Peyton Holt sat in the dark dorm room, the glow of his laptop screen casting long shadows on the walls covered in Halo posters and crumpled fast-food wrappers. The system panel still hovered in his vision, its cursor blinking mockingly over the "Request new System Funds?" prompt.
His finger hovered over the Y key.
He could feel the pull—the siren song of another cycle, another chance to burn it all down. But for the first time since this nightmare started, a seed of doubt had taken root in his brain.
What if the system was rigged? What if every "flop" he designed was destined to explode into another viral hit? Lonely Desert Highway: boring road trip turned irony gold. The Lonely Ocean: pointless drifting became an environmental meme. Tax Season Simulator 2025: soul-crushing paperwork morphed into a national tax-reform debate.
He was worth over five million personally now, but it felt like pocket change compared to the hundreds of millions the company had raked in—and he couldn't touch a dime of it without that cursed 100:1 ratio.
Peyton slammed the laptop shut, banishing the panel. "No. Not yet. I need a break. I need... people."
Mason had texted earlier from his cousin's place in Pasadena: "You still alive? Saw Tax Sim on the news. They're calling it 'the game that broke the IRS.' Congrats? Or condolences?"
Peyton hadn't replied. He was too busy staring at the ceiling, replaying every decision that had led to this.
But the system rules were clear: to use funds "legitimately," he needed a real company. Real employees. Real operations. No more solo dorm-room disasters.
It was time to hire.
He opened Craigslist, LinkedIn, and the West Coast State job board. With five million in the bank (company bank, anyway), he could afford to overpay for the worst talent money could buy.
Job posting title: "SkyHigh Games – Hiring Creative Rebels for Next Big Thing (No Experience? No Problem!)"
Description: "We made Lonely Desert Highway, The Lonely Ocean, and Tax Season Simulator 2025. If you hate fun, love tedium, and want to make games that challenge the soul, join us. Competitive pay, flexible hours, zero micromanagement. Artists, programmers, designers—apply now. Location: Downtown LA."
He hit post and waited.
The resumes flooded in like a digital tsunami—1,200 by morning.
Peyton sorted them with surgical precision, tossing anyone who looked remotely competent. No AAA studio vets. No Ivy League grads. No portfolios with "polished" or "engaging" in the description.
He narrowed it to twelve gems:
- Dylan Rivers: Artist. Portfolio full of hyper-realistic but oddly disturbing food renders. "I once spent eight months on a single 3D cheeseburger that looks like it's staring into your soul."
- Cody Walsh: Programmer. "Specialized in inefficient code that runs perfectly but crashes at the worst moments. Last project: a calculator app that factored in existential dread."
- Ashley Brooks: Designer. "All games should have mandatory 30-minute unskippable tutorials about mundane life skills, like folding laundry."
- Tyler Hayes: Sound Guy. "I capture the essence of boredom. My best work: 12 hours of fridge hums."
The rest were similar: a writer obsessed with purple prose about taxes, a QA tester who "enjoys finding bugs but not fixing them," and a marketing intern whose idea of promotion was "whisper campaigns in coffee shops."
Peyton rented office space: a 1,200-square-foot loft in a converted warehouse in Koreatown, above a 24-hour donut shop. $6,500/month. He blew $120,000 on ergonomic chairs, top-spec iMacs, and a ping-pong table nobody would use—because the system demanded "professional setup."
First team meeting: Monday, December 21.
The twelve misfits shuffled in, looking like they'd been dragged from various basements and art-school dropouts. Dylan carried a sketchpad full of taco doodles. Cody wore a T-shirt that said "Syntax Error: Life Not Found."
Peyton stood at the front, whiteboard marker in hand, trying not to grin like a maniac.
"Welcome to SkyHigh Games," he said. "You've all seen our hits. Lonely Desert was about solitude. Lonely Ocean about regret. Tax Sim about... well, taxes. Our next project: something even deeper. We're calling it Ghost Town Online."
He sketched on the board: a multiplayer survival game set in an abandoned Nevada ghost town. Post-apocalyptic vibe, but with a twist.
"Core rules," he announced, channeling his inner saboteur. "Servers limited to 10 players max. No voice chat—only text emotes like 'sigh' or 'stare blankly.' Resources spawn once per real-life week. Combat? Disabled. You win by... surviving boredom."
He assigned tasks designed to doom the project:
- Dylan: "Make the environments photorealistic but empty. Miles of nothing but dust and tumbleweeds. No color palette—just beige."
- Cody: "Code the servers to lag randomly. Make logins take 5 minutes with captcha puzzles about tax forms."
- Ashley: "Design quests like 'sit in a chair for 20 real minutes' or 'watch paint dry on a virtual wall.'"
- Tyler: "Soundtrack: wind howls, distant coyote yips, and the occasional fridge hum from Tax Sim."
Budget burn: $4,200,000 over three weeks. $1.8M on server farms that "accidentally" throttled to dial-up speeds. $1.2M on ultra-HD empty-desert assets. $800k on "authenticity consultants" (a group of Burning Man rejects who advised on "true isolation"). $400k on a marketing "whisper campaign" that amounted to one Reddit post at 3 a.m.
Peyton monitored development like a hawk, steering every decision toward maximum unfun.
Dylan's first environment render: a vast, featureless plain with one rusted swing set that didn't swing. "It's metaphorical," Dylan said proudly.
Cody's login system: a 10-step captcha involving math problems from Tax Sim. "It'll weed out the casuals," he grinned.
Ashley's quests: "Collect 1,000 grains of sand one by one" or "Meditate in silence for 45 minutes—no alt-tab allowed, or the game crashes."
Tyler's audio: layers of white noise that induced headaches after 10 minutes.
Peyton playtested the beta for 15 minutes and had to lie down with an ice pack.
It was glorious.
It was empty.
It was going to lose every cent.
Launch day: January 15, 2010.
Price: $29.99 (mid-tier to scare off impulse buyers).
First week: 412 downloads. Servers empty. Forums silent. Revenue: $8,200 after refunds.
Peyton refreshed the dashboard hourly, whispering "yes" like a prayer.
Week two: Old Joe streamed it.
**"I Joined the Emptiest MMO Ever – 48 Hours of Nothing and I Loved Every Second"**
He role-played as a "lonely prospector," sitting in the virtual saloon typing "sigh" for hours. Chat spammed it back.
By week three: downloads 2.8 million. Servers "full" at 10 players became a meme—"Ghost Town Waiting Room Simulator."
Animal rights groups protested the "coyote yips" as "distressing," leading to free publicity on CNN.
Settlement: profit $112,447,882.
Personal cut: $1,124,478.
Peyton sat in the office, head on desk, as the team celebrated with donuts.
"Why," he whispered. "Why won't you let me lose?"
The universe didn't answer.
But the system did.
[New funds available upon request.]
He pressed Y.
The cycle spun on.
To be continued…