The Never Game Read online

  “My father and I’d go out every fall for duck and pheasant,” she said. “Kind of a tradition.” They dodged a pair of Asian women in bobbed wigs, one of which was bright green, one yellow. They wore snakeskin bodysuits.

  Maddie asked, “You didn’t play games?”

  “No computers in our house.”

  “So you played on consoles?”

  “None of the above,” he said.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Never met anybody who grew up on Mars.”

  On the Compound, in the rugged Sierra Nevadas, the Shaw family had two basic cell phones—prepaid, of course, and for use in emergencies only. There was a shortwave radio, which the children could listen to, but like the phones it could be used for transmission only in dire straits. Ashton warned that “fox hunters”—people with devices to locate the source of radio signals—might be roaming the area to find him. When the family made the trip to the nearest town, White Sulphur Springs, twenty-five miles away, Ashton and Mary Dove had no problem with the children’s logging on to the antiquated computers in the town library, or using them at their aunts’ and uncles’ homes during their summer visits to “civilization”—Portland and Seattle. But when your daily routine might find you rappelling down cliffs or confronting a rattlesnake or moose, vaporizing fictional aliens was a bit frivolous.

  “Oh, oh, oh! . . . Come on.” Maddie charged off toward a large monitor on which a gamer—a young man in stocking cap and sweats and an attempt at a beard—was firing away at bulky monsters, blowing most of them up.

  “He’s good. The game’s Doom,” she said, shaking her head, sentimental. “A classic. Like Paradise Lost or Hamlet . . . Caught you almost looking surprised there, Colter. I have a B.A. in English lit and a master’s in information science.”

  She picked up a controller. She offered it to him. “Try your hand?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “You mind if I do?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Maddie dropped into a seat and began to play. Her eyes were focused and her lips slightly parted. She sat forward and her body swayed and jerked, as if the world of the game were the only reality.

  Her movement was balletic, and it was sensuous.

  Speakers behind Shaw roared with the sound of a rocket and he turned, looking across the jammed aisle. He gazed up at the monitor, on which a preview of this company’s game was displayed. In Galaxy VII the player guided an astronaut piloting a flying ship over a distant planet. The craft set down and the gamer directed the character to leave the vehicle and walk into a cave, where he explored tunnels and collected items like maps, weapons and “Power Plus wafers.” Which sounded to Colter like a marathon runner’s food supplement.

  The game was calmer and subtler than the shoot-’em-up carnage of Doom.

  Maddie appeared beside him. “I saved the world. We’re good.” She gripped his arm and leaned close, calling over the noise, “The gaming world in a nutshell.” She pointed back to Doom. “One, where it’s all from your perspective and you mow down the bad guys before they mow you down. They’re called first-person shooters.” Then she turned to the game he’d been looking at. “Two, action-adventure. They’re third-person role playing, where you direct your character—avatar—you know avatar?” He nodded. “Direct your avatar around the set, overcoming challenges, collecting things that might help you. You try to stay alive. Not to worry, you can still use a pulse laser to fry Orc butt.”

  “Lord of the Rings.”

  “Hey.” She laughed and squeezed his arm. “Hope for you after all.”

  When there’s no TV, you gravitate toward books.

  “One last lesson.” She pointed up to the Galaxy VII screen. “See the other avatars walking around? Those are players somewhere else in the world. It’s not just a role-playing game but a ‘multiplayer online role-playing game,’ a MORPG. The other gamers might be on your side or you might be fighting them. At any given moment in the popular games—like World of Warcraft—there could be a quarter million people online playing.”

  “You game a lot?”

  She blinked. “Oh, I never told you: it’s my job.” She dug into her pocket and handed him a business card. “I’ll introduce myself proper. My real name is GrindrGirl88.” And she shook his hand with charming formality.

  22.

  Maddie Poole didn’t design games, didn’t create their graphics, didn’t write their ad campaigns.

  She played them professionally.

