Chapter 24

Taking a deep breath, Elena calmed herself. She was curious and a little nervous about how things would end up.

Leaving the clothes to wash, she went to the second floor, tidying up the rooms. While organizing, she found an old, outdated weapon in a drawer, which only reinforced her feeling that everything was heading in a terrible direction.

After finishing Todd's room, Elena was heading to Alice's room when Todd came out of the bath and pushed her away.

"Get out of the way, and clean up this mess."

Seeing the bathroom with some flies buzzing around left Elena in a blank state of mind, and Christoffer, seeing it too, was disgusted.

"It's like he's a pig in human form."

He wasn't the only one thinking that; many players trying Detroit were becoming increasingly disgusted with Todd.

"I'm not going to clean..."

Before she could finish speaking, Kara started heading to the bathroom. When she was about to curse, Elena lost control of the character. Kara entered the bathroom and came out sometime later with a neutral expression.

Christoffer could only sigh at this sight.

"Now I really am starting to feel sorry for these androids; no one deserves this."

Sighing in relief at not having to enter that bathroom, Elena went to Alice's room to finish organizing everything. When she opened the door, the girl seemed scared and ran to a small tent made of sheets.

Seeing this, Elena felt her heart tighten a bit. A child of this age shouldn't act this way; she should be strong and cheerful, running and playing.

At this age, her daughter was already hitting friends of the same age, even if it was just in duels. Elena was always proud, but the child in front of her was thin, weak, and scared.

Approaching the girl, Elena began to talk to her. Some options appeared, but she tried to talk to the girl on her own, and surprisingly, she succeeded.

Only now did Elena realize she didn't have to follow the options the game offered. Realizing this, she happily conversed with the child. Elena asked about her favorite foods, which animals she liked, and many other things. Unfortunately, the girl did not respond.

Thinking that maybe the girl wasn't programmed to respond, Elena stood up a little disappointed. But when she tried to walk away, Alice grabbed her hand. The girl seemed hesitant and a bit scared, but she still placed a key in her hand and pointed to a small box on top of the dresser. Elena didn't know, but this was a missable interaction in the game.

Players would only receive the key from Alice if they tried to talk to her and increased the girl's affection. Even though it seemed like a small thing, it could give an advantage in the future.

After handing over the key, the girl ran downstairs. A little curious, Elena opened the box and found some drawings and a photo inside. The drawings were very childish but showed Todd hitting Kara while Alice watched and cried.

"So that's why she was being repaired and had her memory reset."

Christoffer shook his head.

"Yes, now it makes sense why this girl is always so scared. She must have seen the pig venting his anger on the android."

They both thought they understood the reason for the child's behavior. Unfortunately, they were wrong and were about to find out.

Elena was curious about the end of this chapter. After finishing all the tasks, she decided to go downstairs. When she was descending the stairs, Elena saw Alice sitting at the table, playing with a teddy bear. Todd approached her slowly with bloodshot eyes; he was sweating and a bit breathless.

Elena immediately became concerned, but before she could do anything, she lost control of the character, and a scene began.

"What are you doing?"

"I... I'm playing."

"Playing... I know what you're thinking... that your father is a bum, huh?... a piece of shit."

Todd said this slowly, circling the table.

"Doesn't get a job, doesn't take care of the family. Think I haven't tried to make everything right?"

He started talking louder as he got closer to the girl.

Elena and Christoffer widened their eyes.

"Hey, stay away from her, damn it, why can't I do anything?!"

Christoffer was also worried. Even just watching, he wanted to run there and show how a real father should be.

Todd continued to approach the girl, his expression growing more irritated.

"Doesn't matter, someone always shows up to SCREW EVERYTHING UP."

He grabbed a chair and threw it away.

"I know what you think of me... you hate me... you hate me, don't you?"

Alice had a scared expression and started to cry. Todd grabbed the girl, lifted her into the air, and began shouting.

"TALK, YOU HATE ME..."

Seeing the frightened face of the girl, Todd started to cry and slowly put her down.

"My God, what am I doing? Sorry, dear, I'm so sorry... you know I love you, don't you? You know I love you..."

Alice continued to cry silently with a scared expression while Todd hugged her, crying. She looked at Kara standing on the stairs, and then the chapter ended.

"No, don't end now, damn it, how can I leave a child with that man..."

Elena was irritated and indignant but slowly calmed down. This chapter hit her weak spot, seeing a child in such a situation made her heart almost leap out of her chest.

Christoffer wasn't better off. As an old man who had lived for so long, few things could make him nervous, but this chapter definitely was one of them.

...........

Pov William Freeman

...........

It's funny, sometimes to change your life, you just need to choose a path and put in some effort. My whole life, my parents said I should inherit the family farm. Even though it's not one of the biggest, our farm still produces grains for three different planets.

