PWNED: A Gamers Novel

by Matt Vancil

  “Are you gonna tell me how the two of you met up?”

  “Really? You want to know that?”

  “Mainly I want you to stop bitching. But yeah, sure.”

  “I made a half-court shot.”

  “No shit? You win the big game or something?”

  “Not really. Our student government—this was back in high school—they used to have a raffle at halftime during every basketball game. If they pulled your name, you got the chance to win a few 24-packs of soda.”

  “But you had to sink a half-court shot to win.”

  “Right. And so nobody’d ever made it, and the prize kept getting bigger. ‘Cause they kept adding more packs each time. It became kind of a joke. The stack got so big they had to wheel it out on a cart.”

  “And they drew your name.”

  “Yeah.” He hadn’t even planned to be there, but his grandparents insisted he go do something social instead of spending another evening at home with them. He had checked the school calendar and attended his one and only high school basketball game.

  When they’d drawn his name out of the fishbowl and called it out, jeers and laughs had rained down. The weirdo kid in the suit was going to take the shot? Hilarious!

  Reid had tried to slink away, but the cheerleaders spotted him and dragged him to midcourt. Camera phones flashed all around him. The Associated Student Body president smirked and slapped the ball into his hands.

  Reid didn’t even want to be there, and he wasn’t going to make the shot anyway. So if he was going to miss, he was going to do it in style. He turned his back to the basket, put on his sunglasses, and hurled the ball over his shoulder. Nothing but net.

  The place exploded. Reid had never been cheered before. The benches emptied. A tsunami of screaming students slammed into him and carried him (and his soda) out of the auditorium on their shoulders—smashing his head against the top of the doorframe in the process.

  When the stars faded, Reid saw the popular black-haired cheerleader who’d stopped to help him up. That was how he’d met Astrid. “We’ve been together ever since.”

  “Wow,” said Yanker. “Shit. With a meet like that, you have to be destined for each other. It’s like a fucking John Hughes movie.”

  “Yeah.” Reid left out the part where Astrid had dragged him to the party afterward. The atmosphere was nothing he’d experienced before, all noise and smoke and bodies wriggling against each other. No Lawrence Welk music here. Suddenly he was Mr. Popular—doubly so because he had donated the mixers (his soda). Astrid never left his side, and spent the party wearing his blazer and introducing him around and laughing at the goose egg on his forehead. And near the end of the party, with only stragglers still conscious, she had taken his virginity under the piano.

  Reid had come so hard he had cracked his head on the undercarriage and swore a symphony. He could still feel that amazing mix of bursting pain and brilliant bliss.

  Astrid had laughed. “I like you,” she said. “I’m gonna keep you.” And in that moment he fell.

  Yanker broke his reverie. “You still there?”

  “Yeah.” Reid tried to recall what they’d been talking about. Right. That stupid Grail sword. “So, the Godsword. What would you do with it?”

  “Wave it around,” she said, “every chance I get. And then put it on my resume. Talk about a branding masterstroke, right? That would get Boy Howdy’s attention. Maybe then I could get hired and tell them everything they need to fix about their game.”

  “I thought you… fix? Meaning there’s something wrong? You love this game.”

  “I do,” she said. “It’s the realest world I know. But it’s changing. They’re losing players to the new consoles and mobile, which, you know, is gonna happen. Trends change. But this game’s been around a decade because it offers something those can’t—these totally immersive, massive and heavily populated areas that feel… organic. Real. Right? Like you’re not playing a game.”

  “But it is a game.”

  “No, it looks like a game. What it is, is a world. It lets you make mistakes. It lets you explore the edges. You can go to the ‘Here Be Dragons’ part of the map if you want, and you’ll get your arse handed to you, but you have the option. The game’s not on rails. It’s not prompting and poking you to try this next, learn this obvious mechanic, download this new content, come back in six hours or pay us a dollar to get the next quest now. All that shit just reminds you you’re playing a game, and that games are business, and that you’re a fucking customer. Breaks the immersion. It takes you out of the game.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” she continued, “and I hate that we’re starting to see that crap. The too-easy starting zones, letting new players begin with toons at the level cap… letting you specialize in all your class’s talents—for a fee, of course—instead of having to make a decision and, you know, build relationships and tactics and learn how to survive. Stop making the content consumable, stuff you buy instead of doing. If everyone can do it, it stops being special. Like that,” she said, pointing at the dragon.

