by Nick Cole
Fishmael turned back toward the beach. His vintage Super Cub floatplane rested alongside a rickety wooden dock. As the developer, Fish could give himself any of the in-game assets and treasures. But he’d played the game as an anonymous player, going on missions, crafting and looting supplies to purchase equipment from the in-game store, and getting in fierce gun battles to keep his stuff. He’d built the tree house by harvesting vines and bamboo from the jungle, and he’d even gone on a quest and raised a sunken boat to strip it of materials like teak to floor it with. In Island Pirates you could do anything to make your island into your own pirate kingdom.
He checked to make sure his character had all his equipment. Guns, compass, shovel, and two health-restoring Hotshots. Then he walked out to the dock as he equipped Fishmael with his straw pirate hat.
He hotkeyed his dog whistle, and his pet, a Portuguese water dog that no one else in the game could ever get—they could have other pets, but the water dog was his because it was a rare unique game item—came bounding through the surf along the beach.
In real life, Fish had always wanted a Portuguese water dog.
“Time to fly around and see how things are going for everyone,” he said to no one else in the empty design suite.
He climbed inside the Super Cub and fired up the electrical system, then cranked the engine. In-suite, peripherals deployed across the Moon Desk. A flight control yoke beneath the keyboard. Rudder pedals from the floor. A small throttle from a flat surface in front of the SurroundMonster monitor. Fish watched all the vintage gauges on screen. Especially the magnetos. He’d bought a typical in-game plane from the Island Pirates store using a microtransaction from his private Make account. Just to test the process. He’d even had to learn to fly the Super Cub using open source flight training programs. Everything had to be real.
The old, worn-out yellow Super Cub was not state of the art; it was prone to mechanical failure. Everything was salvage in Island Pirates. Nothing was new. It was a tropical worldsim of modern-day piracy and treasure hunting. Distressed salvage was part of the appeal of the game; making stuff from scratch or finding something on your own was how you got ahead. It was the opposite of modern life. Of the everything’s-brand-new-and-get-stuff-from-Big-Government way of thinking that had become the standard of modern culture. Here in the game, you either acquired by hook or by crook, or you went without. Whatever it was, it had to be earned.
The Portuguese water dog, Jackson, sat beside him in the cockpit of the tiny plane. Occasionally it would “woof” at something. It was running a beta open source low-level pet A.I., so who knew what it would do from one moment to the next.
Again, that was part of the fun.
The Super Cub lifted off from the sparkling little bay and climbed out over the light blue water. Water that seemed almost transparent. Below, in the white sand shallows, Fish could see swimming tiger sharks weaving this way and that as they made their way in one direction. They were yellow and black. Fish thought it made them look more sinister.
He headed for the fog bank that lay around his private island and quick-traveled to a small island chain he’d named the San Diablos. He’d seen a lot of players messing around over there, and he wanted to watch them play and see what happened.
He told himself he’d just kick back and watch for a while. Not get involved in anything.
***
Over open sea at three thousand feet and approaching the outer edge of the coral reefs and sandbars that protected the easternmost islands of the lush San Diablos, Fish turned on the plane’s radio and dialed in the local island chat channels. Someone was broadcasting an all-luau ska station from a misty ridgetop farther up the chain. She was calling herself ThreeDog’s Lady, and every so often she’d give status reports on other players. She was even running commercials on crafted goods that could be exported to the Make from Island Pirates.
“The kids at Agua Caliente Lagoon want everyone to know that the casino is now open and the cheating has been dealt with,” she said in a raspy growl above a tinny static washing through the transmission. “On a side note, they’re offering a bounty on BubbleWrap1999’s hideout, and a finder’s fee for any of the four thousand MakeCoins recovered, plus unlimited use of the casino’s lines of credit in the future.”
And…
“ToeCutta’s crew says they’re coming for DirtySteve tonight!”
And…
“The New Arkham Mining Company will pay top dollar for any gems recovered from active volcanos along the San Diablos. See SailorJim in Porto Tortuga.”
