Chapter 10

The studio was quiet in a way it never was. No music from Cael's corner, no hum of conversation, no clatter of keyboards. Just the low drone of our machines and the sound of four people trying very hard to look calm.

Jonas had reorganized his desk three times in the last twenty minutes. Pens aligned, monitor adjusted, water bottle moved from left to right and then back to the left again. He was wearing a button-down shirt, which I'd never seen him wear to the studio before. It was slightly too tight around the neck and he kept tugging at the collar.

"Should I have the build ready to share my screen?" he asked for the second time. "In case they want to see something specific?"

"Yeah, have it ready," I said, also for the second time.

Blair sat at her workstation with her arms crossed, leaning back in her chair. She looked relaxed, but I noticed she hadn't opened a single file since arriving. Her monitor displayed the desktop wallpaper, a photograph of a temple garden in Kyoto, and nothing else. She caught me looking and raised an eyebrow.

"Stop staring at me, Owner. You're making it worse."

"I'm not staring. I'm surveying my team."

"Survey quieter."

Cael was early, which was how I knew they were nervous. In the year I'd known them, Cael had been on time exactly twice, both by accident. Today they'd arrived fifteen minutes before everyone else. They were dressed in a vintage blazer over a graphic tee, their purple-blue hair actually brushed for once, multiple rings fidgeting across their fingers as they clicked through something on their screen.

"Do we know who exactly is going to be on the call?" Cael asked.

"There are three people on the invite," I said, pulling up the Google calendar on my screen and tilting my monitor so the others could see. "Two have accepted. Helena Mercer, Executive Producer, and Eliot Brandt, Senior Marketing Manager." I paused. "The third one hasn't responded."

Jonas leaned closer to read the screen, and I watched the color drain from his face. "Alexander Crowe," he read aloud. "That's the President of Collapsed Star." He straightened up, tugging at his collar again. "Is that bad? That feels bad. If he invited himself and then didn't respond, does that mean he looked at the game and decided it wasn't worth his time, or—"

"It would be weird if the President showed up to every first meeting with every studio they're considering," Blair said flatly. "He's got other things to do."

"Blair's right," Cael said, spinning a ring around their finger. "You'd basically have to hit the jackpot for the President to be sitting in on a first meeting."

The room went quiet. I watched Cael register what they'd just implied, their expression shifting through a brief, visible sequence of oh, wait, no.

"Which doesn't mean they're not interested," they added quickly. "Just that we're not, you know. Game of the Year material. Yet."

"It's fine," I said, with more steadiness than I actually felt. "Everyone get to your stations." I looked around the room, making sure I had all three of them. "I speak first. Microphones stay muted until I tell you otherwise. Understood?"

Nods all around. Jonas smoothed his shirt one last time. Blair uncrossed her arms and rolled her chair forward. Cael stopped fidgeting with the ring.

We all settled into our seats, the quiet of the studio folding back in around us as the clock ticked toward the hour.

The Google Meet room was a grid of four silent faces staring into their respective webcams.

I watched my own face in the small feedback window in the corner of my screen. I looked tired. The bags under my eyes were visible even through the mediocre webcam quality, and my hair was doing that thing where it couldn't decide if it wanted to stick up or lie flat, so it compromised by doing both in different sections. I'd worn a decent shirt, at least. Claudia had picked it out for me this morning, vetoing my first three choices with increasing disappointment.

A minute passed. Then another. The silence in the studio was suffocating. I could hear Jonas breathing through his nose from across the room.

"They're not going to show up," Jonas said, his voice tight. "Something went wrong. Maybe the link didn't work on their end, or maybe they changed their mind, or—"

Two new video feeds blinked to life on my screen.

Helena Mercer appeared first, filling her rectangle with the composed stillness of someone who was very used to being on camera. She was in her late thirties, with sharp cheekbones and dark hair pulled back from her face. Her expression carried that particular blend of warmth and authority, the kind of face that could pivot from genuine laughter to a firm no without losing an ounce of credibility. The wall behind her was plain, a neutral grey that gave away nothing about where she was.

