A jovial scene was scene at a suburb as Atharva walked past it. A father was celebrating his daughter getting a fixed salary job playing games. A mother was waxing on and on about her son whose livestreaming had over twenty thousand people even when he livestreamed in middle of the night. She went on and on about the money he got from gifts and from the contract with the livestreaming company. She was escastic as her neighbour always talked about white collar jobbed son. The envious neighbour sniffed angrily and denounced the lazy bum's earnings. Who didn't know that making money via livestreaming was a hazardous occupation? Today, you get few gifts, tomorrow your livestreaming will have single digit viewers. But the mother of the said lazy bum was on expressway, running over the neighbour. How could star of her eyes be so easily defeated? Moreover, he had started livestreaming his game play in the new game, and don't you know, that game was selling like hot cakes, with a long queue formed just for pre-order.
A housewife was humming happily as she had a satisfying day within the game. A bunch of teenagers were discussing the vids they had seen about the game. They almost came to blows while discussing which player was better, who was God.
So early in the morning, when everyone was scrambling and running around to start their day, the game had already seeped into normal life. The integration might be 50% advertising and marketing, but the remaining 50% was just due to game. As game progressed, naturally, this percentage would increase.
The gaming company behind it unfortunately didn't have shares out in the market, technically. Else, the share price would have increased by 10-20 times minimum, thanks to this game. A pity. Instead of few million people becoming richer in bits, a bunch of companies in consortium raked in all the money.
If someone from the gaming company had heard Atharva 's musings, they would have broken the table in anger. They were still in red. The game had taken over a decade of work with cutting edge technology. The amount spent on background and stage setting was even more enormous. The hardware to ensure that the game could be played without lag even when millions of billions of players playing simultaneously, it costed a bomb, more than few bombs, to be correct. The maintenance and progress was under aegis of AI manning few supercomputers. The amount spent on advertising, marketing, ambassadorship etc , it was not for faint hearted. None of these were cheap. The money hungry and grubby character of game was out of necessity. So was the reason of having game on subscription only.
Having said that, it is still true that the company made some money. The shares among the companies had changed hands so quickly and frequently that they had implemented system of updating only once a week, to prevent info dump or info overload. The shares were like hot potato, too hot to hold it in hand, but not entirely ready to hand it over.
The money grubbing nature would become even more evident later on. The character/ game avatar had to pay 1 bronze coins per day( at village level) to continue playing. This is entirely different from subscription model proposed and sold. The subscription mode was so that the players could get goodies worth the subscription fee as there was no way to convert credits to game items currently. The actual real action was emptying a coin a day from inventory. The so called pay to play model. If there was no coins, any item would be snatched back by game AI but it was not completely inhumane, the value of the item would be considered as sold to a NPC shop and after taking away the fee, it would reimburse the remaining fees. No fees would be charged for this transaction. See how humane the game is? But this would come into focus only after the free trial period is over. The question then would be- will the players ready to pay to play? The chances were very high as the payment was inside the game using game coins. Poor saps. Game addiction was bad. An addiction which may pay credits would be even worse. Thankfully, the gaming company had taken measures to curtail it and save itself. The game time would be in night and with playing this game, they could forgo sleep and not suffer whatsoever.
The trend would change sooner or later. Atharva who was planning on running away from game, didn't think much of it. So that's that.
He had walked all the way from University town towards suburbs because even his own treat had to be on budget and the university town catering to rich and brilliant brats have shops which sold water at hundreds of credits. If possible, they would have billed for drinking the air there too.
This necessitated a long walk. But he saw how deep the game had clutched the public. What an eye opener. What a beautiful marketing trap. Make money while sleeping. Make money while playing your favourite game.
Atharva had a hearty breakfast. After that, a small walk to digest, a walk which brought him back to college. After thinking long and hard, he decided to gift some credits to family members. Not much. Each less than ten thousand. After pondering, he decided the family would not react in extreme if the given amount is less than ten thousand. So he sent money with a post script - please don't tell others, don't have money to give to others.
P.P.S- Don't buy anything for me. Sama is coming to purchase them and I have money set aside for them.
The response was of course hilarious. First it was,
Brother 1- ?
Brother 2- scratching head emoticon
Sama - wtf gif.
Then came the series of calls. Atharva multitasked. He started reading some financial news, speculations. The initial tie ups of the game were with gaming gears, some merchandise. Now, every one wanted a piece of that pie. Fasted to tie up were livestreaming sites, few other SNP ( social network platforms). The rumours were everywhere and the contract details were absurdly exaggerated.