  Grinding—as in her online nickname—was when one played hour after hour after hour for streaming sites like Twitch. “I’m going to give up asking if you know any of this, okay? Just go with it. So what happens is people log on to the site and watch their favorite gamers play.”

  It was a huge business, she explained. Gamers had agents just like sports figures and actors.

  “You have one?”

  “I’m thinking about it. When that happens, you end up committed to a gig. You’re not as free to play where you want, when you want. You know what I mean?”

  Colter Shaw said nothing in response. He asked, “The people who log on? They play along?”

  “No. Just watch. They see my screen while I’m gaming, like they’re looking over my shoulder. There’s also a camera on me so they see my cute face. I have a headset and mic and I explain my gameplay, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and crack jokes, and chat. A lot of guys—and some girls—have crushes on me. A few stalkers, nothing I can’t handle. We gaming girls gotta be tough. Almost as many women play games as men, but grinding and tournaments’re a guys’ world, and the guys give us a lot of crap.”

  Her face screwed up with disgust. “A gamer I know—she’s a kid, eighteen—she beat two assholes playing in their loser basement in Bakersfield. They got her real name and address and SWAT’d her. You know it? Capital S-W-A-T.”

  Shaw didn’t.

  “When somebody calls the police and says there’s a shooter in your house, they described her. The cops, they’ve gotta follow the rules. They kicked in the door and took her down. Happens more than you’d think. Of course, they let her go right away and she traced the guys who did it, even with their proxies, and they ended up in jail.”

  “What’s your tat?” A glance toward her neck.

  “I’ll tell you later. Maybe. So. Here’s your answer, Colt.”

  “To what question?”

  “What we’re doing here. Ta-da!”

  They were in front of a booth in the corner of the convention center. It was as big as the others yet much more subdued—no lasers, no loud music. A modest electronic billboard reported:

  HSE PRESENTS

  IMMERSION

  THE NEW MOVEMENT IN VIDEO GAMING

  This booth featured no play stations; the action, whatever it might be, was taking place inside a huge black-and-purple tent. A line of attendees waited to get inside.

  Maddie walked up to a check-in desk, behind which sat two Asian women in their thirties, older than most employees at the other booths. They were dressed in identical conservative navy-blue business suits. Maddie showed her ID badge, then a driver’s license. A screen was consulted and she was given a pair of white goggles and a wireless controller. She signed a document on a screen and nodded toward Shaw.

  “Me?”

  “You. You’re my guest.”

  After the ID routine, Shaw received his set of the toys too. The document he’d signed was a liability release.

  They walked toward the curtained opening to the tent, lining up in a queue of other people, mostly young men, holding their own controllers and goggles.

  Maddie explained, “I’m also a game reviewer. All the studios hire us to give them feedback about the beta version of new games. Immersion’s one I’ve been waiting for for a long time. We’ll just try it out here for the fun of it, then I’ll take it home
for a serious test drive.”

  He studied the complicated goggles, which had a row of buttons on each side and earpieces.

  The line moved slowly. Shaw noted that a pair of employees—large, unsmiling men dressed in the male version of the women’s somber suits—stood at the entryway, admitting a few people at a time, only after the same number had left by a nearby exit, handing back their goggles to yet another employee. Shaw noted the expressions on the faces of those leaving. Some seemed dumbfounded, shaking their heads. Some were awestruck. One or two looked troubled.

  Maddie was explaining, “HSE is ‘Hong-Sung Enterprises.’ A Chinese company. Video gaming’s always been international—the U.S., England, France and Spain all developed games early. Asia’s where it really took off. Japan, in particular. Nintendo. You know Nintendo?”

  “Mario, the plumber.” Once off the Compound for college, then work, Shaw’s education in modern culture took off exponentially.

