The Game - Results
A sincere thank you for all being part of my trauma dump, what was once an update became a distillation of all the pain and development that I have traversed in order to become the artist that now weaves the words below.
It was a story I needed to tell so I could put the events behind me, having accepted and ultimately learned from my mistakes, eager to advance into a more enlightened future.
Total Responses: 70
2 people duplicated the answers, and 2 people messed up the casing (put all the uppercase characters to lowercase, likely a formatting issue, I counted them, and the duplicates once)
The responses were SHA256 Bit encrypted hashes, so adjustments couldn’t be made and people wouldn’t mess with the response, nobody did, but some had email client issues.
1 person got -really annoyed- ended up spamming my Patron page with a bunch of comments and complaints, I tried my best to help but they ended up incurring a ban for their attitude.
Ending 0 : 3 Respondents
Picked the forbidden fruit.
A mislead at the entryway to the game through twitter, two links, one had the forbidden fruit which lead to a dead end, an offer to return, one person decided to pick it anyway quoting ‘I disobeyed all instructions immediately and without remorse’
Love it.
Ending 1 : 6 Respondents
Didn't turn dark mode off.
A few added comments saying they just couldn’t be bothered to read it all, respectable and understandable.
Ending 3 : 1 Respondent
Skipped something or didn’t ignore the fertile soil.
This had an option to return, but the individual decided not to take it and instead fell upon their ending, honesty or confusion, who knows, they didn’t clarify, hopefully they read on anyway.
Ending 4 : 1 Respondent
Was there from subscribestar, didn’t read the update, or was just curious or stubborn.
Sad, but I expect some malicious compliance here.
Ending 6 : 1 Respondent
Didn’t remember how many narratives I had planned, decided not to return.
OR they got caught by the use of NEXT and NETX, not the first use of this manipulation, but I did offer an out at this stage, I guess honesty or confusion, it was important for people to remember this detail so it needed a trap.
Ending 9 : 1 Respondent
Skipped to the gateway without being prepared.
Fun bit of horror writing in this section, they got given an out at the end but decided not to take it, the only option was to return to the beginning, so I suspect malicious compliance, or perhaps honesty? Or maybe they just liked the horror writing.
Ending 10 : 1 Respondent
The Clarity trap.
Accounting for about 6 reasons here, stubbornness, distrust, skipping, frustration or missing the second misdirect caused one individual to fall upon their end. Fun!
Ending 12 : 1 Respondent
Incinerated by Star 1.
First trap in the game! This was quirky, and offered an out, it seems they were either too honest, missed something or got confused, or were stubborn and annoyed at me, all are equally likely, they didn’t clarify.
Ending 20 : 7 Respondents
Missed the highlight.
This was a really tricky one.
At the beginning in the rules I advised you could highlight text only when you were asked for help.
This paragraph held the glimmer from this ending and allowed you to progress:
“You’re doing really well! but there’s a problem… I’ve ventured out past the realms of taste, I could really use your help, take this spacesuit and please help me if you can, be careful on your way out, Max is around. goto JUST A TASTE.”
David asks for help twice during this paragraph, if you missed it and read on, it leads to an unrecoverable ending, the ‘goto JUST A TASTE’ was white text on a white background.
A couple people commented on this seeing the error they made after the fact but decided to pick it anyway, respect for that!
Maybe the rest were just sick of my shit and decided to pick it out of spite.
This is the one I thought would catch the most people, I was wrong, more on that later.
Ending 21 : 1 Respondent
Fell into Max’s clutches.
1 Person arrived here, either without a spacesuit through skipping here, or maybe they just liked the bit of light erotica, loved that someone picked this one. I was really proud of that bit of writing.
Maybe they didn’t consider it a bad ending?
Ending 22 : 2 Respondents
Skipped to space without a suit.
You needed to have followed everything properly to acquire a spacesuit by this stage, so these respondents either did this and perished in space without a suit, or picked it through spite, or picked it because they liked how I’d accounted for it. Fun either way!
Ending 27 : 1 Respondent
Died in the asteroid field, didn’t know why.
People making it this far had to navigate the white text/white background maze that led to the true ending.
They had to skip 7 lines to clear the field, this was the 7th, someone must have been very honest with this one, love this.
Told you it was important to remember that detail, there's a reason I mention all important details at least twice.
Ending 29 : 29 Respondents
The ‘Good’ ending.
These individuals either skipped right to the end, either because they couldn’t be bothered to read everything, read my mislead in the rules that said ‘There is only one good ending’ and maybe searched for ‘You have arrived at the good ending’
A thoroughly unsatisfying ending which I set up and expected to be the biggest trap for those skipping, bored, or thinking they could outsmart me.
