A game that is popular enough for the entire nation to know is called a national game, while a failed game is called a national trash game.
In South Korea, there might not be a national game, but there was a national trash game.
About 10 years ago, a game was released.
The mobile RPG 'Player Meister High School,' abbreviated as 'PlayMaGo.'
A modern world drastically changed due to a collision with another world.
Meister High School, which trains players with supernatural abilities.
It was a mobile role-playing game where you control various characters in that school setting to progress through the story or clear quests.
The start of PlayMaGo, which was a hot topic even before its release, was grand.
The highest development and marketing costs in the history of the gaming industry.
An opening song sung by a powerful singer known for dominating the music charts.
TV commercials broadcast during prime time on public networks, cable, and comprehensive programming channels.
Posters filling bus bodies, stations, subway walls, and screen doors.
Banner ads and video ads placed all over portal sites.
It was no exaggeration to say that half of the nation's population had seen the ads for PlayMaGo.
'I found my life game!'
As one of the 3 million pre-registrants, I thought so.
The service start date for PlayMaGo was the day after the college entrance exam ended.
Just as I had free time after finishing the exam, I jumped into the game on the first day of service along with 3 million users.
However, PlayMaGo became the life-wrecking trash game for many gamers.
A game balance that was a mess, regardless of character, skill, or item.
Bugs that only increased every day without being fixed.
A control difficulty that made you wonder if it was designed to make you feel awful.
Excessive repetitive grinding elements with little reward, and no auto-function.
Except for the "Request help from other players" command, it was basically a single-player game, with no multiplayer elements.
The store was bombarded with rating attacks, and the comments were filled with declarations of quitting and foul language.
But the concrete fanbase held on.
Despite the numerous flaws, the game had some merits.
Beautiful, high-quality illustrations.
Character rendering and in-game graphics that closely resembled the illustrations.
Detailed and charming character settings.
The concrete fanbase couldn't let go of the game.
But that didn't last long either.
The story's hopeless development shattered even the mental fortitude of the concrete fanbase.
[Let's go for a refund run from this rotten water story that's been decaying since day one of the open.]
[My characters, family, mentor, and friends all died, so I'm quitting. Please share any successful refund tips. I'll reward you.]
[Master Yong and brother Jeokho were brutally killed, so I'm about to quit. You should all escape soon. I understand your feelings, but I hope the refunders die off.]
[I was about to quit, then I got a notification from the Military Manpower Administration about enlistment. A huge win?]
[The story development is a major frustration, I feel like I'm going to die. I quit!]
[I won't say much. I'm quitting. I'll pay for a brain that hasn't played this game.]
[I'm transferring my position as a moderator of the forum. If there are no application comments in 3 days, I'll randomly transfer and then leave.]
After the story, where characters were massacred in large numbers, unfolded.
PlayMaGo's unofficial information-sharing forum was ruined, and a large number of concrete fanbase users left.
This incident later came to be known in the gaming world as the "PlayMaGo Concrete Fanbase Collapse Incident."
Rumors started to circulate in the gaming community.
'You should never associate with veteran players of Player Meister High School.'
PlayMaGo is an infamous trash game that will be engraved in the history of gaming.
If anyone still plays it, they're either the game developer or a pervert, and both are dangerous people you should avoid.
Meanwhile, I kept returning and quitting the game repeatedly, while being called a pervert.
With every story update, the playable characters and those around them met tragic deaths.
The surviving characters also broke down mentally.
Still, I held on to keep reading the next part of the story.
'If one more character dies, I'll really quit!'
At that moment, I genuinely thought so.
But despite thinking that, even after several more characters died, I couldn't quit.
At some point, I stopped even the occasional quitting.
Even after enlisting, I continued to play during the three hours of smartphone use allowed in the living quarters.
"Hey, rookie."
"Yes, Private Jo Eui-shin. Did you call me?"
"What game are you playing?"
"…Player Meister High School."
The atmosphere in the living quarters instantly turned cold.
Sergeant Choi, who was holding a smartphone in one hand and a TV remote in the other, was stunned.
Sergeant Choi looked at me with the eyes of someone watching an idiot diving headfirst into the ground and said to me,
"Huh, you're a pitiful guy."
I was treated as a pitiful guy until the moment I was discharged.
