stare. I remembered being a little dazzled by him in an older-brother kind of way. It wasn’t just me; he had that quality for nearly everybody—he had this taut magnetism. I avoided his gaze. I didn’t think he ever liked me, even before I bailed on the game world.
“Thanks, everyone. Thanks. I only have a couple of things to cover,” Don said. “Darren and I want to just get everybody oriented.” For a manager, he didn’t seem that comfortable as a speaker. He was used to Darren handling it.
“Number one, we shipped Solar Empires III. It’s selling… pretty well so far, and CGW’s cover story is going to come out next week, which should give it a boost, and a little bird told me we’re a contender for the Best Strategy Game award from Electronic Gaming.” There was some cheering—people were still buzzed with whatever they’d gone through. Lisa didn’t bother clapping. Neither did Toby. He really did hate outer space now—planets, comets, gleaming battleships aloft on the solar wind like golden cities, the whole empty lot of it—but there was a much wider market for it than for fantasy.
“Second thing. Darren and I talked this week since he got back from Nepal, and we roughed out a couple of big decisions for the company.
“First off, we’re entering into a partnership with Focus Capital, which should stabilize things a bit after last year’s rough spot.”
“What’s the next game?” Jared called out.
“Right. The market for science fiction gaming is pretty good right now…” The room went a bit quieter. I saw Matt’s knuckles actually whiten on the edge of the table. The romance of simulated space exploration had palled over three months of eighty-hour workweeks. “But we’re going back to fantasy. We’re going back to the Realms. Darren’s working out the details, but it looks like we’re back to the Third Age. Darren?”
Real cheering this time, and questions, everyone talking over each other, Dark Lorac, Endoria, conversation interfaces and hit location, something about the White City.
Darren stood up. It was the first time I’d heard him speak in years. I wondered if he knew I was there; I felt the urge to duck down. All of a sudden I felt ashamed at coming back, like I still wanted him to like me.
“Hi, guys,” he started. He spoke quietly, and everyone shut up instantly. “So what’s the Third Age about?”
He stopped and let the silence go on a little, the room completely still now; he had a knack for making eleven in the morning feel like a primal midnight. The lights dimmed a little—Matt was standing at the switch. Darren looked around the room at each of us. The screen behind him lit up, showing a series of screenshots from what I supposed were past Black Arts games: at first just a few characters and dots on a black screen, then a hypercomplex board game, fading forward to real images.
“The First Age is long gone, a fallen legend. The Second Age, a magical war that shattered the world. Now the Third Age. Four heroes battling for a thousand years, and for what? Simon’s notes don’t say. It’s up to us,” he said, and paused. Darren was good at this.
“I want you all to think about the Third Age, everything that happened there, the fall of Brennan’s house, Dark Lorac. How does the Third Age end? I mean, how did it end for you? What did you find at the end of a thousand years of struggle in the dirt and the rain, and what did you do with it? Were you brave? Did you win or lose? What did it take out of you?”
On-screen, the capsule history had gone to 3-D, a view of a warrior fighting wolves alone in a snowstorm. I thought about it. What was Darren’s story? What was Simon’s? Was he brave? Did he get what he wanted?
“It’s the end of the Third Age, people. You are going to slay gods.” A burst of applause, which Darren let run for a few seconds, then continued on. He had more coming.
“The ads talk about the technology. We’ll say it’s the fastest, most realistic graphics yet. We’re probably going to beat Carmack at id, we’ll beat Epic for sure. But it’s 1997, and games are about as realistic as they’re going to get, right?
“Think again. Big news, we’re throwing out all our old graphics tech, which means… a couple things. We’re ditching the Ukrainians, for good”—a modest cheer at that—“and