09 - How to make money

After the trailer was released, hype for Residual Devil broke out again. People who didn't even know about this college contest started going to the contest page to find this game called Residual Devil.

As Rank F Players was one of the largest categories of players in the world, second only to Rank E players, the target audience of this game was very large. F-Rank players were sending the game to their F-Rank friends, and even some E-Rank players who found out about the game started testing it and recommending it to their E-Rank friends, or even the F-Ranks that were still on the lower end of the spectrum.

Unfortunately for Rank E players, the development Residual Devil gave to skills was only slightly better than normal Rank E games, but because of how interesting the game was, even Rank E players began trying it out in droves.

Unlike F-Rank players, E-Rank players already had a total amount of Mana between 2 Mana Units and up to 10 Mana Units, which meant that they could play Residual Devil for up to 10 Hours if they felt the game was interesting. But of course, since Residual Devil didn't provide much of a big improvement for them, and the game only had 1 hour of content, most Rank E players had played the game for a maximum of 6 hours before returning to playing the other Rank E games that they were used to playing.

The advantage that Rank E games provided players was that these games could consume more Mana Units per hour, which amplified the speed of upgrade. While the same game at Rank F would consume 1 Mana Unit per hour, if that game was Rank E it would consume 2 Mana Units per hour, which would double the speed at which Rank E Players would learn the skills of that game.

Of course, as Gabe discovered earlier, if the game was really good, the amount of Mana it might consume could also increase, but for that to happen, players had to have a very strong attachment to the game, something that hardly a game achieved. It would be even harder to ask an F Rank Developer to make a game that players would have such strong feelings for.

So, even if say Residual Devil's improvement was 1 point per hour, because of the emotion that the game caused in the player even though it only costs 1 Mana Unit per hour, for a Rank E player to play a Rank E Game, that costs 2 Mana Units per hour, but with the better improvement than the other Rank F games, 1 points is already much more profitable than other Rank E Games.

But Gabe wasn't worrying about the potential Rank E players he was missing out on for now, as just the Rank F players were more than enough for him.

After Gabe finished his lunch, it had been 3 hours since the trailer had been released. Using the management app for the games he uploaded, Gabe looked on his phone and saw that the Residual Devil download had gone up from 1,000 Downloads when he released the trailer to 2,200 downloads, moving the game up from 5th place in the University Contest to second place!

The difference between downloads for Residual Devil and Spear Training was only 600 downloads now, as the other game was at 2800 downloads. But while Spear Training had become first available for download almost 15 days ago, Residual Devil: Village was available approximately 24 hours ago!

As the players had recently downloaded the game, Gabe didn't pay attention to the average game time and accumulated mana, as to have accurate data on this he would need to wait a few more hours. But the game's growth was a great sign for him.

During the morning, developing the game trailer was not the only thing he had done, as most of the things in the trailer were ready. What took him the longest to do were the scenarios, taking about an hour to make all the scenarios that appeared in the trailer. As for the characters, he just used some illusions, which weren't real entities, as he wouldn't have enough time to make them all, and he then used the other remaining hours just to make the simple characters.

Now that the trailer has been released, Gabe had yet to make Chapter 1 of the game.

He had already separated the game into chapters, the first chapter being the prologue story from before Ethan arrived in the village until the moment the player entered the castle the first time he was kidnapped by Karl Heisenberg.

As what he would have to add would be more relevant to the story than in terms of combat, this was an easier task, so Gabe promised that Chapter 01 would be available tomorrow.

"I think I'll only need about 3 hours to develop the scenarios for Chapter 01, program the NPCs that will appear, and configure the battles that the players will have," Gabe said as he washed the dishes from the meal he made. "I'm also going to need to earn some money…"

Looking around the small room he called home, mostly at the near empty food cupboards, the previous Gabe skipping money on food and hygiene to spend it all on games was making his current environment very uninhabitable.

"How can I make money?" Gabe wondered. "The contest has a prize of $10,000 for the best game, which I'll probably win, but I'll still have to wait another week for the contest to end. Then it's another week for the judges to decide which game is the best... Two weeks living in these conditions will not be comfortable…

"The only way I can make money is by either selling stuff in Residual Devil for real money, or I can use my Developer name to get money elsewhere... like a livestream… But a livestream might not work in the short-term, since I still would have to build an audience, right?!"

