Chapter 140: World Tournament
Chapter 140: World Tournament
“Miss Neb! Block that side!”
Jenny played her match with great passion. Since she had a strong competitive spirit and fairly decent sense, the two of them stood out quite a bit with their teamwork.
Aside from their skill, they also drew attention because they were a female duo, and Nebrania’s appearance stood out considerably. She was beautiful, and Dryads were a relatively rare race.
Normally, some people grew nervous and failed to show their true skill when they attracted attention like this, but fortunately, that was not the case with these two. Jenny’s competitive spirit was so strong that she did not even notice her surroundings. And Nebrania had originally been someone who performed on the streets.
Unfortunately, however, they did not make it all the way to the championship. They met a strong team in the semifinals and fell apart.
“Ughhh!!”
Jenny looked extremely frustrated. Nebrania was frustrated too, but she had spent a long time as an unknown singer. Through that, she had painfully experienced that many things did not go the way she wanted. Because of that, she could let it pass with a regretful sigh.
Well, we still somehow got third place. I can at least replace my guitar strings.
The 200 del for third place was not bad either if she thought of it as unexpected pocket money.
The championship went to the Gnome duo from Casual Team 2 who had beaten the two of them. They were programmers named Tani and Pannatas, and they were already known for being good at games. Since they usually bickered all the time, no one thought they would end up on the same side, but the power of money was strong after all.
“Congratulations.”
“Yes! Thank you!”
The two accepted the prize money from Ras with a deeply grateful attitude. Since they were skilled enough to make the matches entertaining and heated up the event, Ras did not feel the money was wasted.
It seemed like a decent event. Considering that other companies held mountain hikes or parties to promote unity, he could think of this as something similar. No, in a way, it simply felt like a party appropriate for a game company.
Like this, not only in the Republic of Smite but also in other foreign countries where the boards were later exported, small tournaments like this continued to be held, and the enthusiasm for Bomb Special Forces kept growing.
This game was truly unusual.
It had little online potential, and because it entered development before the magical connector appeared, it did not have an online multiplayer function. Yet its arcade port happened to be completed right when PC communication, in other words Spirit Space, was becoming active, so it was properly benefiting from online activity.
In any case, people held small tournaments, shared information online, and built their skill.
As that happened, everyone’s expectations gradually grew. They were expectations for an official international tournament hosted by Meta Soft.
Meta Soft had not yet made any firm announcement. But it was an event they had always held whenever a versus game came out. Moreover, this game’s enthusiasm was even hotter than previous versus games, so everyone was certain it would be held.
“Of course we have to hold one.”
And naturally, Ras was planning to do so as well. In truth, because the game was mentioned online so much, the excitement was hot, but compared to that, board sales were only decent. As mentioned earlier, it was a team-play game, so it was not especially popular among small-scale operators.
Even so, it was still enough of a hit, and thanks to the arcade boom, the PC version sold 2.7 million copies. This was the highest sales figure after Spirit Stone.
Of course, compared to previous games, this one came out after the PC game market had become far more active and after overseas markets had expanded, so it was hard to call it a fair comparison. Still, it was undoubtedly a tremendous hit.
And in Brunyad in particular, its popularity nearly rivaled Spirit Stone.
There were several complex reasons for this.
First, related products such as network play and Spirit Bread entered Brunyad a little later, so Spirit Stone’s popularity had started burning relatively late. Meanwhile, Bomb Special Forces attracted more attention because it had been developed inside their own country, and compared to other countries, its popularity rose more quickly and sharply there.
Compared to Earth, this world was in an era where patriotic hype worked far better.
Recently, when it came to games, people had almost given up and simply accepted games from the Republic of Smite, but that did not mean their hope for a domestic hit title had disappeared.
That was why when Meta Soft released Bomb Special Forces in Brunyad, it emphasized in its marketing that the game had been made by the Brunyad Development Team.
Thanks to that, not only did the PC version sell tremendously, but in the case of the arcade version, even though it entered Brunyad slightly later than in the Republic of Smite, its popularity was burning even hotter than in Smite.
“That’s why I’m a little torn. It’s so popular there, so holding the tournament only here feels a bit wrong.”
It was not only because of popularity. Since they had promoted it as a Brunyad game, it would feel somewhat strange if the actual tournament was held in the Republic of Smite.
“But everyone knows it’s our company’s product anyway, right? And all the previous tournaments were held here too.”
Ella tilted her head as she responded to Ras. Her reaction suggested that she did not think he needed to worry about it that much. Ella had gained a fair amount of understanding of the game industry, but compared to Ras, who directly managed the company, she was still somewhat slow to catch these things.
“That’s true. Still, I feel like we need to make it feel different somehow.”
Of course, Ella was not wrong either. Unexpectedly, many things in the world worked through the simple inertia of “that’s how it has always been,” even without any clear logic or theory. Since all previous tournaments had been held in Ranchert, the capital of the Republic of Smite, there probably would not be much backlash if the finals were held here again.
