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It was nerve-wracking and thrilling.
At about ten minutes before launch, Judith, the company owner, joined Elliot in his office. Which meant this was about to happen. For real. It was actually coming.
At five minutes to, every speaker phone in the office beeped, which equated to an off-kilter kind of tone echoing through every room.
Everyone in the dev room put their phones on speaker, and I assumed most of the rest of the crew did too. We hadn’t talked about this as an office, but it seemed appropriate. We’d all sweated and bled together, we should count the game launch down together as well.
“I’m going to make this short.” Judith’s voice overlapped itself through the entire room, making her into her own backup announcer. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve been here since theCord days, if you’ve come on in the last year, or somewhere in between. If you’re here today, be proud of yourself. Regardless of what happens next, we’ve already set records, broken barriers, and told the industry they’re a bunch of stodgy old fucks and we know where the future is.”
“Of course, what happens next is going to be even more incredible than what we’ve already seen.” Elliot stepped in.
Was Judith smiling at that? She didn’t do so often, mostly because she had a reputation to uphold, but I’d bet money she was in Elliot’s office grinning. “Last call to tell usno go,” she said. “Art?”
“Go.” That was Phillip.
“Music?” she asked.
Brandon was in the office for this. It didn’t matter that he was a consultant these days—he’d still earned this. “Go.”
“Story?” At this point, Judith’s going down the list was more symbolic than anything. No one was going to pull the plug.
“Go,” Sonya said.
“QA?”
That was Nigel. “Go.”
“Security?”
There was a pause.
“Luna? Danny?” Judith sounded concerned.
“Stop,” Danny’s whisper wasn’t quiet when it was broadcast on every phone in the office.
Luna’s giggle was infectious, and I’d fight anyone who said otherwise. “I’m kidding. We’re a go.”
“Thank you.” Amusement tempered the edge in Judith’s voice. “And last, but never least… Development?”
“Go.” Elliot made the single word, two letters, one syllable, sound like the most potent invention in existence.
I swore a collective breath-holding rolled through the office. The seconds that ticked away on the clock were agonizing.
As the hand slipped closer to ten, Elliot spoke up again, “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four, Three.”
This was really happening.
“Two.”
Did it feel different from the other times?
“One.”
Yes. It was so much better.
“Go.” Elliot would be pressing that last button he needed to make our landing page live, as he spoke.
The phones stayed on, but everyone was focused on their computers. I didn’t have to see to know that was true because I knew my colleagues.