No shame on those who picked it, this was just, as ever, to prove a point, and I’m glad for the honesty of those that picked it, it’s about to make me even more satisfied with myselfbecause…
The True Ending : 5 Respondents
The True Ending.
At least one of them added a very sincere message to the body of the email, which was lovely to see.
They found their way through all my crap, stuck with me when I said all you need to do is pay attention, read through it and you will have the best experience.
That or they just searched for ‘The True Ending’
Who knows, one thing is clear though, their choice of this ending means they missed what I consider to be the only ‘good’ result, and it’s not an ending, blessedly…
10 People found their Future
Just before the link for the ‘True ending’ there was a link for ‘This is my Future’ at the end of a very climactic culmination of everything I’ve wanted to say for the past 6 years.
I don’t really blame people for missing it, it was subtle, all the way back at the rules it was implied that glimmers of hope could exist before an ending, I underlined this line and put it in blue to make it look like a link, but did not make it empirically clear that my intention was nobody would select ‘The True Ending’
The true ending, to my mind, was somebody reading everything I had to say, and still choosing to leave.
This is a really sad outcome, and I personally choose to believe it was merely my subtlety that led people to this answer.
Along with that one respondent adding a very sincere message, I choose to believe that was what happened.
What, really, was all this for?
As I said at the beginning, it was a pure trauma dump.
My hope is that all the traps, stars and such, assumptions I thought people would make, were ones nobody would actually begin to suspect, but the reason they’re all there is because these are all things that have held me back creatively at some point during the last 6 years.
I have had to reconsider how a scene plays out, because I was afraid of people losing interest, when I first posted A414 EP1 and 2, and 4, a lot of comments I saw were along the lines of
‘Why all the talking, get to it already’
‘Boring, this took way too long’
I took those to heart, and it caused me to shift my priorities.
I wrote scenes always with a story in mind, but I diverted from the original path, A414 series was the main ‘window’ into my world where I’d planned to deploy all the lore dumps about how this world works, why sperm is being collected, what that means for him, or, as was intended, you.
Because I couldn’t gather people's attention with it, it steered me off the path to discovering my true potential. All the ‘what if's' and ‘what would people think’ crushed my ideas, because I believed everything, I believed I wasn’t good enough, I believed I was no good at this.
And yes, at one point I almost took a very permanent solution to the depression I found myself in.
My journal (which someone did email the results email saying it looked like the pages were put back in or something)
Whether they thought it was faked or what, I don’t know, it was not.
You’ll notice my writing style changes towards the end of the entry, I stopped writing at the moment ‘My writing is much’ Wrote a goodbye note, picked up a razor blade and headed to the shower, so I wouldn’t make a mess, and my body wouldn’t continue to be the burden I so firmly believed it to be.
The entries happened after I was talked down from the ledge by a close friend, someone who assured me that it wasn't the answer.
I didn’t need to choose an ending.
I didn’t want anybody going through the game and choosing an ending, I wanted to show that we could have a new future.
And my god did you deliver
The comments, feedback, even just those 10-15 people who saw the message, sent me thoughtful emails and DM’s, reassuring me that yes, I can do this, and actually.
I’m really fucking good at it.
The Game was the story of me discovering my potential and understanding the shackles that bound me. So I could discard them forever.
In many ways I’m glad this is how it went down, it allowed me to explore different ideas, understand where the pain was coming from, transforming it into stories that might help others heal their own.
The Game was also the sincerest thank you I could think to construct, you people saved my life, I will never forget that.
No, I’m not saying I want to be a political figure
I want to entertain, and through that entertainment, communicate strong messages that might help people introspect, find meaning in them, and hopefully learn something about themselves.
I wrote horror, to prove that I could, I wrote erotica, to remind you that I can.
I made it into a game, to show you that I can do that too, I made it difficult as fuck, so you could experience what I went through.
I appeared to insult you to get you angry so you could understand mine.
I made it really long to illustrate my frustration with modern media.
I summarised it here to prove I can do it better.
I threw together 16,000 words in 5 days to show that when I am in my element, I can do amazing things.
I compacted the message down to these 2027 words to assure you that I do respect your attention.
You just need to trust me when I say:
You don’t know what you want, I know what you want.
And if you grant me that trust and support so I can expand my team. I will pull you into a twisting narrative, the likes of which none of you could possibly even begin to imagine.
I will ask questions, I will continue to raise more, but you will always get an answer, eventually.
I will make your attention worth it.
