MMKM Episode 2: Opinions
Miss Me? Keys Mi
This is the second episode in the Miss Me? Keys Mi series.
Background: Following Keys' insecurities from the last episode, Millie and Keys now have differing opinions about the future of their game, causing a conflict.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
You know the best part about games? They allow you to indulge in activities that would seem unreasonable, or rather, impossible in reality. A lot of people view games as an escape from reality. A coping mechanism, of sorts. There's that too, of course.
For something that meant so much to so many people around the world, it was worth understanding how these games were developed and how they functioned. I still remember the time I opted for game development as my elective, clear as day. I wonder what things would be like had I chosen a different elective.
Life Itself probably wouldn't have existed.
Nor would have Guy.
Worst of all, I wouldn't have met Keys.
"Millie?" Keys asked, spinning his swivel chair around to face me.
"Yup?" I said, pulling down my headphones.
"Well, I have good news and bad news." Keys sighed.
I blinked at him, looking into his eyes. His eyes twinkled, accompanied by what seemed to me like a faint smile that gently tugged on the corners of his lips.
Mouser snorted in his sleep, ruining the moment. Keys cleared his throat and diverted his attention back to what he originally intended to say.
"The good news is that our unique visitors have gone up by 87% since last month."
"That's great!"
"Umm… the bad news is that not all of them created Free Life accounts. Our servers are running out of space and uh- that's making the game laggy for some users. Bad user experience."
Keys turned back to his laptop and drew up some statistics. I furrowed my eyebrows as I looked at him.
"We're running on GCP right now?"
"Yeah," Keys answered. "I think it might be time to switch to AWS."
"But that'd mean shutting the game down while we moved to AWS. We could lose players, Keys." I frowned.
"If we continued with GCP, players would eventually leave anyway because of the lag, Mills."
"Yeah, but- but, we have only just started out. We don't have any godfathers in the gaming industry."
"It's better that we don't. We had one, and I think both of us know how that turned out."
Keys furrowed his eyebrows. A tense silence lingered in the air.
"Where would we arrange the funds from? I don't want to commercialise a game we made with so much love..."
"Neither do I. We'll figure something out. Maybe we'll try our luck at a convention or something- wait a minute, the IGC San Francisco is coming up!" His face lit up in excitement.
I walked over to the couch, collapsing onto it. This was a bad idea. If we were to leave, our game wouldn't make the cut. I hugged my knees to my chest.
"In the time that we were gone, the game could collapse on itself, Keys." I croaked.
Keys looked at me sadly.
"If we want our game to survive in the long run, we have to take a risk now, Mills." He sighed. "Anyway, chuck that. We'll talk about it later."
I pressed my palms to my face. This was terrible. We had just started Free Life a month ago. We couldn't shut it down already. Who knows, the move might even reset Guy. And I really didn't want to lose him. Keys had poured his heart out into making him. I wanted to treasure Guy as a souvenir of Keys' cute, subtle, innocent confession, and my dumb, obscure self.
"You know," Keys chuckled. "I am flattered that you find my love letter cute."
I could feel my cheeks heating up to a billion degrees.
"I said that out loud, didn't I?" I pursed my lips, bringing the long sleeves of my turtleneck up to my mouth.
He simply smiled at me, his eyes skimming my face. From the Keys who couldn't even bring himself to smile at me without shying away, to the Keys who now boldly held my gaze, it's been one hell of a transformation. Locking my eyes with his, I walked over to him and settled on his thigh. Almost instinctively, he wrapped his arms around me, as if to keep us from toppling off the swivel chair.
I'm not kidding, that has happened before, and Mouser had quite the laugh back then.
"You know, Keys?" I said softly. "Maybe I'm not a loser after all."
"You never were, Mills."
"I won my lawsuit against Antwan, I've got a lovely game up and running," I tilted my head and smiled as I fixed my eyes on the framed photograph from the Seattle Indie Game Convention. "And, I've got the sweetest best friend-slash-partner-slash-boyfriend in the whole freaking world."
The last part brought a wide smile on Keys' face.
"You know, you're cute when you brag." He grinned sheepishly.
I laughed.
"You really wanna switch roles, huh?" I took his glasses off and set them down on the desk beside us. He looked at me, his hand resting carefully on my shoulder, as my fingers gently combed through his hair.
"Oh, my. You need to drop your haircare routine. Now."
Keys laughed before his lips met mine. We kissed for a long, long time.
"Mills, I think you should attend this year's Indie Game Convention in San Francisco. It'll be a great place to strike up some sponsorship deals. AWS is going to be expensive for a game like ours. We don't have that kind of money on us."
So much for talking about it later.
I looked at him briefly before I pinched the bridge of my nose.
"The IGC was where we sold off our game to Antwan. I don't want to make a mistake like that one again."
"Antwan was an asshole. Forget him. There will be a lot of other sponsors. You'll do great."
"I'm still a little worr- wait, what do you mean by 'you'll do great'? You're not coming?"
Keys smiled gently, before pursing his lips sadly.
"Someone needs to keep the game up and running. Like you said, the game could collapse on itself while we were gone." Keys said.
I frowned. Keys should have tagged along. I knew how much he loved attending such conventions. It wasn't fair.
"I think you should go. I'll stay."
"No, Mills. I can't speak well enough to convince investors. You'd do that better." He paused and smiled. "You've always been better than me. At that, especially. I know why you want me to go. Trust me, I'll be fine."
"Are you sure?" I asked him, cupping his cheek with my palm.
"I'll be fine." He rested his hand on mine and smiled before placing a little kiss on my cheek.
"Millie, take Maya with you," Mouser said nonchalantly from his spot on the couch, holding a box of strawberries.
Instinctively, I got off Keys' lap and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. Keys straightened his shirt.
"Maya who?" Keys asked.
"My girlfriend. She has worked as an AWS Cloud Engineer in the past. Now, she works as a backend supervisor in Epic Games. She can help out." Mouser walked over to us.
Keys and I blinked at him. Rather too blankly.
"Questions?"
"She will?" I asked. "Won't Epic Games have a problem with that?"
"Nope. Don't worry about that." He said, popping a strawberry in his mouth. "Keys, questions?"
"Since when do you have a girlfriend?"
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
note: GCP and AWS are cloud computing platforms that provide storage, servers and other services to individuals/companies. Such platforms are also employed by game developers to host their games for the global audience.
Author’s note: Second episode in the Miss Me? Keys Mi series! Hope you guys like it! ♡
Written by: @highratedkudi
Tags: @tompetersebbuckyhazleo @jazy3 @sophiathedudette @himitsy-chan @sleepy-head-611 @andyrobbos