And…
“Listen up, children, pirate gunboats took out the Sea Cow last night off the tip of Mermaid’s Castle. Player SandyGunfighter says they were using torpedoes and not interested in cargo or MakeCoins at all. Who knows why, children. ThreeDog’s Lady does not. But she knows this: only fools rush in where wise men fear to tread. Now, here’s ‘Blue Hawaii’ by the SkateRonin out of Dusseldorf.”
Below, Fish could see a junk cutter tacking into a channel through the outer reef and out into the big deep blue ocean beyond. Someone probably doing a trading run up to the Make Portal at Porto Tortuga, the only place goods and players could transit back into the Make itself without logging out and then logging back in. That would all change once the game went live. He panned his POV south and scanned the island chain, watching the big rock formation that was Mermaid’s Castle. He didn’t see any pirate gunboats. He wondered who those players with the gunboats were and resisted checking the log files to find out. For just a little while more, he wanted to know what it was like to feel uncertain in his game. To just be another player trying to make your way. Maybe, for some, even make a little coin you could use to improve your real life. Banking everything on skill and hoping to acquire a bit more by gaining as much from the game’s environment as you could
“Yo!” came a voice out of the radio’s chatter-crackle ether. Fish heard it loud and clear in his suite, but it still had that tinny distortion of a transistor radio running on baling wire and bubblegum. “Any players out there able to lend a helping hand? I’m in (crackle crackle) trouble.”
Fish keyed his mic. Let’s see what this is like, he thought. Getting involved. No one knew his avatar was actually the developer, so he could play around a bit and see where it led. “Go ahead, this is Fishmael.”
“Need a little help…”
Fish could hear gunfire in the background. Automatic gunfire. He knew it was the sound in-game AK-47s made; he’d personally overseen the sound design. He had wanted it to feel abrasive and dirty all at once as it came out of someone’s speakers or erupted in their headphones. The sound file still needed work, but the resources team at WonderSoft had promised a full sound redesign. One of the suits had quick-checked the available inventory and bragged that WonderSoft had over one hundred different AK-47 sound designs, seventy of which contained the “dirty” tag.
“What’s your problem?” Fish wanted to add the player’s gamertag but he had no idea what it was. Was that good? Did that make it more real? Or would players need that to work together? He filed that away for a bug-busting session later.
“I’m over at Pete’s Cove,” replied the player. “I need extraction.” Then more gunfire. This time a pistol at close quarters. Probably a .45.
This was one of the delicacies that came out of a game like Island Pirates. Why, thought Fish, was this guy in trouble? And by helping him, would I, if I were a regular player, make new enemies? He weighed the options as though he were real player and then went with helping out—under the heading of “playtesting,” or so he whispered to himself inside the plush climate-controlled suite. He felt comfortably cool but could not detect any direct AC flow.
“Sure, I’ll help out if I can,” Fish said after keying the mike. “Where’re ya at exactly? I don’t know how much help I’ll be… but I am flying around in a floatplane.”
&n
bsp; Fish turned toward the southwest. Pete’s Cove was a small hilltop island out on the western side of the chain. Two weeks ago, some beta players from the Middle East had been setting up over there and exploring the local area. Fish hadn’t liked their gamertags—stuff verging on radical without being directly there. The last thing he wanted was his game becoming a social media platform for violent extremism.
“I can be at the cove in five minutes. If you can put her down in the bay and taxi in toward the beach, I’d be real grateful,” replied the player on the other end of the transmission.
If I were a real player I’d ask for money, thought Fish. “How much?”
Jackson woofed randomly at some seabirds circling above a small volcanic island they were passing over. Thin black smoke curled out of the picturesque caldera. The game could detonate volcanos; Fish had set up a completely unhackable algorithm that ensured total randomness where that was concerned. He felt that when an explosion did happen, when one of the many island volcanoes finally went Kracka-Boooom, it would take the game to a whole new level of player-made storytelling.
