Scene #9211: Game Dev Tycoon

Owner	Pose
Rufus Shinra	At this point, has Kuroto Dan had many kamen riders (riders kamen?) barge in on him yet? Looking for powerups or assistance via begging, blackmail, or otherwise? Today... is not one of those cases. Rufus Shinra sends a calendar invite, an RFQ, and an NDA. It's all very mundane. ... Admittedly the RFQ lists a 'Awesome Supervillain Live-action Simulation', 'AI Captured Princess That'll Get People Totally Simping', and 'Thing Where One of Your Henchmen Might Be a Traitor and You Need to Figure Out Who and Get to Take Them Out Execution Style' as line items, which is perhaps less mundane? Also Rufus arrives by helicopter. If there's not a landing pad he simply jumps out onto the roof as it passes by. "Heyyy!" Kuroto gets finger-guns, when Rufus meets him face to face. He'd know this is common Rufus SOP from having seen it before. "It's the game man! Played some of Toki Meki Crisis on the way over, good stuff." "I've got some stuff I need made, and need to get a rush order on it. You game? Hah." Finger-guns again.
Kuroto Dan	"Mr. Shinra." Kuroto gives a polite bow, before straightening back up, his eyes now glued to a digital tablet he's currently holding. Despite this fixation, however, he continues to converse. "I'm glad you've enjoyed my game, and while I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on it, I'd like to go over your request." He recites the prompts he was given verbatim with complete seriousness, not even smirking when he says the words 'totally simping'. "Anyway, I'm always willing to provide to a fellow member of the Concord, but if I may ask, is there a reason you need games like this?" By 'this', he means... Well, they aren't good ideas as far he's concerned, nor are they bad ideas. Middling isn't the correct term either, except for the last one he supposes, mostly because social deduction games are pretty popular lately. "You're free to not answer that if you wish, though it goes without saying, regardless on if you elaborate or not, I'm going to ask for you to promise to not do anything that will draw unwanted attention towards me. I assume you don't have a problem with that, yes?"
Rufus Shinra	"Because it's part of a larger project that's already in the works. If I may..." Rufus doesn't wait for a response to 'if I may', of course, he just does. He pulls out his own tablet, bringing up the fancy/expensive Shinra Holotech display. "Specifically, all three games are part of Project Duogenesis. A sort of... supervillain simulation. Something to let the heroes of the Multiverse experience life on the other side, without actually having to turn evil. A way to channel out those aggressive tendencies in a way that doesn't hurt anyone, like... smash rooms, or punching a bag of potatoes. And then after working all that out, they can go right back to heroing with pure hearts." "... And also going to make some money off of the whole thing, of course," he adds. "The other pieces are coming together. I've got the location booked." Actually he had the location before anything else, including a use for it. "I'm steadily hiring actors and stuntmen and other staff. I've got marketing going. I'm building sets and scenery. I've got a few people booked already." "But there's key pieces I haven't tackled yet - the actual game behind the simulation. The engine, the heart. And instead of trying to put together a game development team myself, I thought I'd just go hit up the best, because I want the best." Finger-guns.
Kuroto Dan	"I am indeed, the best." Kuroto repeats Rufus' praise as a simple matter of fact, before continuing. "I see. I suppose those individual requests make a lot more sense with this context. I remember getting an invitation to observe Miss Rook's hero simulation a while back, so I assume that's where some of the inspiration came from?" If that's where he got the inspiration from, it's pretty good, he'll give him that. Seems like he's done a bit of planning himself outside of just idea guying him too, which is both impressive and appreciated. Or, rather, it would be appreciated if he wasn't the kind of guy who didn't like sharing credit if he could help it. Though if he has to, he will begrudgingly. "So you need the systems for events and to keep score. I'd say that'd be a tall order to ask any game developer, but I'm not any game developer. Luckily for you, augmented reality is my current passion project, so I can make code this heart of yours trivially. I'm also going to assume you need 'enemies', since I doubt most of your actors are going to want to be aggressed."
