Chapter 175: Unexpected Play and Popularity

< Try managing your own arcade! >

Pampi, who had returned to land after a long while and visited a game store, picked up the package after hearing it was a Meta Soft game, then saw this phrase on the back.

Game stores were a recently emerging type of business that specialized in handling games. For now, they only appeared occasionally in large cities, but Ikarak was also quite a large place and a port city where a fair amount of money circulated, so one such store had already opened there.

Pampi had happened to discover it while visiting the city, and since it handled everything related to games, including all kinds of games, gaming magazines, and even card packs, he had spent quite a while staring around in fascination.

He felt he would use it often from now on.

In any case, after buying the game, he returned home and opened the package.

So you really do manage something.

After entering the game and playing for a bit, he quickly figured out what kind of game it was. Since he had already enjoyed Professional Baseball Manager, he wondered if Meta Soft was now trying to popularize these kinds of management games.

After all, Meta Soft had always carried the image of pioneering new genres and leading trends in the game industry.

This game suited his tastes more than expected. In particular, he liked that it was a single-player game.

When he first encountered Spirit Space after returning from a voyage, he had also found it fascinating and had once become absorbed in it. But for some reason, multiplayer play felt as though it did not suit him.

It was probably because he ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did not particularly enjoy the element of competition.

In that respect, Arcade Empire was excellent. Problems occurred and the player solved them, which made it good for quietly enjoying alone, and somehow, it also seemed similar to his own work as a navigator.

Of course, his real work was far more boring.

The subject of growing Arcade Game Land also suited his tastes.

It was not that he had any particular dream of running a business. But as someone who liked games, an arcade was a dream space. Deep down, he also thought he would someday like to create a private arcade like the one Ras had set up in his mansion.

That being the case, even if only through ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a game, it was inevitably interesting to have Arcade Game Land, the largest and best arcade in the world, become his own and to be able to operate it.

Moreover, perhaps because it was a game made by Meta Soft, the form of each arcade drew heavily from actual arcades, and most of the released games and events were based on things that had really happened, making it feel even more immersive.

So at first, he decorated the store while recalling the Arcade Game Land branches he had visited and making it similar to them.

Of course, since this game was built on detailed calculations, maximizing profit required calculations rather than appearance. However, ordinary players did not play the game with calculators out like Garazt did.

It was more common to simply ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enjoy the game at a reasonable level, as long as it did not collapse into bankruptcy.

And people like Pampi, who did not particularly enjoy competition, had an even stronger tendency toward that. They simply found joy in maintaining and decorating the arcade itself.

But just decorating it the same way is getting a little boring.

For several days, he enjoyed it greatly.

As the type who felt interest rather than resistance toward new things, he found it thrillingly fun at first.

But once he became somewhat accustomed to the game, simply maintaining the arcade and decorating it after real-life arcades became too easy.

And when players grew accustomed to a game and improved their skills like this, they usually attempted faster growth. The Brunyad Development Team also knew this game required learning, so they designed it accordingly.

“There’s more to dig into than I expected.”

Thus, once Pampi became somewhat familiar with the game, various elements began to catch his eye.

At first, he only saw things like a game’s success rate, but fatigue was also an important point. No matter how popular something was, if its fatigue level was high, customers would leave the arcade quickly, making it impossible to optimize profit.

Of course, there were ways to reduce fatigue. Players could install games that generated lower profit but allowed relaxed enjoyment, or place attached facilities, such as Quick & Fun Burger, near the arcade to resolve not only fatigue but also hunger.

Properly arranging these elements to maximize profit was the goal the development team gave to players.

But not all gamers followed that goal.

“If I do this well, I might be able to stop customers from leaving the arcade at all.”

Pampi liked the packed atmosphere of the arcade. No, even aside from that, he simply wanted to fill the arcade with as many people as possible.

So he adjusted profit only enough to avoid bankruptcy, installed Quick & Fun Burger, and arranged the movement routes carefully.

Then, just as he thought, instead of leaving, customers began circling around inside the arcade.

Since inflow continued and few customers left, the arcade began filling with people.

Pampi chuckled as he watched it.

This was not because Pampi was particularly psycho.

Surprisingly, there were many gamers like this. That was clear just by looking at the posts uploaded to Spirit Space.

< Successfully filled up to the 8th floor with claw machines! >

< Hey, can anyone reduce the number of game machines further than this? >

< Emptying only the first floor is hard. How do you do it? >

Since this was not a game with a clear ending and it was not a game where players competed against someone else, gamers enjoyed it in whatever way they wanted.

Some even tried to develop stranger play styles to show off and enjoy attention. As a result, a few actually became fairly famous.

A user with the ID Land of Happiness shared a save file where they filled a 200-pyeong site with people while placing only four game machines.

These attention-grabbers once again presented new goals to the people enjoying this game.

Thanks to that, Arcade Empire gained more popularity than expected.

This might not seem like much, but the essence of games was originally play, and when selling a product, the most important factor was topicality.

This did not mean Arcade Empire’s gameplay was bad. However, the mere fact that it was constantly mentioned in Spirit Space, which could be called a space for gamers, and that those posts gained popularity, meant its commercial success was already practically guaranteed.

