It was focused.
A long wall of tinted glass played a curated rotation of show metrics: audience retention graphs, live viewer heat maps, trending social signals. On another wall more screens showed rotating views of live footage from the village. Her desk was absolutely clear except for a mug of tea and three floating holo-screens that were blurred from the direction he was looking.
Valentina herself looked like someone who had been awake for hours already. Her hair was pinned back, her sleeves were rolled up, her eyes were sharp. And her posture was immaculate.
“Good morning Ms. Cross,” Alex said.
She chuckled and shook her head. “I see Delores infected you. Please, it will always be Valentina. Maybe just use Ms. Cross in front of Delores if you want to stay on her good side.” She gestured to the chair across from her. “Sit.”
He sat.
Valentina smiled at him. It was warm, but in Alex’s experience she was always smiling.
“You requested this meeting late last night,” she said. “A little unusual. Most recruits spend their first few weeks training, being exhausted, and sleeping. Maybe panicking a little over one of the challenges, or the tournament. Are you worried Alex?”
Alex nodded along to her until she asked if he was worried and quickly shook his head no. “No, ah, not really worried. I’m enjoying my time here. Actually, I think I would like to stay on full time. I talked to Reach and he said it wouldn’t be an issue since I’ll have a bedroom in the Team House after the training hut.” He was rambling and shut his mouth. He was here for a reason and couldn’t get distracted.
He noticed the flicker at the corner of her mouth as she tried to suppress a different kind of smile.
“I heard, and that is excellent. We’re happy to have you on board. I understand that you will be switching to distance learning?”
Apparently Valentina knew everything. He shouldn’t be too surprised by that. She had a knack of turning up whenever something interesting was happening too.
He smiled back at her and answered. “Yes, it shouldn’t be an issue. I can do my classes at night. Honestly, the ANIP makes the schoolwork a little easier. I find that I pick up new concepts a little faster now than I did before. It’s pretty impressive really—I almost feel like I’m cheating.”
Valentina leaned forward and rested her elbows on her desk, she had already closed the holodisplays. “Don’t you dare. The ANIP isn’t cheating, it’s enhancing. Sure, everyone gets a little boost, but its main purpose is to enhance your physical attributes. A little extra boost to memory and processing is just…” She waved one hand in the air like she was searching for a word to grab and then said, “a fortuitous side effect.”
“Now, your request,” she continued. “You have a proposal regarding the team structures of Dungeon Inc.? Or are we just talking about your particular team?”
Alex drew in a breath. This was the moment he had rehearsed dozens of times.
“The point,” he said, “is that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I fit into the show. Me and my team. And I realized that the show is hitting a structural ceiling.”
Her eyebrows lifted the smallest fraction but she said nothing so he pressed on.
“Right now, Dungeon Inc. introduces twelve new adventurers on two new teams every six weeks. That system worked great in the beginning and we all cheered on our favourites. But I’m part of Cohort Fourteen, we’ve introduced close to thirty teams total and over one hundred and fifty adventurers. Most viewers back home can’t track that many. The people I know don’t even talk about their favourite teams anymore, there are too many—instead they just focus on their favourite adventurers. Even with strong editing, attention is only going to fracture more and more. And newer teams are overshadowing older ones because we have fancier tech and newer classes, like my battlemage class, that people haven’t seen before, causing fan attachment to get even more diluted.”
He paused for air. Valentina’s eyes stayed on him, steady and unreadable. She didn’t try to stop him though so he steamrolled on.
“Production just can’t keep depth consistent across that many teams, which means they’ve already started to focus on the bigger, more popular stars which makes it harder and harder for newer adventurers to find a fanbase. But the older teams are feeling the pressure too and many of them are taking bigger and bigger risks in order to do something, anything, to capture as much screen time as possible. Dungeon Inc. is huge right now, but the current system is a serious risk to long-term engagement. The show is doing great—but the architecture is starting to fail.”
There. He may feel like throwing up from anxiety. But he had got it all out.
She leaned back slightly in her chair. “Go on, you have a plan to turn it around?”
Alex paused and took a long sip from his cooling coffee.