  “I get it,” said Noob. “You’re like a virtual environmentalist.”

  “Ha! I like that. I’m gonna use that in conversation.”

  Noob regarded her levelly. “What kind of work would you want to do there?” he asked. “That was a pretty intuitive analysis.”

  “Design.” Her eyes lit up. “Game design.”

  “No shit.”

  “Yeah. I’ve shipped a couple games on my own, but I could never get hired anywhere.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Hi, I’m a woman.” The ground rumbled as the dragon tromped by.

  “Well, if you’ve made games, isn’t that kinda the criteria?”

  “Should be. Mine were little ones, Kickstarter games. Stuff I could solo on the coding side and just outsource the art from campaign funds.”

  That’s incredible. “Anything I would have played?”

  “Probably not.”

  “What were they called? So I can look them up?”

  “Please don’t. I made the mistake of appearing in the pitch video. First time I’d done that. The comments… fuck. Even fucking industry blogs, it was all how fuckable I wasn’t. And how obviously my boyfriend was the designer, or how I must have totally ripped off this game that launched two weeks after my campaign because I was a fucking stupid slut who could never have designed anything like that myself.

  “So, yeah. Not going down that road again. I’m done. Got out before it could suck the joy out of playing. The Godsword—it’s a hell of a trump card, you know? ‘I got the thing you couldn’t, fuckers, so I’m a better gamer than you and suck on that!’ Maybe with something like that under my belt, it’d be easier to walk past the other shit if I ever went back, you know?”

  “Shit,” said Noob. “I really hope you find the sword.” It’s a shame we couldn’t both. There was only the one Godsword, she’d told him, and once that’s found, that’s it. Done, finito, thanks for playing.

  Yanker grinned. She pulled a baguette out of her picnic basket and took a bite. “Mmm. Tastes like mac and cheese. My dinner,” she explained.

  “I’m wearing my dinner,” said Noob. Yanker laughed. Reid knew it wasn’t real—it was one of three randomized laughs that all female ord had—but it still made him smile.

  “Don’t not eat on account of me,” she told him. “We’ve got a long night of gaming ahead of us. Order a pizza or something.”

  Reid had the not yet spoiled remains of his anniversary dinner on hand. “I’ve got some brie and Borodinsky—it’s a Russian rye, very thick.”

  “You like brie?”

  “Not particularly. But it’s the only cheese higher rent than cheddar that Astrid will eat.”

  “Shame,” said Yanker. “I like a good bucheron or neufechtel myself. Gruyere, too.”

  Noob perked up. “You like French cheese?”

  “As long as the wine’s right. But Gruyere’s Swiss, not Fre
nch.”

  “I knew that.” Did he know that? “Okay, who are you? How does someone else actually care about cheeses?”

  She shrugged. “I only learned about cheeses because I figure a bottle of wine a night on its own doesn’t end anywhere good.”

  “Whoa, really? Every night.”

  “Yes, Mom. Well, most of one, usually. The opened bottles only keep for so long, so there’s usually a few I can grab from the kitchen at the end of my shift. They’d just pour them out otherwise.”

  “So, wine and gaming?”

  “Mm hm. I was near the dregs that night I helped you out. Must have softened me up.”

  “How far along are you now?”

  “Third of a bottle left. Plenty more for dragon watching.”

  “Fair enough,” said Noob. “Yeah. So… what are your thoughts on muenster?”

  They chatted long into the night, the dragon all but forgotten.

  7

  The Fine Art of Power Leveling

  TIP: Grouping with other players is a great way to earn experience points!

  “Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Noob asked again as the spike-wheeled steamroller ran over Yanker. The criminals driving it cheered.

  “I’m good, thanks.”

  “You look like a bloody waffle.”

