A Development Team Tale...

The following story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real places, people or events is entirely coincidental.

Heh.



In the Beginning the Devs created a small game and saw that it was good.

They populated the game with zones, lighting effects and various MOBs. Yet without players the game was not all it could be. Since this was a gathering place they referred to it as the Den. Since it was electronic in nature it became known as the E-Den.

Yet, without players the E-Den seemed rather dull; so the Devs brought in two Beta Testers. The Beta Testers were told to enjoy the E-Den and try out all the various features of the game. The place was intended to be a paradise without any real violence or intense conflict. Some claim it was the Alpha version of The Sims.

The Devs had only one rule for the Beta Testing of the E-Den; don’t look at the PIGG files.

Sure enough, a Dev from a competing software company approached one of the Beta Testers and she went all “Industrial Spy” on E-Den. So, the Devs kicked the Beta Testers out and sealed up the E-Den with a powerful AngelSword Firewall.

The next game the Devs came out with wasn’t nearly so cheery. They decided that paradise as a game model was actually pretty boring, so decided to go with a hard-scrabble survival version. They titled the game Free Will and, giving in to the begging and pleading, they let the original Beta Testers back into it as well as a few of their relatives.

It wasn’t long until a character named CandyCain began to send PM after PM to the Devs demanding a PvP system. It seemed he had a beef against WillingAndAbel and was frustrated by his inability to waste him. Some of the Devs were against they idea of introducing PvP into their game, but others pointed out the game was called Free Will and setting up restrictive rules would make them the target of ironic jokes from sarcastic game reviewers.

CandyCain ganked W.A.A. within five minutes of PvP system installation. The Devs felt a little nervous about him going on a killing spree so they compromised and created a PvP Zone known as Nod and suggested he go there to satisfy his mass murdering impulses.

Free Will was enormously popular. It swelled out until nearly every one on the planet had at least one Free Will character. Unfortunately, the Devs had established a bad precedent by giving in to the PvPers on the basis of “you should be able to do whatever you want in a game called Free Will.” Soon every pervert, sadist and freak was demanding a zone for their particular fetish.

The Devs realized the game had gone to hell and decided drastic measures were required. They searched through the mess and found a few loyal players who were at least somewhat normal. They contacted these players and then loaded their characters onto a portable Ark Drive. Once the Ark Drive was secure the Devs ran a Flood Purge Re-Format program on the Servers.

The next version of the game was Free Will: Consequences. It was marketed as an expansion on the original but since you couldn’t play the game without it, people knew it was really more like Free Will 2.

The players weren’t quite as thrilled by Free Will: Consequences. They were still allowed to do what they wanted, but now the Devs would arbitrarily punish them for some actions. The player base began to get frustrated since it seemed that the Devs were punishing, not by a standard set of rules but whenever the whim took them.

The players elected a representative named Mo who accepted the solo mission and ascended the path to speak two the Devs. This was not much fun since the path was on a mountain that was in a travel suppression zone.

Mo conferred with the Devs for some time then came back with a list of Ten Terms of Service.

The same people who had demanded the rules now complained they were too restrictive.

There arose from among the players a small number who called themselves the Prophet Guild and their dark assurances that the game was DOOOOM-ed managed to scare a few people but for the most part the game continued on normally. One of the Prophets even leaked information about a future version of the game called Apocalypse, but without hard evidence and with the Devs denying everything, he was soon put on global ignore.

Things settled down in the game. The T.O.S. seemed to satisfy everyone and the atrocities lessened somewhat.

More recently a new Dev was hired to lead the Development Team. He was announced to the player base as having the initials J.C. It remains to be seen if he has a major impact on upcoming game changes or not.

And on the first day, the devs said, "Let there be light!"

The animators weren't quite sure which direction was east, having spent all their living hours in a basement, cubicle, or other indoor-only format, but took their best guess and created an NPC Puddle with the SUN FX. Because of arguments about color, it was agreed that the colors would change depending on the time of day.

The powers guys called Arcanaville, who gave them the precise mathematical formulae for lighting the world without creating a scorched earth policy. (That code is being held for a future expansion.)

The costume guys, of course, were still busy figuring out animated hair.

Marketing, however, was still in the dark, and so slept through the whole thing.

But there was light!

Most of the playerbase thought it was good.

Some tried to kill the sun, and were upset that it was a non-targetable NPC. (Considering that the sun was in fact trying to kill them, they felt it being an attackable object was only fair.)

The RPers promptly demanded emotes for sun worship, sun bathing, and of course, sleeping and sex emotes for when it WASN'T light.

And as a whole, the playerbase thought it was a nice touch, but a bit useless in a game where you spend most of your time in missions in caves or tunnels or buildings where the word WINDOWS obviously wasn't in the architectural blueprints.

But there was light!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

lmao!!! This guy, I tell ya..