Rufus Shinra	"Some inspiration, not all," says Rufus, maybe a little bit defensively. Only a little bit, though. "Miss Rook's simulation is an invite-only governmental affair intended for research. This is a publicly available business enterprise with a focus on entertainment and stress relief." "... Though that was quite a thing, wasn't it?" says Rufus much less defensively. "The stagecraft. The storylines. And that bit at the end where she flipped out and tried to kill everyone - you can't plan action like that. I wish I had been there." He clears his throat. "Great! Great. Augmented reality. And - actually, 'enemies' would be great. Stunt actors with extra armor can only go so far and I'm paying out the nose for insurance. So we'd need..." He pokes at his own tablet a bit, bringing up the view of the town. "It's set here, in this nice midwest city called Genesis." It's clearly town-sized, not city-sized. "So - security guards, and cops - people love beating up on cops these days. They have this thing they yell, something about cabs, don't ask me what it means. And - maybe a few tougher ones, heroes and the sort." "So then the AI captured princess, she's meant as a positive reinforcement loop, really rizzing them up to do villainy. They'd 'capture' her on the first mission, and then after that she'd give ongoing commentary and be like 'Oh you evil fiend, you robbed that bank and got away with all the money, won't someone try to stop you'. I was just going to have something with a 'prisoner monitor' on a computer or something, but if you can augment that reality too that'd be great." "... I wish that was my idea. I got Miss Soroka in for a consultation a while back, she came up with it." Good news, Rufus does not seem to shy away from giving credit where it's due. "Money's not really an object for this, by the way. My accountant's going to disagree with that statement, but-" Suddenly he's in Kuroto's personal space, one arm over his shoulders, the other gesturing out grandly. "You and I, we get the vision, right? We aren't the kind of people who are going to let spreadsheets and budgets get in the way of art."
Kuroto Dan	If only she had succeeded at killing everyone there. Having less of those types to deal with would have been pretty great, but he supposes he has no one but himself to blame for not being there. Oh well. "Armored stunt actors? Rizz?" Kuroto's a bit stun locked by the deluge of information and slang that Rufus keeps sharing, though thankfully he doesn't really have to understand all of it. The most important thing is the princess AI, which appears to be a Petra idea. He'll have to ask her what rizz means at some later time, but he's at least able to infer from this being her idea that the AI she sort of be like Heyalexa. When framed like that, it's an easy enough prompt. "All good ideas come from somewhere, the important thing is that you make them your own, Mr. Shinra." He offers some sagely advice as he just lets Rufus wrap an arm around him, doing his best to smile. "I see. I suppose I do get the vision. It's true, I have no love for constraints like money or making sure my investors are pleased. It's only ever been about sharing my creativity with the world. "
Rufus Shinra	"Great! Great." Kuroto gets a probably too hard slap on the back. "Then I'll leave you to it. I'm sure you've got a lot of, of code that you need to code into the code. Gotta tighten up the graphics on level three. Gotta go be a machine that turns coffee into programming. All that stuff." Rufus disengages from being in Kuroto's personal space. "Money's a terrible constraint, but having it helps, right? You just get your people to send my people an invoice, I'll get my people to send your people a big duffel bag of money that your people will then send to you. Or a check, I guess, but big duffel bags full of money just have that... that je ne sais quoi, right? Right." Finger-guns. "Oh right, one last thing, you fine with me using your branding? Adds a bit of prestige. Powered by Genm Corp! Kuroto Inside! Or something. I'll get the marketing guys to come up with a slick tagline, they're good at that."
Kuroto Dan	The smarter thing would be to say no, he can't use his branding. He did say to avoid drawing unwanted attention towards him. HOWEVER, since the pitch isn't really something that'd get him in trouble since it's just pretend villainy, it should be fine. More importantly, however, he wants his recognition. "Haha yeah, something like that. Anyway, feel free to use the Genm Corp logo for your advertising."