For the True Fans
From the day Rena World opened, I threw myself into Minecraft like a woman possessed for three straight days.
My usual viewers found it baffling at first. Had I always been into Minecraft? Then they started cheering. Just the fact that Rena World had stretched out my stream hours was enough to make the fans happy.
But as time wore on… I could feel the mood shifting.
People call them "regulars," but eternal fans don't exist. A person's heart can flip over the smallest change in circumstance. In that sense, a good chunk of the V-fans who'd made up my core audience were quietly airing their discontent.
What we want is a virtual stream, not a Minecraft stream!
A little bit is fine, but three days straight of Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft?
How do I know their feelings so well? Because before my regression, I was one of them. Fans' hearts tend to run along the same tracks.
My viewer count had actually gone up since I started Minecraft. But the chat activity and engagement from my true fans had clearly dropped. The data made it obvious. Search a viewer's ID and you get a clean readout of how long they watched and how much they chatted.
This is what analysis is for. There's a feature this good, and the idiot virtual streamers only use it for end-of-month giveaways.
Most of them just handed boost items to whoever had the longest watch time or the most chat messages that month. For someone who loved digging into numbers, it was enough to make me want to scream.
This trend isn't good. The crowd pouring in right now is all casual traffic. When it comes to priority, the true fans come first.
Rena World mattered. But the true fans mattered more. As a streamer, I needed to keep to a proper middle path.
Which meant what, exactly?
It meant that today, for the first time in a while, I was going to run some proper virtual content to keep the true fans happy.
And the mining losses? I'd handed the endgame pickaxe to Mayo, the most reliable of the three when it came to control. Once word got out, the ore-crazed fans would flood her stream instead. That was the positive trickle-down effect of a crew done right.
The one worry was Mayo falling into lava and yeeting the endgame pickaxe into oblivion. Against that possibility, I issued a solemn declaration: if the pickaxe went missing, her League of Legends account went with it. Mayo immediately swore she'd guard it more carefully than her own life. Absolute LoL maniac.
V-fans, have you been lonely without me?
Pangea TV's first virtual Best Streamer, Seo-a, greets you after far too long — *bows!*
Today I'll be running a "Charades" collab with Seol Pyo-woo of the Decrescendo crew on a VRC map.
Content starts at 7 PM sharp!
Please show us lots of love.
The deranged ore-addicts had infiltrated even here, but we'd held the line. The Minecraft fandom really was no joke. Rena World hadn't even fully taken off yet, and they were already showing this much initiative.
I glanced at the nickname written in the notice.
Still the best booking I could've made. Always keep the other side's ace in check.
Even while grinding Minecraft for three days, I hadn't let my guard down on Decrescendo. With Pocotin already written off as a washout, they were the only crew that could still go toe-to-toe with us.
Fortunately, Decrescendo wasn't nearly as fired up about Rena World as we were. Under Park Na-na's lead, they were running Me-un-di showdowns within the crew and co-hosting PUBG Kindergarten Episode 4 with Oh-ha — leaning hard into outside content instead.
Muyo's doing something on the server, at least.
She'd sailed off to a distant stretch of ocean, claiming she'd build a Decrescendo island, pioneering and constructing at the same time. But one person alone could only do so much. The rest of the members logged in only sporadically, so no real synergy was forming.
On top of that, a live bomb was already ticking. Elsa, one of their crew members, had taken an interest in the Poko Server. The talks were happening behind closed doors, so the full truth was still murky. There was a rumor that Ori-koong had reached out to her separately.
Under those circumstances, my strategy was to keep Seol Pyo-woo — Decrescendo's ace — occupied. I'd checked Park Na-na and Baiyo's VODs; both were complete Minecraft beginners. Their control was rough, and they didn't even know the basic crafting recipes. Safe to leave them alone. But Seol Pyo-woo was different. She had Minecraft knowledge and her control was sharp. Leave her free and she could become a real problem.
So I sent the collab invite immediately. If I couldn't be on Rena World, neither would she. Luckily, Seol Pyo-woo accepted without hesitation.
Heh heh. I've handled Seol Pyo-woo — so mine hard and free, Mayo.
"Hello, I'm Seol Pyo-woo from the Decrescendo crew. This is my first time meeting Seo-a, but I've really wanted to get close."
"Oh? You too, Seol Pyo-woo? Same here — looks like we're on the same wavelength. Want to drop the formalities?"
"Yeah. Let's talk casual, friend."
Seol Pyo-woo was one of those virtual streamers who never revealed her age. People generally placed her in Decrescendo's middle tier. Muyo was the confirmed youngest — she'd even gone through the Yoon-seo Law — while Park Na-na and Baiyo were in the older-sister bracket. Elsa hadn't disclosed her age either, but from the info that had quietly circulated, she was also assumed to be on the older-sister line. So a lot of people pegged Seol Pyo-woo as mid-twenties. You could roughly guess age dynamics from how crew members treated each other.
These idiots. The second a collab guest showed up, they started clowning around. Were they actual elementary schoolers? Trying to provoke jealousy with that cheap little act — like I'd fall for such a pathetic scheme.
Seoah Not Streaming has been muted for 10 minutes.
SeoAMineBoo has been muted for 10 minutes.
SeoAStrawberryFlavor has been muted for 5 minutes.
Hmph. This is absolutely not jealousy. My hand just slipped for a second, that's all.
"Alright, let me introduce today's content. Drumroll, please~ It's Charades! The rules are simple."
On a VRC map, using full-body trackers, you express the topic through movement alone. Then someone guesses the answer. Intuitive and clean.
"The person guessing the answers is Tong-dari-chicken. You all know him, right? He helps out a ton with my VRC content."
Tong-dari-chicken was the one who'd helped with VRC during the Wooga-dol audition. Thanks to him, I'd gone from VRC newbie to competent at breakneck speed. He'd given me one-on-one coaching for nearly a month. And that connection hadn't ended there — whenever I needed VRC help after that, I reached out. Of course I hadn't freeloaded. During the Wooga-dol audition I'd formally hired him and paid a salary for about a month and a half, and after that it was per-job. He'd helped with the Christmas carol video shoot, too. Now that V-Live had name value in the Pangea TV virtual scene, I couldn't put out half-baked production quality. Money, time, and effort — all of it added up.
"Some of you might suspect Tong-dari-chicken will deliberately miss Seol Pyo-woo's prompts because of his connection to me, so let me clear that up in advance. Tong-dari-chicken is scheduled to collect his payment for our crew's Christmas carol video work today. Specifically: twenty thousand won for every correct answer!"
"AAAAARGH! I'll get every single one even if it kills me!"
His over-the-top bellow booming through Discord sent the viewers into hysterics. Even the crowd that had been yelling this is mid swung back around pretty hard.
After a quick round of greetings and content explanation on Discord, we logged into VRC.
Virtual content, at long last.