Thanks to the treatment of "let's not mess with the pitiful guy," I had a relatively easy military life until Sergeant Choi was discharged.
Private First Class Gye, no, Sergeant Gye, bullied me consistently until the moment he was discharged.
A few years later, I truly became a pitiful guy.
"You have stage 4 lung cancer."
I couldn't understand what I was hearing.
This wasn't something a gamer who couldn't even afford cigarettes because of in-game purchases should be hearing.
"There are rare cases where there are no symptoms even in stage 4 lung cancer."
He added, "There are many cases of non-smokers getting lung cancer."
After that, the doctor said more things.
About half of what the doctor said went in one ear and out the other.
What I barely understood was this:
I could die within six months.
If I receive treatment and have a good prognosis, I might survive for more than three years.
Even with health insurance coverage, I couldn't afford long-term hospital bills without a job.
I said I would think about it and never returned to the hospital.
I lost my parents in middle school, lived off relatives' hospitality until I graduated high school.
Repeatedly took leave and re-enrolled in college while working to earn living expenses and tuition, finally graduating from a four-year university.
Gave up the job position I was supposed to get through a professor's recommendation to a parachuter (someone who gets a job through connections) and spent a year as a job seeker.
Survived on part-time jobs and finally succeeded in getting a job last month.
But when I got a health check-up for the employment paperwork, I received a terminal diagnosis.
Despite the many hardships, my life, which had been bearable, seemed to be coming to an end.
I became a gaming addict.
Until then, I was just an ordinary gamer who somewhat managed to participate in society.
But now, I was stuck in a small room, having given up all productive activities and social interactions, staring blankly at my smartphone.
I became an indisputable shut-in gaming addict.
'One of the reasons I got cancer is probably this game.'
I had lamented several times while playing PlayMaGo that it felt like I was getting cancer.
Even now, as I'm dying from cancer, I can't let go of this game.
Recently, my coughing has worsened.
Two or three times a day, I cough up blood.
Sometimes, my entire body hurts so much that I can't sleep.
Over-the-counter painkillers from the pharmacy didn't help at all.
'Is it time for me to die?'
While playing the game, I was fine, but during the maintenance periods, all I could think about was death.
It was when I was refreshing the game news section on a portal site to distract myself.
The main article had changed.
[Blockbuster Mobile RPG Player Meister High School's Final Chapter Update Scheduled for Today!]
Forget death—curses came out of my mouth on their own.
I immediately clicked on the article and left a comment.
[jo2god111: Why is this trash game update article the top news? Blockbuster, my foot. If you have money to bribe the reporters, why not use it to balance the game and fix the bugs?]
Within minutes, a reply was posted under my comment.
[kye777ing: This is real. Is the trash game Player Meister High School still not shutting down? I refuse to sit at the same table with anyone who plays this game.]
It's true that PlayMaGo is a trash game.
But being hit with such offensive comments made me angry.
Shouldn't at least the person who plays the game be the one to criticize it?
The mentality of 'if someone's going to trash it, it should be me' is a rotten mindset of a gaming addict.
Impulsively, I replied.
[jo2god111: That's a bit much. Have you actually played the game?]
Then, an explosion of reactions followed under my reply.
[zxYJ0008xz: What's up with jo2god111? Seems like he's sick.]
[kye777ing: Are you out of your mind? Go back and read your own comment.]
[dudtn90: Don't feed the troll.]
[rkrehrl12: Let's maintain some objectivity. (censored insult) No subject here.]
Even though I wrote the comment, looking at it in context, it did seem ridiculous.
Soon, the comment section was filled with half insults aimed at the game and half at me.
Unable to make a proper rebuttal, I closed the news page only after PlayMaGo's maintenance ended.
'…I guess I'll see the ending and then die.'
Lying on the narrow bed, I opened the PlayMaGo app, and the update was in progress.
While downloading the update file, I pulled out my file folder and reference books.
The file folder contained printed A4 pages of the strategies I had organized.
Eight volumes of reference books, each over 500 pages, which received harsh reviews with people asking who would ever read them.
I threw them under the bed for easy access.
As I flipped through the reference books filled with notes I'd written, the update was completed.
'Is it over now?'
The six months the doctor mentioned had long passed.