“Maybe. Rowan, from the Wylder Company, told me about guilds in the Eastern Empire. There are a few different ones, but they are all affiliated in some way and use the same system for adventurers, which apparently this world is absolutely full of. But the guilds are central to the whole system.
“That’s what Dungeon Inc. needs. Not more teams, but a better, more centralized organization. Something scalable. Something that lets you keep onboarding recruits for the next ten years without losing cohesion. Something that gives producers something to really sink your narrative teeth into.
“Like I said, Dungeon Inc. is huge. But let’s think of it as a new sports league. The sport is adventuring. Dungeon Inc. is the league. You dictate the rules and manage the system. Then, the league is made up of a finite number of teams, called Adventurers Guilds. 7, or 9, whatever. All of the existing teams get absorbed up into a guild and become working squads, or ‘lines’ in the team analogy. Right now, 7 guilds would mean about 20 people per guild, or about 3 of the current teams per guild.”
Valentina tapped a single finger slowly against her mug as she listened.
Alex paused to see if she was going to cut him off yet and when she didn’t, he kept going.
“So, say seven guilds. Now, whether adventurers come or go, the guilds are permanent and fans can root for their favourites. Each one with a theme, a brand identity, a narrative direction. New recruits will get some sort of ranking as they train, something like an F through A ranking. This gives the guilds something other than just class to use to recruit new members.”
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
He shifted slightly, trying not to lean forward as his excitement for the idea drove him.
“You can still tell squad stories, or focus on individual personalities. But older teams can now run with newer classes because they are all part of the same guild. Team lineups are malleable or interchangeable.
“And, guilds are already a well established part of life in this world. So, as we explore more, and Earth3 opens up, guilds give us a way to organize large-scale exploration, sponsorships, region control and more. We can build chapter houses in major cities if we want to start integrating into this world and they should be accepted readily.”
He inhaled, done with his pitch. Valentina just stared at him and he added:
“It’s not a new show. It’s the evolution of the one you’ve already built.”
Silence.
She stared at him across her steel table. Not cold. Not dismissive. Just looking. The silence stretched long enough that Alex’s pulse started ticking in his ears. He took another sip of his coffee.
Finally Valentina spoke, voice thoughtful. “That’s a significant restructuring.”
“Yes,” Alex said. “But not an impossible one.”
She tilted her head. “And how do you propose handling the current adventurers? Legacy teams?”
“Well, first, I think everyone gets a rank. Older teams get higher ranks based on past experience.” Alex said immediately. “You have to. It makes everything consistent and gives fans a system to weigh each player. The ranks can be incorporated right on Herobook on our profiles. I think we figure out the number of Guilds, base each around specific themes or goals, and then try to match the existing teams up to those guilds as closely as possible.”
She nodded once, barely perceptible.
“And lower-ranked recruits?” she asked. “F’s and D’s. What makes them worth following instead of discouraging them?”
“Underdog arcs, training arcs, mentor arcs,” Alex said. “Easy audience hooks. Each guild will have both senior and junior members. At the end of the day the squads that perform get the screen time, but guilds balance out the fame across squads and over time. A squad of B rank adventurers could take an F or D rank along on a mission for extra training, etc.
“But if they aren’t cutting it out in the field, maybe we find other things for them to do—I imagine there will be administrative and training work involved within the guild hall itself. Running the guilds day to day will be work. So if we get folks who don’t quite make the cut with a higher grade, and they still want to stay on, there’s always a place for them on the team.”
Valentina’s fingers stopped tapping.
Another long silence.
Then she smiled.
“I like it,” she said in a warm voice.
Alex let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
She stood, circling around the desk with her mug in hand and leaned against its edge in front of Alex.
“This is… Clean. Scalable. In fact, I have a whole team of writers downstairs that have been working on this problem for months and not one of them has come up with anything half as elegant. You’ve clearly thought this through.”
Alex nodded, heat rising faintly in his cheeks. “I tried.”
“Okay,” she said. “One last question,” she said, her gaze sharpening slightly. “What do you want out of it?”
Alex met her eyes. No hesitation.