  “It was a playing card company in the eighteen hundreds and eventually pioneered console gaming—those’re like arcade games for the home. The name’s interesting. Most people say it means ‘leave luck to Heaven.’ Sort of a literal translation. But I was playing with some Japanese gamers. They think it has a deeper meaning. Nin means ‘chivalrous way,’ ten refers to ‘Tengu,’ a mythical spirit who teaches martial arts to those who’ve suffered loss, and do is ‘a shrine.’ So, to me, Nintendo means a shrine to the chivalrous who protect the weak. I like that one better.

  “Now, back to history class. Japan soared in the video gaming world. China missed the party entirely—that’s a joke. Because the Communist Party didn’t approve of gaming. Subversive or something. Until, natch, they realized what they were missing out on: money. Two hundred million Americans play video games. Seven hundred million play in China.

  “The government got involved and Beijing had a problem: players sit on their asses all day long. They get fat; they’re out of shape. They’re in their thirties and they have heart attacks. So HSE, Hong-Sung Enterprises, did something about it.” Maddie waved her hand at the Immersion sign. “When you play, you actually move—everywhere, not just standing in front of your TV, swinging a fake tennis racket. You walk around, you run, you jump. Your basement, your living room, your backyard. The beach, a field. There’s a version you can play on a trampoline and they’re working on one you can use in a pool.”

  She held up the goggles and pointed. “See, cameras in the front and on the sides? You put it on, get a cellular or Wi-Fi connection and go out into your backyard, but it’s not your backyard anymore. The game’s algorithms change what you see. The tricycle, the barbecue, the cat—everything’s been turned into something else. Zombies, monsters, rocks, volcanoes.

  “I’m pretty into sports and exercise, which is why it’s totally my kind of game. Immersion’s going to be the NBT—the next big thing. The company’s already donating thousands of the units to schools, to hospitals to help with rehab, to the Army. There’s software to replicate battlefields, so soldiers can train anytime. In the barracks, at home, wherever.”

  They were next to go in. “Okay, this’s it, Colter. Put the goggles on.” He did. It was like looking through lightly tinted gray sunglasses.

  “The controller’s your weapon.” She smiled. “Umm, you’ve got it backward. You fire that way, you’ll shoot yourself in the groin.”

  He turned the thing around. It was like a remote control and felt comfortable in his hand.

  “Just press that button to shoot.”

  Then Maddie took his left hand and lifted it to that side of the goggles. “This is the on switch. Press it for a second or so after we get inside. And this button. Feel it?”

  He did.

  “If you die, hit it. It resets you back to life.”

  “Why do you think I’m going to die?”

  She only smiled.

  23.

  When they walked inside the tent, an employee directed them down a corridor to Room 3.

  The thirty-by-thirty-foot space looked like a theater’s backstage: walkways, stairs, platforms, furniture, a fake rubber tree, a large sprawl of tarp, a table on which sat bags of potato chips and cans of food, a grandfather clock. He and Maddie had the room to themselves.

  Just a game, of course, but Shaw felt himself go into set mode. Just like before rappelling off a cliff, or streaking up a hill on the Yamaha fast enough to go airborne, you have to ready yourself.

  Never be unprepared physically or mentally . . .

  A voice from on high said: “Prepare for combat. On one, engage your goggles. Three . . . two . . . one!”

  Shaw pressed the button Maddie had indicated.

  And the world changed.

  Astonishing.

  The grandfather clock was some sort of bearded wizard, the platforms were icy ledges, the rubber plant a campfire burning with green flame. The tarp was now a rocky coast overlooking a turbulent ocean in which whirlpools swirled and sucked ships into dark spirals. There were two suns in the sky, one yellow and one blue, and they cast a faint green haze over the world. The walls were no longer black curtains but instead distant vistas of snowcapped peaks and a towering volcano, which was erupting. All in stunning 3-D.

  He glanced to his right and saw Maddie, now dressed in black armor. He then looked at his own legs and found he was wearing the same. His hands were in black metallic gloves, and in his right the controller had become a ray gun.

  A consuming experience.

  Immersion was aptly named.

  “Colt,” Maddie called, though it wasn’t her voice. The tone was husky.