In a situation where I could die at any moment, time and energy were more precious than gold.
But I was spending all of it on the game.
* * *
The battle that spanned several tens of hours was over.
'It's over.'
Who would have thought it would end with such a hopeless, dreamless, merciless bad ending?
In the end, I couldn't protect anything, and no one was saved.
My top main character, 'Baekho Gun,' who fought alongside me until the final boss battle, also lost everything and met a terrible end at the hands of the scenario writer.
'Damn the scenario writers.'
I thought I could handle any bad ending.
If the game had ended with a happy ending, while I was about to die, it might have twisted my gut.
But I was wrong.
I must have been expecting a happy ending.
The reason I kept coming back to the game, despite the painful story that made me quit several times, wasn't because I enjoyed the pain.
Otherwise, I wouldn't feel this miserable.
'I couldn't let go of this game because I was hoping for a happy ending.'
It was only after I became terminally ill and fully cleared this game that I finally realized it.
But the game was over.
All the playable characters had died miserably.
And I would soon die too.
I forcibly closed the game and threw my smartphone into the corner of the bed.
Ding!
Then, as if in protest, a notification sound rang.
It was an alert from the PlayMaGo game app.
‹You can now claim your reward for clearing the final chapter. Please check your gift box.›
'…A reward for clearing the final chapter?'
PlayMaGo, notorious for its poor management, had received endless complaints for sending push ads, and not even update notifications—why now?
'It's probably a worthless reward anyway.'
I didn't have any expectations, but I was curious.
I had to see it.
It was a typical thought process of a gaming addict being toyed with by the game company.
Even thinking that, I opened the game app with dead eyes.
But when I opened the gift box from the game's main screen, the screen froze.
No matter how long I waited, the screen wouldn't move.
Even a forced shutdown didn't work.
When I tried to turn off the smartphone's power, it wouldn't turn off.
Since it was an integrated battery type, I couldn't just remove the battery.
'Damn, a bug at this point! Ack, ugh.'
As I opened my mouth, a coughing fit burst out.
The end of a game I had played for nearly 10 years.
The resulting sense of emptiness.
The release of tension.
My stamina, already worn down by the long hours of play and battling illness.
My body began to collapse rapidly.
Kek, ugh, cough, kek...
The sounds I made were no longer just coughs but more like screams.
It sounded like the final death throes.
I thought it was just spit, but when I wiped my mouth, my hand was bright red.
‹Connection to the Transcendent Universe is complete. Assessing the suitability of the connected player.›
Trans... what?
I started hearing things.
This is bad.
I must really be dying now.
‹Assessment complete. Player 'Jo Eui-shin' has been selected as a suitable candidate for altering the future in a different dimension.›
"Eui-shin hyung, it's Seongheon. Are you okay?"
I heard the sound of Choi Seongheon, the dorm manager, knocking on the door.
Maybe another resident had complained because of my coughing.
Next week was when a spot would open up at the hospice ward, where people like me were plentiful.
If I don't die today, I'll have to lie down in front of the ward to get in somehow.
I was being a nuisance to Seongheon and the other residents near my room.
‹Proceeding with the alteration of Jo Eui-shin's information, synchronization, and transfer to the different dimension's future. 10 seconds remaining until completion.›
Choi Seongheon, a junior from my university days, had always looked up to me.
Even after we met again as dorm manager and resident, his attitude hadn't changed.
He would often bring me snacks and cough medicine, saying it was in exchange for the meals I had treated him to before.
He was too good a junior for someone who was about to die.
I had prepared for the possibility of dying suddenly in my dorm room.
I left behind a will and some cash that might be left over after the funeral.
I had written Seongheon's name on the envelope.
‹8... 7...›
I needed to say I was okay, but I couldn't respond.
I was hearing things, spitting blood, and everything was a mess.
At the very least, I tried to cover my mouth to muffle the coughs.
But the coughing only got worse, and the sounds grew louder.
Kuh, cough, cough, ugh, gah!
Seongheon started pounding on the thin door.
"Hyung, open the door!"
I heard the clinking of metal several times, as if Seongheon was searching for the key, then soon after, a click as the lock opened.
‹2...1...0.›
Almost simultaneously with the door opening, a blinding white light engulfed my vision.