The hardest part about getting their new work balance up and running was getting Celeste freed up so she could participate in the game development. It took some bargaining, especially since the school was inflexible about working hours. In the end, she had a choice. She could either no longer be part of the development team or go down to part-time.

  Jasper and Celeste had talked long and hard about it. While they would be okay financially with this setup, the choice was ultimately Celeste's to make, even as Jasper made it clear that he was fine with her not participating in game development.

  In the end, Celeste ended up working part-time. While it wasn't ideal, she couldn't help but feel like the game was speaking to her in a way she had never experienced before. Not just that, but the school was looking to cut down on the number of teachers, thanks to the diminishing number of students attending each year. She would likely have been asked to go part-time anyway, but this allowed her to do it on her own terms.

  And with that, the first week of development started. It was an intense week. This was primarily due to the groundwork that needed to be done for things to be ready for the first group meeting. Jasper and Martin both worked long hours in an effort to get the game to work online. They managed to finish it off by working through the weekend, but at that point, things were running pretty smoothly, ensuring minimum delay in the connection. That was, however, mostly Martin's fault. While Martin wasn't the best at communication, and some of the new "best practices" weren't really something he bothered to understand, his Assembly code was impressive.

  Jasper was still in awe at how Martin managed to tie each API call made to the Deep Dive Interface to the local code running on the server. While there really wasn't much filtering or sanitation going on with any of the inputs, it had such little delay that anyone connecting might as well have been playing locally. However, it wasn't really necessary to clean the inputs, as they were running it all on a private intranet. All in all, they could play with their American intern with practically no delay.

  As such, when Monday came around, all four loaded into a temporary holding world. Jasper had done the barebones modelling for the world, creating a library with seemingly no doors. Each of them got to sit in a comfy chair while in their avatar forms.

  That did lead to quite a comical sight, as Martin's massive orkish frame seemed to take up most of the room. His muscles bulged quite a bit, thanks to the scraps that made up his outfit, which did not cover much of his body. The only real gear he was wearing was a pair of impractically oversized pauldrons, each ending in a flat top, almost like a tower. The left pauldron even had a small catapult sitting on it. Martin knew it was stupid, but he enjoyed being the god of Dungeons, Engineering, and Sieges. This was all done thanks to having the Domains: Beasts, Plants, Range, and Wealth.

  Next to him was Celeste. She had more ingame titles than most, but usually going under the nom de guerre of "The Architect of Reality". She wasn't much taller than she was in real life, meaning that she was quite short, and she had been honestly surprised nobody mistook her for a halfling yet. The hood of a black cape hid her wild, short, blonde hair. The inside of said cape was filled with pockets, and every pocket was filled with various tools she used during crafting. The rest of her outfit wasn't anything too out there, meant to have her blend in with the rough clothing of the common folk. She walked among them, the Goddess of Entropy, only making herself known when someone did something stupid. This was also reflected by her Domains, which were Death, Health, Journeying, Time, and Tinkering.

  Next, Jasper was sitting and browsing through some UI interface as he studied his character. Being the father of dragons and the god of magic, his build was rather scattered. Having initially gone for a shield and magic build, he had failed in this, and, due to his hyper-focusing nature, he jumped from project to project with the intent of fixing problems as they came up. Jasper looked very much like his real counterpart, though this version of him had glasses and was wearing a bright blue robe. He had ended up with the Domains of Endurance, Knowledge, Luck, and Magic. While he enjoyed the Knowledge and Magic Domains, he wasn't too keen on Endurance and Luck, feeling like he hadn't used them as effectively as he could.

  Lastly, Riez appeared. Since she didn't have an ingame avatar, the avatar from the last game she had played spawned instead. The username themightykamina hovering over the head of what could only be described as a chibi version of herself, with the smuggest expression that Jasper had ever seen. She looked like one of the many gremlin depictions of nerdy characters that Jasper had seen around the internet. All she needed was some Doritos and Mountaindew to finish the look. Her bright orange hair was perfectly replicated in almost neon-like colours, and her aura of smugness, which she had managed to exude even in real life, seemed only to grow stronger in this digitised form.

  The trio stared at the newcomer, their eyes not believing what they saw. Martin opened his tusk-filled mouth to say something, only to be interrupted as Riez pulled out some unknown softdrink and downed it in a single pull. Martin closed his mouth again and looked to the husband and wife, who just seemed to shrug.