However, both to repay the Brunyad Federation’s response and to take responsibility for the patriotic marketing they had pushed so hard, Ras decided that this tournament would not end with only one main event. Instead, there would also be regional preliminaries.
And those regional preliminaries would be held once in the Republic of Smite and once in the Brunyad Federation.
“Will that be okay?”
“Yeah. Well, the costs will go up a little, but we sold that much because of it. And for this game in particular, expectations for a tournament are high, and the enthusiasm is hot.”
Not only that, Ras had originally been thinking of growing game tournaments to a massive scale.
After organizing his thoughts a little more, Ras created a rough proposal and instructed Arcade Game Land’s Event Department to plan the tournament.
“Ah. Is the Bomb Special Forces tournament finally being held?”
The employee who received the document Ras sent through the company network turned to Karen, the team leader, with an expression that was half welcome and half burden.
The Event Department, which had already hosted several game tournaments, reacted as if they had been waiting for Ras’s proposal. After all, there was probably no one who had not expected a tournament to be held. In truth, even on Spirit Space, people were talking about when the tournament would be held, and there were hardly any debates over whether it would happen.
Because they were already prepared, the Event Department handled the work quickly.
Of course, unlike before, they needed to think a little because regional preliminaries would be held separately, but there were many tournaments in the world even outside game tournaments. And holding regional preliminaries was actually the more common format, so there was plenty of material to reference.
While proceeding with the planning, the Event Department immediately produced placards and advertisement boards, promoting the tournament and holding preliminaries at Game Land branches.
It did seem somewhat rushed, but since game tournaments had shorter lifespans than ordinary sports, they needed to move quickly.
Of course, looking at the current atmosphere, its popularity did not seem likely to die down quickly, but no one knew what would happen later. If enthusiasm suddenly cooled for some reason and its popularity disappeared, then holding a global-scale tournament would become extremely awkward.
“Ooh!! Finally?!”
In any case, once talk of the tournament was released, gamers began burning with excitement both online and offline.
The words “Bomb Special Forces World Tournament,” clearly printed on large placards hanging on the outer walls of Arcade Game Land branches throughout the Republic of Smite, the Brunyad Federation, and the few overseas locations, stopped gamers around the world in their tracks.
Some welcomed it simply as a global gaming festival, but this time, there were unusually many people who were truly serious about the tournament.
It was thanks to the Spirit Space community. Some communities held tournaments almost regularly and honed their skills, and when talk of this tournament came out, some people even began training camps.
And among those preparing for the tournament, there was one particularly intense team. But this team was not in the Republic of Smite or Brunyad.
Unexpectedly, it was in the Nuchin Kingdom. It was a team created by Baron Taito, who had been deeply impressed by previous game tournaments.
He had distributed game machines in his own country, created gamers, and continued participating in tournaments. However, perhaps because the gamer population was small, their results had not been very good.
Baron Taito was greatly disappointed. But as game tournaments gradually grew larger, his desire for the championship cup burned even hotter, and he began training professional gamers.
He held small tournaments within the Nuchin Kingdom to discover talented players, then made them practice intensively. Thanks to that, in the most recent second Fighters’ Club tournament, they had managed to reach the semifinals.
Encouraged by this, he increased his investment further and strengthened the team’s professionalism.
And for this Bomb Special Forces tournament, he had already created a system almost like a professional gamer team on Earth. In addition to gamers, he added management staff, collected and analyzed every strategy available on Spirit Space across the world, created new strategies, identified each gamer’s weaknesses, and made them practice to reinforce those areas.
In a way, they could be considered the first professional gaming team to appear in this world.
“Xiao! Your wall-breaking speed is slow!”
“Yes!”
Their training continued inside a building where the cement walls were exposed as they were. The Beastman boy who looked about fifteen and was called Xiao gritted his teeth and moved the lever.
Normally, most people relied on momentary reflexes to respond to situations and target opponents on the fly. But those who truly dug into the game created strategies and shaped situations to match them. Moreover, since this game had allies and walls that could be broken, there were many variables, making such strategies especially effective.
And to use strategies like that, it was important to lay the groundwork and match the timing, which was why they practiced endlessly like this.
Both the players and coaches were quite desperate in their own way. Their livelihoods depended on it.
Baron Taito paid the players fairly generously. In this country, where income levels were not high, a monthly salary of about 500 del in Republic of Smite currency was several times the wage of an ordinary laborer.
This practice facility also looked shabby, but by this country’s standards, it could be considered quite decent. It had heating and cooling, water did not leak from the ceiling, and the noise was not severe.
This was possible because Baron Taito had originally been wealthy, and because the business of distributing games from the Republic of Smite had become fairly successful and earned him a lot of money.
In any case, the Nuchin Kingdom repeated this training every day with the determination to win the championship this time no matter what.
The game tournament caused a stir, but that did not mean the other businesses stopped. In particular, the Spirit Space service was adding content day by day.
First of all, boards were being added constantly, and games for network play were also developed and added.
The MUD game still seemed to need some time, but other simple card games like poker and blackjack, as well as checkers, were developed quickly.