Gamelit Novel, 9 (Patreon)

Thinking of making this my patrelocals serial! Updating every two weeks. Previous episodes here, via the gamelit novel tag, or the collection:

https://www.patreon.com/mcahogarth/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=gamelit+novel

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Ray wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve this.

Well, no, he had an inkling of how he’d ended up in this… situation: by being the best. There were thousands of people who edited video for streamers, but few were so good they could bank on contracts from e-sports and MMO corps. He’d been expecting the call from Omen Galaxica the moment he heard about their big beta contest. In fact, he’d cleared his schedule in anticipation of Mollie’s call.

He liked that he could call her Mollie and she would give one of those rippling laughs of hers and say, “That’s right, Ray. Let’s do business!” As if they were sharing a joke: the basement dwelling guy and the shiny, beautiful exec being on first name terms. Who’d have thunk it.

He’d been right about being one of the team tapped to take on the editing job for their beta… one of only twelve. And she’d given him the plum, too: the contract for the max star power duo: SweetieGold, who’d made it big streaming last year’s bestselling MMO, Raiders of Aeons, and the monster MOBA streamer, KillzYourFase, who’d been talked into playing only because “having the AI dynamically respond to our every desire means I’ll be able to murder everything.” KillzYourFase had a history of such open contempt for MMO players that Ray bet they’d have millions of views the moment the camera went live.

Oh yes. He was going to make piles of money. And he loved Omen Galaxica’s new rig, which they’d let him demo half a year ago when they’d started talking up the refresh. With an editstream key, he could pull up the realtime views from both players’ HUDs—not a big deal—and place an environmental cam so he could look at the players from an external perspective—which was a big deal. A huge deal. The scope for cinematic cuts was enough to make anyone drool. He could even inhabit a view from the inside of a MOB’s head, and wasn’t he looking forward to the first boss they took on? That top-down view on the duo cutting at his kneecaps was going to be hilarious and awesome. It was a stream editor’s dream. And they’d given him the prize pair.

…and also, the dud.

“Look,” Mollie said, “you’re the only one I trust with this, Ray. You have the touch.” She talked like that, in italics. He was afraid he was picking it up. But she had such a bubbly voice, you forgave her the teenage careening from enthusiastic high point to high point. “And these two are special. I think they’re going to be the outliers that take off. But if they’re going to have a chance, they have to have a master managing their channel, because they don’t even have one.”

“A master?”

“A channel.” He heard her shuffling papers. “No, I’m sorry, the boy just started one.”

“The boy?”

“Yes! It’s a teen boy, and his disabled mom! Well, not disabled. But pregnant and on bedrest! Isn’t it already the most heartwarming story? He wants to share his love of the game with his family!”

Oh, God, he was dying. Not the good kind of dying either. The ‘kill me now’ kind.

“I’ll shoot you the info when I sign off here. You’ll see, it’s going to be great. I know you won’t let me down on this one, Ray. All my peers think it was a stupid idea—well, almost all of them—but they don’t understand the human angle! And also that we’ve maxed out our market share in the extreme gamer audience, we need to reach people outside it if we want to grow. This is going to break us out!”

A mom and a teen boy. Ray remembered what he’d been like as a teen. It hadn’t been all that long ago. To say he hadn’t been entertaining or heartwarming was an understatement. “I’ll do what I can for you, Mollie.”

“I know you will. And what you can is the best in the business! Talk to you later!”

He’d needed a double espresso after that little bombshell to calm down. Extra whatever it was his dad kept sending him. Ray glanced at the bottle: rum flavor? What even was rum flavor? Whatever, he’d take it. But after the reassuring buzz hit, he eased back into his command chair and checked on SweetieGold’s channel. Hugely popular for an MMO streamer: three million subscribers, just over 900,000 views on the latest where he was unboxing his beta hardware. But Sweetie, who’d taken off when people thought he was a girl and somehow kept all his subscribers after the face reveal, couldn’t hold a candle to KillzYourFase, who had 179 million subscribers, all eager to see him go pvp murderhobo. Other than an offhand video about how he was going to go visit the “stale, krusty world of loser mcloserfaces” with SweetieGold to see if he could turn the AI into a “psychopathic killer,” he hadn’t mentioned Omen at all. Which was fine. These guys were pro. They’d wait to launch until they could make a “best of day one” reel. That would be the teaser that would lead people to pay to subscribe to the realtime stream. Ray had all of one day to start mocking that up, which was more than enough. He checked the package: the editstream keys, contact info, login for the Omen Galaxica portal that was aggregating all the content. As he expected, both of them were playing, and not outputting to their channels.

As he expected, neither of them was all too interested in him, either. Sweetie’s response to his in-game message was: ‘yeah wtv, start cutting.’ But then, Sweetie had an editor on contract, so he knew the drill. KillsYourFase was even less interested: ‘make it less boring if you can.’ Ray sniffed. As if he could make a boring stream. Especially with what he had to work with: the two of them were cutting through a forest full of ghouls, the ‘Veilgrove.’ Nice.

Ray lost about an hour, watching and playing with the new tools. Then he thought—reluctantly—that he should check on Mollie’s charity case. He cringed when he found the boy’s channel, especially when he realized they were both streaming. Without any fanfare, any buildup, any paywalling… nothing. The kid was wandering through the woods like some kind of tourist, staring at… what? Flowers? And the mom was talking with centaurs? Not battling them. Not questing for them. Literally just in their camp, talking.

He owed it to Mollie to help, at least a little. Which of these was the least boring? God, they were both terrible. But the forest was all dark and poorly lit shadows. At least the centaur camp had activity in it. He foregrounded that stream and labeled it ‘Chatting with Centaurs’. Seriously, what could he do with that? Nothing.

Meanwhile, the AI had already generated a miniboss for Sweetie and Killz. Ray pulled his headset down and went to work.