"What if they sue?" one of the investors asked.

"Then we walk into court and defend."

"What if we lose?"

"We appeal. Chuck, how many legal obligations do we have to our crowdfunding contributors and audience?"

"Zero."

"Can you please explain why so everyone will understand?"

"Legally, if I give money to you, it's a gift. You are obligated to do absolutely nothing. This is doubly true if I am giving you money under a terms of service agreement in exchange for you building some kind of speculative project like a video game. I have no legal recourse at all if the project fails. I am issued no stock. There are no ownership documents. There is no contract. I own nothing. Even if there were some kind of contract, force majeure would absolve you legally and since everyone in this room is sitting behind about 11 corporate entities, by the time Joe the video game fan unravels the legal taffy wad, some mail drop in Nevada will be dealing with the paperwork anyway."

"How do you know all that?"

"I'm a member of the California Bar."

"Where did you graduate law school?"

"UCLA."

"Did everyone get that? If you need it in writing, Chuck's crack staff will draft something this afternoon."

"Garrett, we can't just do a pat answer like this. We're talking about a ten million dollar project now. There's more to this than just a bunch of guys in a garage. This building alone is going to provide the entire fan base what they'll claim is proof we were just in it for the money."

"We are just in it for the money."

"Garrett--"

"The fact we're doing so well is precisely why we can't allow what might happen someday to affect our ambition today, Janice. Now, let's move on to the ten features."

"How long did you reserve the room for?" one of the senior developers quipped. Some of the attendees chuckled. The room darkened and the projector filled one wall with an enormous image of the sword-and-shield-reminiscent Kings and Conquests logo. The word "balance" appeared in the center of the screen. Then a red line crossed it out and a red circle appeared around it. Wyland turned and faced the meeting.

"Hit me."

"What does that mean?" Brody asked.

"KNC will not be balanced. Balance is boring. Balance kills fun." Wyland replied.

"So, what are we going to do? Make it imbalanced?" audio engineer Tyler Briscoe asked.

"Absolutely. This game is going to be hilariously imbalanced. I don't want players to know what's going to happen from one minute to the next. Balance is a prison, and I'm not going to waste capital paying a bunch of code monkeys to sit and adjust a spreadsheet day and night for ten years."

"You're deliberately trying to provoke an argument, aren't you?" the same investor asked. "Players will go nuts if they think they are being picked on. They'll claim they aren't getting what other players get."

"We've already discussed annoying the Internet. There is no better advertising in the world than a bunch of highly motivated complainers, especially Internet people. In fact, we should buy them all webcams and let them spit and hiss and pound the table on Videowall day and night. The more they huff and puff, the higher our subscriber rates go."

"That could backfire."

"Good. The more complainers, the better. If we get a thousand of them I'll throw them a party at the Chestnut."

The investor shook his head. "Look," Wyland continued. "I know it's risky. In fact it could be reckless, but I've seen what happens to the companies that play it safe. They plod along, one sleepy step ahead of their burn rate, just trying to get to release day without being overcome by the wolves. That's not Fairly Unusual. We're going to walk out on stage birthday party naked, grab a microphone and start singing 'America the Beautiful' with the wrong lyrics, because the louder the audience shouts and the more they shake their fists, the more TV cameras will get pointed in our direction. And TV cameras equal sales."

"Then with all due respect, who buys our game?"

"Everyone. I will personally award a brand new Sovereign 7GL 650-horsepower Gullwing to the first player to reach max level in Kings and Conquests."

Silence.

"A two million dollar supercar? Most games would produce a winner in a few months," Brody said.

"Try weeks," someone else added.

"The first guy to get to level 3 will be one of the most famous players in the game, and he'll be too scared to leave the Inn," Wyland replied. "Death is permanent in KNC. You die, you start over. You die, your subscription cost goes up. You die, you don't get your stuff back unless you're the first to find the body, you have the right skills and you escape alive. A lot of the creatures in our game will be well aware of the potential for regular delivery of hot meals near a corpse. Assuming they don't just eat the corpse and throw all your stuff over a cliff first."

"What's our max level?"

"Seventy-five."