Chapter 33: Pokemon and Social Media

[3rd Person POV]

Ven was busy enjoying the game recreation versions in his room in Wayne Manor. Since release of his games, the gaming industry has begun a new boom so he also checks out other companies' games. Though none of them so far are in the same quality as his, some of them have enjoyable quick gameplays. 

He received an email from his staff that the Pokemon recreations were done. It has been a few months after all. As he head out, he used his superspeed to run to Metropolis.

'Lately I've been using it a lot and I have to admit, it's too much fun. But sooner or later I have to get on to the flying to prepare for healing Clark. So I have to practice that soon enough.' Ven thought to himself.

As he arrived in Metropolis in some random alley near his office headquarters, he starts to walk out and pretend he just got there so the CCTV's would not catch him using his speed. After arriving in the office, he immediately obtained the copy for Pokemon and begun his own 'testing' but more like he just wanted to play it again. 

Since this version looked like Pokemon ORAS but is actually leaf green and fire red, he was quite excited to play the classic first gen game. But it sure felt to him like a new game or remake considering the graphics is a little better than the original Red and green versions in gameboy.

"As always, I choose Charmander for my starter haha. Damn this is so nostalgic"

Ven proceeded to go through his initial run in the game and most of the features are the same as Fire Red and Leaf Green so its literally just him re-playing the game in a bit more graphics.

After a couple of hours enjoying the game, he decided to discuss with his team regarding the future VR version of this game. So he held a meeting with some of his staff.

"Alright, the game itself is already completed and satisfactory to my requirements. But as you all know, I intend to have all my games eventually converted to VR for the future as well. But since this is also a turn based game, I would like to get your opinions for the VR gameplay." Ven told them.

"Sir what if we make it an action RPG? Maybe make the battles real time?" -Staff 1

"Interesting but how will that work exactly?" -Staff 2

"Well instead of Pokemon taking turns when they fight, it becomes that, an action RPG so they fight real time."-Staff 1

"But how do players control the Pokemon then? Do we have the players shout their every move?" -Staff 3

"That might be one way to go about it. Or we can try having the player get kind of like telekenetic control over the Pokemon only during battles?" -Staff 1

"Or we can put AI into Pokemon during battles so they have general programmed behavior based on their species but allow players to shout 4 specific moves only so they can use those commands when they see an opportune moment." -Staff 4

"That last one might be the closest one to the original concept of the game considering the in game story. But the other methods might be interesting so why don't you all develop all of them for now and we can pick later after we try everything out? For now, develop that last one as main candidate. But as an alternative number 2, use the telekenetic control for all movements in battle, and add in more options if you think of any then we can discuss after trying it out in testing.

And are the stuff toys ready for shipment?"-Ven

"Understood. And yes Sir, the Pokemon stuffed toys are produced already and ready for shipment. As you wanted, we made only a few of the Pokemon for now, namely Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Clefairy, Sandshrew, Dratini, Eevee and Vulpix. The rest are on a custom order basis. We already have contracts with several toy stores so they will be on sale a week after our game's release." -Staff3

"On another note, the base world of GTA has also been completed. But are you sure we will be allowing all sorts of crimes in this game Sir? Isn't this like a bad influence?" -Staff 1

"Not really, I think its even more important to make something like this as an outlet for peoples intrusive thoughts so they don't actually do it in real life. Let them do all that crap in game instead. But it's not like we will simply allow them to do anything. We still have police chasing them when they do crime in game so we can still portray consequences." -Ven

While Pokemon by Nintendo was originally released on a handheld device, Ven still chose PC so it has a more wider reach and to remove the hardware limitations. He thought of having a version for phones, but this world's phones aren't just there yet. So he held off on it for now.

But one thing Ven never noticed before was that this world didn't have social media platforms yet. No facebook or twitter, not even that old friendster thing. The ones they had were mostly forums or personal pages and blogs. Then again, it was still quite early in the timeline so Ven thought it just wasn't developed yet. Ven thought it was a little weird considering Cisco mentioned facebook in the first episode of Flash in the show yet it didn't exist here yet so maybe he checked some random CCPD database instead for Barry's choice in music.

