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January 8th, Sunday.
For the virtual scene on Pangea TV, the day carried considerable weight.
First, it was the application deadline for Freeca's additional member audition.
For the small-time virtual streamers who hadn't made it into Rena World, the audition was a single ray of light — a genuine shot at something better.
Back during the previous Wooga-dol audition, the applicant pool hadn't been impressive in quantity, and objectively speaking, the quality hadn't been much to write home about either. Ssa-yo had announced the Wooga-dol plans so abruptly that there simply hadn't been many transferred virtual streamers around at the time. And not all of those transfers had even applied. When you were already working with a thin roster and still had to cut people down to a final selection, of course the result was going to feel underwhelming.
But the situation now was entirely different.
Through the Wooga-dol audition, Freeca had made enough noise to register even next door on Rabbit TV. Word of an additional member audition had gone viral far harder than before. As a result, not only the people who had already crossed over to Pangea TV, but a considerable number of genuine talents had decided to transfer specifically for this round.
A talent pool far richer than the last audition. Could Ssa-yo actually sort the gems from the gravel?
Drumroll! Ssa-yo's 2023 picks — coming soon to a screen near you!
Either way, I was content to stand off to the side with my arms crossed and watch.
There was a second issue as well.
Yu Seona, who had been preparing Seona Land as a direct counter to Rena World, still hadn't closed recruitment — but she had been building anticipation by test-playing her finished Minecraft server on her own stream. Maybe Seona Land would become a sanctuary for the virtual streamers shut out of Rena World. The possibility was real enough.
Rena World had originally been put together on a small scale for Mercury — formerly Rena Universe — so it had hard limits on capacity and server operations. That was why Rena-ttang had been so timid about expansion, adding only two or three people a week. Seona Land, by contrast, was a product of Yu Seona opening her wallet wide for server costs. From the jump, it was projected to hold at least one and a half times Rena World's population.
The problem was name recognition. Yu Seona was a mid-tier streamer with years of hard-earned experience on Pangea TV, but Rena World already had multiple major-league streamers under its roof. In terms of pure visibility, Seona Land wasn't even in the same conversation.
Yu Seona had been fretting herself raw, even reaching out behind the scenes to see if she could peel Wang-ko or NS Namshin away. The answers came back negative. If she had contacted them earlier, maybe — but Wang-ko and NS Namshin were already leading companies inside Rena World. Abandoning those companies for Seona Land now would be a moral problem, and the fandoms those companies had already built would not sit quietly. Even a major-league streamer couldn't afford to spit in the face of public sentiment.
Having given up on the two of them, Yu Seona finally grasped how serious the situation was and hastily reached out behind the scenes to Jamst and Ssa-yo as well. With Jamst she had built a genuine friendship through years of shared content. With Ssa-yo, there was even less to say — she had recently lent him money when his finances got tight.
Jamst replied that he would join if his schedule allowed. Ssa-yo was practically an automatic yes. A major-league streamer like Jamst plus a heavyweight mid-tier like Ssa-yo made for a start that wasn't half bad.
Yu Seona didn't stop there. She widened her sights to the StarCraft scene as well. Looking at the streamers already inside Rena World, PUBG and League of Legends players were everywhere — but StarCraft streamers were completely absent. After the StarCraft boom had ended, the only major-league streamer still active on that board was Baek-gu, but plenty of solid mid-tier names remained. If she could lock down three or four of them, she could field a camp that wouldn't look badly outmatched against Rena World.
That calculation, of course, carefully excluded Park Bong-sik.
And in the middle of all this, what truly delighted Yu Seona was the mass of applications from Mercury's — formerly Rena Universe's — virtual streamers requesting residency in Seona Land. Mercury's virtuals had already dropped considerably in weight class. They had been popular in the early days of Pangea TV's virtual scene, but a string of uncomfortable scandals and internal conflicts had worn their fans down until people drifted away one by one.
None of that mattered to Yu Seona. The mere existence of Mercury's virtual streamers was a gift. Those women had an extremely uncomfortable relationship with Rena-ttang. Pull Mercury into Seona Land, keep manufacturing issues around them, and Rena-ttang would have no choice but to pay attention — of that, Yu Seona was certain. Eight years of grinding on Pangea TV, sparring for dominance with countless fellow female streamers, had sharpened her instincts for exactly this kind of game.
A server war was being prepared in the dark, fierce and quiet. Who would win?
Our V-Live crew had a group chat for smooth communication. Recently, a separate group chat for V-Live Company had been added as well. The names were so similar that someone had once accidentally uploaded an image file to the wrong one.
Ahem. That was just a joke.
Anyway, that day we were chatting back and forth in the company room, tossing opinions around. The agenda was the company's headcount. Should we recruit one more person, or proceed as we were?
Honestly, even for me it wasn't an easy call. V-Live Company itself was a butterfly-effect product that had never existed in the pre-regression Rena World.
Anything touching income was always a sensitive subject, so it had to be approached openly and honestly. A leader could have made a more unilateral decision on something like this, but I wanted a company staff that was voluntary and collaborative — so I preferred to lay everything out and talk it through.
Opinions bounced back and forth. Even Han A-yeon and the newcomer Na-ro-si, who had started out just reading the room in silence, eventually jumped in with real energy. It was a constructive space where everyone could be honest about what they thought.
People's eyes and instincts end up pretty similar no matter who you ask, huh.
The opinions gradually converged, and watching them settle, I found myself nodding without meaning to.
Broadly speaking, the mood favored adding one more person. The problem was that among the people currently on the server, no usable talent was visible. In a way, that was only natural. Every company would have already scooped up the capable ones first. Whoever was left after that filtering process was bound to have some shortcoming or another.
It's a shame, but they don't fit a company that aims for a small elite core.
So the conclusion we landed on was this: leave the recruitment door open. We just weren't going to pull anyone in right now. If additional people entered the server later and someone looked worthwhile, we could fling the door wide open then — it wouldn't be too late.
Another short debate wrapped up the usual way — noisy, chaotic, and full of life. And tomorrow, at last, would be V-Live Company's first official meeting.