Cut to the Bone by Alex Caan

muscles, blond hair flowing in his face. His eyes were purple, a hefty sword in his hands.
    Dan Grant appeared in a little box in the corner. He was filming himself, the purples and reds and blues of the game reflecting in his face.
     
    So this is Medieval Space Bandits. The graphics are good but not great, guys, if I’m honest. And you know me, I’d never lie to you. Still, it combines the best, don’t you think? Medieval warfare and alien warriors. Plus you get to choose from a series of avatars.
     
    Dan freezes the screen and scrolls through the various avatars. The first is a bulky male, in chainmail, with a sword as his weapon of choice.
     
    This is SyCo. He’s got 130 points melee attack, and 100 melee defence. His ranged attack is crap, 43, but he has good ranged defence of 73. You can upgrade him later, increasing his defence. He’s all right, but a bit bland.
     
    The next is another male, this time thinner, with a hood. He has a bow across his back and daggers in his hand.
     
    Like they didn’t copy this from Assassin’s Creed, right? Still, this is Jerome. No idea why they picked such a retard name for him, probably one of the developers’ own name or something. He’s, yeah you guessed it, the archery supremo. 128 points ranged attack, and 100 ranged defence. His melee is decent, he has 70 melee attack points, probably his dagger skills, and 45 melee defence.
     
    The next is a female. She wears chainmail in a bikini fashion, and is armed with a curved sword and giant shield.
     
    This is Tiana. But I don’t like playing female avatars, so you can work out her stats for yourself. There’s a hack somewhere to make her get it on with Jerome, if you know where to look. Not for me to share that though, I’m too decent, as you know.
     
    The next avatar is also female, again scantily clad. Dan skips over her completely, with a meh .
     
    So this is the one I’ve gone for. Balthazar. He looks like a badass, and has a top sword, don’t you think? Plus he has something else. He’s got secret powers. Yeah, that’s right, he does wicked tricks, shoots lasers from his hands.
     
    Balthazar is a demon, with red horns, and fire for eyes.
     
    He has 150 melee attack, 140 ranged attack and 110 melee defence. So you’re asking me, what’s the downside? I won’t lie to you. He has no defence against ranged. You shoot him up with an arrow, and you’re looking at him with 40 ranged defence. No armour. Cos like I said, he’s a bad ass.
    OK, so got my avatar, time to play this. Are you with me, guys? I got your back, just like I know you have mine. Oh, and if you get bored, don’t forget to click on the link appearing below, yeah I know it’s some dumb advertising, but hey it keeps me online for you. And if you get really bored, click on the link to the right to my website. And don’t forget to subscribe.
     
    ‘So he literally talks through a game? That’s the attraction?’ said Zain.
    ‘Yes, for his fan base. It’s mainly young guys, trying to see if the game is worth investing in, or trying to work out where they are going wrong if they keep failing levels.’
    ‘Or lonely young gamers wanting some company? Dan becomes their friend as they play their games. A pseudo big brother, and I don’t mean Orwellian,’ said Zain.
    ‘We all get by how we can,’ Millie said.
    ‘I get this. I know how YouTube works. I can see his two million subscriber figures there. Pretty impressive. But they don’t pay a charge.’
    ‘No, he gets paid for this.’
    Millie refreshed the page. It started with an annoying advert that you were allowed to skip after five seconds. Zain barely paid attention to these ads when he was watching videos.
    ‘Each view of this, Dan gets money,’ she said. ‘I had a channel a few years ago, when I tried to do make-up tutorials. I wasn’t very successful. It can be anything from one cent to fifty cents per view, sometimes higher. If the advert is set to play fully, meaning you