Jones flipped through the stack of letters in her hands before stopping at a reply from a publisher addressed to her husband.
"Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, this title does not meet our company's publishing standards, "
"They're never going to publish your 'work of art.'"
Jones made air quotes with her fingers.
This wasn't the first rejection letter Will had received from a publisher. Ever since Raid on Bungeling Bay, Will hadn't managed to sell another game.
It was as though he'd become obsessed, throwing himself headfirst into urban planning, but that concept seemed destined to be fundamentally incompatible with video games.
"They don't understand! Those idiots, my God! All they want are stage based action games! A bunch of shortsighted morons!"
Hearing that his work had been rejected yet again, Will finally seemed to reach his breaking point and exploded.
Will always felt as though the world itself had conspired against him. In 1983, he developed the first game of his career: Raid on Bungeling Bay.
He had believed it would mark the beginning of his career. Who could have imagined that it would instead be the beginning of a nightmare?
In 1984, he released the game on the Commodore 64, but piracy spread far faster than he had ever imagined. Those pirated floppy disks sold for less than the official version, dealing a devastating blow to the sales of the game he had placed so much hope in.
He thought his career would end there. Then, out of nowhere, Nintendo contacted him, saying they wanted to port the game to the NES and the Famicom.
Although the game ultimately sold around 600,000 copies, only about 20,000 found buyers in America, where rampant piracy on the Commodore 64 had gutted much of its commercial potential. In Japan, however, the cartridge based Famicom release was far more resistant to piracy, helping the game sell hundreds of thousands of copies.
Even then, Will saw little of the Japanese revenue, with most of the profits going to the publisher under the licensing agreement. Still, despite its uneven success, those years were the brightest chapter of Will's life.
But as time passed, Raid on Bungeling Bay's sales gradually plateaued, and Will desperately needed to develop a brand-new game to earn more money and support his family.
Especially now that he had a wife. His expenses had doubled, yet it was at precisely this moment that his career suddenly hit rock bottom.
Will took everything he had learned from Raid on Bungeling Bay and poured it into his new project, pushing theories of urban dynamics to their limits.
He named this ambitious new game SimCity, running on the Commodore 64. Then publishers looked at the game and asked him an absurd question.
"So... when does this game end?"
End?
End my ass!
It's a city-building simulation game! What do you mean, when does it end? Were all those idiots' brains clogged with lard?
"They only want games with clear victory conditions and stages!"
No one wanted to publish his game, that was an indisputable fact. Unless he could start his own company like EA or Activision and publish it himself.
But he was already struggling to make his mortgage payments. Where was he supposed to get the money to start a company?
Hearing Will's self-defeating complaints, Jones suddenly lost her temper as well.
"I can't believe this! You spent an entire year making this… this useless electronic sandbox! We need money, Will! Money! Do you understand?"
"You're just as stupid as those people! It's not some useless electronic sandbox, it…"
Will's words caught in his throat, as he saw the tears shimmering in Jones' eyes and fell silent.
After a long while, he picked up his coat, draped it over his shoulders, and let out a long sigh.
"I'm sorry... I'm going out to get some air..."
Will practically fled to the front door and yanked it open, and then he froze in place.
Standing outside was an unusually familiar-looking young man. His hand was still suspended in midair, as though he had been about to knock.
Seeing Will staring at him, Ethan smiled awkwardly before withdrawing his hand.
"Sorry, did I come at a bad time?"
Ethan instantly felt a wave of helplessness. Just how unlucky did he have to be to walk right into the middle of a family argument?
Faced with this unexpected visitor, Will wasn't in much better shape. The moment he realized the man had probably overheard every word of his fight with his wife, his face burned with embarrassment.
He wiped his face before finally taking a proper look at the visitor.
"Excuse me, are you, No way... No fucking way!! Ethan Hayes?!"
That face was practically the symbol of the video game industry, it was simply impossible to mistake.
Ethan Hayes. Founder of GAMENOVA, one of America's biggest gaming companies.
Ethan smiled faintly and nodded politely. Glancing at the flustered Jones inside the house, he said to Will, "Seems I've come at the wrong time. I'll visit another day."
"No, no, no, Ethan! You've come at the perfect time!"
Will grabbed Ethan's hand in one swift motion before turning towards the house and saying, "Honey, tidy up the house, we have a guest!"
"O-Okay!"
Only then did Jones seem to snap back to reality as she hurriedly straightened up the somewhat messy living room.
"Y-You're... serious?"
Will stiffly adjusted his glasses, unable to believe what he'd just heard. Jones stood there just as frozen, unsure how she should even react.
"Yeah, GAMENOVA has just finished expanding, and we're looking to recruit a new group of developers with fresh ideas. If joining us doesn't interest you, we can also provide startup funding for your own studio, as long as you develop exclusively for the NovaBox platform."
"No, Ethan! I'm interested! I'm extremely interested!"
Will fought the urge to slap himself twice, just to be certain. After countless sleepless nights, it wouldn't have been the first time his overworked brain had started playing tricks on him.
Am I finally losing it? Did I actually work myself to death?
For the first time in his life, Will found himself wondering if there really was something waiting after death.
He had always been a staunch atheist, but staring at the impossible before him, he wasn't so sure anymore. If this wasn't a hallucination, then maybe, just maybe, he'd been wrong about the whole "no higher power" thing.
Just ten minutes ago, he had been nothing more than a miserable nobody whose career and marriage were both falling apart, someone on the verge of being swept into the trash heap as a burden on society.
Yet now, in the blink of an eye, he had received an offer from the greatest game company in the world, GAMENOVA, and it was a personal offer from Ethan himself!
Even if someone walked in right now and said that everything he'd experienced had been nothing more than an absurdly elaborate prank, one that was carefully orchestrated by GAMENOVA to see if he was worthy of joining their team.
He'd believe them without question. They could laugh, call him gullible, say it was all a joke, he wouldn't care.
After everything that had happened, he'd already been swept so far beyond disbelief that reality itself no longer seemed like a thing he could trust.
"Ethan..."
Will licked his lips, his eyes drifting towards the Commodore 64 as he hesitated over whether he should bring it up. He was genuinely afraid that once Ethan saw SimCity, he would reject him just like every other publisher had.
If that happened, he would even lose the opportunity that was right in front of him.
But if he simply buried the game, if he abandoned the project he had poured countless days and sleepless nights into….
No, his pride as a game developer would never allow it.
No matter how logical the choice might be, no matter how much easier it would be to walk away, he couldn't bring himself to discard something he had fought so hard to create.
He secretly glanced at Jones. She seemed to understand exactly what he was thinking and gently shook her head, telling him not to say anything.
But just because the two of them stayed silent didn't mean Ethan would.
"Will, our company has recently been planning to develop a city-building simulation game. I found some of the concepts you explored in Raid on Bungeling Bay extremely interesting, so I'm certain you're going to love this project proposal."
"Huh???"