“Can you please stop doing that?”

Cameron Ames looked up Jeff from across the long mahogany conference table. He was poised on the edge of his custom-made leather chair, a Styrofoam cup in hand. Cameron had never seen a man look so tense in a chair that comfortable “What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice soft and condescending.

Jeff jutted his finger, pointing fiercely at Cameron’s pen. “Stop clicking it,” he replied. The fury in his voice easily carrying across  the conference room.

Cameron complied. He set the pen down delicately and smiled. Never piss off a programmer in crunch, he thought to himself. Especially when things aren’t going the way they were supposed to. Everyone at Pastoral Games was pretty wound up – a second coffee machine had to be brought in – but it was Jeff’s crew who was working triple-overtime, scrambling to fix as many bugs as they could before the release of Death Knight, the company’s self-proclaimed masterpiece. After a moment, Cameron mumbled a half-hearted “Sorry.”

Jeff  sank into the chair a bit. “It’s cool.”

There was a knock at the door. Vincent Reins, the studio’s Activision liaison, entered with a bright red folder in hand. The man always wore a trim grey suit, and the guys gave him a hard time about it. Behind him was Crowley, dressed down slightly in a black button-up and jeans. He was the lead designer and director, and the person Cameron dealt with, and liked, the most.

Vincent and Crowley took their seats without any customary greetings. At this point in the development process, they were beyond that. Instead, they eased into the silence like a family sitting down for their daily dinner.  “Sorry I was late,” Vincent said. “The good news: if we go gold in the next two weeks–”

“That’s not definite yet,” Jeff interjected.

“If,” Vincent replied. “If we go gold in the next two weeks – like we projected – we’ll be set for a Q3 release in Europe.”

“It’s not going to be done in a week, Vince,” Crowley said. “I still got to send the latest build to QA.”

Vincent smiled. “We’ll see what happens. Alright, Emma will be joining us a bit late, and Will is tied up in a meeting, but gave us the go ahead to start without him. So let’s start this, shall we? Cameron?”

Cameron nodded. This was the part he’d been nervous about all week. In fact, his nerves were so bad that he’d thrown up that morning, something he hadn’t done since the state speech and debate tournament junior year of high school. His girlfriend Loren suggested  he call in sick, but she didn’t understand that putting it off would only make it worse. There were no sick days during crunch.

He cleared his throat. “Alright, so, this, umm, bull pen meeting is going to focus around the results of our Alpha testing. I know we’ve all seen the emails and we’ve played with some ideas separately, and we’ll get to them, too, but what I’m focused on is the RTS ideas that we tossed aside way early on, which, considering these notes, I think might be prudent to toss back in the mix.” He paused, trying to gauge the reaction in the room. Everybody had a skeptical look on their face, but, then, they almost always did.“Death Knight started as a half-shooter, half-strategy game. I think a lot of our problems would be solved in we re-implemented the strategy part.”

Crowley spoke first. “So, I guess my first question is: what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Are you suggesting we push the release again?” Vincent pondered.

“No, I’m not even thinking of that. I’m just trying to salvage the core essence of what we had when we started, because I think when we moved away from that is when we went off the rails.”

“The game we originally came up with would have taken seven years to make, Cameron,” Jeff said. “We have weeks left. You’re not offering a solution; you’re offering more headache.”

“Does no one remember the gesture based magic system?”

The room groaned. The idea seemed novel when Cameron first suggested it for the Wii port, but, in the days before MotionPlus, turned into a logistically nightmare. The port was scrapped altogether, but Jeff hadn’t forgotten what a pointless time sink it was. He couldn’t. His girlfriend had nearly broken up with him while he worked fruitlessly on it. “Fuck your gesture based magic system and fuck your real time strategy,” he hissed.

Crowley joined in.”Let’s try to be civil here.”

“I think what we’re really looking to do is pare down the gameplay, Cameron? Let’s keep it as a shooter. Our testing shows it works as a shooter, and shooters are doing well right now.”

Before Cameron could continue to defend his vision, the heavy double doors to the boardroom flew open. He didn’t need to look, as only the staff writer, Emma, would make an entrance like that. She stormed in, fumbling with her purse, trying to free a packet of cigarettes. “Hey. Sorry I’m late. Had to cut 200 lines of dialogue. Up since six, hacking away like a Rwandan child soldier. Can I smoke in here?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She cracked open one of the windows overlooking the parking lot, and moved one of the plush chairs close to the window. She turned her sharp, Nordic face to Vincent. “You aren’t going to stop me?”

“What lines needed surgery?” Cameron asked. “You should tell me when you’re cutting.”

Emma swiveled her chair. “I guess we needed the disk space for all the costumes you added last night, at two in the morning.” She raised her free hand. “And before you mention the PS3 version, half the audio was shit anyways. Quality, not quantity. Corvallis isn’t really known for its budding voice acting community, and, no offense Vince, but our talent budget was shit. You get what you pay for.”

Crowley paced his way to Emma’s side of the table. “Look, we’re getting distracted. That’s another issue and we can take that up another time.”

“When?” Cameron asked. “Every step of the way we’ve make concessions on this game. I remember way back at the start, when we said we wanted to make something that addressed our concerns with modernity and the impact technology has on our lives. Now we don’t even have sound effects for the level four ninjas when they get shot.”

“Hmmm…” Vincent said as he stood, took off his jacket and draped it on the back of the chair. He leaned on the chair’s back, giving himself command of the board room. “The game works, Cameron. It doesn’t freeze up on load screens and we haven’t had a player character fall through the world in two cycles.”

“But that’s not–”

“It’s marketable, it’s got solid gameplay, and it has a set release date that isn’t going to change, no matter how many ideas you come up with. Okay?”

Everyone in the room turned to Cameron. He shifted in his seat. Up until this point, he had had no idea that it was really everyone versus him. He was the problem. These people, they didn’t care about changing the future of gaming. Or creating something new, or different.  All they cared about was turning something in, anything, so that they could collect their paycheck and go home to their families.

Sure, Cameron’s ideas tended to be imprecise: a mishmash of hypothetical ideas that had rooting in GDC talks instead of actual playable games, but all great thinkers think in their own peculiar way, and it should be left to others to interpret those thoughts and make them a reality. And, like all great thinkers, Cameron was forced to concede his vision once again.

“Yeah, alright.”

Vincent smiled. “Perfect!”

A sense of finality swept through the room as Crowley took his seat. Everyone scribbled down a few thoughts and sipped their coffee, except Cameron, who stared at his hands, wondering deep thoughts like, If I shot myself, would I even want to respawn?

“Alright,” Vincent said. “Let’s order some sandwiches and talk advertising.”

By Hardcasual’s Canadian correspondent, Filipe Salgado.