“If you implement the guild system,” he said, “I want to claim one of the seven. I want to call it: Side Quest Heroes. And when the next cohort arrives, I want the chance to bring in the people who started that name with me. We’ll be the scrappy underdogs because we’ll mostly be new adventurers.”
“You wouldn’t ask Marcus or Rowan to become part of your guild? You seem to be friendly with them.”
“Oh, I am. But Marcus and Rowan both lead popular teams and are probably in the top 10 most popular individual adventurers. I imagine they will both want to consider running their own guilds and that would make sense for Dungeon Inc. too - you don’t want to stack too many popular people in the same guild to launch this concept. You need to spread the star power around.”
Valentina laughed brightly. “Alex, I do like how you think.” She tapped the side of her mug for several long breaths, considering, then, finally, smiled widely and then extended a hand.
“Provisionally approved.”
Alex blinked. “Really?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself,” she said dryly, but still holding her smile. “Look Alex… You’ve given me something valuable to think about. I like it. It seems to be a viable path forward. We’re going to have to go over this in detail to make sure there are no holes, and then we need to figure out exactly how to implement it. But honestly, unless we hit something really unexpected, I think this is, while huge, a pretty straight forward change. And I like rewarding the people who bring value to the company.”
He nodded, then reached out and shook her hand.
Her grip was cool and firm.
She released his hand and moved back around the desk, already making a few quick notes on a floating screen only she could see.
“I’ll need some time to sit with the geeks downstairs,” she said. “And figure out how to iron out the inevitable resistance this will draw. But the bones are solid and I think we can turn around a plan this week. Alex—” She looked up from her screens at him.
“Good work.”
He stood, heartbeat hammering in a way that was equal parts adrenaline and disbelief.
He nodded. “Thank you.”
“Now go,” she said with a smile. “Reach is probably waiting for you by now and you have to make sure you are ready for the forest tomorrow.”
***
As previously discussed, the current multi-team format has reached its natural ceiling.
Audience engagement data continues to show further fragmentation with every new cohort. Too many parallel arcs have ultimately diluted emotional investment, complicated recap narratives, and limited the effectiveness of long-term branding. In short: viewers want depth, not the sprawl that is a natural result of the necessary build up of people resources in this new world.
To address this, we will be transitioning Dungeon Inc. into a guild-based structure at the start of the next season cycle.
Under the proposed model, all active teams will be consolidated into a fixed number of officially sanctioned guilds. Each guild will serve as a stable narrative pillar with distinct visual identities, defined ethos, consistent leadership, and predictable internal rivalries rife with storytelling threads. This change will enable Marketing to focus spending, tighten branding, and build a recognizability that extends beyond individual personalities.
In parallel, we will be introducing a formal adventurer ranking system, graded from F through A-class, based on performance metrics, survivability, contribution value, and audience response. Rankings will be visible, dynamic, and narratively reinforced. Progression will feel earned. Regression will feel consequential.
New cohorts will no longer be assigned arbitrarily to a newly formed team. Instead, each intake cycle will culminate in a draft event, with guilds selecting recruits in a televised, sports-style format. This gives us:
- A recurring tentpole episode with built-in stakes
- Clean onboarding for new viewers
- Immediate emotional buy-in for new trainees
- Organic rivalry that will arise between guilds
From a numbers standpoint, projections are strong. We expect a measurable lift in retention, improved episode-to-episode continuity, and a significant increase in ancillary engagement—merchandise, social discussion, and cross-platform clips. Most importantly, this framework scales forward, not outward; allowing us to grow the brand without destabilizing it further.
There have been suggestions that our long-term value lies elsewhere, especially as our numbers have further fragmented over the past six months. I disagree though—not philosophically, but practically.
What we have here is a renewable resource engine: stories that replenish themselves, talent pipelines that generate loyalty, and an audience that invests not just in outcomes, but in people. This is the kind of asset that compounds without the need for significant resource investment.
I’ll circulate implementation timelines and branding mockups by end of week.
Internal Memorandum
From: Valentina
To: Executive and Strategic Oversight Teams
Re: Structural Realignment — Season Transition Proposal
DON'T FORGET: Drop a rating! Pretty please!