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Golden Gamer

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"Golden Gamer" is the second segment of the fifth episode (and the tenth story overall) of Close Enough.

Synopsis[]

When Josh attempts to finish a video game, he must confront an inner demon while Alex tries to win his students' respect.

Plot[]

Josh and Dante are on their way to install an ultra-wide television set inside the 3-story luxury yacht of an affluent man who had already won Dante's respect and admiration. As they approached the dock, the owner of the yacht signaled them to gingerly make their way to the upper floor.

Upon closer inspection, the owner of the yacht recognized Josh and made pleasantries, but Josh failed to recognize him. The owner of the yacht then reintroduced himself as Keith Nash, the President of Nash Man Games and creator of its flagship video game, Heli Man.

Josh then recognized him from his late teens when they were both trying to make it as mainstream game developers. Keith told Dante that Josh used to be the object of everybody's admiration because of his masterful game developing skills, while Dante finds it hard to believe that anybody could admire Josh.

Keith ascertains that Josh had finished his game - Dudeman - and had become financially successful on his own behalf, to which Josh replied (with humility and shame) that he hadn't finished the game. Keith is understandably unable to understand Josh's shortcomings as he himself has managed to become a self-made financial success.

Keith bids Dante and Josh farewell as he gets airlifted via helicopter to give a sold-out keynote at E3 for the second year in a row. Josh is left wondering what had gone wrong in his life and why he is not even remotely the walking success story that Keith is.

At home, fueled by uncertainty, mania and insecurity; Josh dug up his plug and play console for Dudeman. It was clear that Josh had not even made a decision as to whether he even wanted to finish Dudeman, because he immediately fell into trouble finding adapters and ports to work on the console.

After jury rigging multiple adapters and ports and writing new drivers for them, Josh was finally able to access the game but still faced issues because of OS incompatibility. Josh hastily attempted to write up emulators but failed. Josh smashed his hand across his keyboard, inadvertently causing the transformer for the Duplex to short out.

This surge of power and Josh's dark emotions had caused Dudeman to come to life. As soon as pleasantries were exchanged Dudeman quickly turned to confronting Josh as to what had happened between them and why Josh never actually finished the game.

Josh painfully reminisced about how he was prematurely given contracts before Dudeman was even finished. Josh, however, was not the competent game developer that he and his friends thought that he was, as he presented a highly bugged version of Dudeman at his own keynote. The game was so bugged that it was rendered unusable. Josh's corporate backers walked out on him, and instead sponsored Heli Man.

Dudeman then tells to Josh to finish the game but Josh manically feels uninterested. Dudeman then entices Josh to reconnect with his early 20s self and magically spawns in a car and gives Josh the look that he had in his early 20s. Josh then agrees to go on a bender with Dudeman.

Josh returns home in a drunken state to Emily which causes the latter to question Josh's actions. Josh explained that he was out partying, drinking and skating and showed photographic evidence of him doing so, with Dudeman strangely absent in the photos giving speculation that only Josh can see him. Emily tells Josh not to act out of impulse like he had just done but Josh was in no mood to listen and passes out.

Josh then attempts to jump a ramp via motorcycle over a canal of fire with Dudeman on the back of the motorcycle with him. The whole stunt was originally organized by Alex as a means to garner respect from his students. Alex was however successfully talked out of it by his students after they showed him that they’ve learned the material he was trying to teach. Nevertheless Alex did stumble off the building and hurt himself regardless.

As Alex was about to be stretchered off to an ambulance, he pleaded with Josh not to do the stunt but Josh didn't want to listen to Alex either. Emily suddenly rushed in with Candice in her arms and pleaded with Josh not to do the stunt to which Josh replied that he didn't have the option to not do the stunt as this was his only means of escaping his life as a failure.

Emily then asked Josh to re-evaluate his life choices and really think whether or not he really was a failure. Josh realized that while he never made it as a celebrity game developer like Keith did, his life is still very fulfilling because of Emily and Candice and how his dream didn’t end but had just changed.

Dudeman becomes incensed over Josh's change of heart and forces him to do the jump anyways in hopes that it will entice Josh to finish his Video Game so they both could become rich and famous. As Josh struggles to keep control of the motorcycle, the scene cuts to Josh from Emily's perspective giving fact to the speculation that only Josh can see Dudeman.

Dudeman is successful in forcing Josh to do the jump, which incenses Josh, prompting him to throw the original Dudeman console into the fire, killing Dudeman. Josh successfully completes the jump, but runs into the side of a windowless van anyway.

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