In a poorly-lit room, a thin youth sat in a custom gaming chair staring at the third of his impressive quad monitor setup with visible shock. His eyes watered as he read the contents of the screen and not long after tears began to fall from his eyes.
"Finally!" Aiz screamed with unrestrained joy permeating through every fibre of his being. He then regained focus and began typing on his Kinesis 5th generation keyboard, his fingers furiously tapping away as he wrote a quick message to all his patrons.
"So guys we did it, we finally reached 200 patrons! To celebrate this momentous occasion, I will release a custom patch for each and every one of you guys! DM me any mod requests you have and I'll be sure to hook you up with the good stuff, just don't go too overboard, you know Fantasy's Edge engine can get a bit screwy if you go over the top."
Aiz clicked confirm and his message was sent through, he leaned back his chair and exhaled a sharp breath of air.
He pulled out his ZPhone X from his pocket and quickly transferred two thousand dollars to his sister's bank account.
Not even a few seconds later his phone began ringing.
"Hello, Bella?"
"Aiz! Quickly nullify the transaction! You know how the banks are these days, even if you want to give me money do it in person!" Bella replied quickly.
"Shoot! It's too late anyway,"
Bella sighed exasperatedly.
"Even if you wanted to show me you're doing better now, why transfer online? Sometimes I wonder how selective your intelligence is Aiz!" Bella berated, concern concealed in her voice.
"Ouch!" Aiz said feigning hurt.
"Hmph, my husband will still support you, even if you decided to sit at home and play games all day"
"Hey!"
"I wouldn't have sent you to university if I knew," Bella said regretfully.
"You're hurting my feelings," Aiz said in the most monotone voice he could muster.
"You've hurt my bank account! It would not be an exaggeration to say you have caused irreparable damage to my credit score! If not for my properties, you would be on the streets!"
"I'm hanging up"
"Wait! No-"
Aiz cut the call.
After his mother had died, his father became was driven to the brink of depression before becoming one of the most successful robbers on earth, plundering and stealing from The World Bank with reckless abandon. Although he got caught, he still managed to transfer all of the money he stole and refused to say where he put it, even with his life on the line.
Somehow, his older sister managed to get a grasp of it and she promptly moved into a huge apartment with her highschool sweetheart, quickly having 2 children at the ripe age of 24.
Aiz closed his Patreon tab and opened up the Modder's forum, he designed the search engine by himself, of course, more or less copying the code from more popular search engines and changing it to suit modders.
[Welcome back WaifuOverlord!]
Aiz chuckled as his username appeared on-screen, he then browsed through the forum until a particular thread caught his attention.
[The Psychology Behind the Boundless Success of Fantasy's Edge]
[In the modern age, escape has become more and more welcome and sought after, with the very real approach of our planetary expiry date fewer and fewer people are looking for a solution to our death date and instead an escape and Fantasy's Edge appeared at just the right time.
Satisfy, the corporation behind Fantasy's Edge released their masterpiece and it immediately gathered worldwide success, garnering over a billion downloads in the first week of its release, becoming a second reality.
Within Satisfy the constant influx of quests and missions that not only grow the player visibly but also have a sizable impact on the player's universe as a whole meeting the average human's thirst for attention and control while making every action the Player seem fulfilling and worthwhile. All of these factors lead to the most popular distraction in human history.
News reports of cults and religions stemming from the release of FE as well as an entire generation of children being brought into the world with that as their primary tool of entertainment. The situation grows more and more significant day by day, 'Modders' becoming one of the most sought after jobs with some of the more popular and mainstream becoming kings and queens within their own corner of reality.
I cannot help but be apprehensive of the new future the new world holds]
Aiz's face crumpled as he read the last line of the thread.
"That's a bit too ominous"
An optimist by nature Aiz could not agree with such blatant fear-mongering.
First of all, becoming a modder was not nearly as difficult or sought-after as the writer described. Aiz had learned with relative ease after he got his degree and even after 5 years of hard work and goodwill, he managed to live a well-off life after his sisters' initial investment and 200 kind strangers who had valued his service enough to repay him monetarily.
He did have to admit though, the sweet embrace of seemingly boundless virtual reality made the real world look like hot-garbage water in comparison, members of both sexes opting for digital partners over physical ones, Aiz could only shake his head as he watched his own species descend into madness. Most organisations that opposed FE died out with the new generation becoming more and more tolerant with the invasion of technology.
Aiz was lost in his thoughts as he reflected on his life and world, which he would find himself doing more often as the days went by.
Aiz's hands began moving, almost without his consent as years of muscle memory showed their effectiveness.
He opened up his mod list an began to scan over all of the mods he had installed on his game.
[Graphics Boost - Mark 35 - Sensual Patch] - IDontHaveOCD
[Foodgasm - Mark 13- Sensual Patch] - ForbiddenChef
[NPC Hawtness Boost - Mark 6 - Sensual Patch] - HaremGod
[Magic Madness - Mark 3 - Mechanics Patch] - WaifuOverlord
[Fighting 101 - Mark 22 - Mechanics and Sensual Patch] - MurderHobo
[Minerals and Materials - Mark 5 - Content Patch] - IDontHaveOCD
[Musical Makeover - Mark 2 - Content and Sensual Patch] - IDontHaveOCD
[BuiltLikeAGod - Mark 12 - Sensual and Mechanics Patch] - MurderHobo
[LegacyCampaign - Mark 1 - Content Patch] - SatisfyDevTeam
[Racial Diversity - Mark 27 - Content and Sensual Patch] - WaifuOverlord
[BioChemistry4Dummies - Mark 11 - Content Patch] - WaifuOverlord
[Ancient History - Mark 47 - Content Patch] - WanderingHistorian
[Class Cataclysm - Mark 16 - Content Patch] - IDontHaveOCD
[More Items - Mark 8 - Content Patch] - WaifuOverlord
[Gods and Anime - Mark 12 - Content Patch] - HaremGod
[Boundless - Mark 1 - Content Patch]
There were hundreds of thousands of patches within Fantasy's Edge but Aiz condensed it all down to what he thought were the fundamentals, plus a few extras for himself. Patching was a very delicate and meticulous process, FE was not meant to be patched extensively and the corruption of save files was a very real and severe thorn in the back of Modders.
Satisfy however inadvertently supported the use of mods when they released a huge DLC update with ridiculous volumes of content in it. Needless to say, mods did not work in the multiplayer version of FE but that game-mode had already been ruined by human greed and influence so it was really only fought in by curious people, noobs and feuding corporations.
Bu-Dum!
[HaremGod has sent you a message!]