Eliot Brandt materialized a second later, a stocky guy with a neatly trimmed beard and friendly eyes, looking to be in his early forties. Behind him, a tropical beach shimmered and glitched, his outline flickering between sharp and pixelated as the filter struggled to decide where Eliot ended and the palm trees began. Part of his left ear kept disappearing into the ocean.

"Hi there!" Helena said with a practiced smile.

"Hey, good to meet you all," Eliot added, giving a small wave.

"Hi," I said.

Behind me, through my headset, I heard the muffled chorus of my team. "Hi!" "Hello!" "Hey!" Three voices speaking enthusiastically into muted microphones, their greetings vanishing silently into the digital ether. On my screen, I could see their mouths moving, their hands waving, and absolutely zero audio registering from any of them.

I resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose.

"So, we're really excited to—" I started.

"We're happy to—" Helena began at the same time.

We both stopped. Eliot had also opened his mouth and was now closing it. I saw them notice me about to speak again, so they held back, which made me hold back, and for a horrible two seconds the three of us sat in perfect silence with half-formed words dying on their lips.

Helena smiled, the kind of smile that suggested this was not her first meeting with clumsy nerds. Eliot chuckled softly, his beach background rippling.

"Why don't we start," Helena said smoothly. "I'm Helena Mercer, Executive Producer at Collapsed Star. I've been with the company for about eight years now. Before that I was at Ubisoft Montreal for a while. My role here is essentially to evaluate new projects, work with studios through development, and make sure we're all aligned on vision and milestones."

"And I'm Eliot Brandt," Eliot picked up seamlessly. "Senior Marketing Manager. Been at Collapsed Star for five years. I handle market positioning, audience targeting, launch strategy, all that fun stuff. Basically, if Helena decides a game is worth making, I figure out how to make people care about it." He grinned. "Which is the hard part, honestly."

"Would you like to introduce yourselves?" Helena asked, her eyes settling on my feed.

"Sure. I'm Oliver Moore, Creative Director and founder of Lost Time Studio. I started the company about a year ago. Before that I was, uh…" I paused for the briefest moment. "I was doing independent consulting work. Before that I studied game design at Blue Moon. Paradox Proof is our first title, and it's been in development for about ten months now."

I turned my head toward Blair's corner of the studio. "Blair, go ahead."

Blair unmuted herself with a click. "Blair Sutter, 3D Artist and Art Director. Fifteen years in the industry, previously at Aye Aye and a few smaller studios." She paused for exactly one second, as if calculating whether anything else was necessary, decided it wasn't, and muted herself again. Clean and efficient.

"Cael, you're up."

Cael unmuted, gave a small wave that made their rings catch the light. "Hi, I'm Cael Ashby, Game Designer. I worked at Firecracker Studios before this, and I've been with Lost Time since pretty much the beginning. I'm responsible for most of the core gameplay systems and narrative design on Paradox Proof." They muted themselves and went back to fidgeting with their rings off-camera.

"And Jonas," I said, turning to his feed.

Jonas beamed at the camera, his face lighting up with a wide, genuine smile. "Hi! I'm Jonas Alcott, Lead Programmer! I've been coding games for about twelve years now, and I have to say this is one of the most exciting projects I've ever—"

His mouth kept moving. No sound came out. On my screen, Helena and Eliot maintained polite, patient expressions, clearly familiar with this particular flavor of technical difficulty.

"Jonas," I said gently. "Unmute."

He froze, looked down at his keyboard, and clicked something. "—been working on. Sorry! Sorry about that. Jonas Alcott, Lead Programmer. Twelve years of experience. Very happy to be here." His smile hadn't wavered once through the entire ordeal, which was either admirable or slightly unhinged.

Helena and Eliot both chuckled warmly, nodding along. "Great to meet all of you," Helena said.

"We were really impressed by the prototype," Helena said, and the words hit me like a health potion in the middle of a boss fight. "The time manipulation mechanics are genuinely innovative. I don't say that lightly. I've seen a lot of pitches." She smiled, a touch of self-deprecation entering her voice. "I'll be honest, I got stuck on level six for longer than I'd care to admit."

I looked at my team. Blair had the faintest hint of a smile, which for her was the equivalent of jumping out of her chair and screaming. Jonas was beaming so hard I worried his face might cramp. Cael was nodding slowly, their rings catching the light as they tapped their fingers together in quiet satisfaction.

