Vaudevillain

In a small college dorm room, one found in many colleges across the world, a man threw his VIS helmet at the wall in a rage. The machine crashed against the concrete wall and rebounded back onto the player's bed. Amazingly, the helmet sat intact with not a single crack on the exterior. The player in question grabbed the VIS again, this time setting it back down next to his computer.

"That fucking troll!" The man yelled. He jumped off his bed and over to the stream he had running. The stream had been set for a rather large delay, around a minute. The man felt it was appropriate since he wasn't interacting with anyone on stream. He watched the last bit of his fight with that stupid villain and fumed again as his character got shot with that purple laser.

Heroic, more commonly known as Matt, looked almost exactly like the stereotypical nerd found in old movies. His skin was an unhealthy pale white and his face still had a problematic case of acne. Resting on his face was a pair of almost comically large glasses. The lenses of said glasses shrunk his eyes down into his face, giving Matt a pinched sort of look.

In truth, Matt looked nowhere near as ugly as he sounded. The result of his complexion was a combination of poor nutrition and genetics. Pasty white ran in the family and none of them could keep a tan. The acne came from unhealthy cafeteria eating, a staple at almost any college. This was because copious amounts of grease was the only way to stomach the terrible food.

Matt's glasses were the result of genetics as well. Both his parents were terribly nearsighted and both had passed it onto Matt. He could have chosen to grab thinner lenses; as well as less blocky frames. However, Matt was also the stereotypical poor college student. After he broke his last pair of glasses the cheap frames and lenses were all he could afford.

The combination of Matt's poor condition led him to hold a complex against most people. He noticed the looks people tended to give him. That odd stare that said, "are you auditioning for a part in some play?" It was never anything major, but all the little actions added up over time.

It was why he put so much work into the Heroic persona. It was his dream to work in video games. Matt even went as far as to get his undergraduate in computer science even though math was the worst torture he could subject himself to. When Vert had announced their intention to hire high-level players, Matt saw it as his chance to get his foot in the door.

He didn't want to brag, but Matt was rather good at finding exploits in games. Of course, he hadn't expected the amount of hidden information present in World of Supers. Vert had no list of powers to choose from, so Matt couldn't look at numbers and make spreadsheets. Plus there were no tooltips on how things worked, only terrible tutorials. Instead, Matt had to go in blind.

Which led him to his current problem; that troll going by the name of Dr. Zlo was ruining his game. Players shouldn't be able to change the avatars of other players or steal important quest givers. A lot of people relied on getting quests to raise their reputation. Those playing heroes had to react to crimes after all.

As he watched his avatar die from the trains and log out, Matt changed the stream over to his webcam and overlay. A few of his watchers typed question marks in the chat, wondering why the player had shown himself.

"I'm so fucking pissed guys," Matt started. "That troll shouldn't be able to do stuff like that in game. What is Vert thinking?"

Matt's chat responded with the normal memes and emojis, eventually settling on a spam of the message, "maybe git gud?"

"Shut the fuck up," Matt growled. "You aren't the ones with a girl avatar."

Spams of, "yeah but she hot tho," ran through chat.

Matt's brow furrowed as he read the chat. He knew he shouldn't be feeding the trolls but he was still angry from the defeat. Plus chat was targeting his complex about his looks. Even though it was his virtual character the insults still stung. "I didn't make the character to have fuckin' tits jackasses. I'm not a fuckin' tranny."

It seemed more people were joining Matt's stream, typing away responses. One message caught his eye.

Knuckledragger24:

I bet you secretly like it.

"I do not, secretly like it, you fucktard. I didn't sign up to play a girl in the game so I shouldn't have to play as one."

The argument went like this for a while. The chat would tease and troll Matt while he would angrily lash out against them. Eventually, even Matt got tired of the constant arguing and switched over to his other point.

"Look enough about the avatar change, the big problem is that this guy took one of the main quest givers. How are we supposed to rank up in reputation if the one issuing quests is kidnapped?"

HipsterZombieUwU:

Just go out and PvP the villains

"It's not that simple dumbass. Heroes and villains have different playstyles. If you want more freedom with the game, go villain. Or pick the vigilante hero. Hero's in the guild have to do things a certain way or they get kicked out. The tradeoff is that you get a steady supply of reputation from patrol quests and such. So it's kinda a big deal when one of the major heroes can be kidnapped!"

More of the chat spammed messages of, git gud and other memes for a few seconds before some others started to agree with Matt's point.

HashPotato:

I had something like that happen. Guy took out the villain I'd tailed and made me fail the quest. Messaged Vert about it and they said its part of the game.

Sgrspk:

Dude same

Ballrog:

Guy I partied with accidently killed me and I failed the quest. Lost a rank in rep because of it.

