The PC shop was standard. They were going to be closing in a few hours, which based on how close it was to the movie theater and all the eateries. Honestly, I missed it when they were everywhere. It made gaming more of a thing you could see, but in the culture war of jocks versus geeks, the jocks had long since lost the crown.
Being a geek or a nerd was in. Curvy was in.
Especially in this computer cafe.
It was packed. I saw that they had several flyers about what was going on and their activities. It was a bit of a drive from Ridgewood, but maybe I might make the hike occasionally. I took in the flyer about the Comic-Con coming up in November and made sure that I had my dates right. I checked in the calendar and yep, they were there.
Of course, it was around midterms anyway so it would be a good stress relief.
Standing around all day at a convention? Questionable but fun. Doing that after grading a bunch of exams? That would be better.
In the back of the cafe there were a bunch of kids playing and I couldn't help but notice it. They all had APs in the seventies. I was a bit held back by only being able to recruit from students that came to my college and heard about our program. If I could just recruit anybody? Then things might be different.
But that was a problem for the next time. I had my team for now with some subs and we were going to get through this season.
---
I had Friday, Saturday and Sunday off to get more experience and grind up to that next status. Individually, I could compete in ranked matching. Unfortunately for me both my friends had an extensive law practice where they had stuff to do on Fridays. They might even make a motion or going to court on Fridays. It was something I was going to say way out of.
What I was going to do was go see Jill with them. They normally scheduled our class on Friday morning. Amir and Stacey were punctual as you would expect lawyers to be.
Usually, I hated having exactly one thing to do in a day. I wanted the entire thing blocked off and freed. Or several things. But having this one touch point before the weekend? I could do it for the right person.
I would bend the rules for yoga with the fam. I didn't have to do it, but if they would be there then it helped. Plus, if they were bored, I could get them to go get coffee afterwards and get the latest updates.
The last time, Amir was being cagey about what exactly he was doing with our instructors’ sister-in-law.
"Amir!" I said, arriving at the park. Amir had a carefully calculated image, zero hair on top of his head and a beard that was on point. He looked like he could be an extra in a commercial about a terrible skin condition when they went over all the terrible things that could happen to you if you took it. He would be dancing with a white woman at a party, wearing a bowtie. He knew that we would have told him that too.
This is going to be one of the last times that we could do this outside before things eventually took a turn. It was a nice day and we all wanted to get it on. Outdoor yoga was one of the best things for my aching back. It was hard to carry the hopes and dreams of an entire county. I wasn't up for election this year as I had done fuck all to be nominated, but I stood ready to take over if any of the candidates needed me.
He was early as I. As he unfurled his mat, I helped him straighten his, then we did mine. It was a nice pre workout calming exercise before we did the stretching exercises that would make me curse internally and externally.
He placed his stainless-steel water bottle down. The park here was gorgeous, and I was so happy that it was still warm. Still, I would have liked it to be fall weather at some point in time.
Having a record-breaking high temp everyday was kind of getting to me.
"So how is it?" I said, stretching.
"It's been good. Honestly, I just don't want to piss Jill off."
His temporary situationships didn't last that long so this being something we talked about more than twice?
"This is getting to be really weird. It's like your responsible adult actually treating somebody else like a responsible adult."
"Well, I think things are different with her."
He began to stretch. Whatever gym influencer that that men needed to do more cat and cow poses? That person needed a raise. As he was arching his back and going between the two, Stacey showed up.
"Oh? How are things different for Ridgewood's number one player?" she said, placing her mat down and making sure it was smooth.
"You guys are not going to believe me but she's different," Amir said.
"You're a changed man because she knew just the right words to say? Come on, Amir. What is really going on?" Stacey said.
She was smiling. At least she wasn't mad at him anymore. I needed my friends to be not fighting because I was thinking of doing something crazy.
"It's just that we've decided to keep..." he said, his voice getting lower. "...seeing each other. Adults can do that right?"
I felt shocked. Stacy looked shocked. I can honestly say that throughout the years of being his friend he had never made me speechless before. Had I been surprised at the number of women that he had been with? No. But this? It was like he was a junkie who was telling us that he was now scared straight, and he had been sober for 3 months already.
"All right," I said. "I'll believe it."
