He runs his hands through his hair and slows our pace again before he picks up. Trey in full story mode is a sight. He looks younger and more laid back as he relays the start of their profitable company. I don’t want to interrupt him to ask questions and ruin the spell.
“That’s how smart Finn is. He coded our first real game while drunk. The concept was simple. Players had to use their fingers to swipe at the screen and make a goal. It was so basic, but once we stuck it online it went crazy. We sold it our junior year and that summer I finally convinced him to focus on making more games.
“I had dollar signs in my eyes. The soccer game sold for twenty-four thousand dollars, but I thought we were rich. I had no idea how much it cost to keep a gaming business afloat.” He laughs at himself and turns to me.
“How did you go from soccer to Dragons Reborn?”
“It never would have happened without Grant. As you know, he has a bit of family money.” Trey pinches his fingers together in front of him. “He invested in us and his money was the start-up cash we needed to keep the lights on.
“It was a crazy time for all of us. It took over a year of solid coding, but Finn finished Dragons Reborn next. We had half a million downloads in the first month and were caught unprepared for how quickly it would take off. We were always on the defense. Buying more server space as we overloaded the old one, working on one bug just to discover five more."
Trey stops when we reach a brick building with a bright red door, the word “Pizza” written in neon lights above it. He opens the door allowing me to enter first. One step inside the building and the smell of cheese has my nose searching for the ovens where the dairy goodness is cooking. My stomach growls in excitement.
The restaurant is small with less than ten tables for people to eat inside, half-filled at this moment. We approach the main counter, a tiled affair separating the eating area from the prep and ovens in the back. As we wait for the pizza to cook, we take seats at the farthest corner next to the large glass window to watch people as they walk by the store front.
“There must have been some good times in the beginning, right?” I ask to learn more about the young and ambitious Trey.
He laughs in thought again. “There were tons of great times. Grant stayed at Stanford to finish his senior year. Ryland had already been recruited for a semi-pro team, so he left before finishing college as well. Finn and I were living in this tiny two-bedroom crap rental. We survived on soda and pizza for every meal. It was in a horrible part of the city, but we craved that coveted San Francisco address. It was the only place in Silicon Valley we could afford.
“As our memberships grew, we were forced to hire more coders. We’d have five or six guys sitting in our tiny living room all working together. It was my job to feed everyone and keep them motivated since I was little to no help with the code."
“I’m sure your neighbors loved that.”
“They weren’t too bad. Eventually we needed more servers, so we ended up renting office space in Oakland and putting them in there with the AC turned way up.” He laughs as if he’s told some huge joke, but between the two of us, he’s the only one that understands it. “It wasn’t safe at all. Now all of our machines are stored in a climate controlled area in the basement of our building.”
“Good!” Trey’s last name is called from behind the main counter as a white and red pizza box is slid on the counter awaiting us. Trey pays and we step back out on the sidewalk before the conversation picks up again.
“So when did you decide to go from six guys in a crap apartment to what you have now?”
“It took a while. As Dragons Reborn grew bigger and bigger, we realized we couldn’t continue to handle it so I started to shop it out. There wasn’t time to worry about the legal parts of a company at the time. I had to get rid of the game before it buried us. Most of our early coders make up the main employees in the company now. A few left to keep working on the game for the new company.”
Trey stops in front of a large blue building on the corner. Windows, three stories high, line the space with big white doors leading inside. “The Raven Digital Arts building.”
I look up to try and take it all in with the setting sun. “Wow. Much nicer than your first place, I assume.”
We start to walk again while Trey holds the pizza in front of him with my bag still swaying on his shoulder.
“Does Finn ever plan to take the company public?” I ask. Trey’s head shoots to mine and he narrows his eyes at my question. I'm reminded of his allegations from last week when he thought I was after his account. “I only mean Finn could’ve kept all the money. Of course you could have sued, but you’d have spent years in court,” I try to clarify.
Trey snorts his derision. “Finn’s not like that. He forced half a billion on me. I would have taken much less. Now that everything’s settled, we've focused on designing new games and selling them to larger players.
“Finn doesn’t want to deal with all the issues that come with a popular game. I used to disagree, but recently I’m starting to see his point. After so many years in that shitty apartment and working non-stop, it’s nice to have some personal time.”
“You get half a billion, and with that kind of payout, you buy a two seater Mazda Miata first?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Trey laughs with me. “Besides, I thought you liked Apple.”
His use of my name for the car makes me giggle and shrug my shoulders in his direction.
“I also bought this place and paid off both of my parents’ houses as well.” Trey stops to open a dark blue door to our right.
I step back to admire his home. It’s built right next to the houses on either side of it, which appears to be a common element at least in this neighborhood. I scan the houses down the street and notice they are all the same without any space between the nonmatching home designs. Trey’s place has a garage door next to the area we stand now, so you could pull a car in from the street. The dark blue color and large window jutting out from the front set his home apart from the rest. It’s larger than his neighbors’ and gives the building a modern and new age look with the reflective mirrored surfaces.
“You didn’t help out any of your siblings?” I ask as we walk through his garage and up a staircase into the main house. If I came into five hundred million, Elena would be at my doorstep asking for keys to the Porsche before the ink was dry.
Trey stops to open another door at the top of the staircase and walks in before me. “I’m an only child. Finn too, which is probably why we clicked so well. We both needed that brother connection.”
He leaves the pizza box on the breakfast bar area and I’m left to take in the view as Trey walks through the kitchen and begins opening cupboards. The space is larger than it looked from the outside. Somehow even the window looks bigger from this angle. Light wood grain hardwood floors make the space feel cavernous. I have to suppress the urge to see if I can echo my voice off the tall ceilings.