  “It does set damage, not percentile.” She popped back up after the steamroller had passed and shot the driver in the back of the head.

  A burst of light, and Noob leveled. The number above his head ticked over to 24. Almost a quarter of the way there.

  He’d hit twenty shortly after they’d entered the Marrowstone Underground dungeon. Not that he’d contributed much to his sudden gain in experience points. On Yanker’s orders, he stood in the back while she macheted her way through a horde of Level 20-25 attackers.

  “I just feel like I should be contributing.”

  “It’s faster if you just let me kill everything.”

  “I can stealth. I do double damage when I backstab. I can halve an elite if I catch him unawares.”

  “And when you’re 100, that’ll be key to our damage rotation.” She fired a bomb arrow into a cluster of smugglers. Eyepatches and contraband flew everywhere. Because he and Yanker were grouped, Noob got half the experience credit for her kills. “Right now? Just let me play howitzer.”

  She kicked open the door the smugglers had been guarding and strode into the final zone of the dungeon.

  In the narrative, these smugglers were the bane of Marrowstone City. The way the quest givers told it, the Cult of the Underlord was best mentioned only in furtive whispers and innuendo. Three of the NPCs Noob had spoken to had been assassinated by cultists immediately after he’d accepted their quests. They were tough, too—Yanker made him fight those one-on-one, and he’d barely survived.

  In the middle of the final room was what players had colloquially dubbed the Suicide Gong. If a toon stumbled into it, or if one of the guards got to it and rang it during combat, the garrisons of all ten of the towers surrounding the chamber would pour into the room and hack your party to bits. “Players hate this part,” Yanker had told him. “Hate hate hate it.” If the gong got rung, a total party wipe was the norm.

  Yanker drew back her bow. “Never do this, by the way,” she said, and fired a shot into the gong.

  A horde of enraged smuggler-cultists poured into the room and attacked Yanker. She exchanged her bow for her sword. They fell on her in a ruck, and Yanker switched to cuisinart mode. Limbs and blood fountained out.

  “Look, are you absolutely sure you don’t need any help?”

  “Seriously, I’m fine.” Noob couldn’t see her through the knot of mutilated smugglers.

  “Didn’t these guys kill the Chief Marshal?” That was the guy who had commanded Noob to track down and slay the cultists’ leader with four of his friends, preferably along a healer / tank / 3x dps split.

  “Yep!” Yanker leapt on top of the gong, shedding clumps of dead cultists. The surviving guards stabbed at her without effect; damage calibrated to hurt someone in their twenties lost a bit of its edge seventy-plus levels up.

  “They nearly shut down trade with the other Kingdoms of Order.” She backflipped back into the fray. “And any martial forces sent into the sewers to clean them out wound up butchered.”

  Noob kicked his heels against the crate of stolen goods he was sitting on. “Maybe I’m missing something,” he said, “but if these guys had the king quaking in his king-boots, and are, to quote the Trademaster General—this is before that assassin set him on fire with that incendiary arrow, which was pretty cool, I have to admit—”

  “Yeah, love that part,” said Yanker. “People will hang around to watch that bit.”

  “He called them, ‘the greatest threat Marrowstone faces today.’ So I guess I just supposed this would be, you know…” He indicated the trail of dead criminals stretching behind Yanker like a collapsed conga line. “Harder?”

  Yanker wiped dead smuggler off her blade. “The Marrowstone Underground is a low-mid level dungeon, meant to be run by a five-player team of toons at your level. For them, it’s a righteous challenge. For me? It’s an XP mine for a low level guildie. You’ve been looting the bodies while you complain, right?”

  Noob took in the dozens of unlooted glowing corpses. “I… uh… ”

  “Well, then get started while I kill the boss. There’s drops in here that fetch a good price at the auction house.” She lit the four incense sticks around the pentagram in the back of the room. “And stay back. This guy can be a doozy.”

  The room darkened. Tendrils of blood red smoke swirled around the pentagram. “So,” intoned a deep and mocking voice, “the fools above have discovered our little secret...”