I can say that I am in a very privileged situation. After all, how many in the universe would like to be in my place?

But I always knew I couldn't stay stuck on this farm planet. I didn't want to cause a significant impact on the universe, so I discovered games.

I slowly sank into this world, playing one game after another, participating in all kinds of wars and battles. The excitement I felt infected me. I didn't just want to have this feeling; I wanted other people to experience the same as I did.

That's how I decided to create my own games. Today, at just 90 years old, I have already won two junior game designer awards.

Even though they are small awards that only took place in my galaxy, they are still significant to me. But now I want more; I want the junior game designer award of the universe.

I have been preparing for ten years since I discovered this competition. Unlike other people, I understood what it meant.

The gaming market has always been side by side with the music and movie markets, but the lack of innovation is killing the industry. That's why this competition is focusing on innovation. So, I did extensive research on the history of my galaxy. Around 6,000 years ago, a group of people came together to create a fleet of vigilantes.

They weren't recognized by the military and were not seen favorably by the public, but since they never attacked innocents and the military was busy dealing with the Exceeds, they were left alone.

During an attack by the Exceeds on our galaxy, this fleet of vigilantes sacrificed themselves to hold off the enemies. This was enough for the military to arrive and save the people.

This act of sacrifice was recognized by the military, and they even received a tombstone on the planet of heroes. This is neither a famous nor an uncommon story. Many people have sacrificed themselves for their planet or galaxy.

But I still chose this story for my game because, even if it 'exaggerates,' no one will complain, but mainly because the story is not the game's focus.

The real focus is the new mechanics I created. First, the story will be told from various points of view, making everything more dynamic. The main mechanic is the exploration of the environment.

Every time the player controls a character, they will be in an environment of three or four rooms. They will be able to interact with everything, which is different from other games where the player only controls the character to save progress in the story. 

I also hid some unique items in these rooms, and some dialogues will change if the player has the right items.

There will also be unique scenes that can only be unlocked if the player finds all the hidden items. This way, the game becomes more enjoyable, and players might even play two or three times to watch all the unique scenes.

It's been a day since the competition started. Sitting in my virtual space, I finally read the comments about the game.

"Damn, I'm still nervous… it's okay, this is the best game I've ever made, I'm sure no one can do better."

Even trying to calm myself, my hands are still shaking a bit. Taking a deep breath, I open my game's page and go to the comments.

"Yes… There are already over 60,000 comments, more than I expected. This is great, let's see what they are saying."

[Good story]

[Interesting, I was able to interact with the items in the rooms, the designer put effort into this game.]

[The story is quite common, but it was done excellently, it kept me entertained for a few hours.]

[Cool]

[Thanks for the game]

[Fun]

I continued reading the comments for a long time. All of them were praising and giving good reviews. When I was satisfied and thinking of logging out and waiting for my awards, I saw a comment.

[Meh, it's not even close to Detroit.]

"What? Meh?... What is he talking about?"

Looking at this comment, I saw that some people had replied to him.

[You must not have played the game; it's because of haters like you that many designers stop making games.]

[No need to be so sensitive, I just told the truth.]

[This game is very good and has many new things, and you can even explore several rooms; you must not have read the text at the beginning explaining about the items that can be found.]

[I bet you didn't find a single item that adds unique dialogues, and came to complain.]

[Okay, I didn't want to waste my time with single-brain-celled people, but here we go.

Yes, I played and found several items, but the story is quite common, adding unique scenes and dialogues to a story that is not interesting just makes it boring.]

[Says the master writer.]

[We have a specialist here.]

[He must be the designer of this Detroit game, and came here to try to get attention, haha.]

[Haha, as soon as I spoke facts, you guys ran out of arguments, just accept the truth, this game is mediocre, simple as that.]

I kept reading the comments, but after that, they started debating about politics and some popular things. This comment had more than three hundred replies and was still growing.

Sigh.

"Forget it, everyone is enjoying it, better go have dinner."

I closed the page and was about to log out of the virtual space, but I stopped.

"Damn it, mediocre… he's just a hater… I'll just check his profile, then I'll go have dinner."

I quickly went to his profile. I thought I would find several hate comments, but actually, he commented very little.

Looking through his recent comments, I found one that caught my attention. It was on a game called Detroit: Become Human.

[This game is the best surprise I've ever had. I played only the first three chapters, but I can say it's one of the best I've ever played.]

"My game is just meh, but this is the best of your life? Let's see if it's that good."

I admit I was a little irritated. I doubt any game is more innovative than mine.

I entered the page of this Detroit: Become Human and was really surprised. While my game was barely reaching 60,000 comments, this game already had over 100,000.

This is a competition open to the entire universe and has over 5 billion participants. Standing out is very difficult, and there are only two ways.

