And so my weekend at comic con arrived, not with a bang but with a little card that let me know that I was special. I clutched my three day pass on the train ride into the city, giddy to the max the entire time.
Stacey and Amir were joining me as well as Leigh and it was like the perfect storm of everything that has led up to the moment.
"It's like this," Leigh said. "They don't want to see black women.doing cosplay or something. They say that you should do a black character. But I'm going as Toph."
She had the earth kingdom outfit down bad. I was jealous. Amir was going as Silly, another odd choice.
"Yeah I chose Zuko because of that comment about them never getting their own adventure together," he said.
"You guys didn't want to do a couples one where they're an actual couple?" Stacey asked. "That would have been a good one."
"She wanted to play Toph."
"And he played along. Honestly, this works out better," she said. "The hard part was getting the makeup right on him. I tried the blind contact lenses too but that didn't suit me."
I looked out the window at the bright morning. We were heading there instead of Yoga today. We all promised Leigh that we would do yoga later, but I had a packed schedule of con stuff to do.
That first day was devoted to me seeing all of the booths and getting the merch. Enough that my inner child would at some point stop asking me to stop. It was one of those things where I realized that I had an adult paycheck, adult responsibilities, and the mind of a teenager who was trying to get the best deal on everything they ever wanted. I'm not going to tell you how much money I spent that day. Day. I'm just going to tell you that I saved up a lot and that all the things I got were assuredly deserved. I had an absolute stack of manga and mahwah ready for consumption. I got several shirts. I met several people and took photos.
I took so many photos.
I went to several seminars about promoting yourself and esports and I got some ideas to go back with. I resolved to start streaming more and figuring out how to get people to watch my streams more. It was a little bit of showing them what that was actually to be like and then showing up and actually being good at the game. I could do the game part. It was telling the story about the game that we were playing part that I need to work on.
It was going to be one of those things where I was going to have to spend a lot of time working at it until I got the idea. But for now on, every time that I played I would probably stream. Unless I was not trying to really be competitive. This will give people an idea of what I was doing and if I did anything amazing maybe that might live on infamy. Maybe if I just made it a rule that whenever I played I would stream that would just take the pressure off. I felt like getting to a lowberry of entry was going to be the first thing. If I just had everything set up and it was as easy as just pressing play and it would happen. The harder it had to be to get streaming right, the harder was going to be for me to fix it.
Without knowing what was going to happen, I was just going to be sitting there staring at the screen and talking about myself. Or maybe be talking to the chat.
At the end of the day, we returned back to Ridgewood and I nearly needed help to move all my books back. I already had a pretty full bulk shelf. It's something that happens with your professor. I've got old editions of textbooks that I would love to offload on somebody but otherwise I just had there for reference. Now I had a bunch of manga that I was going to be digging into upon the recommendations for people. I know that I could find it online but I didn't really want to do that. I like the feel of a physical book in my hand. Especially when it was gorgeous art like the stuff that Esther really wanted to produce.
It was one thing to be able to write a story. It was quite an amazing to present a manga in a way that was compelling. But she was getting close there. She was edging towards being able to write out a novel and then eventually turn that into the cartoon.
---
Stacy gave us the play-by-play of how her date actually went that weekend and suffice to say that if he was not a school teacher he would have got an invite to yoga.
It's rather unfortunate when someone has a job that requires them to be up and out of the house before 7:00 in the morning. But that's kind of the price you have to pay when you want to be a gangster. Although I thought that perhaps gangsters kept their own hours. This just felt like corporate gangster s***. Like if a mafia boss leveled up his entire organization and then decided that he was going to make things legit and perhaps he got a taste for making pottery and all the sudden they just started selling pottery.
Going from the selling pot to making pots would be an excellent idea and I noted that down for the next time that I talked to Esther. She would make something out of that. She always did. Apparently she had been known for taking people's ideas and then outlining them and having some fun with that.
Knowing what I now knew, I started plotting out our training schedule for the rest of the semester. Raquel and Murph I knew would be with us next year so they were going to get some more specialized training. Esther, of course was my star already and so all I had to do was convince her to stick on.
If Bob was still here then I would take him. But otherwise I was going to have to go through the roster of my B Team players and see who I wanted to bump up. Just because we were playing against them in our Tuesday matches didn't mean that they were schlubs. No most of them had gone up a considerable amount in training because they were looking at what we were doing and copying that. They were learning from what we were doing and I was really appreciating Rachel's specific insights into how to get better.
If we kept doing a practice every Tuesday night, we had about 5 weeks left until I had to let them go. Go. This meant that we might get anywhere between a 5 to 50% improvement. Overall. Esther's attack was at a 22 when We had our fight with Essex this week.
That was after getting her to 20 and then training pushing her up a little bit further. I might get her to a 30 attack or I might be able to get her above 20 and most of her stuff by the end of it. Considering she only had two two skills at 18, it was tempting. I also wanted to see what I could do about Raquel and Murph. Their potential had risen to 50 and with that, their current ability had also raised. I need to see if I can get them past some threshold to get them to another level of ability.
