13 Life (1/2)
Jericho walked through the cemetery near his home in Newcastle. ”I'm here again. It's a great place to clear your head, right mom?” The bard smiled softly. He thought about the many times he would visit whenever he felt down. He sat down on a bench, pulled a harmonica out of his pocket, and started playing. Music soon echoed around the tombstones and memorials.
The white haired grounds keeper came over and sat next to the musician.
Jericho ended his piece. ”Hey Staul, it's been a while.” He greeted with a smile.
”I see you are back again, Jerry. You didn't bring Moira with you today?” The aged man inquired.
”No, just me today; a lot has happened recently and I needed to come clear my head. Being here is a good change of pace. It helps.” He replied.
The old man let out a laugh.
The two chatted for a bit.
”Hey, Jerry, remember about 7 years ago? You brought that large object you called… What was it, a gooey tar?” Staul asked.
”When I brought one of guitars I built and wanted to play it in front of my parents' graves? I remember, you took it away because my playing and singing was interrupting another funeral. What about that day?” He chuckled lightly.
”I'm surprised you forgave me for taking away.”
The adult shook his head. ”I wasn't very considerate back then, rocking out in my own grief while others wanted to silently grieve their own loss. You were only doing your job.”
”Well, I still have it, if you want it back.” He smiled.
”Wait, you told me you got rid of it!” Jericho exclaimed in happy shock.
”It's over in the keeper house. I'll give it back in exchange for a performance. To be honest this place gets too quiet when you aren't around.”
”Deal!” Jericho beamed.
After the groundskeeper returned with the instrument Jericho tuned it and began to play. He strummed the guitar to produce a relaxing, vaguely western tune that sounded like someone journeying with friends.
***
Jeannette Long stared out over the city of Newcastle.
Her petite, blond secretary came into the office. ”Mrs. Long, the report on the player Jericho has been complete. It is predicted that his influence will increase the game sells by a significant margin. Details are in this folder here. After seeing the data, the development team has requested a meeting to discuss the future of the game. They and the other company leaders are waiting in office room 9.”
”Thank you. I will head there now.” Jeannette picked up her violin and left her workspace.
The head of the game development department, Director Fletcher, spoke first. ”Based on the report about the player Jericho requested by Mrs. Long, we want to work on a patch to give stats and levels to artistic items. Mrs. Long, as you are the head figure in charge of this game, we came to seek your approval.”
The model like woman shook her head and pointed to the violin in front of her. ”How many instruments exist?”
”In-game? Or in real life? The team head replied.
”Both.” She answered.
”In-game there are 81 different instrument types, we primarily focused on the more popular ones in history. In real life, I don't know how many there are. How is this question relevant?”
”Right. Let me help you see this in perspective. You can't treat artistic tools like a sword.”
”Go ahead.”
”I know it is only a single program for this virtual reality game, but to make a single simple in-game character, how many tools inside your program do you use?”
Mr. Fletcher started mentally counting. ”104 if we count the coloring tool as one tool.” He replied after some thought.
”As you can see, department head, the arts are special. Tell me, if you had to switch out every single tool individually every 10 or so levels, how frustrating would it be?”
The man frowned. ”I see. Then what is your suggestion? The team wants to promote these new in-game avenues. We may even be able to outsell the current most popular game if we do.”
The Vice CEO smiled. ”We will do it like this: Ignore item levels on artistic things. Making them have levels will only add frustration to the artistic players. Give the art items a quality rating like other items. For normal artistic items have the standard Tier 0, 1, and 2. Then create special instruments that have additional effects rather than stats. These can range from tier 3 on. But something the development team must understand is that even a basic instrument in the hands of an expert will produce amazing results. A higher grade item doesn't always mean a superior performance. Someone like Jericho wielding a Tier 0 instrument will outshine someone with a godly instrument because of pure skill alone. Just like you and your NPC design program. I could only create an okay NPC if I had the knowledge of how to use each tool and someone helping me. You on the other hand, could create an outstanding NPC with the outdated version of your software from 26 years ago.”
”But, Mrs. Long, if we do that, the artists will have a huge statistical disadvantage later in the game.”