Phil Spencer’s chair was empty. No one had moved it. That was the worst part. The room had built an absence into the seating chart. Gen X had left a hoodie-shaped vacancy at the table and called it continuity.

Asha Sharma sat near the front like the spacey office manager of a doomed branch office, legal pad open, one perfect circle drawn on the page. Satya sat at the head, calm and soft and unreadable. Matt Booty had coffee. Matt Ball had a laptop. Both looked prepared to mistake preparation for force.

Then the door opened.

OYT walked in.

He was 5'9, Bald, and compact, with the hard little shine of a man who had been underestimated by height and overcompensated through doctrine. His bearing was seemingly Liberal at first glance: the jacket, the careful posture, the faint civic-professional affect, the look of a man who could plausibly attend an arts board meeting and ask a mean question during Q&A. But the face ruined it. The eyes were too hot. The mouth too ready. The bald head sat above him like a stripped municipal warning light. He looked like Birmingham grievance had been given a speaking role.

He took in the room.

OYT: Let me have your attention for a moment.

No one moved.

OYT: So you’re talking about what? You’re talking about bitching about that game you shot, some son of a bitch that doesn’t want to buy, some Scum that doesn’t want what you’re selling, some franchise you’re trying to screw back to life and so forth. Let’s talk about something important.

He looked at Phil’s empty chair.

OYT: Are they all here?

Asha Sharma: All but one.

OYT nodded.

OYT: Well, I’m going anyway.

He dropped his briefcase on the table.

OYT: I heard Cowshit was here. Well, I’m from downtown. I’m from Fairfield. And I’m here on a mission of mercy!

He pointed at Booty’s coffee.

OYT: Put that coffee down.

Booty froze.

OYT: Coffee’s for Winners only.

Matt Ball blinked.

Matt Ball: I’m sorry, who exactly—

OYT snapped toward him.

OYT: Who exactly? You’re Matt Ball?

Matt Ball: Yes.

OYT: They brought in another Matt.

Asha wrote something on the legal pad.

OYT leaned over the table.

OYT: One Matt named Booty. One Matt named Ball. Ass and Ball. That’s Xbox now. The entire masculine apparatus, severed, bureaucratized, and unable to close.

Booty went white.

Ball went red.

OYT pointed at Ball.

OYT: You’re the new one. I know your type. Portfolio discipline. Strategic optionality. Margin pathways. You’ll put Halo in a quadrant and call the corpse underpenetrated.

Then Booty.

OYT: And you. Gen X archive priest. Soft-eyed steward of dead arcade heat. You think games have souls because your generation saw box art in a mall and mistook retail lighting for God.

Then the empty chair.

OYT: And Phil.

He paused. The room went still.

OYT: I am not fucking with you.

He slapped the table.

OYT: First prize: Scum come back. Second prize: you become Sony’s day-one charity publisher. Third prize is you're fired.

He pointed at Phil’s chair.

OYT: Fourth prize: you get Phil’s chair.

No one laughed.

OYT: Good. You shouldn’t.

He paced.

OYT: You got games. Halo. Gears. Forza. Call of Duty. Madden by habit. GTA. Game Pass. Party chat. The 360 ghost army. Barracks. Firehouses. warehouse guys. divorced dads. headset uncles. kids who failed English but knew every spawn point. ScumJocks who did the bare minimum to stay academically eligible and then became kings of the lobby.

Booty said quietly:

Matt Booty: The Games are weak.

OYT stopped.

The whole room stopped with him.

He turned slowly.

OYT: The games are weak?

Booty said nothing.

OYT smiled.

OYT: Fucking games are weak?

He stepped closer.

OYT: You’re weak.

Asha stared into space.

Satya did not move.

OYT leaned over Booty.

OYT: Xbox 360 was huge with Scumbags. Have you forgotten? Have you, Booty? Or were you too busy preserving studio dignity while the brand bled out in party chat?

He turned to Ball.

OYT: And you, Ball. You think weak games are some exogenous market condition? Games are weak because men like you and Booty and that empty hoodie chair let them become weak. You let Halo attend its own funeral. You let Gears go to therapy. You let Forza become a climate-controlled dealership. You let Game Pass become a pantry full of broccoli and called it value.

Ball stiffened.

Matt Ball: That’s not a serious characterization.

OYT: Serious? Serious is what consultants say when the truth enters without a badge.

