sacrifices himself in the opening animation without any prior foreshadowing at all. It was supposed to be a symbol of the end of the old era, and beginning of the new one, yet instead community made it into a symbol of the end of the franchise. Developers promised that it's not a case, and it will continue to work on reaching even greater heights than ever before - under yet another new team. But luckily it had nothing to do with me. I long since have left the country and started to pursue my long cherished dream of travelling the world.
Few days after this statement came out, this happened. One chilly morning I was walking out of the apartment of my new girlfriend when something impossible to explain happened. In the middle of the town, in a narrow alley no longer than two hundred meters a truck was driving down the road. At 211 km/h. I don't even know how I have information about it's speed. It just strangely popped into my head at the moment the track was passing through the place I originally stood. And even if I was already a little more than wet stain on the wall, somehow I still managed to perceive how immediately after, the truck mysteriously slowed down to normal speed without caring about the laws of physics at all and turned the corner as if nothing had happened.
And all that brings us to the current moment. Me sitting at an old garden chair with a stupefied expression on my face, staring across the table at a bratty little girl who pointed her small finger at me with a clear accusation steaming out of her entire being.
Yes. A moment ago that she declared that she's a supreme goddess, and it is my fault that her favorite game 'Secrets of the Origin' has gone to shit.
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