The Rise and Cries of GameTeam Rexcorp

So GameTeam Rexcorp finally got the Zoboomafoo license from PBS. It was worth a lot less when the monkey died, god rest his soul (or as we say in Detroit, dicks out). Adrian was standing in front of us in his aunt’s garage and his eyes were tearing up and he was adamant about what an opportunity it was. Sure, we’d hedged a few licenses before, like for that child’s Popsicle stand, or for the plumbing guy that helped fix the company toilet.

But Zoboomafoo was different, in that it was a license that could, in some nebulous but sober way, actually be tooled into a piece of entertainment software. Corey, the plumbing man, had previously negotiated with us that his videogame would be released within three years or else we would lose his license. We really needed to get moving on Zoboomafoo though, which was sure to make us. So we slapdashed a game together for half the cost it took to license his image, relationships, and life story. Before the Zoboomafoo opportunity arrived, we had only really coded in the bridge to the Arby’s where he spent his days off. We also had made accurate digitizations of all of his divorce papers. Clerval, a skinny programmer with gray hair at thirty, simply added thousands and thousands of copies of Corey’s “dissolution of marriage” forms into this environment. The game that was then produced from Corey’s license was therefore about walking around Corey’s staggering amount of divorce paperwork, underneath a bridge, with no further context. We called it “Corey in the House” before receiving a strongly worded cease and desist order. “Corey… In the… House?” was an alternative that we thought we were very clever for but then we still had the mouse breathing down our necks. In the end, we called it “Corey, Get Your Fucking Life In Order, Thanks For the Divorce Paperwork Nitwit Aha Ahaha”. The team seemed to like this, although we never got Corey’s opinion about it since before the game could properly release, Corey died under mysterious circumstances and his ex-wife vanished in Bulgaria. We added the phrase “In Memory of Corey” into the credits, posted it to Steam, and all moved on with our lives.

We started making the game and Adrian seemed the most inspired, but then again, due to a sensitive amygdala, he forgets the last four hours whenever his aunt uses the microwave, which was constantly. By the end of the day, the rest of us had progressed twelve hours of work, and Adrian had actually regressed back six months, to his troublesome career jerking off endangered animals in the Serengeti. We’d see him at the computer, just grasping again the details of his life painstakingly retold by all of us, and then his goddamn aunt would use the microwave again, and he’d reach for the spectral testicles of some rhinoceros of yesteryear. We’d have to start him all over again. We privately decided to yank him off his leadership position, and instead chain him into a small, dark box with his computer inside, next to a delicate handwritten note that said “you have been kidnapped, and if you ever want to see your family again, keep coding this videogame for Zaboomafoo .” This became much more efficient, and Adrian’s whole process with it began with reacting to the microwave, and then screaming with confusion, a few “helps”, frantic clicking on his keyboard while sobbing, his becoming dead inside as he focused on completing his work above all other things, and then the microwave went off and he did it all again. Since Adrian learned coding in the first grade, we had some time before his mind regressed to that certain point that he could no longer contribute to this game of Zaboomafoo.

So Clerval ended up being project lead by default, and he abused his position by doing jack shit. I suspected that he didn’t actually evaluate or approve anything I sent to him. I first discovered he must not give a shit when instead of the section for level five, I sent him a video of capybaras having sex I had meant for my Life In Biology professor, and he approved it and sent it along to be integrated into the game. I know this was a Zaboomafoo game, and about learning animals, but this footage was very long, graphic, and contained no gameplay. It was just an excruciating capybara orgy.

After that, I started making the lemur say little songs when the player got berries.

I started with the standard song, “Wow! That berry seems so true. My name is Zoboomafoo.” It’s shit because Adrian wrote it, and had age regressed to approximately five years old. We were running out of time.

I tried to send a couple of updated ones.

“I’m everybody’s monkey and I live in a zoo! You found another berry! ZOBOOMAFOO.”

“I’m just a little monkey, I don’t know what to do, but the berry helps me out! Zoboomafoo!”

I sent it to Clerval, but I saw over his goddamn shoulder that he just accepted the content without looking at it, and went back to trying to sculpt models. This pissed me off. Tell me if it’s good, asshole.

I made a few other ones to capitulate on my frustrations with Clerval’s sloppy work.

“Eat my dingus, eat my poo, do your work ZOBOOMAFOO!”

“No one listens, boo boo hoo, what’s wrong with me? ZOBOOMAFOO!”

And then later on because I’d just become mad with the power that I had without any accountability.

“Lick my ass, I shit on you! I’LL KILL YOU ALL! ZOBOOMAFOO!”

“FUCK YOU CLERVAL, FUCK ME TOO! FUCK THE WORLD, ZABOOMAFOO!”

He just kept accepting all of them. It seemed we were bound to notice eventually. But then came the crunch. With our asses out in the open, it seemed like we couldn’t get it done, especially since Adrian was a newborn. We tried and tried, but he was the real talented coder, and without him, we were in a rut.

But then the confused, wailing cry of a newborn was once more encapsulated by the sound of a microwave, and suddenly we heard “What? What’s this? Who are you people? Where’s my wife?”

I opened the little food slot and saw the eyes of a different man in the body of Adrian. Apparently he had age regressed into his precious reincarnation. The implications on spirituality and destiny were so profound, my head was spinning. With the cycles of life and death finally decoded, I could hardly breathe. In the end, I could sputter out “Can you program in C+?”

“What the hell? I’m Steve Jobs, I can program anything!”

“Clerval! I yelled energetically. “Before Adrian was Adrian, Adrian was Steve Jobs!”

“We’re going to finish this Zoboomafoo game!”

We hugged for the first time.

With Steve Jobs now kidnapped inside of Adrian’s body inside of a metal case, the game was able to go gold. Progress started steamrolling, and Steve Jobs cut through all our computer problems like butter through water. It felt so good to finally be safe. So good to finally be free.

Then we went gold. We removed our ceremonial scissors and cut the red tape that we had placed in front of Adrian’s garage for this very moment. Clerval nodded, and we posted the game to Steam.

Within seconds, we received thousands of user reviews about the game’s explicit content. So many, in fact, that one of our computers instantly exploded.

“full penetrative capybara orgy one star”

“The monkey bullied my child so much, he ran away on the caboose of a railcar. One star.”

“Help me I must buy flinston vitamin one star”

Clerval’s fiery glasses turned towards me and he lunged for me with his fingers, but our company imploded so fast that before his clammy hands could even connect with my throat, we already worked at KMarts in three separate states. Now I scan mattresses for eight dollars an hour to see if they are still right in front of me. However, from time to time, I wonder what happened to Clerval, and lie awake at night thinking what the implication of all this was for Adrian’s immortal soul. Is it still in his body somewhere? Is he dead now? Did he ever exist at all?

And then Corey’s bullshit divorce bridge got featured on G4 because of a clerical error, and I got like two hundred dollars from curious strangers on the internet, so I knew everything was going to be alright.