He flipped over the whiteboard.

On it:

ABC

AIDA

Below that:

SCUM

OYT: A-B-G. Always. Be. Gaming. Always be Gaming.

He hit the board.

OYT: S-C-U-M. Shift. Curbstomp. Upshift. Monetize. Shift: did he just get off one? I know he did, because our audience is working class, not welfare niggers. Curbstomp: does the game hit? Upshift: have you made the night move faster for Scum? And Monetize...

Ball shifted.

Matt Ball: You’re such a hero. Why are you coming down here and wasting your time on a bunch of Gen X bums?

OYT sat down.

Slowly.

He took off his watch.

Not gold. Worse. Old. Heavy. A square-faced thing with a scratched crystal and a dead man’s dignity. The kind of watch a man keeps because replacing it would concede something to time.

He held it up.

OYT: You see this Apple Watch?

Ball stared.

Matt Ball: Yeah.

OYT: This Apple Watch has more Xbox in it than your whole fuckin' roadmap. You see, pal, that’s who I am. And you’re nothing.

Booty’s face went white.

OYT: Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good note-taker? Fuck you, go home and Curate your memories.

He turned to Ball.

OYT: Smart operator? Fuck you, go home and model churn.

Then to Phil’s empty chair.

OYT: Beloved leader? Fuck you, stay empty.

He faced the room.

OYT: You want to work here? Win the Gen.

He pointed at Booty.

OYT: You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can’t take this, how can you take the abuse you get from Scum? Scum does not care about your feelings. Scum does not care about your all-hands. Scum does not care that the studio had a journey. Scum comes home tired, turns on the box, and asks one question: does this thing have any Games?

He stood.

OYT: You don’t like it? Leave.

He pointed at the 360 controller on the table.

OYT: I could go out there tonight with the materials you have and sell 100,000k Consoles. Tonight. In two hours. Can you? Can you?

No one answered.

OYT: Go and do likewise.

He slapped the whiteboard.

OYT: S-C-U-M. Shift. Curbstomp. Upshift. Monetize. Get mad, you sons of bitches. Get mad.

He opened his briefcase.

For one second everyone expected papers.

Instead he pulled out two old Xbox controllers tied together by the cords.

Duke controllers.

Huge. Black. Absurd. Sacred.

He held them low.

OYT: You know what it takes to sell consoles?

He let the controllers swing once.

Then put them on the table.

OYT: Go and do likewise, gents. The money’s out there. You pick it up, it’s yours. You don’t, I have no sympathy for you. You want to go out there and close Scum, close. It’s yours. If not, you’re going to be shining Sony’s shoes while Nintendo sells cardboard to children and Steam sells backlog to Nerds.

He pitched his voice high and weak.

OYT: “Oh yeah, I used to run Xbox. Tough business. Players changed. The market shifted. The games were weak.”

His face snapped cold.

OYT: Bunch of Losers sitting around a Redmond conference room.

He reached into the briefcase again and pulled out a thick stack of green index cards tied with string.

OYT: These are the new leads.

He dropped them in front of Asha.

OYT: These are the Fairfield leads. And to you, they’re gold.

He looked at Booty.

OYT: And you don’t get them.

He looked at Ball.

OYT: You don’t get them either.

He looked at Phil’s empty chair.

OYT: He had them and turned them into a support group.

OYT tapped the stack.

OYT: Why don’t you get them? Because to give them to you is throwing them away.

Asha slowly placed one hand on the cards.

OYT nodded.

OYT: They’re for Winners.

He put his watch back on.

OYT: I’d wish you good luck, but you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it.

He looked at Ball.

OYT: And to answer your question, pal, why am I here? I came here because Cowshit left smoke in the room and nobody knew whether it was a fire alarm or ambience. I came here because somebody had to tell you the real favor.

He looked at Booty.

Then Ball.

Then Phil’s empty chair.

OYT: Fire the Gen X priests. Empty the empty chair. Stop modeling the corpse. A Loser is a Loser. A steward is a steward. A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet.

He picked up his briefcase.

OYT: And Scum are legion.

He stared at Ball for one second longer.

Then walked into the inner office with Asha.

She carried the green cards.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5879865&forum_id=2...#49980186)

https://www.matthewball.co/all/gaming2024

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5879865&forum_id=2...#49980210)