Strategy for the Future
At last, Do-zney Castle was finished.
And so, this coming Saturday — the 14th — Lethal Company would be holding a completion celebration concert right in front of the castle. Everyone was invited to attend and grace the occasion with their presence.
I supposed I should count myself lucky. At least it didn't overlap with our own building fundraiser on the 15th.
We really did pick a good date.
A building fundraiser, at the end of the day, was a race to claim the wallets of casual viewers first. The wallets of hardcore fans were basically a fixed constant. None of the other companies had managed to put together a landmark construction plan the way we had, and thanks to that, the communities were already showing V-Live Company a lot of interest.
Please, seven hundred thousand… no, even six hundred thousand wouldn't be bad. If we can just set a record like that…
The truth was, the size of a fundraiser mattered to more than just the streamer. More often than not, it was the fandoms that went completely feral over the numbers. South Korea was a capitalist society through and through, and so each company's fundraising total became a measuring stick for that company's capability and pride. That was why fans threw open their wallets with such feverish enthusiasm.
The Galde Cup wars over each company's building fundraiser totals were absolutely insane.
Even on FM Community, accounts that couldn't keep their tempers in check and got into fights over it were handed hundred-day bans by the dozen. The unmoderated underground galleries didn't even need mentioning. People started tracking every company's building fundraiser totals in Excel spreadsheets from January all the way through the half-year until the server shut down, just so they could keep fighting about it. Companies that came up short on fundraising got roasted daily as "broke fandoms." Lethal Company and Seoni Moon usually took the brunt of that role.
Take, for example, Kim Hak-do's main fanbase — the LoL-addicted middle-aged guys. The usual line was that they swarmed in and filled seats but were a pack of freeloaders who never did a thing to prop up their streamer's momentum.
Honestly, Kim Hak-do and NS Namsin should be judged by a different standard.
Kim Hak-do was treating Rena World more like a Season 2 side project, so his fans' immersion never quite matched that of the big-agency streamers. Naturally, the trickle-down donations fell short too. Likewise, NS Namsin already had Seoni Group — an entertainment crew, the main body of his operation — to feed. Just covering the monthly donations that needed to pour into Seoni Group was already a stretch. Adding Minecraft company streamers on top of that? Even Park Bong-sik, the so-called King of Pangea TV, couldn't have pulled that off. Fans' wallets had hard limits.
So in the end, it really felt like a three-way race.
Park Bong-sik's Mu-yang Group, boasting an overwhelming total donation volume. O-Wang Company, with solid donations and a stranglehold on first place across every kind of content. And Akatsuki — the romantics who, without a single big-agency streamer among them, still posted the highest average candy donations per person.
Against powerhouses like those, we had to find every crack we could just to survive.
First place is out of the question, honestly. There's a saying about a sparrow tearing its crotch trying to keep up with a stork.
Self-awareness mattered in everything. Reckless greed was the surest way to destroy yourself. My realistic target was a middle position between O-Wang Company and Akatsuki — shine in as many content events as possible, build name recognition and public goodwill, then use that performance to pull in casual viewers. If luck was on our side, maybe we could even aim for a shared third place.
Frankly, for a company led by someone who'd walked into Rena World with a fixed fanbase of three hundred to even dream of sitting above Lethal Company and Seoni Moon was already a pretty bold plan.
Still… everyone's working so hard.
I'd seen an info post on the community boards not long ago comparing average connection times across company staff. Ours held first place by a considerable margin. Sure, more big-agency streamers had joined since then, and playtime would gradually catch up as people chased donations — but that didn't erase the effort we'd already put in. Thinking about the company staff who'd trusted me and worked quietly even when the donations were thin, I wanted to scrape together everything I could for them, even if I had to brazen it out. That was just basic human decency.
Alright. It won't be easy, but let's give it everything we've got.
I steeled myself in silence.
I sent out several announcements through the group chat.