"Me too," Stacy said. "But I want to see her come to our class then."
That was about the time that Jill walked up. Jill looked like she had made a deal with the devil and came out on the top of it. She was wearing the cutest yoga outfit.
"Ladies. Amir," she said. "Are we ready to get after it?"
"Heck yes," we said in unison. Jill liked it when we were enthusiastic about our time with her. It helped that she was a good sport. I just needed Amir to not make problems because he was shooting his shot.
"Kelly, I trust that your big game last night went well?" Jill said, settling in.
"Yes! Thank you. I'm so proud of the team."
"Good. Let's start with some sun salutations..."
---
I have to hand it to her. She's good at what she does. At the end of that, I felt refreshed and relaxed despite being covered in sweat. The best part about having adult friends within walking distance so that you could walk to them.
It didn't make it work any easier, but it did make driving to where they were. Not an issue. Since we'd all grown up there or nearby, it was easy for us to adjust to life there once we were established.
It felt comfortable.
The team? Whatever the opposite of comfortable was how it felt at that moment.
They were all individually good, but I needed them to come together as a cohesive whole. It would be easy if I had all of them in one class but that just wasn't true.
It wasn't like I had a lot of time to work with them. We had practice once a week and a game once a week. Outside of that? They were students.
Back in my apartment I fired up the newest season of 'Survival of the Thickest' it was time to think about anything except MOBAs.
---
I watched a few matches each day and then returned to the flurry of activities and posters for Hispanic Heritage month. In my marketing class, I went over how league of legends and others went to the Latin American players by making sure that they had localized translations. On top of that, the developers had decided to make the whole thing available to play on a lower spec’d system. This was key in their growth there, which helped their overall numbers.
"What's more effective to show to investors?" I said to the class. "Do we want to show more users?"
Someone raised their hand. It was Racquel. I almost did a little happy dance. She was on point.
"More users could be bot accounts. They could make a login; play once or never and then they could use that."
"What's a better metric?" I said, letting the small class think about it.
"Daily users?" Someone said.
"Delta in active users?" Another said.
"Engagement?" A third said.
I let it sit for a minute.
"All of those are excellent metrics," I said. "When you're planning a marketing push, I want you to think of the 'so what' and the 'then what'. So, keeping with the theme of Hispanic Heritage month, what if say we make a lunch adore themed skin for an avatar. Or fill in the blanks. How would that be for marketing?"
The was a bit of a murmur.
"What if they made country themed skins? This is a potentially marketing idea where we are trying to give the players what they want. They want to play our game and if they want to play with a Trinidadian flag or something?"
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I gave the rest of my sermon for the class and finished outlining the marketing project. They were shocked about the group work projects but understood when I offered an alternative.
This meant that three people were at my door asking about the alternative when office hours opened. Of course they wanted to get more information. I had made the alternate project intentionally vague to cover up that they were going to do more work. To do this. You see the thing about group projects. Are they usually they fall to one person and that person is tired of being the only person that's doing the project.
This was a way to weed out people to do some work in the field. I gave him the opportunity to partner with one of several organizations that worked within the college that I could call upon. They would have to do a marketing plan for that organization. Whether it was a business or a group like my esports team, they needed to talk with them and that they were the client and then put out a product or a marketing plan. Of course, the entirety of the course was built about a capstone marketing plan, but that one was just a theoretical one. This one they would have to implement.
I just set the bar a little bit lower when they were working by themselves. The productions by the groups had to be far more polished.
I wanted to ask them to work on the Bulldogs marketing, but I knew that would be too much nepotism. I just asked that they find something for me to evaluate first before they went and started asking.
This meant that whether they are working with me or working with a group, they were going to have to work with somebody that was themselves. The stakes would be different if they were part of the group though.
They couldn’t be introverted if they wanted to work in marketing.
There was something like 200+ teams that competed in the tier two and three tournaments. These were local clubs or franchises. I was looking into if any of those teams needed a manager. I might take a sabbatical and see how this went, especially with the new patch skills coming in super handily.
I also have my eyes on the highest tier which was tier one and surprisingly the invitationals.