If I could do that, then perhaps I could turn them from a average player to a household name. Course that would require me to actually put in work and track these things and see what I could do about them.
I oddly wondered what would happen if somebody came up on my notes. And that's pick up. Looking for games where people play the manager of a MOBA.
Now I understand that there are important things for me to be doing, especially as regards to taking care of my students. But I did spend part of Friday looking for a similar game to the one that the patch had given me
But the patch gave me something that I can work with then perhaps it was basing it off a real world game. Or perhaps I was just delusional and thinking that.
I didn't actually know.
Several searches later and apparently something was missing. On the Wikipedia page for mobile based games. There was one spot on the screen that always seemed to fuzz. Every time I looked at it. They gave me pause. I was getting back to the idea that I might have a rain tumor and this whole thing might actually just be a terrible side effect of the tumor. If I hadn't seen the kids get better after something I had done in a mini game inside of my head then I wouldn't really have a leg to stand on.
But this right here? This was interesting. There was something out there that I was missing out on and when I tried to click the through, I found a page that was just blurry and I had to hit the back button. It would let the universe was conspiring to not let me see one particular Wikipedia page.
At that moment, I was wondering how I could figure out what the page said when I realized that my mom was right there.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Yeah I was doing this all during her dialysis treatment but what else was it going to do. She was watching her soap operas as usual.
" Mom," I said raising my laptop up. "Could you do me a Little favor here?"
She gave me the look of the stain that I so enjoyed every time that she wanted to look down upon me. Like woman I didn't ask to be born. I'm your daughter not some sort of show Pony that has disappointed you your entire time in America.
What does my daughter need? She asked.
Mom, would you be able to read part of this to me? I can see it but I just want to confirm something here.
I genuinely held the laptop out to her so she can see the blurred out screen.
If you could just read the title of this page, then I would appreciate it
Do My daughter's eyes not work? What is the meaning of this?
Just you or me mom.
Very well. This is a Wikipedia page for... A game? Called gamer manager? Is this one of your silly things?
I regretted the idea that this was a silly game. Things I did might be silly but the game itself was serious. I wasn't going to tell her that though. She might be hooked up to a machine that was clumping her blood in and out. Trying to do what her kidneys couldn't but mostly? She was a captive audience. Anybody who wanted to come in there and sell her something. She would listen to the pitch and be alert and attended the whole time. She wouldn't buy a damn thing but she would listen. Attentively and make them think that she was about to pay for their kids college.
That's kind of mother I had she's support , but she's bored. She has always been a busybody so keeping still so that her body can do. The thing that I needed to do was a bit rough on her.
Daughter, I don't know why you need to see that, she said. You can read just like I can.
I know Mom. It's just wanted to check your vision, I said.
So there was something going on on that page that the universe was conspiring to not let me see. And it was about a game called gamer manager. The obvious next conclusion for me was to try and see if I could buy this game or end or play it. Something told me that that would not be possible.
If I couldn't see the game there on its Wikipedia page then maybe something had happened. I had the faintest memory of once playing a game but I didn't recall any of the details. I felt like a small part of my brain had just decided to up and quit that exact moment. Why would they need to do anything. Did my amygdala unionize and try to get better pay for worse working conditions? I wasn't actually sure.
I wondered what was going to happen if I texted in the group chat about that. Amir had court today. Stacy was doing Discovery. All the kids had stupidly decided to take classes on Friday which was in my eyes a rookie move. No one takes class on Fridays. You got to stack those classes up. Joe, you're not always tied down and having to be physically on campus. But what did I know. I had a way that I wanted to live my life and I didn't want to spend it commuting everyday.
---
On Tuesday, I spent all day thinking about what we done before. Esther was a rockstar and we continue to be a rockstar. But if I could get Murph and Raquel to nearly the same level, then it would be like we had three rock stars. So I set my goal. I set my sliders to shore up their weaknesses. The goal was to get Murph and Raquel to a threshold where they would get to increase their their ability. Their potential ability was the limiting factor. With a potential ability of 50, I could Max them out at two spots. Joe, I had to think about what to focus on. If I got more points for him, I would spend them on mechanics. Raquel would be flip- flop of what he had. Still with the mechanics but instead she would be high and attack.
It's not that they would have a 20 defense and a 20 attack in the same Lane. So long as they had a high mechanics and they kept farming, they would be good. It was what was going to happen next that was going to really affect them. If I could get their potential higher, as I could use them.
The other thing that happened that week was that Rachel joined the club. Not only was she coaching, with her ridiculous Ability potential of 150, she was going to be a star player in her own right. Between her and Bob, I had a solid team. I had enough people in the B team to rotate in and out so that they could get a chance to be a star or not.
This week on Thursday night, Rachel player first official game for our esports team. I had to do some extra forms to get her on board but it was all worth it. It was so much easier dealing with the organization than it was dealing with the bureaucrats that worked in my college. Honestly it was a breath of fresh air. I would take 10 referees over one. Gladys.