In reality, Arcade Empire managed to sell six hundred thousand copies in three months.

“...”

Dnallin was in a complicated mood.

He had connected to Brunyad’s Spirit Space and was checking reactions to the game. He had already heard about the sales figures from headquarters.

< As expected, they’re the hope of Brunyad’s game industry. >

< Their creativity is seriously insane. How did they even think of this? >

It was receiving favorable reviews in the Republic of Smite as well, but here, combined with patriotic pride, people were practically praising it.

It did not feel bad, but on the other hand, he could not grasp the reality of it, wondering whether this was really happening.

Mallidon, however, was extremely happy.

In fact, he had gained something called fame through this work.

That was only natural. He had created something completely different from existing games and achieved great success with it.

No, Dnallin himself had also gained fame. After all, he was the team leader of this development team. He was also the one who had led the actual development at the front. Though he had been seized by doubt at the end.

“Haa...”

This fame eased, to some extent, the anxiety he had continued to fear all this time.

But ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the same time, it also gave him the anxiety that he would have to keep making games he found difficult to understand in the future, making his feelings even more complicated.

If one went far east from the Kanig Continent, where the Republic of Smite was located, the Gondwana Continent, one of the Old Continents, appeared.

This land had mostly been contested by Elves and Dwarves for supremacy.

However, those two races were not the only ones there.

There were races that had somehow maintained their presence between them, and one of those races was the Gnomes.

Their physical abilities were nothing special, but their technology was quite good.

It was enough that even the Dwarves, who had been famous as a race of craftsmen since ancient times, could not simply overwhelm them one-sidedly.

They were inferior in numbers and also physically weaker, so fighting alone would be difficult, but there were many races on this continent.

In particular, because there were Elves who contested supremacy with the Dwarves, the Gnomes were able to survive through appropriate balancing, and even maintain a certain degree of influence.

In any case, the Gnomes possessed technological ability that did not lose to the Dwarves, but its direction was not entirely the same.

Dwarves tended to pursue something orthodox, while Gnomes could be described as more flexible and inventive.

Perhaps that was why.

That might have been the reason why they, who had shown little interest in games from the Republic of Smite until now, became interested in Arcade Empire.

“I heard it was a game, but this is unusual.”

Albron was a citizen of the Republic of Tonidu and a Gnome.

That was only natural, perhaps, since the country was known as the Gnome Republic because its racial composition was ninety-nine percent Gnome.

In any case, he was a programmer.

Since the Republic of Tonidu was famous for advanced technology, many people there were interested in computers. Thanks to that, while not many games from the Republic of Smite had entered the country, Hammer Computers were surprisingly widespread.

And although they had comparatively little interest in games from the Republic of Smite, it was not as though Gnomes disliked games.

Most Gnomes were simply satisfied with their own country’s games.

Some were interested in foreign games, and Albron, being a programmer, paid particularly close attention to foreign software.

That was why he occasionally obtained and examined games from the Republic of Smite, which had been growing famous recently.

Games from the Republic of Smite, especially Meta Soft’s works, suited his tastes fairly well. But whether they could succeed in the Republic of Tonidu was something he could not be sure of.

Perhaps because of cultural differences, tastes differed subtly, and the quality of domestic games was not exactly low either.

However, after the Hammer Computer was released, his thoughts had changed somewhat.

After all, there was a difference in graphics.

Until then, the computers of the Republic of Tonidu had been somewhat better in performance, so the difference between new and old computers was not as dramatic as it was in the Republic of Smite. Still, there was a difference.

“A game is still a game.”

When Albron first encountered Arcade Empire, he thought it might not be a game.

The graphics were cute and compact, but in terms of content, it was a very realistic management simulation. So he wondered whether it might be some kind of training program.

Of course, after playing it for a while, he realized that was not the case.

It was fun, and it was also unusual.

He had not known that one could create a game using management as an element and feel enjoyment from it.

Of course, Professional Baseball Manager, which had been released earlier, also had management elements, but Albron, or rather, not just Albron but people in this country in general, did not have much interest in the sport called baseball. When he heard that the game required network access and card packs to be properly enjoyed, he did not obtain it.

Although he was quite proactive about obtaining foreign software, it was not easy to get software from a country across the sea when it was not even officially imported.

In other words, it felt wasteful to spend time, money, and effort to obtain something incomplete.

In any case, simply trying the game had already made him feel that it was unusual. But when he found and read an article about this game in Gamers, which he had also obtained with difficulty, his interest grew even stronger.

< Unusual Ways to Enjoy Arcade Empire >

It was an article about people who did not play in the standard way, but instead set goals in strange directions and dug into them.

And this was a story that perfectly matched the tastes of Gnomes, who liked inventive and bizarre things.

He immediately began enjoying the game exactly as described in the article.

Footnotes:

Translator’s Notes:

200-pyeong — A pyeong is a Korean unit of area. One pyeong is about 3.3 square meters, so 200 pyeong is approximately 661 square meters.

Claw Machine — An arcade machine where players use a mechanical claw to try to grab prizes, often plush toys or small goods.