I couldn't find much of a difference between two or three depending on where it was. There were five worldwide leagues, depending on the location. North and South America got grouping into one of those. China had its own league as well as South Korea. Then there was Europe, including the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific. Someone had decided to sell franchise rights so those were at the top tier. Everything else was below, but there was a way for a lower tiered team to make it to the highest contest held annually.
I would just have to find it.
There were enough teams in the tristate area for me to be content with that and then there was always the solo queue when I needed to work out some issues. I got heated when I played but I still did well.
After all the students left, I went into practice with open eyes. I felt like I was phoning it in. In fact, I knew it was because I kept getting all these messages from Amir and from Stacy because apparently for the first time ever, they had a joint case that they were going to work together on. They had consulted each other before for sure, but this was the first time that they both went pro bono on a client.
I was getting all the tea in the middle of team time.
Amir: Can you believe that he tried to fire her and then give the position to his wife?
Stacey: I can't believe it but it makes sense. It also makes more sense that he would try to turn his assistant into his wife.
Kelly: You guys is any of this going to be admissible? Because this is getting kind of ridiculous. It's almost like he is my client.
Stacey: You know he might need some help in that department. Are you available for consulting?
Amir: Yeah! We could all working the same thing at the same time. Wouldn't that be great?
It will be great to work with them. But also, I would be out of my mind.
Kelly: I love you both but a large part of why I can continue that is because we are not all working on the same team.
Stacey: He is cute and we know that he is newly single.
Amir: And we have his tax forms
Kelly: ...Show me a picture next time we meet up.
Amir: Laughing Face emoji
Stacey: Eggplant emoji
Kelly: To be clear. Not of his tax forms.
Amir: No tax fraud here. Got it.
They were the worst but also the best. I loved my friends, but they were pushy about the weirdest things.
I was going to have to do my best to not laugh at their ridiculousness.
Murph once again improved on his redacted skill, though now I was thinking that something was up. What was he doing that Racquel wasn't doing?
Sure, he was super supportive, but I didn't have any clue as to what the heck the man was doing. I was going to have to take my time with his play, but I had run out of it by the time I noticed the change. That was good at least, even if Racquel stalled, her support could keep her going.
I was going to have to talk to her about what she was doing. Mechanically she was fine if a little hot headed. She let the enemy kitten to her head. It was the mark of somebody who needed to just let things go and treat each situation as if it wasn't someone trying to do a reverse psychology card on her.
My phone buzzed again.
It was a photo of the man that was getting acrimonious and scrumptious. He looked like Mos Def had been his workout partner. I smiled. These fuckers thought that I was going to rise to the bait, but I was a strong proud independent woman who didn't need a man. I did need a pair of strong arms to move my shit around and reach tall shelves sometimes.
I called it a day for Tuesday and logged off. My plans for world domination were going to be set to the side for a little bit. I had to catch up on my shows.
---
Wednesday, I had the first little quiz ready for my business guys. All my quizzes were early and optional. Arrive on time and you got the benefit of the quiz.
They were, of course meant for you to check if you learned what you were supposed to have read. Because not everybody took the time to read things in college. That's why I had to make everything into little bite-sized morsels of content. You can't really deliver a college degree through bite-size morsels of content.
You kind of had to do some deep reading. I wasn't asking for much. This was a business course at a community college, but they did have to do something. Some of my colleagues had made strange remarks about the caliber of students we got but at the end of the day, they were all here to get better and we had to give them all our best.
Despite my misgivings, I opened office hours and took in any students that want to show up. Thankfully because it was week two, nobody wanted to come by. Heck, I didn't want to be there myself, but I had tenure, so I needed to do stuff. It also helped that I wasn't going to answer my phone during business hours as both of my lawyer friends had a tacit understanding that I wasn't there to be played match maker to.
I was there to kick ass and take names. I was also there to educate future leaders. Nobody was going to care much if I spent my time going over to social media strategy for an esports team. After all, who could blame me for trying to understand the game?
Things have changed so much in the last twenty years with kids growing up already having internet everywhere. Now? They had forgotten or never learned a lot of what we had to begin with. Their video games generally worked, even if there were micro transactions just to get content that used to come free with the game. Developers got away with a lot.
Honestly, DOTA relying on skins to make money was one of the good things about it. You knew where their money came from. It might not make sense to me as a consumer, but somehow, they were in business. Someone had to be doing something right somewhere.