First: prepare every spectacle we planned to show on landmark building fundraiser day, and prepare them well. I'd said it a hundred times — viewers weren't idiots. Sometimes they looked like suckers throwing money around mindlessly, but that generosity always came from goodwill. The moment you started treating it as something you were entitled to, fan affection cooled into something thin and brittle.
There's a reason so many streamers flash bright and then collapse. The viewers know exactly what's going on.
That was why I hammered the point home: spare no effort on this prep. Make sure the fans never felt their donations were wasted.
Second announcement: attendance at the Do-zney Castle celebration concert on the 14th. Unless there was a special reason, no one was allowed to show up late — arrive early and take seats in the very front row. It was almost funny, but the Galde Cup rivalries and petty sniping between company fandoms were heating up by the day. Without a big-agency streamer to lean on, building the best possible image was critical for us. Events this important needed full, enthusiastic participation from every last person — pure goodwill farming.
It might look a little pathetic, going this far. But nothing in this world was meaningless. In the end, this was just mutual favor-trading. If our company planned a large-scale content event and turnout was terrible, how would that feel? If the goodwill farming had been done properly, people would show up on their own without anyone having to nag.
Even if it's a hassle, you have to take care of things like this. Company donations might end with this server, but a streamer's individual image lasts a long time.
The third and final announcement: for the time being, increase the daily sales quota on mending gear sold through the V-Shop. Until now, we'd limited daily sales to two or three pieces to keep the market price high — but I'd gotten advance word that a vehicle auction was coming soon, so we needed to stockpile more cash.
Normally, the companies that buy vehicles would get called suckers. But if Rena-ttang takes my advice into account…
Then the purchased vehicles would earn their keep well enough that the cost wouldn't feel wasted. And if that happened, there was no reason not to invest in the vehicle auction. It would deliver buzz and name recognition, and the sheer money-flex would feed the pride of the company fans too.
Mending gear sales alone might not be enough. We'll need to call in at least some of the loans we've handed out.
V-Live Company currently held about fifty million Rena in cash. The total amount we'd loaned out here and there, on the other hand, came to eighty million Rena. The fact that more than a third of that debt belonged to Lethal Company was genuinely legendary.
Anyway, digging through my pre-regression memories, I recalled that four vehicles had gone up for auction in total. The popular classic sedans and sports cars had gone for somewhere around eighty to ninety million Rena. The sports car had been nearly a hundred million, hadn't it? So our current cash reserves felt a little thin.
We used to be the overwhelming number-one rich kids. Now they're catching up.
In a way, it was only natural. Our company had just hit seven members, while O-Wang Company had already passed ten, and Partner & Tofu Company — being a coalition — had enough people that they were raking in money at high speed.
In the end, there's no answer to sheer numbers. And there's a real difference in work efficiency between men and women, too. Our company has no male streamers. We still have a lead because we ran hard from the start, but…
That was why I'd been fretting over recruiting more people — that anxious sense that we were about to get overtaken. But an honest conversation with the company staff had helped me find my calm again.
Right. Don't get shaken. Stay steady. Even if things looked a little short right now, plenty of groundwork for the future was already in place.
Ratatouille and the mega-farm, for instance.
Just imagining it made me feel full. If we sold off everything currently piled up in the warehouse, how much would that even be? Ah — right. Market prices were still garbage. Until the crop-selling patch went live and we could get proper value, patience was the order of the day.
For now, the plan is loan recovery. If that falls short, we'll scramble everyone together for a group mining session. Lately everyone's been nothing but farming, so a long-overdue mining run might actually be nice. The mining addicts will be happy too.
Diamond CK was off the table — the landmark building fundraiser was this Sunday, so we had to hold back. Even if "money-grubber" was the concept, there were still lines you shouldn't cross.
…Wait. I'd already taken over a hundred and seventy thousand this month?
Actually, lines existed to be crossed.
Alright. That covers all the urgent stuff.
Confirmations came back from everyone that they'd gotten the message. In the middle of it, Mayo grumbled that she hadn't played a single ranked game all week — which I quietly ignored. Aside from that, the company was running smoothly.
Then let's run hard this week too.
The strategy for the future was coming together, piece by careful piece.