Spending a massive amount of credits on marketing, or the game must be so good that players recommend it to friends, creating word-of-mouth marketing.

"There's only one way to know if a game is good or not."

I installed the game and quickly opened it. Just before starting, I saw a small warning.

(This is a fictional story. Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental.)

Seeing this warning, I was really surprised. A completely fictional story? Why didn't I think of that before? Why did I go through all the trouble of 'embellishing' a real event?

"No, even if it's a good idea, it's still risky. After all, it's impossible to know if you can create a good story. There's a reason why people use real events in their games."

I started the game with confidence. I really didn't believe this game could be better than mine, but as I played, I didn't even notice when I got hooked on the narrative.

Unique characters, an engaging story, but mainly a choice mechanic that creates countless changes in the story.

I simply couldn't believe it, so I did the first chapter several times to change the ending, and it really changed, from sacrificing to save the girl or killing the android. I even jumped out of the window to see if the designer anticipated it.

And to my surprise, yes, the designer anticipated someone would do that. When I jumped out of the window, I saw a scene in a laboratory where several people were analyzing the protagonist's body, trying to find the flaw that led him to jump off the building.

Leaving the game, I felt my heart pounding. While playing, it felt like the doors to a new world had opened before my eyes. There are so many possibilities. My head is full of ideas and projects for new games.

I looked at the information about the designer of Detroit, and I think the most surprising thing was his age.

"This game was made by an eighteen-year-old newborn… Wow, hahaha, that's unbelievable, hahaha, a child who barely started walking made a game ten times better than mine.

This is amazing, my heart is pounding. When was the last time I felt like this?!

I was so confident for making some improvements in a tired genre, but a kid decades younger simply appeared and did better.

Alexandre Lockhart, I don't know who you are, but I definitely won't fall behind. Brian, delete Project Fusion and start a new project."

"Mr. Will, are you sure about this? We've worked on this game for a long time. I don't think we can create something at the same level in time for the next stage of the competition."

"It's okay, don't worry. My mind is bubbling with ideas."

..............

POV Alexandre Lockhart

..............

This was a great start. Even on the first day, I've already managed to attract some attention. This must be the effect of the advertisement I did at the end of Dragon Ball and Avatar.

Now I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. My biggest fear was that the game would be buried without even having a chance to shine.

"Now that everything is going well, I should take a look at the reviews."

Reading the comments, I saw several low ratings. This isn't really a problem; after all, not everyone will like the game. That's normal. 

But what surprised me was the reason for these reviews. Apparently, someone played Detroit and gave a positive review, then went on to test other games but gave a negative review and mentioned Detroit. This caused many people who liked the game to start complaining, even coming here to leave negative reviews. It's amazing how even after thousands of years, people on the internet act like hyenas.

"But if people are willing to waste time coming here to make noise, maybe this game is interesting."

Searching a bit, I found the game they were defending: *Heroes of a Forgotten Galaxy*.

"A bit of a cliché name, but it's actually good. Let's see if it's as good as the reviews say."

After finishing the installation, I started the game. Right at the beginning, a large text appeared explaining that unlike other games, here it would be possible to explore the environments. Additionally, there would be some items that would add unique dialogues or scenes to the story.

"Having new mechanics can be good, but needing to explain this with text is a designer's flaw. But let's see how this is implemented."

I kept playing for a while. I can say that by current game standards, this game is really good. When the player starts controlling the characters, it's possible to find items related to that character's past story. For example, with Rick, the first protagonist, you can find a photo of his daughter. Later, there's a scene where he talks about how his daughter died and what led him to become a vigilante.

Unfortunately, over time, this becomes tiring and repetitive, but the idea is really good. Returning to the game's page, I saw that the designer's name is William Freeman.

"He seems to have talent. Maybe I should keep an eye on him in the future."

.........

Note: Finally a new chapter, haha. I've been very busy these past few days. My time has been quite short, but whenever I can, I'm writing a bit.

I hope you like this new character. He won't be one of the main ones, but he should appear occasionally. 

I want to create a rival for the protagonist, but not the typical Chinese type (I am much better than you because I am a genius and very rich, hahaha). No, I want the two to create a rivalry through the games they will make. I've always read several stories where the protagonist dominates the entertainment world, and all the other companies can do is copy him. 

I want to do it differently. In such a big universe, it's impossible not to have one or two geniuses who can pressure the protagonist and force him to improve.

I'm still thinking about how to implement this in the best way. I'm open to opinions, haha.

Before finishing, I just wanted to say once again that this story is mine. I am the author. For some reason, there are still some people confused about this being someone else's work. Anyway, this weekend I'll have some free time, so I should post a chapter on Sunday. Let's hope for the best, haha.