lucky. You know why? We’re done with wedding dress shopping!” She giggled and covered her mouth.
“Hey, could one of you help me out of this dress?”
One, two, three, scissors.
Candace was rock.
Damn it.
Chapter Fifteen
With his noise-canceling headphones on, Asher couldn’t hear me cursing at the email on my laptop screen.
“Melody, please work with Kat and the rest of your team to make a prerendered trailer for Ultimate Apocalypse, and a demo build. Someone dropped out of GameCon Northwest and we got a screaming deal on a show booth. We’re going to GameCon Northwest with your game reveal at the end of the month!!! —Ian”
GameCon Northwest? Where Xbox and Nintendo first announced product release dates? I needed to talk sense into Ian. This deadline was impossible.
My stomping shook the floor as I stormed over to Ian’s office. He was hunched over his desk, swaying to Debussy with his eyes partially closed while drinking a French press coffee that he brewed on his desk. Could he be any more pretentious?
Before I uttered a word, and without even looking up, he said, “I see you got my email.”
“Yes. I did. And I have some questions.”
He gestured for me to sit on his couch while he pressed more coffee. “Would you like some?”
His craft brew smelled amazing. But screw him.
“No thanks.”
He poured himself a cup. Then he poured a second cup and placed it on the glass table in front of me. He looked me in the eyes, ready to talk. God damn that tantalizing coffee aroma.
Leaning back on his stuffed leather chair, he took a small sip. “For several early mornings and late evenings, Joe and I have talked through some PR ideas that could save this company from imminent doom. As you know, we’re still going to launch your game with you at the helm. We haven’t found another lead female producer yet, even with all our recruiters working on it, so you’ll be the one to take this to the finish line. You need to get used to unplanned marketing and PR opportunities popping up here and there before the launch. We need to take the ones that are worth the time. It’s something a producer needs to handle when these situations come up.”
I took a teeny sip. Heavenly.
He continued. “We already have over a thousand names on our newsletter list, thanks to the collection of email addresses on the site. And we finally caught a break when I snagged a canceled booth at GameCon Northwest! That booth was originally for the new WarMaster game by a new Korean studio, but the company’s president died while playing it. Isn’t that fucked up? Imagine that PR nightmare! Anyway, we’re going to have an amazing booth, and all we need is Asher and you to be on the floor, talking to the press, promoting the game. Sound good?”
That was a ton of information to sift through, and I wasn’t ready to speak just yet. So instead I sipped the delicious coffee some more. Mmmm. It didn’t even need sugar or milk.
“So you need a demo and a trailer from me. In like three weeks?”
He nodded.
“With no concept or storyboard?”
He nodded again.
We only had a few scenes from the game we could use, and we had no art assets to make a full video. We were so screwed.
He poured himself another cup. “Well, Kat and you can figure it out. You can hire whoever you need, as long as they fit reasonably within our budget.” Thanks to my advertising background, these types of video projects were right in my wheelhouse. I had some friends who could help me get them done, but we would be cutting it close.
“Oh, one more thing. We need to hire some cosplay actors. To walk around and pull people into the booth.”
Cosplay was something I was familiar with from my comic book fandom days in high school. Tons of GameCon attendees would be dressed up as game characters. “So you want actors that look like the characters from our game?”
Ian’s phone rang. Before he picked it up he said, “Your main characters are male strippers, so go hire some strippers. I need to take this call. Feel free to take the coffee with you.”
I shut the door behind me and headed back to my desk with my drink. He really wanted real strippers in the booth? Maybe I could add this new job duty to my résumé. Production responsibilities include: establishing long-term feature schedules, communicating project milestones and deadlines, and