Gamelit 37 (how much)

we have to go hard at this srlsy

stats are down

 

            Lucas snorted at his phone. “In what universe are stats down, you loser. Your stats are higher than they were when you were streaming alone, by a factor of six.” He swiped quickly on the keyboard.

stop worrying

            A ‘typing’ bubble popped up instantly. A few seconds later:

you were the one pushing for more

            “Yeah, that was before I got bored,” Lucas said. His thumb hovered over the screen, but he decided to pocket his phone instead. He’d taken a walk to get away from all this drama, not so he could keep it going. Lucas stared at the contrails of a passing jet, sinking into the sensation of his limbs moving, and the sun on his head, his shoulders. Walking made him feel saner. Slightly. Sports was better, and lifting, but eventually you had to get outside. Feel like you weren’t boxed in. And he was feeling a lot boxed in by this Omen thing because, he was forced to admit, he was thinking of quitting. Streaming had become a cage, but the problem was that it was a lucrative cage, and walking away from piles of money was hard. His brother’s comments from the day before were rattling around in his brain about guys selling their souls for their careers, and never knowing how much money was enough.

            What would he do with himself if he wasn’t doing this? And how annoying was it that what he thought, overwhelmingly, was that it would be a relief to quit? But the money definitely wasn’t enough yet. Except how much was that number? Why couldn’t he pin it down to a total? A goal? He was so used to setting goals and blowing through them that the process felt infinite. Was that normal?

           How much was enough?

           Lucas rubbed his forehead with the edge of a thumb, listening to the wack-wack-wack of the ducks paddling in the nearby pond.

            On a whim, he dug out the phone and flipped to the channel stats that had upset Goldie so much. They weren’t down, they just weren’t jumping up the way they had been for some of the major events, like the razing of Donner’s Beck or the fight with Tankydon’t-the-loser. Razing Donner’s Beck again wouldn’t excite anyone. They should probably find some new town to destroy. If they destroyed enough of them, maybe the stupid AI would spawn a Most Wanted Criminal quest and he could get this thing moving.

            ‘To what?’ he could imagine his brother asking.

            Back to the question. How much was enough? When would he be done? Why wasn’t he done now, when it wasn’t doing anything for him?

            Except making those piles of money.

            Lucas checked Tanky’s channel, which was full of boring montages about training shopkeepers to fight off PCs—good luck with that—and then, reluctantly, looked at the mom channel. Mom was cleaning up the mess, like moms always did. It almost made him feel bad, which made him angry. He breathed until he could see straight again, watched the baby ducks floating as he strode past. Then he kept going through the channel, baring his teeth at Nerd Dad’s involvement and all the happy-happy lore stuff.

            And then he ran into the song.

            He’d been flipping through the shorts so quickly that he skipped past it before the melody seized his attention. He swiped back to the Lament for Donner’s Beck short, and from there clicked to the full video and listened to the entire thing before he realized it had made him feel something… and wasn’t that annoying?

            God, he was so tired of being angry.

            But he listened to the song again. And heading home, he stuck his earbuds in and looped it. It was moody. It was good. And… he’d made that happen. He’d made someone write a song about something he’d done, and that was the first thing since the game had been willing to let him indiscriminately kill everything that struck him as awesome. He had no idea what that meant, but it meant something.

            Mason had gone to get groceries for Mom, who was napping, so Lucas shut himself in his room and stared for a long moment as his wireset. Then he slid it in place and logged in.

            Goldie wasn’t online—that was rare, the dude was terminally online—which made advancing their existing ‘kill everything’ project off-limits. Which was fine, because Lucas wasn’t in the mood to kill everything, even though going off-script was bad for the numbers. He was sick of being a slave to the numbers. People should be watching because of his choices, because they were interested in him, not because he was smashing their dopamine levers. So he stole a horse from a passing NPC and rode back into the Greenweald, leaping off the saddle and into the trees so he could stealth toward Donner’s Beck. He didn’t get very far when he spotted pony mom.