Gabe was quite stumped. He wasn't too worried about living a life of luxury, as he didn't even have that much luxury in his other life, but living in such precarious conditions wasn't something he wanted either.

"The Developer name I use is EA. Although the company that had that name in my other life was a money-sucking company, the symbology of the name is the best I've ever seen. Electronic Arts, nothing describes video games better than that name, since for me, there is no art more interesting than video games, which are electronic… But I didn't imagine that I would consider using the bad aspects of this company, something that would suck the players for every cent they had. I don't think that would be good for my future…" Gabe quickly dismissed this idea. As much as he knew that this would be quite advantageous to make money, he would lose a lot of credibility with such greed.

"Maybe I can sell a Collector's Edition of the game? This Collector's Edition might add other clothes for Ethan, some pendants for weapons, and maybe a nicer backpack to put the items in. As long as I say that this Collector's Edition only makes items available aesthetically without any in-game advantage I don't think that will be a problem." Gabe thought rather deeply about it.

As the university contest did not prohibit games from raising money, this would not be a problem for Gabe, but usually Developers made the games free, as this would give the game more chance of becoming famous.

With his plan of action already decided, Gabe got excited and started developing these cosmetic items for players.

Since the game was in first person, since it was in virtual reality, Gabe put emphasis on making some custom gloves and jackets for Ethan, as well as customizing the layout of the inventory with other colors and styles in addition to the pendants he thought of for the weapons. The amount of items he developed was around 30, providing a wide variety of customizations for players to use however they wanted.

Gabe even made items that were fairly girly, as he knew the game also had a lot of female gamers, who, despite the items not being much of a match for Ethan, would enjoy having pink weapons and flowery clothing.

The time taken to develop this stuff was no more than 30 minutes, and the price Gabe decided to put on the package was $3.

Along with the Collector's Edition, Gabe also made a large disclaimer saying that this was just a way for players to show support for the game to help the Developer financially, and that anyone who didn't purchase the pack would get the same story experience and skill development as any other player.

With the DLC package ready, Gabe went back to focusing on making Chapter 01, adding more intensity to the horror and battle parts to affect players' emotions as much as possible and increasing the playtime, thus ensuring that the player was more involved with the story and learned more of the weapon skills.

While in Gabe's previous world this "Chapter 01" he set aside could be played in roughly 1 hour by an experienced player, in this world Gabe made this experience last 3 to 4 hours. Thus, a Rank F player with only 1 to 2 Mana Units would hardly be able to finish the story in just one day, thus giving more value to the story. Of course, in order to extend the story time so much, Gabe had to greatly increase the size of the map, making the size ratio closer to reality than in the original game.

In order for the game not to be just the player walking long distances, Gabe had to think of things to add along the way, such as small puzzles, some zombies in places they wouldn't be in the original game, plus a side story that the player could do to understand more about the village.

Gabe thought he would only need 3 hours to make this chapter, but with the extra parts he added in addition to making the map a little bigger than he planned, he spent 4 hours developing this chapter.

"It's finally done," Gabe said with satisfaction as he looked at the world he was building.

Initially he was worried about the amount of Mana he would spend to develop Chapter 01, as for such a large and detailed world he would need at least 1200 Mana Units, but as he developed it, Gabe realized that he was getting more Mana than what he was spending! Even after he spent 1,500 Mana Units on Chapter 01 and a little over 100 Mana Units to make the Collector's Edition, Gabe still had over 4,000 Mana Units available.

"With this Mana I can already develop Chapter 02 completely!" Gabe was shocked at how fast he was getting Mana. He had figured the game would be successful, but not that successful!

For a Rank F Developer to reach Rank E, they would need to have a total of 1,000 Mana Units, which would be equivalent to 100,000 Mana Units collected in games. That's why other Game Developers preferred to make several games and collect all the Mana from that game than to focus on developing a single game and risk losing it, since that way they would have a guarantee that they would reach Rank E.

Gabe, on the other hand, saw things in another way. Just with the Demo of the game he had received 1,000 Units of Mana, but after the launch of the trailer for the first chapter, the Hype that the game received was enough to make him receive another 4,000 Units of Mana. Imagine how much Mana he might receive when the game had already launched Chapter 01, or even by Chapter 05?!

"While other Developers need a few years to reach Rank E, I believe that in a few months I will already be Rank E thanks to Residual Devil!" Gabe thought excitedly.

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