Backseat Drivers and Spoilers Are Everywhere
Today was the day of our company dinner with the President and my fellow groupmates. I dressed up and headed to the restaurant, where I was guided to a pre-booked private room. But seriously, what was up with this place? It looked incredibly expensive.
"Whoa! Look at the sashimi! This is insane!"
"Thank you for the food!"
"Wow."
A Japanese feast was spread across the table. It was the kind of lavish spread you only saw in movies. Tons of different kinds of sashimi!
"Yes, eat up. Eat as much as you want," the President said, watching us with a warm smile.
First, the sea bream. I picked up a piece of fish and popped it into my mouth. The flesh melted instantly on my tongue. Ah, now this was the life.
"It's so good!"
"Munch, munch."
Seowoo was making a huge fuss as she savored every bite, while Jihae Eonni was stuffing her face as if determined to eat as much as humanly possible while it was free.
"Take your time, girls." The President chuckled, pouring himself a brimful cup of sake and downing it in one go. He couldn't even hold his liquor well, yet he was pouring it down without hesitation today. The President loved alcohol, but he was a lightweight.
"By the way, Minseo."
"Yes?"
"You've been causing quite a stir."
"Me?"
"Yeah, yeah. There was even a small article calling you a monster rookie who sang seventy-seven songs in seven hours."
"Huh? Really?"
Seriously? Wow, to think it actually warranted an article.
"It's not a major news outlet. Just a site specializing in VTubers and subculture, but they published a piece on you."
"Ah, I see."
So it wasn't a major mainstream outlet. Well, if it had been, I would have found out first while ego-searching. Still, it felt pretty great. No matter who it was, having people show interest in 'Riu' was an incredibly good thing.
After all, VTubers were entertainers. It was a profession that fed on attention. The only thing scarier than anti-fans was indifference. Having haters meant they were at least paying attention to you; if you didn't even have haters, now that was a serious problem.
"Seowoo and Jihae are doing great, too. You three are doing so much better than I ever imagined. I'm... truly happy."
Borrowing the courage of the alcohol, the President showered us with praise. His eyes looked a little red. Watching him ignore the food entirely and do nothing but down cup after cup of warm sake, I could feel a deep sense of regret and sorrow radiating from him.
Well, he did blow nearly 500 million won on Lunatics, the group before us. His regrets were worth half a billion won—an amount hard for the current me to even fathom. On top of that, he had poured another 400 million won into forming our group. If we failed, he would sink completely.
"Hehehe..." Before long, the President, completely wasted, slumped forward onto the table and fell fast asleep.
"Uh, um... What do we do?"
"Just keep eating!"
"Yeah! Sounds good!"
It wasn't our first rodeo; he always passed out whenever he drank. At first, we had been flustered by his drinking habits, but now we knew exactly how to handle it. If we just left him alone, he'd wake up on his own. If he didn't, we could just call the manager.
"So delicious!"
"Pass me the soy sauce."
"Here you go!"
"Thanks. Oh, and the wasabi too!"
Who cared if our boss was sleeping right in front of us? It was time to enjoy the sashimi!
"This tuna is amazing!"
"What is this flavor in the aged salmon?!"
"Man, this sushi is delicious!"
It was a tempestuous feast.
I returned home after the dinner. Having stuffed myself with sashimi at a high-end Japanese restaurant, I was in the best mood ever.
"I'm so full."
To help digest the food, I sat down in my chair and looked up some information on the game I was planning to play tomorrow. I figured I should at least know the basic premise before diving in.
"Hmm. 'To rescue Princess Sola, you must clear three labyrinths and collect the keys'?"
It looked like there were quite a few puzzle elements. Puzzles, huh?
This... could end in disaster if I'm not careful.
Puzzle games might be fun for the person playing them, but from the viewers' perspective, they could be incredibly boring. If my viewers hadn't reached the stage of parasocial devotion where they'd watch me do absolutely anything out of pure affection, the passing traffic would probably all flee. After all, nothing was more frustrating than watching someone fail to solve a puzzle.
There's a reason puzzle games are called pseudo-horror games. They were so frustrating that they practically induced dread, which is why people jokingly referred to them as horror games. Especially if a VTuber with less-than-stellar brainpower spent hours wandering around a puzzle with a glaringly obvious solution; even the most patient, devoted fans would get so frustrated they'd start backseating through gritted teeth until they got banned. At that point, it was almost better to just look away from the chat entirely.
Is playing this game really a good idea? Doubt crept in. This wouldn't do. I needed to check out other VTubers' gameplay videos and community reactions first. I couldn't just play a game simply because I thought it would be fun. Besides, once I started, there would definitely be people nagging me to finish it. And if I dropped it, the core fans who loved that game would probably send me angry emails complaining about me abandoning it.