            God, she was trotting along through the forest like a Level 2—3? Character had nothing to fear. It was pathetic, and so typical of non-gamer behavior. He couldn’t call her a newb because she was something that existed beneath that level. Proto-newb. Wannabe-gamer. Normie. She was even humming to herself, and he watched in astonishment as she confronted a rabbit, brandished a spoon at it, and exclaimed, “Have at you, hare! I require you for food!” and commenced doing… something. Dancing, maybe? No, she was trying to lunge. For nearly a minute she and the rabbit performed this comedy routine until she succeeded in boring it to death. At least, Lucas would have laid down and died rather than kept going, so he assumed the rabbit gave in. A triumphant mom-pony hung the carcass from her belt, “Like a barbarian,” she declared, and then trotted onward in search of more animals.

            So he followed her.

            It was ridiculously easy to stalk her, she was that oblivious. He liked how it made him feel, slipping from tree to tree, climbing higher, pouring onto lower branches until he was barely five feet above her… and still, she never thought to look up. He imagined what it looked like to people watching the stream: the killer and the prey. Exactly the kind of stuff his audience would lap up. He could imagine what the channel manager would do with it. ‘will he kill her or not?’

            Ugh, even thinking about it was irritating.

            He stalked her until she completed her murder spree—if killing critters counted—and crouched over her head as she stopped to look around. “A little far,” she said; apparently talking to herself was a thing with her. Turning she headed back, but not directly. Did she not know the way to Donner’s Beck? But she looked like she was searching for something specific, muttering under her breath and humming.

            Eventually she did stop, close enough to town that he almost started thinking about not being spotted. There was a tumble of rocks that happened to be under a shaft of sunlight; as both he and mompony watched, a vivid blue butterfly floated past it.

            “Perfect,” she said, and pulled a stone out of a bag. She spent at least five minutes arranging it before she was happy with it, then wandered the edge of the area, cleaning up stray twigs and leaf clutter. A flower got beheaded and set on this slab and then she leaned back, arms folded and one hand propping up her chin in the most cliché attitude of consideration outside a comic book. Except it was apparently authentic on her part, because she said, “I know, it needs food.” From a separate bag, she produced a cookie and set it on the stone. “Great Forest Spirit Lord King, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your actual name and title. But we promised we would remember our duties to the nature spirits we live alongside. Here we will leave our offerings. Starting with this cookie.” She studied it, chuckled. “This Sugar Cookie of Amity. Enjoy it! I’ll be back with more. Or I’ll send other people to leave offerings. Maybe plant flowers around here? That would be nice.” She turned to go… and stopped. Why? Had she seen him? But no, she seemed lost in thought.

            Mom pony faced the altar and set out a napkin from the pouch of cookies, and two more cookies. “These,” she said, “are for Killz and that other person who burned down Donner’s Beck. Just in case they come around again. So that they know if they ever want to give up burning down towns and eat good food and do normal things, they can always count on me. They’ll probably kill me at some point, but I guess that’s what you do in games like this, so that’s fine. I’ll get over it!” She waved as if she was recording a selfie. “See you all, I’m sure!”

            Then she left the forest, and Lucas watched her go.

            She’d left him a cookie.

            He dropped from the tree, liking how he landed without making any noise—he’d give the game one thing, it was good at rule-of-cool stuff—and looked. The cookies were magical items, with the Amity sugar cookie on the altar giving bonuses to reputation with the faction of the forest lord. The two she’d left behind though… an eXtreme Double Chocolate Chip Cookie and a Golden Snickerdoodle. Both gave bonuses to endurance, which made no sense to him… did she want them to have more energy to burn things? But the former cookie was definitely meant for him, from the flavor text: ‘Pushing the edge of intensity and flavor, this double chocolate chip cookie is recommended only for eXtreme players.’ Had she written that, or had the AI? Did it matter? He snitched it, flourished it for the losers watching him, and ate it on the way back to the stolen horse.

            Goldie didn’t login, which was fine; gave Lucas time to make random mayhem, which he did by soloing a few NPC groups, including a cluster of kingsguard. That was actually a challenge, so he logged off in a good mood. His music player was paused on the Lament, so he listened to that a few more times, and was still listening to it when his brother banged on the door.

            “Hey, small fry. Mom’s starting dinner.”

            “ONW,” he called back and rose, pausing the playback. And stared at it for a long moment before dropping back into his chair. Was there a contact email? There was. He dashed off a quick one and then abandoned his room for food.