  The winds howled together, forming a freakishly tall being of smoke and blackened bone. His name erupted in flames above his leering skull: Mort Hyrkanium.

  Yanker shot him in the face. Hyrkanium collapsed like a tower of popsicle sticks.

  Noob hit 25 in a burst of light.

  “Whoo!” yelled Yanker. “One-shot!” She did a victory dance.

  “A secret you will take to your grave!”

  “He’s still talking?” asked Noob.

  “That’s his fight dialogue,” said Yanker. “The whole thing plays no matter how long the fight takes. It can take lowbies ten minutes to kill this guy.”

  “You dare desecrate this shrine?”

  Yanker knelt by Hyrkanium’s corpse. “Hey, arrow-face! Will Death be mocked?”

  “Death will not be mocked!”

  “Is he hungry? I’ll bet he’s hungry.”

  “You shall all feed His eternal hunger… for souls! Mua ha ha ha HAAA!!!”

  “The writing’s not great in this part,” Yanker explained. “They were in a rush to hit beta, and a lot of temp dialogue got left in.”

  “You sure know a lot about the company.”

  She shrugged. “Research. I’ve read a lot about the game. Gotta know all about them if I’m going to work for them someday.”

  “NO!” yelled Hyrkanium’s voice, suddenly panicked. “It cannot be!”

  “And that would be his death dialogue catching up.”

  “I have failed you, master!” There was groaning and gurgling, and the corpse started to glow.

  “Alright, let’s see what Satan Claus brought for us.” Yanker knelt by the body. “Don’t get excited if it’s the dagger—that’s meant for casters. If it’s the boots, then you’re in—oh, now you drop the gloves? Seventy levels after I need them? Figures.” She kicked the body and closed the treasure menu. “Bastard.”

  “I’m confused,” said Noob.

  “Well, try to catch up. You’re a quarter of the way there. And—” she peered around him at the line of corpses—“you’ve got a shit-ton of looting to do.”

  Noob sighed and got to work.

  Reid watched Habermann read his progress report with the speed of someone not really reading it. He look
ed to Reid’s sleep-starved brain like a quest giver—mindless and immobile, waiting to dole out the next round of pointless tasks.

  Reid noticed Habermann was looking at him quizzically. In a panic, he realized Habermann must have been talking to him. That was definitely his waiting-for-a-reply face. “Uh…” Reid tried, “Yes.”

  Habermann nodded. “Good. After your accident, I was a bit concerned. Glad to hear next Thursday will work. Actually, let’s make it due next Wednesday. Thursday I’ll only be here until noon. That won’t be a problem?”

  Reid sighed internally and shook his head. He had managed to get through the first column of boxes, but that had taken two weeks. Either Habermann hadn’t read that part of the report, or he had chosen to ignore it.

  How far behind would he have to be for his boss to assign a couple interns to the project?

  Habermann was looking at him again. Shit. I hope he didn’t say anything important. He’s waiting for a response again. And he’s frowning. “No,” Reid guessed.

  His boss grinned. “Fantastic. That’s what I wanted to hear. The interns are busy enough as it is.”

  Reid threw up in his mouth a bit.

  Habermann saw him gag. “Are you sure you’re alright? You’re not sick, are you?”

  “I haven’t been getting much sleep lately,” admitted Reid. Actually, the only sleep he’d gotten this week had been on the bus to and from work. He’d slept through his stop that morning and had to ride the entire circuit again to get back to work. “Some new neighbors have moved in. They’re up all night.”

  “You’re not contagious? We can’t afford for the rest of the office to get sick.”

  “I was. We were fighting a plaguelord and he hit me with Tomb Rot.”

  Habermann nodded slowly. “That sounds bad.”

  “Oh, it was awful. He had a Staff of Corruption. But our healer dispelled the effect, and we killed him, so it was all good.”

  “So… not contagious?”

  “Right as rain.” Reid saluted, went back to the mound of work in the conference room, and fell asleep with his head in a file drawer.

  Noob hit Level 33 killing a wolf on a picturesque ledge overlooking the sea. The wolf howled and fell still atop a heap of thirty dead packmates.