There’s a perception that people who make video games are either hella glamorous or still live in their parents’ basement.

The amount of time I spend at Comic Con or in media interviews or actually playing games is laughable in comparison to the time I spend pouring over spreadsheets, reviewing legal agreements, and sitting on teleconferences.

Sure, I consume more Red Bull per annum than most small European nations. But I don’t wear sweat pants, I don’t live on pizza from the shared kitchen, and my acne cleared up well before I won my first mock trial in law school.

Before Titan became a company, it was a game. One Max had made when he dropped out of college. I’d helped with the business side. When it took off, we looked at each other and said ‘let’s keep going.’ Since then we’d put out a follow-up hit, Phoenix, that broke all of Oasis’s records as the number one indie game of all time.

That business now paid for more than forty staff in five countries, many of which worked outside my office.

We’d released to the media that our newest game, Omega, followed the story of the last person on Earth in a post-apocalyptic world, facing down every demon nature and hell could throw at him in his quest to find safety and ultimately rebuild the planet.

What no one knew was that we were investing in new, state-of-the-art gameplay to make it happen.

Gameplay that, apparently, was even more fucking expensive than I’d thought.

People who aren’t entrepreneurs think working in tech is like living in the Wolf of Wall Street. Money, coke, and ass for days.

It’s not.

Since the launch of the Phoenix game, Max and I’d make bank to rival some Fortune 500 CEOs. We also paid our staff above market rates, something non-negotiable as far as I’m concerned.

But it’s always a dance. Budgeting enough to get us through launches, ensuring distributors and retailers pay us in time, and selling enough to cover the gambles we take.

With Omega, I thought we had…

At least until I saw the latest payroll numbers for development, which looked even bigger in the unrelenting LEDs of my computer screen.

“What the fuck, Max?” For this much money we could be building a new internet, not just a game.

The cell phone on my desk interrupted my dark thoughts.

“Riley McKay,” I grunted.

“Mr. McKay. I have David Stern with Epic Studios. Let me put him through.”

I’d been playing phone tag with his office in LA since he'd left a cryptic voicemail the night before.

I leaned back in my chair, propping my feet up on the desk and scanning my corner office at Titan as I waited.

My Rolling Stones poster occupied wall space next to my motivational poster of a rock climber standing on top of a mountain that says AMBITION: Climb as high as you can dream. Then choke on the lack of oxygen.

Neither the motivation nor the irony was comforting.

“Riley.” The voice that came on the line was peppy. The head of a Scout band gearing up for the first camping trip of the year. “David Stern.”

“David. What can I do for you?”

“Our film option on Phoenix is expiring the end of December.”

“If you’re looking for an extension, send me a memo. I’ll review it with our management team.”

In other words, me and Max in beanbag chairs.

“We don’t want an extension. We want to exercise the option.”

My feet dropped off the desk and my chair snapped upright with a metallic clank. “Excuse me?”

“We want to exercise the option,” he repeated. “We’re going to make a film.”

I hadn’t had enough energy drinks today to induce hallucinations, so I switched to speakerphone to pull up the agreement without cutting off the call.

More than a year ago, I’d brokered the deal giving them the chance to turn our most recent hit game into a movie. It was a step in the process, ticking a checkbox to maximize dollars from our launch. These things rarely went anywhere, but I was doing my job.

“We’ve got someone working on a script,” he went on. “And we’re talking to potential directors. Of course, we intend to keep your team updated. We’ll have to decide how to involve Titan in pre-production. Then there’s licensing, merchandising…”

His words blurred together as I pulled up a file.

There it was. The agreement, signed by David Stern at Epic Studios and a team of attorneys, authorizing the fat check we’d collected in exchange for the right to put our concept in their thick stack of ideas.

“Riley? You still with me?”

I did eight figure deals in my sleep, but for some reason since he’d uttered the word ‘film’, I was having trouble processing.

I rubbed both hands through my hair, my heart pounding. “I’m here. One question, David.”

“Sure.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

Max had bought the tenth and eleventh floors of the modern building at once, the first for Titan and the second for him. I’d always preferred to have a line between work and home life, even if it was imaginary more often than not.

I made my way up the stairs to the eleventh floor. There was no point knocking on the door of Max and Payton’s suite. The entrance was always unlocked.

Since Payton had moved in with Max more than a year ago, she had added softer touches to the marble and industrial feel of the massive condo.

“Vodka at noon?” I asked Max as I spied my friend in the kitchen, barefoot in his usual uniform of black T-shirt and worn jeans. I eyed up the clear liquid in his lowball glass. “Tell me we’re not going there again.”

He lifted a finger to his lips. “Water,” he grunted. “Tristan’s finally asleep. So’s Payton. I need to do approvals on the current MVP. I thought I’d get them done last night but I fell asleep on my computer.” The circles under his eyes had me doing a double take. Usually my friend worked long hours, but I’d never seen him look ready to cameo in The Walking Dead. “I woke up to bunch of garbage code and key-shaped dents in my face.”

An hour earlier, I’d planned to drop the issue of overspending on man hours for Omega at his feet. It was his responsibility that we’d been using too much developer time on the new game.

But that was before everything changed.

“I have news,” I announced.

“They’re introducing a twenty-fifth hour in the day.”

“Even better. Epic’s exercising their film option.” His expression went blank. “I just got off the phone. Phoenix is going to be a movie. A nine-figure-budget, CGI-artist’s-wet-dream, Whedon-worthy production.”

He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Huh.”

“Let me help you. ‘Riley, you’re a genius. This is the best thing to happen to me since Nintendo 64.’” Adrenaline rushed through me. “This is a game changer, Max. Aside from the fact that we both just moved from the ninetieth to the ninety-fifth percentile of coolest people on the planet, it gives Titan visibility. Licensing opportunities. New revenue streams.” I paused for breath.

Max shook his head, but the weariness had fallen away a few degrees, replaced by disbelief. “Shit.”

“Right there with you.”

Of the two of us, Max was the real gamer and I was the film buff. I’d seen every superhero movie of the last twenty years.

No, thirty.

Having someone turn our latest hit game into a movie would be the culmination of everything I’d wanted.

Today was like getting a new Avengers movie on Christmas, delivered to your door by Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson.

“I just wanted to deliver the good news. Oh, and one more thing. I dropped off your check at the gallery. When were you going to tell me you’d run into Sam Martinez?”

Wariness edged into his expression. “I tried to at the hospital the other night. I know you guys were… complicated.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “What is it you think happened?”

“If I had to guess?” He shrugged. “After living in each others’ heads senior year, she broke your heart. Or you broke hers.”

I shoved a hand through my hair. “Sounds about right.”

I turned for the door.

“Well?” he called after me in a half-whisper, half-shout. “Which is it?”