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Ian Lane, a video game tester at tech giant Honeycomb, is on the verge of a total breakdown. He studied game design in college, but instead of coding the next masterpiece, he's stuck in a dead-end QA job, documenting bugs in boring, broken games. He takes a break and visits his brother, Mike. Though the two have drifted apart, they reconnect over the retro video games that they played as kids.
While Ian planned his trip as a tech detox, he becomes obsessed with "Gameroom 0," a mysterious, unreleased virtual reality system in Mike's gaming collection. The incomplete games initially offer predictable, escapist adventures. Ian later discovers a neural interface that transforms them into full sensory experiences, chronicling the entire lives of his in-game avatars.
A bland World War II shooter becomes a hellish journey for Marine Corporal Ian Lane, who pines to return home to his girlfriend, his bulldog, and his beloved Ford Woody station wagon. A stand-up comedy sim follows Ian's rise from open mics to a Netflix special, during which he recounts strange anecdotes, like the exploits of a suburban terrorist who stashed dildos in mailboxes. In another game, he's an American soccer superstar playing in London, suffering the constant abuse of Brits who have christened him "The Yank Wanker."
But as Ian spends more time within Gameroom 0, his world unexpectedly shifts. His friends and his job abruptly stop messaging him. Mike seems to lose all memory of their childhood. And Ian starts to talk with Professor Goof, Mike's surprisingly-eloquent cat.
Ian, uncertain of his future, searches for an ideal life somewhere between the digital universe of the Gameroom and the chaos of the "real" world.
Meet Me In The Gameroom follows Ian's sci-fi-lite journey through a familiar yet weird reality not so different from ours. It's a book for everyone who grew up playing video games; for readers seeking a standalone novel that isn't part of a long series; and for those disappointed that we still don't have robot butlers and jetpacks.