Gamelit 30 (Crossover) (Patreon)

            The quest Boy Wonder and Mom had embarked on had been exactly the kind of thing Ray expected the new AI to generate for a lore nerd and a hapless non-gamer dragged along for the ride. What he hadn’t expected was for it to involve a cliffhanger. In vain he’d waited for the cut scene or quest completion to drop—instead, the feed stopped right in the middle of the action. Digging into the logs hadn’t shown any activity since.

            …and suddenly, something that had felt annoying and boring got his brain racing. All that data about season finales and cliffhangers pointed in the same direction: people got more fascinated by unfinished stories, not less. And an unfinished lore quest that tied into Nerd Dad’s lecture on medieval fortifications—because wasn’t it supposed to lead to a moat?—was, or should be, gold. Even knowing that the continuation would drop within half a day, he guessed that he could drum up some excitement for his losing team with enough dramatic music and big question mark animations. Plus it was fun. He made a poll asking people what they thought the future of Donner’s Beck would entail; how the return of the whatever-the-lore-things-were would affect the zone, or how it should; what fortification they thought Nerd Kid should work on next. He made a short about the potential of normal players to change the game’s deep background. He spent, to be honest, a lot more time on it than it deserved, given the viewing numbers. Which admittedly had jumped up since he’d posted the fortification lecture. Now the channel had just over 400 viewers, which was shocking given the material.

            But Bard Boy did not turn his feed on a few hours later. In fact, the only new material he got was over a day late, and directly from the kid in email. ‘Dad and i worked on this, please put it up thnx’

            The new recording was just as golden as the last one. For fun, Ray put a talking head in the corner for the kid… easy enough to grab his character model from the game and associate it with the younger voice. Dad didn’t have a character, though. Ray stared at the character creator. Without knowing more about the guy, hewing close to reality would be better. He picked a human male, dressed him like an adventuring wizard, and used him as the other talking head. Then, pleased with the talking heads, he started using them in other shorts and as part of the channel banners: Deer Bard, Centaur Chef Mom, and Wizard Dad. He surprised himself by spending a lot longer on it than he’d planned, or that a four-hundred subscriber channel merited, but the node was developing a feel and he liked it. Nothing like any other streaming channel he’d managed, that was for sure, but… that was nice, actually. Doing something different for a change. He could feel rusted-over parts of his brain moving again.

            He pinned the cliffhanger stuff to the top of the channel and checked on Killz and Goldie. They were currently murdering their way through an instance, looked like… but a completely novel one that had been generated by their actions. The quest involved Killz convincing this lair of bandits and cutthroats that he should be top dog, and he and Goldie were fighting for it. Intrigued, Ray watched, and not just because a two-person instance was weird. So far Killz hadn’t done anything hard, and watching MOBA strategies adapted to a VRRMO offered a new avenue for content. Should he find someone to make commentary on it? He could subcontract.

            He was researching that when his direct message notification pinged, using the noise for one of his friendly rivals. Seong Lee had gotten one of the Omen beta streaming contracts and was one of the few Ray actually liked.

hey loser heads up

            Ray smirked and typed back.

Whos the loser here buddy im sitting on the highest trafficked channel in the beta

yeah yeah says the guy who started with the biggest subscriber bases

srsly

one of my teams is heading for yours

            For several moments Ray stared at the message, unable to understand it. Then:

for the greenweald you mean

yeah man

tankydoo and spellsrus

they want in on donners beck

what do you mean in on

they coming to attack it

no man

they want to help defend it

            Ray leaned back in his chair, and the epic confrontation he’d been so worried about heading off suddenly didn’t feel so disastrous. He didn’t want to throw Boy Wonder to the sharks, but “PVP e-sports gamer crushes mom and son lore nerds” was a sucky story. What wasn’t, was “mom and son lore nerds spearhead amazing war effort against would-be raid boss villain team.”

            He wrote back: ‘gonna be fun’, which was all Seong would need to get the message. And he waffled for nearly ten minutes before deciding on sending the next. Prepare the kid, or let him be surprised? Surprise would make for better entertainment. But Ray knew which he would have preferred had Teen Bard been his kid brother.

hey heads up – you got another beta team coming they want to help you build up donners beck

            No immediate answer, but that was fine. Ray had groundwork of his own to do to prep the channel. Tankydoo and SpellsRUs might not be big by KillzYourFase standards, but they were a heck of a lot bigger than a 500-person family fun channel. Ray had no idea how many of those viewers were gonna cross over, but it wasn’t going to be zero.