This was real. They loved it. They were here, on camera, telling us they loved it. Collapsed Star Interactive, a publisher whose catalog included some of the most acclaimed indie titles of the last decade, was telling us our game was good.

"I'll second that," Eliot added, his beach background glitching as he leaned forward. "The puzzle design is tight, and the narrative hooks are surprisingly strong for a prototype. I kept wanting to know what happened next, which is exactly what you want from a marketing perspective. It sells itself once people get their hands on it."

I allowed myself a moment of genuine happiness. Just a few seconds where the anxiety lifted and I could simply feel proud of what we'd built.

Then Helena's tone shifted. Not dramatically, not unkindly, but there was a change in register, the warmth staying in place while something more businesslike settled underneath it. "So tell us, Oliver. How can we help you? What does your team need from a publishing partner?"

I took a deep breath. "Like we outlined in the form on your website, we're looking for approximately two hundred thousand dollars to complete development. We're about halfway through the content, and we've got a solid pipeline for the rest, but we need the runway to get there." I paused. "We also need help with marketing. It's not something any of us have real experience with, and we know it's going to be critical for launch."

Helena and Eliot both nodded. "That's certainly something we can work with," Helena said.

Eliot picked up the thread without missing a beat. "On the marketing side, we can add a lot of value. I've got established relationships with all the major gaming outlets, Kotaku, IGN, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, plus a network of content creators and streamers we work with regularly. For a game like Paradox Proof, I'd want to start with targeted outreach to mid-tier streamers who specialize in puzzle and narrative games, build word of mouth organically before pushing into broader coverage closer to launch." He was rattling it off with the easy confidence of someone who'd done this dozens of times. "We'd also look at festival presence. PAX, Gamescom, maybe the Game Awards if the timing works out."

I was impressed despite myself. The guy clearly knew his stuff. My team seemed to think so too, Jonas nodding along enthusiastically, Blair giving that barely perceptible nod of respect she reserved for people who weren't wasting her time.

"And of course," Eliot continued, his tone still casual, "we'd want to play into your personal visibility, Oliver. That's a massive asset that most studios would kill for."

The warmth in my chest turned to ice.

"What do you mean?" I asked, keeping my voice level.

Eliot didn't seem to register the shift in my tone. "Well, you're one of the most recognized people on the planet. The whole Owner situation, the broadcast. Every person on Earth has seen your face, knows your name. That kind of recognition is quite the asset. If we position Paradox Proof as 'the game by Oliver Moore,' we've already cleared the biggest hurdle in indie publishing, which is getting people to pay attention in the first place."

My stomach turned. All this time. A full year of building something from scratch, of learning business management and how to lead a team, of pouring everything I had into creating something I could point to and say I made this. And the best marketing strategy for my game was apparently "remember that guy who owns all women? He made a puzzle game."

I glanced at my colleagues. Jonas was nodding thoughtfully, like Eliot had just shared a particularly clever insight. Blair's expression hadn't changed. Cael was twirling a ring on their finger, looking mildly interested. None of them saw anything wrong with it. Of course they didn't.

"Do you really think that's necessary?" I asked, and I heard the tightness in my own voice even if no one else did.

Eliot looked slightly surprised. "I mean, it'd be a pretty significant waste not to capitalize on it. Have you really never considered using it?"

I had considered it. Early on, when I wondered how we were going to get people to hear about the game in the first place. I'd thought about it, turned it over in my head, and decided against it because I wanted Paradox Proof to succeed on its own merits. I wanted people to play it because it was good, not because some cosmic anomaly had made me famous for the most undeserved reasons ever.

"I have," I said. "I guess it's worth thinking about."

"Don't worry about it," Eliot said with an easy smile. "If you sign with us, that's my job. I've got a pretty clear idea of how to approach it."

A silence settled over the call. I could feel my team waiting for me to continue, could see Helena and Eliot's patient, professional faces on my screen, and I **** myself to push past the nausea and get back on track.

"So," I said, clearing my throat. "In terms of deal structure, what can we expect? What does a typical partnership look like at Collapsed Star?"