  “I’m here,” he said. His voice too had changed from its easy baritone to a rugged bass.

  He noted her climbing up a rocky ledge, which had been a simple scaffolding before putting on the goggles. She was crouched low, head sweeping back and forth. “They’re coming. Get ready.”

  “Who’s—”

  He gasped. A creature pounced on the ledge beside her. The glistening blue thing had a human face—with the minor addition of saber teeth and an extra eye, glowing red. The creature swung a sword at Maddie. She blasted it. It didn’t die right away but kept coming after her, taking the sparking hits from her weapon. It swung a second glowing sword. She had to dodge, leaping off the rocks onto a grassy field. Here too there was an elegance to her moves.

  Sensuous . . .

  Which is when a flying pterodactyl dropped from the sky and ripped Shaw’s heart out of his chest.

  YOU’VE JUST DIED! a sign in the goggle screen announced.

  He remembered which button to hit.

  RESET . . .

  He was alive once more. And, now, his survival upbringing returned.

  Never lose sight of your surroundings . . .

  He spun around—just in time to dodge a squat creature attacking with a fiery hammer. It took five shots of the laser to kill it and he had to leap back from a final swing of its weapon before it died.

  The goggle message was YOU’VE JUST EARNED A LAVA HAMMER. A small picture of one popped up in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen. The window was called WEAPONS STASH.

  A shadow appeared on the grassy field in front of him.

  Shaw’s heart thudded and he looked up fast, just in time to kill one of those damn flying things. It too had a human face.

  He found himself sweating, tense. He felt an urge to be trigger-happy, blasting creatures through weeds and trees, shooting when he had no clear line of sight.

  He thought of the hunter, all those years ago, shooting the buck through a stand of brush.

  I hit something? There was just a noise in the bushes. I thought it was a wolf . . .

  Shaw calmed and took control of his tactics. He zapped a slew of running, flying and slithering things—until an alien unsportingly dropped a boulder off a hilltop and crushed him.


  RESET.

  He saw Maddie Poole taking on three creatures at once, ducking for cover behind a downed tree trunk, laden with bags of corn and peasant bread—it was the table on which sat the chips and soup cans. Shaw had a good shot at one and killed it. She didn’t acknowledge the aid. Like a real soldier, she wouldn’t let her attention waver.

  An Asian-inflected voice came through the speakers: “Your Immersion experience will end in five minutes.”

  After Maddie killed her other two assailants, she hit a button on her goggles and walked up to Shaw and pressed the same on his. While the fantasy world remained, the aliens had vanished. It was suddenly quiet, aside from the make-believe sound of the ocean and the wind. There were no laser guns in their hands any longer.

  “Hell of an experience,” he told her.

  She nodded. “Totally. Notice how all the creatures had variations on human faces.”

  He said he had.

  “Hong Wei, the CEO of the company, ordered focus groups to help select villains. Gamers are much more comfortable killing anything that resembles people than animals. We’re fodder; Bambi’s safe.”

  Shaw looked around. “Where’s the exit?”

  She said coyly, “We’ve got a few minutes left. Let’s fight some more.”

  He was tired, after the eventful day. But he was enjoying the time with her. “I’m game.”

  She smiled, then took his hand and put it on yet another button on his goggles.

  “On three, press this one.”

  “Got it.”

  “One . . . two . . . three!”

  He pushed where instructed and, from the controller, a red-hot glowing sword blade emerged. One appeared in her hand too. This time there were no other creatures, just the two of them.

  Maddie Poole didn’t waste a second. She leapt at him, swinging the sword overhead, bringing it down fast. While Shaw knew knives well, he’d never held a sword. Still, combat with the weapon was instinctual. He effectively parried her blow and, finding himself irritated that she’d withheld what this portion of the game would entail, he charged forward. She deflected each of his thrusts and swings or dodged out of the way. As soon as he missed her, she was back, coming at him. His advantages were longer legs and strength, hers were speed and being a smaller target.