- Tyler POV -
'What the fuck, what the fuck did he do to get so many Players for his game in such a short time?! Even some Players from my game are leaving to go play his game!' I thought angrily as I looked at the game rankings and saw my game in second place.
Ever since I posted my game, the first place on that list was mine.
All the teachers have always seen me as the most promising Game Creator of this year's college graduates, I've even signed a contract with a big Company so that my development will be even smoother in the coming years, only for my perfect record to be tarnished by a fair second place in the test that matters most?!
And looking at the Rank numbers that updated every 5 minutes, the difference in the number of Players for our two games was only increasing with each new update!
1st 2.589 Players - [Runestone]
2nd 2.201 Players - [Knife Throwing Training in the Dark]
3rd 1.614 Players - [Training...]
4th...
I was sure that with the changes I'd made to the game I'd be able to win over even more Players and get them to train for longer while playing my game today.
And it was really working in the morning!
I woke up with a bit of a hangover because of how much I drank the night before, but after meditating for a few minutes the hangover passed and I was perfectly awake.
When I looked at the Rank with expectation, my game was 400 Players higher than Runestone, but since 09:00 in the morning the number of Players in Runestone started to increase and my Players started to decrease!
At that point Runestone was the one with almost 400 more Players than my game.
Curious about this, I tried to search the internet to find out why, finding a Whisper page from an account called FrostHaven Entertainment, apparently the company that Theo Brooks was hired by, or that he created, warning Players of an event that was happening in the game and that they could win free cards today only.
'Shit, how could he think of doing something like that?!' I thought frustratedly, trying to find a solution to this, but the frustration of seeing how easy it was for Brooks to think of such innovative things irritated me more and more.
'Wasn't he the least talented student in the class?! Where did he get enough talent to replicate something like Neurological False Feedback in an F Rank game if even I can't do something like that?!' I thought even more frustrated.
When I saw the other students commenting that he had done it, I also thought that I could implement something like that in my game, increasing my Players' gains for physical training and muscle improvement development, as well as improving the Players' bodies, which would surely guarantee first place for me.
As I began to study this, I kept mocking Brooks for being an idiot and playing a stupid game of cards, wasting the opportunity to double the effectiveness of the Players' training.
But when I realized that there was almost no information available about False Neurological Feedback on the internet and that I would have to try to replicate such an abstract concept as tricking the Players' brains with Mana for the development of specific muscles in the body through practically trial and error, I gave up.
Even if I didn't want to, I knew I had to give up...
There was no way I could learn something that complicated, test it tirelessly and apply it to a game when I didn't have more than 90 MP available to develop the game.
So I put that idea aside and just focused on improving my game.
As much as it pains me to admit it, the ideas that Brooks suggested to the other students were very useful, although they wouldn't increase the quality of the Players' training in any way, they would make training much more tolerable for them, encouraging them to spend more time playing my game and giving up playing other games to play my game.
Imagining how much I would earn just by putting this in and increasing the amount of Players in my game, I was confident that maybe I could develop this game to the point where Game Core would evolve after a few years!
But all my confidence in that started to crumble when I saw that the ideas Brooks suggested weren't even the tip of the iceberg.
The things he suggested for us were very simple compared to what he was applying to his game...
Although my pride didn't want me to play his game, I knew I had to get into it and try to understand what was making so many players play it.
In addition to the tips he gave us, I began to identify several other small tactics he was using to keep Players playing as much as possible, such as encouraging competition through Ranked points, giving Players coins for each game they played, encouraging Players to invite friends in exchange for card skins, and several other things.
The list of things he used to keep the Players playing was so long that compared to the few ideas he suggested to the other students, it was like comparing a Ferrari to a bicycle, and unfortunately my game was the bicycle...
Seeing this big difference in our games put me off.
All the confidence I'd built up in my years as a Game Creator was starting to crumble and I couldn't find anything that I was better at than Brooks now...
'Am I not fit to be a Game Creator? ' I asked myself almost desperately.
But then something popped into my head!
'Even if the Federation was very strict about Game Creators copying each other's games, there's nothing about copying features from other games, right?
Realizing this point, I realized that even if I couldn't pass Brooks' game now, couldn't I take advantage of my game's ability to let Players train muscle memory in my game and add these features that amuse Players from Brooks' game?
Even if my game doesn't pass his game for now, as long as I copy the things that make his game fun, won't I pass it over time?!
'I know that my talent in Game Creating is much greater than his, he just has better ideas than mine... but if I use his ideas with my talent, he'll never be able to pass me!' I thought excitedly.
Realizing this point, I stopped worrying about the outcome of this test, even though I was disappointed, and started writing down all the interesting things in Brooks' game to implement in my own.
When the Players see how much better my game is at using his ideas, his game will surely go bust!
- Theo POV -
Looking at the number of Players going up non-stop, I was very happy.
Today's event is being a great success, pushing the previous peak of Players forward by a large margin, with dozens of new people downloading the game every few minutes, bringing the total number of Players who have already played the game to a very high number.
Not only was the game's popularity among Players growing, but normal people were excitedly watching Players play the game and enjoying the event.
Owen's stream, which when I met him was averaging 200 viewers, was now at 993 viewers, almost passing the four-digit mark!
And other players, noticing Owen's success, also started streaming this game, gaining viewers with different styles of streams, with some focusing on comedy, others on different styles of decks... and the list went on and on.
Seeing this large number of people interested in the game and the downloads going up and up, I felt that the 162 MP accumulated in Game Core that I had spent was worth it.
With the increase in Players in the game, this number would recover quickly, to the point where perhaps from now on I could increase my MP by 2 units every day!
The growth rate of Players in the game was going so well that my estimates were that it would rise from the 2.3k average the game had yesterday to perhaps over 3k today!
As today was the last day of college testing, not only were Players on the lookout to discover the best games to play, but I also started receiving messages from Guilds and large companies interested in investing in me!
That was a bit strange, I'd never received any kind of message like that, and the amounts they were offering me weren't low...
[Hello, Theo Brooks! We're the Silver Blade, a developing guild for low Rank Players, and we're impressed by your work on Runestone. We believe that your creative vision can help strengthen our presence among national guilds. We are interested in discussing a partnership where you can help us with exclusive games. The target annual salary is $200,000, but we're open to more in-depth discussions, so let's talk].
[Dear Theo Brooks, this is Skyforge Studios. We've been following the resounding success of Runestone and have been impressed by your skill as a Game Creator. We'd like to offer you a position on our team to bring your innovation and creativity to our future projects. Can we arrange a meeting?]
The two offers, although not from large guilds or companies, were still quite tempting considering how much money even these small groups turned over.
If it were any of my other colleagues from college, they'd be jumping for joy at receiving offers like these.
Just the prospect of a $200k a year salary was way out of the realm of reality for many Game Creators, since they needed at least one game with 4k average online players a day for a year to accumulate a figure like that, or several smaller games.
Accepting an offer like that would skip several steps for these Game Creators, but for me it was irrelevant.
I had already decided that I wouldn't accept anything like that, and I would continue on my path.
With the success of Runestone, I would soon have the money to buy another Game Core from the Federation, allowing me to create another game any way I wanted, without needing anyone's opinion, so why accept?
I would still need to accumulate a good amount of money and optimize Runestone as much as possible before starting a new project, since the focus would be on quality, but thinking about what new games I could make in the future got me excited...
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