"It's pretty standard," Helena said, and left it at that. She smiled politely. "We'll obviously negotiate the specifics when the time is right and try to arrive at something both parties are happy with. I'm confident we can find that middle ground." The non-answer was delivered so smoothly it almost sounded like an answer.

"Now," she continued, shifting forward slightly, "before we get to any of that, we'd need to review some documentation on your end. Do you have an established set of development milestones? A projected release date? A detailed production schedule with deliverables and dependencies? We'd also want to see a current build roadmap, a budget breakdown, any market research or competitive analysis you've done, and whatever QA documentation you have on the game as it stands."

I felt my pulse spike. Next to their respective webcams, I could see Blair's jaw tighten almost imperceptibly and Cael's fidgeting stop. They both looked at me. We had a roadmap. We had a rough budget. We had some milestones sketched out on a whiteboard that Jonas had photographed on his phone three months ago. We did not have a production schedule with deliverables and dependencies. We did not have a competitive analysis. We had maybe a third of what she'd just listed, and that was being generous.

Jonas, bless his anxious heart, was still smiling and nodding, apparently not having done the mental inventory the rest of us just had.

"We'll have everything to you before the end of the week," I said, with a confidence I absolutely did not feel.

"Perfect," Helena said brightly. "That would be great. Take your time with it, quality over speed. We want to see where you are and where you're headed."

"Really looking forward to digging into it," Eliot added. "Thanks so much for taking the time today, all of you. Great meeting the team."

The call ended with a click, and for a moment the studio was silent, just the hum of our machines and the faint echo of what had just happened settling over us like dust.

Then Jonas exploded out of his chair. "They loved it!" he said, his voice cracking with relief. "Did you hear her? She said genuinely innovative. Helena Mercer from Collapsed Star said our game is genuinely innovative!" He sat back down, looking like a kid on Christmas morning.

"Level six got her," Cael added, grinning wide enough to show teeth. "I knew that puzzle was good. I told you guys that puzzle was good."

"You told us it was too hard and we should cut it," I reminded them. "She got stuck, so maybe we should."

"I told you we should playtest it more. There's a difference." They spun in their chair, their blazer flaring out. "This is huge. This is actually huge."

Blair hadn't moved from her workstation. She was looking at me with that steady, unreadable expression she wore when she was about to say something I didn't want to hear.

"So," she said. "Using your popularity to sell the game. You've always avoided that subject, Owner."

The room got a little quieter. Jonas's celebration dimmed to a cautious smile. Cael stopped spinning.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "I'd rather the game got out there on its own. Without needing to lean on… all of that."

"That's stupid," Blair said, with the bluntness that made her both invaluable and occasionally unbearable. "It's an asset, exactly like Eliot said. You're probably the most recognizable person alive right now, and you're running an indie studio that nobody's heard of. I've been baffled all this time by how you keep dodging it."

Jonas shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but I could see from his expression that he agreed. Cael was looking at me with their head tilted.

"It does seem like a bit of a missed opportunity," Jonas offered carefully. "Not that I don't understand wanting the game to stand on its own merits, because I do, but from a purely practical standpoint…"

"It'd be stupid not to use it," Cael finished.

I held up my hands. "I said I'll think about it. I'm not against it." The lie tasted sour, but the team seemed to relax, shoulders dropping, the tension in the room easing back to manageable levels.

"We should celebrate," Jonas said, the smile returning. "This calls for something. Drinks? There's that place around the corner with the—"

"Celebrate what, exactly?" Blair cut in, her voice flat. "We didn't sign anything. We don't have a deal. We have a first meeting where they said nice things about our game and then asked us for a pile of documents we don't have." She looked around the room. "A first meeting with a publisher is not a guarantee of anything. We've got a week to put together milestones, schedules, budget breakdowns, competitive analysis, and half a dozen other things we should have had ready months ago."

"You're such a buzzkill," Cael groaned.

"She's right," I said, already feeling the weight of the week ahead pressing down on my shoulders. "We've got work to do."

Hey there! This was chapter 10 of 4 Billion Toys 2. I'll be posting chapters here regularly, but if you want early access to the next chapters, feel free to support me on Patreon!

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