Maybe today’s the today, he thought, and laughed at the irony of a developer getting caught in his own randomly generated explosion.
“I really haven’t got much on me right now, but in a week or so… I can transfer twenty-five MakeCoins?”
Of course Fish was gonna do it. Just to playtest. But a real player… might not.
He listened to the drone of the Super Cub’s engine. The plane bounced around as it hit some in-game turbulence and he descended down through wispy clouds. He spotted the tiny crescent island of Pete’s Cove far below. A lot of people didn’t know—no one in fact knew—that Fish had put a sunken pirate ship in the waters off of Pete’s Cove. He’d even tagged it as a Treasure Chest location. Treasure Chests were going to be extremely difficult to obtain, but they would hold big prizes once the game launched. WonderSoft was already negotiating with the government to hand out unemployment credits and benefits—which was what most players really wanted, according to a research poll. Fish thought instead they should get some cool corporate prizes like big-screen TVs and tropical vacations.
“I’m there in five…” he said, waiting for the player to hand over his gamertag.
“Awesomesauce. Yeah, thanks man, I’m MagnumPIrate. What’s your tag again? Cruddy game designer hasn’t figured out a way for us to tell who’s who unless we’re in visual. Kinda makes long-range chat real hard.”
Fish shook his head at cruddy game designers.
“My tag is Fishmael,” said Fish. “The guy’s probably spending all his money on supermodels and speedboats. Crack, too, I bet. .”
MagnumPIrate laughed over the tinny radio voice chat. The gunfire had disappeared for a moment. “Must be the life.”
Approaching Pete’s Cove, Fish could see that someone had started a mining operation near the summit of the tiny island’s twin volcanos. A small sandy road carved its way down one hill, disappearing in and out of lush, digitally rendered tropical junglescape.
He came in high with the sun at the back of the Super Cub’s round yellow tail, trying to spot the action, and thinking maybe MagnumPIrate might already be dead and off to the player reboot screen, starting all over with the basic loadout of khaki shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and a rusty fishing knife.
Then Fish lost sight of the mining operation as he descended below hill level and raced toward the far side of the island, banking to come around once more. He spotted a beat-up black Humvee careening down the backside of the island, along the tiny road. In pursuit were two other Humvees and a bunch of junky dirt bikes being ridden by actual players.
Within visual, he could read their gamertags as the Piper Cub streaked overhead.
SonOftheCaliphate
SexyHeadChoppa
BloodyCrescentBrutha
So on and so forth. Nothing but another bunch of third-world extremists bringing their hate-garbage into a new game. After what happened in LA, game developers and admin were required to file a suspicious gamers report with the Homeland Department of Online Gaming.
The beat-up Humvee being pursued was driven by the player tagged as MagnumPIrate. As it disappeared back into the jungle, Fish banked the aging Super Cub and began to climb up over the island and out to sea.
One more pass, he told himself.
“Got some interesting friends there, MagnumPIrate,” said Fish over the chat.
MagnumPIrate’s voice came back. Fish could hear the rattle of the beat-up Hummer in the background, and he knew it was a basic model that hadn’t yet been souped up with any of the “Hot Rod” perks from the vehicle customization store.
“Wouldn’t exactly call them friends right now,” MagnumPIrate replied. “Is that you in the plane up there?”
“Yeah. Putting her down in the bay right now.”
“Okay,” replied MagnumPIrate a moment later. “About that. They’ve got—”
Tracer rounds reached up and smacked the Super Cub. On his heads-up display, Fish saw the aircraft’s integrity flutter down to seventy-five percent. A small superimposed schematic of the plane in the left-hand corner of the SurroundMonster monitor showed engine and horizontal stabilizer damage. On screen, black smoke piled out from under the engine cowling in front of Fish’s face.
Jackson woofed twice as though asking a question.
“I got it,” muttered Fish.
