CHAPTER TWENTY NINE #2
They looked over as the waitress came to take their order. Gabe got crispy bacon, over easy eggs, and a nice serving of hashbrowns. Chloe got the cheese omelet at Aria’s suggestion.
“Okay. Um...I’m not sure where to begin,” Chloe admitted after a moment.
“You want to stream an early access version of Recovery II on your channel. Which is a fair request,” Aria offered.
“Right.” Chloe seemed to recenter herself.
“I’ve done this before. I’ve streamed early access versions of games four times now.
I’m familiar with the process. I’m willing to follow whatever rules you impose, I’ve never broken any of the conditions put on me and never intend to, and will sign whatever you might need signed.
Within reason. My greatest weakness at the moment is my lower viewer count.
I can pull around two thousand regulars, but I’ve recently changed my living situation and that has allowed to me to quit my job and focus on this full-time. ”
“Really? Interesting. You strike it big somewhere else in your lives or are you a patron of the arts?” Aria asked, looking at Gabe.
He chuckled. “Um...something like that. Both, really. We’ve had some good fortune fall into our lap that’s allowed us to focus on our preferred artist careers.”
“Interesting. What is it you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“He also writes Recovery fan fiction,” Chloe blurted out.
Gabe sighed softly. “Thanks, love.”
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I just thought...mmm.”
“This is interesting, actually,” Aria said.
It was subtle, but she became more interested and engaged in the conversation then.
“So I’ve probably read all the fan fic written about Recovery.
Or at least attempted to. Some of them...
were not for me. But you have to realize, I was in high school in the late nineties.
Right when fan fiction was really beginning to coalesce, and then I got to see the glory of the two thousands, when it really began taking off, but still was small enough that it was sort of its own little thing.
I love fan fiction, fan art, fan songs, fan everything. ”
“That’s a nice thing to hear from someone like you,” Gabe replied.
“I imagine so. Corporate interests barely seem to tolerate fan fiction and it feels like increasingly they’re going after their more creative fans.
Which is insane. Actually, something we’ve been prepping for is that we’re going to get much more involved with the community.
With Recovery, it was too frantic, there was too much work to do, and it was our first game.
And then with the patches, the DLC, and prepping for Recovery II continued to occupy all of our time… ”
She paused, then looked to Chloe. “Sorry, I’m getting off topic. We were talking about streaming.”
“I mean, this is interesting,” she replied.
“Okay, good. We’ll just wrap up the streaming really quick then.
We’re prepping an early access package that’s basically the first ten percent or so of the game.
A demo, pretty much. We’re going to be sending it out to some streamers of our choice, and I had time to check you out on the plane ride over, and you seem like you’d be perfect.
You’ll have to sign an agreement basically not to rip into the source code or try to sell it off, you know, the basic legal crap, but right now, I see no reason not to put you on the list. We would be sending these out next week. ”
“Holy shit. Um, all right. Yeah, yes, that would be great,” Chloe replied.
“Awesome! Here, really quick, let me send over the form to your e-mail. It’s through an online document signer, are you familiar with those?” she asked, pulling her laptop closer and getting to work.
“I am.”
“Perfect.”
She typed and navigated for about a minute, then set the laptop back aside. “And sent. We’re still nailing down the exact day we want to do this, and we want a curated list, but you should get it sometime in the next ten days.”
“Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome, Chloe. Honestly, it’s people like you two we should be thanking for engaging with the game like this.
And because we have no corporate interests, as we are a completely self-funded development studio with zero publishers, we can afford to treat our fans how we want.
And we’re very much going to be throwing the doors open this time around for fan projects.
We want to host fan fictions, fan art, fan songs, hell, fan machinima on our home site...
out of interest, which stories have you written? ” she asked, looking back to Gabe.
It almost seemed like she was fishing for something, though he couldn’t be sure what.
“I’ve just written one,” he said, then paused.
“Well, technically two now.” He paused, then decided to just admit to all of it.
It wasn’t like he was ashamed, although hopefully this wouldn’t somehow screw with Chloe’s offer.
He didn’t think it would, based on everything he’d seen of Aria so far. “I wrote Recovery Echo Four.”
A look of excitement came onto her face and she sat up straighter. “Okay wow, this is kind of too perfect. I-are you serious? You did?”
“I’m completely serious,” he replied. “I mean, it’s not done yet, but...is this good or bad?”