The things I learned that week were that Rachel was a good all-around player but that she really preferred to play cute characters. This being a MOBA, there were tons of cute characters and cute skins. The amount of Seen her whip out a cute skin that had to cost her money, it made me realize why she might have some problem with the finances. I was off to tell her that it was time for her to stop buying them and let herself get sponsored.
It's all great to have a custom skin that you like on your favorite character. When you're playing a game. It's even better when the cussive skin is up your specific franchise because you want a tournament and are a top tier player. Just because she had some goals, didn't mean that I didn't have goals for her. This also meant that she wanted to play the druid Freya, one of Esther's favorites, but they didn't mind swapping out.
By the end of Tuesday, everyone had gotten a 5% raise in their stats. Overall. Even the B team had a 4% raise. I think that was more due to them starting off a bit lower. I wouldn't hesitate to play them but the reason they were there was to fill in.
If I get a 5% change every week, then it would compound. The 5% for next week would be on top of the 5% last week and so on. We were probably in a really good spot for the finals.
Rachel had taken off for Thursday so that she can play with us. It was refreshing to have someone new on the team. Bob wasn't going to be able to play this game and I had to swap out our fifth position for a B team player. But the good news was that we were going to play at home. That meant that one of Rachel's co-workers had to pick up her shift that she already taken and she was going to find out pretty soon. Why Rachel take it off.
I mean I didn't blame the girl for taking off. She could work normal hours. But she was starting her business classes and falling in the footsteps with the most amazing Professor in this entire community College. What else would you expect except for greatness? Clearly she had a lot going on.
After practice, I even got into play one of the games with them. It felt so smooth. I was keeping up and I felt like we were squashing our enemies like bugs but that was probably because they advanced so far that they were just pulling me up by their bootstraps. It was like a rising tide head decided to pick me up so that my play would be on their level. And of course my ELO was f***** because I was playing with these studs.
If anything, it was a good reminder that this was a fun thing that I was doing and it was not just a business transaction. If I was going to run a franchise, there was going to be a lot of times when I wasn't going to have to make hard decisions based off of money. But right now? I was playing with somebody else's money and it felt good.
It was on my last match of the night that Rachel started talking about the potential for us to do well at our invitational tournament. It was coming up fast.
Honestly, I was thinking that Amir and Stacy might not be the right ones for this. Now that they both had significant others or at least were dating, it meant that they had to consider other people's timetables. I, not having locked myself had whatever plans I wanted to. If somebody wanted to get with me, they had to show me that they were worth my time.
But still, I wanted to be respectful and even though $5,000 might not be a lot to a lawyer, it was still something to consider.
For a single day's work? I would definitely front the cash. And then I might have a suspiciously look-alike third party go and place money on us. Come to think of it. I might make more money betting on other people doing well than otherwise. I was going to have to look into the legality of betting on esports at some point in time. And then eventually, whoever was trying to book these deals would realize that I was going to lose money for the house.
---
Sports betting aside that weekend we would have the open tournament.
It was the perfect middle of calendar month. There was no reason to not have an event that weekend. Everyone and their mother were planning their fall wedding. So of course that was the time that this pop-up event was going to be at. It was the week after comic con, after all.
I did a little bit of research into the background of the company that was running this. They had to be making enough money to sponsor this. They either had the hardware already or they were borrowing it.
Based on how Rachel's company did, it was an entirely different setup than I'd ever thought. It was like they had a gym that they brought around different places except the gym was a bunch of computers.
This one was going to be in Secaucus. It was one of those things that was set up at a hotel. They wanted to make it an all-weekend affair. This particular event was going to be just a single day though. In essence, each team putting $100, and they had to win every game. To get a $5,000 prize, they had to have either 50 teams or they had to kick in somebody themselves. Due to the copious amount of advertisers that were pumping money into this venture, it made sense that they would be able to direct that revenue somewhere else. Also, I was trying to figure out what the profit would be there. To me, it really looks like there was no profit in this but then I had to think about who was standing to gain any money from this operation.
And that's when I figured out that there was a different convention going on at the same time at the same place and this was something that the organizers put on last minute. It was an esports conference that I hadn't heard about, because I had my nose to the grindstone.
That made more sense to me. If I was actually going to get into the business side of things, then I'd have to figure out what the heck that even meant.
Having the captive audience of hundreds of people going to this convention about esports meant that the advertisers were willing to put in some money to get their name out there. You've probably seen avatars before that. Want to sponsor these events. They're like chair companies or monitor companies or ergonomic widgets that you can purchase to make your gaming experience that much more comfortable.
I found that as much as I like being comfortable, I felt better with a little bit of uncertainty sometimes pushing me forward. If we went there, we won something, then I would learn a lot about the team that I had formed. I would learn a lot about the regional talent. It was worth a team heading there. There was also a good second prize and a third prize though everything underneath that was not a cash prize.
And to top it all off there was a Tony Robbins event at the same time. That would be an interesting weekend.