The airplane tried to fall off to the left. Fish kicked in the opposite rudder to avoid a stall, pushed the nose over, and headed toward the sparkling bay a few hundred feet below. That’s when he saw the tramp freighter.
“They’ve got a patrol boat with an old AA gun on the back,” said MagnumPIrate over the chat.
“Really?” replied Fish sarcastically.
On screen the plane began to shake. Integrity was dropping rapidly. The peripheral controls in the suite began to vibrate in Fish’s hands. He knew if he didn’t get his plane down pretty quickly, it’d fall apart in the sky.
The patrol boat, a ramshackle rustbucket tramp freighter complete with smokestack and patchwork bamboo armor along the sides, came around the point of the tiny crescent island. It wasn’t firing anymore.
They think they’ve knocked me down, thought Fish as he fought with the control yoke, feeling himself slip from rock star developer to resolute gamer. Angry that someone was beating him at his own game. Angry in the same moment that someone was trying to take his hard-won stuff. He vowed not to design-hack this and cheat his way out. Right now he was just a player, and he was going to find a way out as a player.
The deep blue water of the outer bay rushed up at Fish through the cockpit windshield between black snakes of smoke escaping in spurts from the engine in front of him.
At least we’re not leaking oil, thought Fish. If that happens… we’re cooked. He’d know if he saw oil spray up against the windshield. That would mean the engine had taken catastrophic damage. There was also the Whoops subroutine, which affected every piece of equipment in the game. There was a percentage chance that any item might just randomly break at any time, especially if the conditions were right.
Damage and excessive speed were those conditions for aircraft.
A moment later, Fish lowered the flaps and flared for landing. The floatplane splashed down into the deep waters of the outer bay and crossed over into the translucent sandy seafoam green shallows of the inner bay. Ahead, he could see the wide shoreline and the remains of a beached speedboat. Thin curls of black smoke spiraled away from its wreckage. Fish tried to place what type of boat it had been, but it was too wrecked to determine.
He taxied the tiny yellow seaplane in toward the beach. Gentle wavelets made long slow rolls toward the slope of the pristine shore.
The battered black Hummer leapt from within the jungle and crashed out onto the white sand farther down the beach. Thr
ee motorcycles were in close pursuit.
“Don’t beach the plane!” yelled MagnumPIrate over the chat. “Turn it around and get ready to scoot!”
Fish panned his POV to look out the rear of the plane. The gunboat was just rounding the rocky point at the tip of the bay.
“If the engine explodes on takeoff…” he muttered, dropping a repair package from his inventory over the plane’s schematic. Some of the damage, but not all, was immediately repaired. Fish shifted in his comfortable chair and rolled his shoulders. He blinked twice and refocused on the monitor.
Jackson woofed.
Fish kicked the rudder, gunned the engine, and swung the floatplane around to point back out toward open water. Off to his left, he saw the Hummer crash into the surf and disappear beneath the waves. A moment later, he watched MagnumPIrate’s avatar swimming through the sparkling water out toward the plane. Jackson gave another woof woof.
Less than thirty seconds later, MagnumPIrate was in the plane and the gunboat was blocking their exit from the bay.
“Go, go now!” shouted MagnumPIrate over the chat. He was wearing jungle tiger stripe fatigues. His avatar had curly hair and a mustache. He was holding a silver-plated .45.
Bullets whipped past the plane and splashed into the waves, creating sudden small water plumes. The players with the AK-47s back on the beach were firing at them. Fish knew the looming gunboat ahead of them couldn’t fire the AA gun mounted on the aft deck of the vessel until they were airborne and within its skyward firing arc… and then it was duck season.
“This might be a real short trip.”
Fish gunned the throttle to full and the floatplane surged slowly forward. He watched the forward canopy for the sudden eruption of black oil spray jetting up across his vision. There was a possibility the game could make that happen right now. After all, everything in Island Pirates was junk, prone to going sideways at any moment. The only thing you could rely on was yourself.