  "Good! Everyone is here!" Jasper finally managed to say, and a murmur of agreement came from the others while the chibi version of Riez pulled out some popcorn and started to stuff her face with them.

  Jasper ignored her, trying to continue her introduction. "So, as you all know, we will develop the entire game at this point. That means we have to do things a little differently." He said, only for Riez to raise a hand.

  "Yes?"

  Riez whipped her hands on the comfortable leather chair she was sitting in and swallowed the mouthful of popcorn. "Uhm... Who is she?" She pointed to Celeste.

  Celeste beamed a bright smile, trying to make a good first impression. "I am Celeste, Jasper's wife and part-time teacher."

  Riez nodded along, and Jasper rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Riez, this is usually the point where you introduce yourself as well."

  The little gamer gremlin seemed surprised by this turn of events, but her smile beamed with joy. "I am Riez. A pleasure to meet you."

  Jasper comforted himself by the fact that he had already told his wife about Riez and what to expect from her. Celeste nodded to the intern and then turned her attention back to Jasper.

  The team leader cleared his throat and continued. "As I said, we will be developing the entire game. That means that we are going to run into problems. A lot of problems. And we will only be going into the world every 2 weeks. However, we first need to decide what kind of game we are making." The others looked at him expectingly, so Jasper continued. "Okay, so in short, we have been making the world with an MMO in mind. However, the reality is that if we continue making an MMO, we will have to think about servers, the world economy, and so many more things. Essentially, we are making things much more difficult for ourselves."

  Martin nodded along, but he couldn't help but make a small comment. "If you are saying we should be making a mobilegame, I will be logging out of this meeting and beating you up IRL."

  Jasper laughed a little, then looked at Martin and saw that his friend wasn't entirely kidding. That made sense since they had threatened to quit their jobs after the main branch had told them they should be making mobile games.

  Jasper decided it was best to just continue. "Anyway, what I am saying is that while we would all like an MMO, we do not have the team for that. I am pretty sure we don't even have the team to maintain something like that. Anti-cheating alone will require a much bigger team than us."

  Celeste raised a hand. Jasper looked at her, opened his mouth, then closed it again, before finally saying things out loud. "You know, you don't need to raise your hand to say something."

  "It is polite to do", Celeste countered, though Jasper was pretty sure that was just a work injury from being a teacher. Celeste was quick to ask her question, though. "So what will we be making?"

  Jasper nodded along, glad to get put back on track. "I was thinking some kind of Co-op game. Focus more on the experience among friends than anything else. Let people host setups themselves if they want, and then let them explore the world. I was thinking that maybe we should do some kind of split play, where people can either play adventurers or gods like we have been doing. However, since I don't wanna scope-creep us on our very first meeting, I think we should just focus on them being adventurers."

  The others seemed to consider it for a bit before essentially agreeing. While it was clear that they wanted to make something fun, it was also obvious that they knew they had limited resources.

  Jasper sighed with relief, seeing that there were no outright protests. "Cool! So! First thing first, we have been running around rather split up. While that is fun and all, I don't think it is a good idea anymore. This is primarily because we need to have a developer mindset now, not just a lore mindset, meaning that we have to think what kind of stories we are creating, not just if something makes sense in the world."

  Celeste pretended to be busy studying the room they were sitting in, though a soft smile was on her lips. They had already talked about the choices she had made during their last iterations, and it wasn't really something they had to spend time on going over again.

  Jasper prepared to wrap up. "So, my pitch is to pair up, two and two. I am considering reworking my character a little, so I am thinking that I team up with Riez this time around, and then we can dive in and try things out..."

  Riez gave a thumbs-up, and Celeste nodded. Martin cleared his throat. "I have implemented our location hopping system. We still can't really teleport, but every time we load into the game, we can choose a region to load into. I am thinking Celeste and I will be heading to the dwarven area just to check it out."

  Jasper looked at Riez. "We can figure out where we load in after we have made our characters. However, heads up that it has been 200 years since our last session, so things will probably have changed quite a bit. Is everyone ready?"

  When they all nodded or agreed, Jasper smirked and walked over to the wall. A hidden panel slid aside, revealing a big red button. "Let's go!" he said before hitting it and sending them into the game.

  Heavily inspired by my favourite meme of all time