1 1. The Big Oops

"My name is Kai Shepherd, and today I will make history. "

Kai's finger delicately tapped a few keys on his keyboard, saving the changes he made to a few files. With another few taps, a loading screen popped up. It looked frozen for a few moments before it slowly progressed to 1%. The glacial loading speed quickly became boring so Kai got up from his chair and began pacing his apartment.

As he walked around the penthouse suite, Kai placed his hands behind his back and started practicing his supervillain monologue.

"As a child, my dream was to become a wizard, president, or to make video games. But life has not been kind to me. My first dream was crushed one harrowing day on a playground when I learned that wizards are not real. Even the other kids in the orphanage laughed at me!

My second dream did not last much longer, being dashed during a particularly nasty round of middle school student body elections.

Filled with determination, I began delving into the intricacies of video games.

My focus was so great that my teachers even called me a unicorn, one in a million! Though that was because they never saw me in class.

With newfound inspiration I began to teach myself coding. The internet was full of stories about college dropouts and tech startups becoming rich so it must be easy right?

Wrong! Coding is a dangerous and costly endeavor not for the faint of heart. One must also be able to tell the truth from fiction. The internet said that flappy bird was created with under a thousand lines of code! I needed almost five thousand just to create my loading screen!

The forums all tried to tell me that it's a skill issue and that I need to learn more than if/then statements but who are they to tell me how to code? I, Kai Shepherd, refuse to bow down to a bunch of condescending nerds on the internet.

Besides, why learn to code when I can look up the error and copy/paste the first solution I see?

It only took two months of grinding to hammer out 400,000 lines of code and produce my first prototype; Idle Wizard Tower Clicker Dungeon Defense With Friends!" 

Reaching a good stopping point, Kai pulled himself out of his monologuing state and walked back over to his computer. Due to the game's 'inherent awesomeness', it took almost an hour to load on a good day. Just looking at the code, Kai was thankful that he won the lottery straight out of high school. His code could give a real programmer a stroke just by trying to read it.

Eyes fixed on the laptop screen, Kai waited with bated breath as a loading bar slowly neared completion.

"Come on, come on, twenty-ninth times the charm."

As the bar reached 99% he crossed his fingers and dove behind the desk, deftly avoiding a pile of charred laptops and motherboards.

…

….

Silence? No explosion or smell of burnt plastic and heavy metals? Success!!

Vaulting the desk and slamming his butt into the cushy office chair, he studied the computer screen. Ignoring the stutters and frozen frames, there was a wizard-y voxel tower on a circular grassy plane. Lining the edges of the field, there were a few blocky trees.

Clicking the mouse, a little '+1' popped out of the tower.

That was it.

Kai's development philosophy was to just wing it. Thought of a cool mechanic? Just add it! Game assets too expensive? Just pirate them! Too many bugs in the game? Nope, that's a hidden feature!

At this point, he couldn't remember exactly what was added to the game as it rarely even booted up. Looking at the jumbled spaghetti code wouldn't help either, even Kai had no idea how it even functioned at this point. Regardless, he had a grand vision for the game. Kai envisioned a cross between idle clickers, base building, and a MMO.

Players would start with a wizard tower and could add cool stuff with the mana it generates. Using a portal system, they could also travel to other players' towers and to steal, hangout, or whatever they wanted. The details were unimportant. Other games like NMS just added more content after release. Kai was sure that with such exquisite foresight the gaming community will-

*Hssssss Pop*

Hearing a familiar noise, Kai stopped daydreaming and took a glance at the laptop. The fans were running at full power and the faint smell of burnt plastic wafted over. There was even a small, smoking bulge at the bottom as something in the computer malfunctioned.

As a grizzled three month veteran of game development, Kai could recognize the signs of an imminent explosion and started a mad dash out of his apartment.

Reaching the front door, Kai almost managed to pull out his keys before a loud noise erupted behind him.

*BOOOOOM*

Kai ignored the ruckus as he felt a flash of heat pass through his body and his hair stood on end. Unfortunately all of his keys looked the same and the adrenaline was making his hands shaky. 

Kai awkwardly fumbled around for a full minute before realizing that the room was nearly silent. There was no crackling of melted plastic or even an acrid odor, just a weird tapping noise.

Kai slowly turned around and his eyes went wide.

The room was in complete disarray, orange flames surrounded his laptop as shrapnel could be seen suspended in the air. His desk was shattered and halfway between crumbling and catching fire. Even the graveyard of bricked computers was not spared as it lay spread across the floor. The entire space looked like it had been frozen in time, with the explosion halted halfway through.

Strangest of all though were the ominous purple-black cracks extending from the laptops carcass, and the ethereal man with white angel wings and golden hair impatiently tapping his foot right in front of him.