Gaming the System

Over 16,000 Words of Kreme!

Amy is both excited and nervous for her first time teaching in person since the pandemic. And while her husband Terry does his best at trying to convince her she doesn't need in-class gimmicks to make a positive impression on her students, that doesn't change the attractive young teacher that students are more likely to remember an instructor who makes learning fun.

She wants to make learning entertaining, to make it unique, and most of all to make up for all the students lost this last year with distance learning and instruction.

That's why a passing remark Terry makes about a magazine article he was just reading strikes so much interest with Amy. He shows her the article, about an instructional application for the classroom developed during the pandemic to make something of a competition or game out of learning.

Gaming the System as it's called is a downloadable program that merely requires a television and pretty much any game controllers so long as they have a built-in microphone and buttons. The teacher can pre-load a select series of questions, or a theme, and the questions will appear on the television, each student able to lock out the others by pressing any button of their choice on their controller. Supposedly points are earned and there are even rewards for right answers, punishments for wrong answers.

During the prep week, only the senior students have been randomly divided, ten per class to a number of teachers, all geared towards giving both students and instructors essentially a practice session to get used to in-person learning again.

But could this be a gimmick that takes things a bit too far the opposite direction of social distancing? Amy and Terry might have figured that out if they knew that Gaming the System is an educational product release by a company called SINtech, most notably known for being the brains behind an adult gaming series of products under the SINtendo name.

The following day, everything seems to go fine... at first. Amy has her randomly assigned students, ten senior boys, everyone from muscular athletic football players to shy loner nerds. Her chosen series of questions are on colleges and heading off to college, all trivia based on the terms and names of collegiate education. The first two questions are easily gotten right, and the rewards are very confusing, one simply saying Happy, the other saying Confident.

What none of the students realize is that Amy truly is adjusted by the rewards, made to feel a happiness she rarely has felt... made to feel a confidence the shy young teacher seldom has. The fun, however, begins on a mistake that results in an incorrect answer.

As Amy reads the punishment, everyone begins to realize that Gaming the System might not be such a boring educational toy after all... and in fact Amy may be destined to be a toy for her students.

After the first punishment makes Amy linked to the student who gave the wrong answer's controller for a limited time, and she is literally manipulated to jump up and down to their adolescent amusement... a sinister idea spreads. Other students begin getting their questions wrong on purpose, simply because the punishments are more fun than the rewards, and all of them punish Amy by changing something about her, turning her into something else, or just giving the student's power over their hot young teacher no student could ever resist.

But what happens when the game is over? Will Amy be used, abused, and absolutely destroyed before the school year even begins? Will her husband and school principal save the day... or has everyone gone just a little bit crazy during the past year and a half, to the point that everyone, student or not, is eager to try a little Gaming the System?

Just in time for school, it's a brand new educational pursuit from the twisted minds behind SINtendo.