I wasn't worried that they would go out of business. The patch itself felt like it would make the game stick around as long as I wanted. I spent some time in my status screens and looked around. There was a lot of stuff that was greyed out. I just didn't know what I didn't know. But maybe I would get a better idea the more I unlocked.
I had about five hundred points and I was thinking about my next purchase from the shop.
I didn't want to rush into anything yet. I checked the shop and there was some new stuff. I wanted to see if I was going to need to grind this week playing or watching.
Points: 550
Shop:
Scouting 2: 500 points
1-1-2: 100 points
Basic Profile 2: 1000 points
Turn One: 100 points
Turn Two: 200 points
Turn Three: 500 points
I really wanted to get scouting two. It was the thing that was helping me find new talent. I would need to work on how exactly to get them to play on the teams, but it was good to have options. It was hell to not have them. I wondered what the turns would do, and I cursed the absence of a tool tip that would give me more information.
That would be a great idea.
If I knew what these things did without having to buy them then I would be happy. As it stood, I would need to play in several dozen games to get some of what I was beginning to see at the basics that the patch was giving me.
I wondered what 1-1-2 was. It looked like it was the standard play mode unless I was wrong about that. If I didn't have it, then how was I using it?
Since one hundred points was something that I could get in about two hours, I finally bought 1-1-2 and I instantly had a better idea of it. I could set the strategy and the team would reset to that position when not otherwise occupied. That changed things a bit.
Curious about what was next, I bought turn one. I knew in my heart that I was going to regret not buying it all right now, but I couldn't go into debt buying stuff from the shop.
Turn One was exactly what I thought it was going to be. It let me set the tactics for the current turn based on my definition. Funnily enough I could set the turn to a time or pick my own definition of the end. I had the ability to set up a certain type of offense.
I could pick top, middle or bottom. I could also do a similar thing with the defense. Would they do that if I just set it the way I wanted? Maybe. I didn't know. I was going to have to try.
I checked the shop again. If things kept going the way that they were going, I would be about to get Scouting 2 by the end of the weekend. I didn't have a lot of time to play Wednesday night, but I did get two more games in, bringing me close to my goal. Each game gave me thirty points even, but it was solo queue.
If I was managing the game, I hoped that it would give me a better idea of what was going on. I would probably get sixty points for managing a game, if at least two of the players were listening to me? I wasn't sure what the threshold was.
I checked the store one more time to see if anything else had popped. Nothing did.
Points: 410
Shop:
Scouting 2: 500 points
Basic Profile 2: 1000 points
Turn Two: 200 points
Turn Three: 500 points
I began to think about how many games I could play in the morning and just realized that I was an adult. I could stretch and then play three more games if I wanted to. Even if they were cut short, that would give me more information. If thirty points was what I got when I played or watched a regular game, how much would I get if I managed a tier two or three game?
Worlds were coming up fast in October. I could watch those live. They were going to be in Europe at least. I could watch it on real time. I didn't have money for a trip to see South Korea dominate itself. Maybe once I got more notoriety, I could. That was not going to happen.
A girl can dream.
I grinded through three more games before getting enough points to finally unlock Scouting 2.
I found myself thinking about that PC shop and what I would be able to see there. I didn't have the time to drive back up to Nanuet and scout out everyone. I did have a lot of students that I could use that on, including Xavier Rienoso.
I was going to scan everyone. Maybe my "skills" could level. That would be pretty good.
---
It was a huge distraction. Almost everyone at the college had played the game at least once. The game was giving me their approximate stats, but it was also giving me background information. Racquel’s stat block now had a spot for history, and I clicked on that, mentally. It was a list of her last ten games and the results. What had been a bit of hard numbers was now numbers plus the lead up to her history.
It even gave her match rating in some of her games. Our game from last week wasn’t even in her recent ten, meaning the girl was either dedicated to the game, bored or trying to avoid something.
*Racquel is a business major and the President of the Bergen County Bulldogs e-sports team. When she graduates, she wants a to continue her education at Montclair State University. She is studying psychology but is telling everyone that she is a business major. *
That was way different than what I expected to see from her. I was well and truly puzzled as to how I could incorporate what I was doing to see if this was just the patch making up silly shit.