Food Game of Health… Greatness Redesigned

create the greatest health food game that the world has ever seen.

Those idiots at FoxHound Studios didn’t understand. They couldn’t see that what I do as art. They see it as a business. And to them there is no money to be made from creating the greatest health food game on the planet. Those fools. They should know that you cannot put a dollar value on greatness. You cannot put a cost on having your name go down in the record books as the greatest game developer that there ever was. They had a chance to realize that dream with me. But they chose money over immortality.

I was happy to leave them behind

I set up my own health food and recreation shop and staffed it with the best people in the business. Speaking of, it was time to go and see how they were doing so I dropped the pen of my graphics tab on to my mahogany desk and stretched my body out. It was time for a break. Maybe take a walk around and see what my developers were up to, other than eating some health food.

I reached the door to my office and walked out into the hallway. I’d barely cleared the frame when some kid in a red hat ran right into me and knocked me over. The kid helped me back up in a hurry, excused himself and kept running towards the kitchen full of health food. When he went in there, there was a whoop of jubilation from inside. It sounded like something big had just happened.

I figured I’d pop in and see what

The kitchen is just as well equipped as the rest of my game design studio. It’s the Japanese in me. We always believe that a good kitchen full of health food and snacks are imperative to having happy employees. I smelled fresh coffee when I got there and found the kid who’d run me over jumping up and down in front of my lead coordinator.

“What’s going on?” I asked them.

The kid calmed down when he saw me and the lead coordinator turned to face me.

“He claims that he got our patch for ‘Not A Last Time Death’ to render on Unity3D.”

I pushed my glasses back up the bridge of my nose and looked the kid up and down.

“And it’s responsive?” I said. “How did you manage that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Come and see.”

The kid in the red hat and weird but rich clothing led us both out of the kitchen and into our screening room. He stuck a flash disk into the side of the screen and rubbed his hands together. The hiss of the fans on the business’s computer started up and the screen lit up. Two years of development had led up to this point. If the kid could deliver on his promise, then he’d save us months off our timeline.

The anticipation in the room

This made the air thick as we watched the screen go from green to blank white and back to green. The logo for our health game of food, Not A Last Time Death, come up on the screen in that sexy calligraphy that I’d convinced our art designers to use and we all let out our collective breathes.

It was rendering. That kid’s code was actually rendering. Suddenly, my dream of creating the greatest health food game ever felt real. Like it was actually happen. Like leaving those piss-ants at Foxhound and setting up my own studio was the wisest thing I’d ever done.

My belly filled with pride as I turned to the young prodigy and patted him on the back. What he’d managed was nothing short of miraculous. But my joy was short-lived. The CPU on the business computer let out a whine like a horse been squeezed through a strainer and the fan kicked into overdrive. The smell of burnt plastic filled the room and sparks shot from the business computer and the screen went black.

My lead coordinator turned to the kid in the red hat and shook his head.

“You turned off the clock-rate calibrators, didn’t you?” he said.

The kid turned his head to the side and clenched his jaw.

“Well, I didn’t turn them off,” he said. “I just got them to calibrate a little less.”

“You idiot,” said the lead coordinator. “What just happened here could have happened to consoles worldwide. The clock-rates are calibrated for a reason.”

The kid opened his mouth to protest

I stepped forward and he closed it again. He knew he was in trouble. And he was smart enough to know when to shut up. I looked him up and down, trying to figure out how best to deal with him. The machine was expensive, but I didn’t want to fire him over it. Plus he’d never afford to pay for a new one on the salary I gave him instead of shopping for the most expensive clothing. But he had to be punished. The kid flinched as I reached my hand up and pulled the red cap off his head, exposing a mess of red hair. I placed the hat on my own head and fitted it on then patted the kid on the shoulder.

“Get back to busiess,” I told him, and walked back to my office with my new red hat.