Chapter 5: Independent Game Developer

Chapter 5: Independent Game Developer

Any black mage would know that... while forbidden spells similar to "Black Magic: Undead Army" appeared impressive, such spells were, in actuality, rather useless.

The reason was simple. Whether it's a "Resurrection" spell that revived the dead using corpses as material or a "Summoning" that called upon undead directly from the demon dimension realm, the product would be nothing more than toys with no combat power. Slow, clumsy, and with an IQ equivalent to zero meant that even a chubby kid could catch up with them.

The few thousand corpses that Yang Qiu had summoned from the swamp didn't have the slightest bit of spiritual fire in their eye sockets and could only amble about with difficulty thanks to the magic that Yang Qiu provided.

As soon as Yang Qiu withdrew his magic, these corpses fell to the ground.

Of course, Yang Qiu didn't expect this cute skill to be useful... He just wanted the corpses.

Next, Yang Qiu rolled up his sleeves and squatted down in the middle of this heap of corpses and picked out complete skeletons.

After slogging away for several hours, slightly over three hundred relatively intact skeletons were picked out.

Then, Yang Qiu imbued magic into these over three hundred corpses and got them to line up in rows behind the undead horse and follow it back to the spawn point.

Next up was another huge challenge—adding the simplified Mind Imprint and a simple teleportation array for non-living things into these corpses.

Asking that players don't wander, make a mistake, and die was something impossible.

Could one be called a gamer if they didn't gallivant? And could a game without all that be called a game?

Even though Yang Qiu had chosen the Taranthan wasteland, which used to be an ancient battlefield, as the game field, there still weren't enough intact corpses to use. Thus, he needed to consider what to do if the gamers died.

Teleportation arrays that could move living beings were out of the question. He didn't have the money, materials, or ability to create one! A teleportation array that worked on non-living beings was simpler... He just needed to modify the summoning technique used by spellcasters for calling their servants from the dimensional realm.

Hmm, this kind of modified summoning spell can't be used on inanimate objects because they can't respond to the beckons...

In any case, after a player dies, the modified Mind Imprint Core acting as a "respawn point" sends out a summon (teleportation) call. The player can respond to it, and this solves the problem of resurrection.

"It's a good idea, but goddammit... Adding two arrays together doubles the amount of mental energy consumed!" Yang Qiu had discovered yet another major problem as he was halfway through.

The intrinsic mental strength of Earthlings, or rather, youngsters of China, was relatively good. At least it was better than natives of this magic plane.

According to the evaluation standards that Yang Qiu had come up with, if a mage apprentice's mental strength value was about 80 points, then the average of Chinese youngsters would be around 40 points, which was still at least 30% higher than most native to this magic plane.

The reason for this, as Yang Qiu hypothesized, was because the mental world of young Chinese people was relatively complete, and from a young age, most had established a world view of "believing and relying on humans themselves rather than gods."

This wasn't just a random guess. Yang Qiu had evidence to support this: To become a spellcaster in this plane, the first criteria was that a "spellcaster must never pray to a god."

Young people of China, who didn't believe in gods but more so themselves, had strong foundations in their mental world... though there weren't any magic rules on Earth, so strong mental strength didn't mean they could become extraordinary.

In short, the segment of young Chinese people with relatively high average mental strength gave Yang Qiu the confidence to develop Earthlings into "OtherWorld gamers." But if the mental consumption caused by the double-tiered array engraved on the "game character" exceeded the endurance of young Chinese people, then Yang Qiu's game couldn't be continued...

After leaving a message for his older sister, Yang Qiu went to the official website and checked the message board.

Because he didn't have any sort of magical system assistant... Yang Qiu couldn't apply for an official game license. Therefore, he couldn't do any public promotions, nor could he publicly post a link for the sale of the helmets. The issue of profiting was many times more severe, and his official website would be 404'ed in a matter of minutes if that were the case.

Thus, Yang Qiu decided to be honest and not do anything superfluous. He bought a domain name and made an official website. On the homepage, he wrote in large fonts: "OtherWorld"—First domestic non-profit and independently developed VR exploration game.

Yang Qiu wasn't sure if labeling it as an indie game would bypass the 404 monster, but as long as he could trick gamers to go online as soon as possible, everything else didn't matter.

On this extremely crude official website, Yang Qiu posted a few fictitious game background introductions as well as some real-life recordings of the Taranthan Wastelands, the "Undead Spawn Point," and his carefully crafted "Undead NPC" battle video. He also created alternate accounts in various hardcore game forums, discussion boards, and Baidu Post Bar roughly 10 days ago and had been sneakily promoting the game this way since.

The result, though, was rather obvious. Hardcore gamers were very skeptical of "indie VR games." Yang Qiu's alternate account posts in various forums weren't welcomed and were met with ridicule, or simply ignored by gamers.

However, it had to be said that there were still many bored people in this world. Although Yang Qiu's alternate account posts were ridiculed badly, there were still many "idle players" who followed the post and found their way to the official website.

And then, the official website that paled in comparison to a middle school student's QQ space drove away many of these bored players.

In the end... Only nine people with extreme patience endured the embarrassing homepage and were drawn in by the extremely realistic and movie trailer-like promotional video, half-heartedly applied for the closed beta test at the bottom of the website, eventually paying 188 yuan for the helmet’s material cost and shipping fee.

In other words... including the helmet sent to his older sister, Yang Qiu had only sent out 10 login helmets in total...

On the official site's homepage was a list of the closed beta with only nine lonely applicants. These players who paid for the helmets sympathized with the developers. Over the past few days, these nine would occasionally log in to the official website and leave a few awkward but friendly messages on the message board, such as:

"I'm so hungry. If I had known earlier, I wouldn't have become an independent game developer."

"Did the developers use all the funds they scammed to make the promotional video? They might as well save some money for instant noodles."

"I'm embarrassed to even ask for a refund now. Oh well, I'll just use this helmet as a safety helmet."

"Is the developer still there? Did the investors kill you?"

"Developing indie games is just a dead end. Why not join me in cross-dressing live streams?"

...and so on.

Yang Qiu, though, was rather unperturbed by these reactions.

It was indeed rather vexing that only nine players bought in, but when switching perspectives and interpreting it as nine Earthlings voluntarily willing to become Yang Qiu's anchor points, the sentiment immediately became completely different.

After admiring a few more sarcastic comments added to the message board today, Yang Qiu calmly posted the server opening announcement on the official website and sent out an email reminder to the nine players regarding the server opening before calmly sitting down and awaiting the anchor points to show up.

The announcement of the server opening was posted at 9 a.m.

At 9:20, in the server room with only one server, Yang Qiu, who was idling, suddenly jerked his eyes open.

Of the three hundred mass-produced runes that made up the Mind Imprint matrix Yang Qiu had created, one lit up.

Then, a second, and a third...