But since he was planning to launch his fulldive VR OASIS anyway, he thought 'what if he created his own social media platform that will tie into his OASIS?'. 

So he pondered for some time and decided to create his own but had 2 separate page types. Each account can create a strictly social page and an alternative gamer page for those who will be playing in the OASIS. So he got his staff to get some programmers and created his own social media platform which he named 'DC World'. He thought it would be his own inside joke that no one would get unless they are from a world like his. He made it a bit more like Facebook since he didn't really like most of the limitations twitter had.

Since he already had the entire platform figured out in his head, coding the thing didn't take long so practically in a few short days it was already completed and available online quietly for the time being. He made all his employees make pages but told them not to put private information like addresses or credit cards or anything. He told his employees that it was mostly to connect people with likes, dislikes or hobbies. He made sure they understood that any personal information would not be posted to avoid being misused. 

The game page was only half unlocked since the VR wasn't even public yet. So for now, it had mostly categories for PC games. But in the future, it would contain their VR games or frequently visited planets in the OASIS.

While he didn't launch it officially or loudly, the site took off immediately considering how many people already worked for him. Even just internally speaking, his employees already saw the appeal of it and started making their own pages filled with stuff that interests them. But because people would normally have families, those employees told their families then it eventually spread. 

In a matter of weeks, DC World had thousands and thousands of people with their own pages. The moment it was discovered by one of the 'popular kids' in any of the high schools, it was bound to spread like wildfire. Even in Smallville, most of the people already created their pages. 

VGames also created an outgoing link in their website to connect to their DCWorld Page so most gamers already created their pages as well. While the rest of the world would take a bit of time before they get into this whole social media thing, at least the younger generations would already be in it. 

This actually made it a bit easier for people like Batman as well if they ever need to look a bit into some kids for example. If People like Batman needed to investigate about a certain kid, instead of doing the old fashioned way like actually going in person and talking to several people, its much more simple to check their profiles to see their hobbies and interests. While these do not contain personal information, its at least a bit of a preview into their personalities. 

Multiple small businesses also started making their own pages considering its much easier to create a page there instead of paying for their own domain and setting up a website that may or may not even get any attention.

To Ven, this was nothing but a minor thing since he was used to it but to the rest of the world here, this was a big step in terms of connecting with people using the internet. Since this was still relatively new, he didn't expect any followers yet apart from his own employees but apparently, most of the gaming community already followed him since his name was of course, already getting very popular for this new game industry boom.

"Guys this DCWorld is pretty interesting, before, we just post in forums like this but with DCWorld, its much more direct to friends and connecting to communities."

"Definitely! I already followed a lot of my communities like Gaming news and Tech today!"

"Like for real, I only signed up so I can see what the girl I like has for hobbies but damn it makes it fun to follow my own likes and interests as well."

"Same, I wanted to check out the hot guy from our school but now I can see his likes as well so I have something to talk about with him later!"

"It doesn't seem like celebrities have gotten on this thing yet so that's too bad but at least I can connect with my Fan group here. We made a group page for certain celebrities fans."

"You guys hear about the fake pages thing?"

"What fake page thing?"

"I saw an article saying some people tried to make pages for other people pretending to be them but somehow it gets deleted shortly after. Maybe they have some sort of team investigating the authenticity or something I dunno."

"Wow, its good that you can't make a page that's not you. Identity theft is a crime after all."

"Of course the creator himself would have a page already. I literally just tried to search for him and voilà! He's already got thousands of followers haha!"

"Oh cool! I just checked it out as well and he just posted his next game!"

"Are game devs supposed to be this hot? DAMN"

"How enviable, rich, successful AND good looking!"

"Ven! Let me have your babies!! DM me!!! LOL"

Ven's page consisted mostly of the games he had created. But since creating DCWorld, his first post was regarding the release date of Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green. It was a selfie of him holding a disc copy of the game and the caption included the release date.

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