And if you drop games too often, the fans stop expecting anything from you.
"She'll probably drop this one too."
"She's just dipping her toes in again."
"She'll just taste it and quit."
Why can't this girl ever finish anything she starts?
"Ugh!"
Labels were terrifying things. Once you were branded as a serial game-dropper, people would automatically assume "she's just going to drop this too" no matter what game you brought to the stream. If that kept happening, I would probably end up dropping games even more frequently. It would become a vicious cycle. Above all, if my viewer count plummeted, my own energy would tank. Would I really be able to handle that kind of slump?
"Yeah, a puzzle game is a bad idea."
As expected, puzzle games were a no-go. If I made the mistake of starting a PG-12 game with barely any dopamine-inducing moments, I'd end up trapped in an inescapable swamp.
I'm currently maintaining around five thousand viewers, but if the bubble bursts in the very first week, my mental state won't survive. I wanted to keep this bubble going for at least a month. I wanted to turn all five thousand of these viewers into a solid, concrete fanbase.
"I need a different game. Something that bursts with dopamine. Something famous, but that VTubers rarely play."
After digging around various gaming communities, a few options popped up.
"A Soulslike."
A genre known for its extreme difficulty. Cryptic, fragmented storytelling. A dark fantasy world. Bosses with absurdly difficult patterns, terrifyingly ruthless trash mobs, and traps everywhere.
"This... actually looks perfect."
It wasn't bad. It was a genre VTubers rarely touched, and even when they did, they usually just dipped their toes in. Looking at the trends, most of them seemed to beat the first boss, milk it for a YouTube highlight video, and then drop it. The vast majority used it as quick content without ever actually playing the real game.
"And I'm confident in my physical abilities."
I had never actually learned martial arts or swordsmanship, but couldn't I just rely on my raw instincts? At the end of the day, it was just a game. The monsters were bound to move according to set patterns anyway.
"Maybe I can pull it off?"
With Choi Minseo's body, it felt entirely possible. After all, I possessed physical abilities 1.5 times stronger than an average adult male, if not more.
Since the VR gear is heavily influenced by one's physical body in reality. To make the five senses feel as vivid as possible, the synchronization rate had to be high. To achieve this, the virtual body was reconstructed based on the physical body we perceived in reality. Thanks to this, we could feel the exact same physical sensations in the virtual world as we did in the real one. In short, it meant that performing beyond your real-world physical capabilities in the virtual world was extremely difficult.
Because your limits are set. Unless you break through those limits, you have no choice but to move according to your real-world senses. The people who surpassed these limits were the ones who became professional gamers in virtual reality. Even among VTubers, there were occasionally those who broke through these limits through sheer practice and training, rising to a professional level. They were usually seen in fighting games or RPGs—genres where you had to physically move and fight. People who surpassed their real-world limitations to achieve 'game-like movements.'
That VTuber who supposedly sang eighty songs was probably someone who had surpassed their real-world limits as well. Even in a virtual world, singing that many songs would normally blow out your real-world vocal cords. Being able to sing past that limit meant they had successfully separated the virtual world from reality.
"Well, in my case, my raw stats in reality are already so high that it doesn't even matter."
I could sing seventy-seven songs in seven hours in the real world too. My base stats had already broken through any normal limits.
"Anyway, the game for tomorrow is..."
From the Nightmare. The main storyline revolved around the death of the Sun God, which scattered his nightmares across the world. The player's goal was to save those consumed by these nightmares and ultimately put the source of the nightmare to sleep.
"The atmosphere is pretty brutal."
While players could choose and customize their characters, I planned to enter the game using Riu's avatar exactly as it was. Girl Knight Riu!
"Let's do this!"
I was already excited. I wondered how far I could go. According to the reviews, everyone got absolutely demolished by the first boss, 'Watcher Rowen'—often called the game's official refund enforcer—before quitting.
"Hello, my little fishies! It's Riu! It's been a whole day! How has everyone been?"
"Oh, come on, why are you crying? Hehe. Still, hearing that you missed me makes me really happy." Crying, my foot. I bet you were all watching other VTubers! I know how it is. Back when Miho wasn't streaming, I used to sneak into other channels to cheat on her too.
"Anyway, today, I've prepared a game for us. But first, I wanted to have a quick chat with my little fishies about what I did yesterday before we dive into the game." Just Chatting was crucial. Even if it was just for an hour, communication was absolutely necessary. After all, what fans loved most was interacting with their oshi.
"The game I prepared is called From the Nightmare..." I answered casually, but the moment I revealed the title, the chat window began to explode.
A massive horde of backseat gamers and spoiler trolls had crawled out of who-knows-where. Truly, they existed everywhere. I could already foresee a very rough journey ahead.