A few more agreements popped up in the chat, affirming Matt's point. He went online to the major forums and created posts about how people taking quest objectives ruined the game. Some of his chat followed and commented down below. Soon the posts had been pushed up to the site's front pages, garnering more attention to the topic.

The next day Matt opened the most known forum Spreddit and saw his post had made the front page. It turned out a lot of people were upset with how some of the mechanics in the game worked. Players hated how others with mind control powers could steal their minions. Or they complained about shrink rays turning the player too small.

But none of that registered to Matt. Because sitting right above his post was the video of his avatar Heroic losing his fight to Dr. Zlo. The entire fight had been clipped and edited to highlight the villain's entire show. Matt felt the blood rush to his head.

"The fucker's a troll! Why's he hitting the front page!"

What's worse is that everyone was loving the character. They loved, actually loved, the suited doctor shooting his gun and changing Heroic's avatar. Comments asking where they could find this player and if anyone knew his name had been repped to the top. There was no mention at all on how the guy ruined the game for the other players.

Over the week Matt seethed as he watched more clips of "the suited villain" reach the top. Yet his post on how dumb the mechanics were dropped below the front page. Other articles had replaced Matt's first post and he watched as his original complaint became twisted. No longer were the posts about how unfair it was to deal with powers like mind control or gender-bending. Instead, people started to complain about the reputation system.

The complaints against the system grew so popular that small news sites started to run the story. These sites were noticed by larger companies and these monoliths of gaming journalism tried reaching out to Vert for questions. Vert refused to answer, leaving many to wonder about the future of the game. Many of the "hardcore" gamers started talking about how imbalanced the game was and how Vert needed to nerf some powers, saying they were quitting the game entirely until it was fixed.

Of course, none of this hurt the company's sales. The small faction of people complaining was vastly overshadowed by those who realized the openness of the game allowed for unique settings. A group of dedicated roleplayers joined forces to commandeer an entire city in-game, turning it into one gigantic RPG setting. Other fringe groups looking to play avatars they could never be in the real world joined in droves. It seemed Vert's game was a smash hit. The only question in mind was if it would stay a hit.

At the end of the week, Vert had an answer to the question. They announced their first hire from the hopeful group of gamers looking to gain reputation. The player controlled a hero avatar and had chosen an alien set of superpowers. In-game their avatar was that of a burnt orange humanoid with digitigrade legs and two thumbs on each hand.

Vert and the player had worked together to give this hero, known as the Orange Visitor, a backstory. The two parties had worked tirelessly over the week to create a working storyboard that could be announced to players. At the end of the month, aliens from the Orange Visitor's home planet would attack, looking to take earth's valuable metals. It would be up to both heroes and villains to stop this invading threat.

The invasion had plans to last a month, with mini-bosses appearing across the world at the end of each week. Player's who helped defeat the mini-bosses would receive reputation, doubling after each successful takedown. At the end of the month of invasions, the final boss would appear. Those with enough reputation from the earlier fights would be invited to join a streamed version of the very first boss fight. The result would be used as lore for the game and any living players would be granted a major reputation boost.

Even though Vert was tight-lipped about what the final boss would be; players couldn't help but get excited. Vert had delivered on their promise to hire gamers with a high enough reputation! The players who had almost given up hope jumped back into the game to redouble their efforts. Even Matt felt reinvigorated by the news.

Dylan heard very little of the news over the week. He was still dealing with the mandatory overtime at the firm. To keep sane he took breaks and thought up new wacky inventions for world domination. He was thinking up a way to combine pet allergies with fake fur when John messaged him.

xXxDemonslayerxXx:

Dude is this you?

www.spreddit.com/b/wos/comments/isenfh8/the_suited_villain_strikes_again/

Dylan clicked on the link. A Spreddit video appeared in a new tab and showed a video of Dylan as Dr. Zlo. The vid was of him facing off against that player Heroic at the trainyard. Though it was heavily edited to only show the good parts.

Superfan39526:

Oh dang am I famous?

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

Yeah dude!

Vids of you have hit the front page almost every day right now

It seems a lot of people had clips of you acting out around Haven City

Superfan39526:

Woah

Dylan didn't know what to say. He'd started playing the character for fun. It wasn't like he expected any sort of major reaction.

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

You should totally do an AMA or something

Superfan39526:

Nah

I don't really want to share stuff with people

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

You don't have to share

Just go in as the character

Superfan39526:

No

I'd rather keep Dr. Zlo inside the game

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

Kay fair

But you should definitely start recording or something

At least send me clips

You turning that dude into a chick was so funny

Superfan39526:

Yeah alright I'll look into it

xXxDemonSlayerxXx:

Sweet

Hey you wanna do a round of SBA2?

Superfan39526:

Yeah alright

Dylan switched his sound over to his headset and jumped online. He and John started up a game of Super Battle Arena 2 and spent the rest of the night mocking each other's terrible shots.