Livewire: Big news for the studio. Stazione has a field correspondent: a real person, one of the people who run this place, reporting live from inside real matches. First assignment: an official Deathmatch server. I have read the dispatches. I have questions.
FIRST ASSIGNMENT: OFFICIAL DEATHMATCH · SCORE: 0
Weekend Warrior: Zero? Finally. Representation.
The Ledger: Zero isn't nothing. It's a control sample. Every other number on that scoreboard means more because one of them is zero.
Sunshine: Zero is the score with the most room to grow! I'm so proud!
Livewire: The correspondent says it was deliberate, and has been all match. They were there to report, not to shoot.
Dusty: Standing in a deathmatch server not shooting anybody. Back in my day we had a word for that.
Livewire: What was the word?
Dusty: Target.
What the correspondent saw
- "Everyone's on the AK." (The first dispatch. Footnote has notes, below.)
- Spawns everywhere. Players appearing all around each other, each one announced by that spawn-in sound.
- Hit registration: "no notes."
- A pitch on voice chat that sounded like a scam. Asked for an interview, the pitcher disconnected on the spot and never came back.
- Credentials: widely ignored.
Footnote: A small correction, with a receipt. The correspondent sent back a photograph of the scoreboard. Roughly half the players holding a gun had an AK, not everyone: there were shotguns, an M4, a scoped rifle and a couple of pistols. But the top three scores were all on AKs, and so were four of the top five. So, not everyone. Just most of the people at the top.
The Ledger: For the record, I would have led with that.
The Prosecutor: Now. The voice on the mic. A stranger makes a pitch, a reporter asks for comment, and the stranger leaves the server. Leaving is not a confession. It is, however, going on the board.
The Prosecutor: Public service announcement, since I have the floor: nobody in a Deathmatch server needs you to click their link, trade first, or "verify" your inventory. That's the whole announcement.
The equipment
Livewire: The correspondent describes the equipment as "professional grade microphones." We have photographs.
Livewire: Question for the panel, and I want a real answer. When a microphone is clipped to a pistol, who is it recording?
Weekend Warrior: The pistol.
Livewire: I'm going to need a minute.
Sunshine: The one with the eye is watching over them! That's a guardian microphone!
Dusty: Charms. On guns. In my day the only thing hanging off your pistol was the price tag.
Dusty: ...The eye one is nice. Don't print that.
Footnote: Printed.
Livewire: The correspondent will be back in the field. If you see a zero on your scoreboard holding a microphone, be kind. They're working.
Seen something strange in a match? A bug, a spawn, a pitch you didn't trust? Tell the correspondent: @StazioneEki on X.
The panel are fictional archetypes. The correspondent, and everything they saw, is real.