The Smile

How it works

You see the room the way he does: the top of the podium, two microphones, the teleprompter glass on either side, five rows of the press and a riser of cameras at the back. Across the podium runs one dial. Its middle is the smile. Its left end is a smirk and its right end is a snarl, and the game is keeping the needle in the narrow band between them for the whole conference.

Ten questions arrive, one after another. A provocation — a botched rescue, a teammate’s interview, a poll that went the wrong way — pushes the needle toward the snarl. Flattery — the ratings, the statue, a second-grader asking his favourite colour — pushes it toward the smirk, and that breaks the smile just as surely. A twist starts as one and turns into the other halfway through the answer. Even the walk-on drifts, because every camera flash nudges him toward enjoying himself.

Hold ◀ Soften or Harden ▶, use the left and right arrow keys (or A and D), or drag sideways across the stage, to push back. The needle has weight: your push takes a moment to build and a moment to fade, and the needle keeps moving after you let go. Push hard the whole time and you will carry it straight through the smile and out the other side. Lean gently, and let go before it arrives.

The question appears a beat before it lands, so read it. Its words tell you which way it is about to push, and leaning that way early is the one thing a quick hand cannot make up for.

What he says, and what he thinks

While he answers, two lines run under the stage. Says is the line from the teleprompter, the one the networks will air. Thinks is what is going on behind the face while he says it. The distance between the two is the joke, and it is also the point: the game is played from inside his head, and it never pretends the polished answer is the true one.

How it is scored, and what the score does not measure

The score is the number of seconds the needle spent in the smile, out of a conference of a hundred and two. The grade is the share of the conference that is: an S is ninety-two percent or more, an A eighty, a B sixty-six, a C half, a D a third, and anything less is an F. Pin the needle against either end and that is a crack — the frame the cameras keep — and it is itemised in the panel under the stage, along with what happened to each answer’s clip.

The end card also gives a Vought approval figure. It rises while the smile holds, falls faster the further off the face is, and drops sharply for every crack. It measures the mask and nothing else, and the end card says so in plain words, above a transcript of every answer he gave and everything he was thinking while he gave it. A perfect score here is a perfect performance, not a good answer.

How the numbers were chosen

By playing it before it existed. Three reference hands stood at the podium for sixty seeded conferences each, all seeing the same needle a human’s reaction time late: one that never touches the controls, one that pushes flat out toward the middle at every instant, and one that leans in proportion to how far off the face is and brakes in proportion to how fast it is moving. The constants were moved until the table said what the design claims.

It says it now. Doing nothing holds the smile for a tenth of the conference, cracks six or seven times and ends with approval at zero. Pushing hard is better than that and still an F: it crosses the middle of the dial about fifty times a conference, overshooting on every correction. The gentle hand holds it for over ninety percent. Between the two there is a sweet spot, not a slider — too soft a hand gets out-pushed by a strong question, too firm a one swings — and a keyboard player who reads each question and leans early holds about nine-tenths of the conference instead of three-quarters.

Today’s conference is everybody’s

The questions, their order and every camera flash are generated from the date, so everyone who plays today faces the same conference until midnight UTC, and two scores mean something side by side. New conference deals you a numbered one of your own instead. Either way, the link you share carries the conference with it: whoever opens it gets the same ten questions, on any day, with your score above the stage to beat. Your best score is kept in this browser only.

Nobody is drawn, and that is deliberate

There is no figure on screen, no costume and no face — and nobody in the room is anyone in particular. The view is his eye line from behind the podium. Naming a work and its characters is what nominative fair use permits, and this page does that plainly; reproducing a character’s visual design is a different thing, and an actor’s face is protected by a right of publicity that fair use does not reach at all. The only power the game lets show is the heat behind the eyes as the needle nears the snarl, and that only as a colour at the edge of the view.

Easy on the eyes, and on the keys

A press room flashes, and this one is drawn so that it is safe to look at: each flash is a small bloom on a lens at the back of the room, never the whole screen, and never two closer together than eight-tenths of a second. If your device asks for reduced motion, a flash is a glint on the lens and the teleprompter text holds still. The keys are only taken while a conference is running, never from a text box, and the line between the two buttons says where the face is in words for anyone not watching the dial.

Settle it in the forum

The board’s forum is where a grade goes to be doubted. Post your link and somebody will explain that they held the smile through the cereal question without once looking at the dial.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan page for the television series The Boys and the comic series it is based on, naming them under nominative fair use. It is a free, unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Television, Point Grey Pictures, Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson and their publishers, or any official rights holder of The Boys.

Every word on this page is original writing, including every question, every answer and every thought in the game. No dialogue, script text, scene, panel, still, logo or artwork from any series is reproduced anywhere in it, no character is depicted, and nothing here imitates an official mark. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world with its own map, its own houses and its own art, and has no connection to the world of The Boys.

The rest of the corner

The Boys wing has the other three games from behind the same eyes: Golden Hour, a sunset rescue timed for the cameras, Collateral, a flight over a glass city, and Super Hearing, a leak hunted through Vought Tower’s walls. The fan tributes hub has the Westeros, Supernatural, King of the Hill, Fringe, Jericho, Big Bang Theory and Last Kingdom wings alongside it, and the free tools that are not about anybody’s fiction. If you would rather play something with more to it, Iron Realms is free and runs in a browser tab.