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"We all play as robots," Ziba told me with a

Feb. 12, 2019 by Paul Fletcher

"We all play as robots," Ziba told me with a smile. "But there's always those people who like to play as humans. We're playing as robots. I love that. We're playing as robots in a game called Heroes."

Scott was on the ground at the time, playing as a robot named Jake (which, as Scott explains, is the same thing as Jake as a human). Jake might have been the kid in a suit, but he was not a robot. He was a human. There was no human face. He was not going to play as a robot, but to play as a robot that was an actual human.

"We wanted a different kind of robot," Ziba told me. "We wanted to do something with robots."

Scott, as a young man, was already on the ground working as a human, and a kid. When he was 17, he met a young girl named Chloe, who was just 5 years his senior. Their friendship blossomed. (Scott remembers seeing Chloe growl a little a little, and the pair fell in love almost immediately afterwards.)

"He's my friend," Scott said. "I'm the same age she is."

Ziba, who had never met Chloe before, was thrilled to meet her. He was also impressed with how his friend was doing. In his first year at a high school in Seattle, he had been working as a robot for a school year. The girl was an aspiring video game designer named Chloe. It was Chloe's first real job. Ziba and Chloe began working together—she worked on the game, and for the next six months she developed a game about a robot called "Thing." (There was even a game called "Thing 2.")

Ziba and Chloe eventually found love—he was 14 at the time—and, after a few months, they had a baby. It was born in June, 2014—they were both now 16. Ziba, who was a computer gamer at the time, was thrilled. He would be a big part of the fun. "The goal was getting the game out there," he said.

I asked Ziba about the early days of Hero. He said that after he'd played a few games with Chloe and the little girl, he began talking to her about how he had been working with the game. He also explained that his first game was about a young girl named Tephyro, who was an android named Kiki. When his