10 - On the University Radar

As Gabe completed the details of Chapter 01, in an office at Harrington University's Developers Course a man in his 60s was sitting in front of a computer as he looked at the list of games for the contest they were running. That man was David Brown, the Dean of the Developers Course. Every year what he liked to do the most was to see the games of the university students in search of some Developer with great potential, since theoretically the students should put the greatest possible effort into making these games, since that was what would define whether they would graduate or not.

As he had already seen the 10 games with the highest number of downloads and determined that the Developers who made these games had held the top ten ranks since two days ago, David decided to look at the games with the fewest downloads, since perhaps despite the game being little known, they had some potential.

"Unfortunately nothing interesting came up…" David sighed as he looked at the list of games.

The vast majority of the games were just copies of the sample games that the teachers distributed for students to get ideas, or even copies of the games that were in the top 10, which were already copies of other well-known Developers' games.

Thinking that nothing interesting would come up, David was ready to close the screen, until he noticed something while looking at the list of Developers participating in this contest.

"That boy Howard hasn't posted his game yet?" David asked himself, a little conflicted, as part of him was disappointed that time was already running out and the kid hadn't seemed to post his game yet, while on the other hand, he had a bit of anticipation for what this kid would post.

Howard was one of the most talented kids among the Developers that year, with a total base Mana of 100 Units. With the time he had available, a game he could develop in 10 days could use 1,000 Units of Mana, unlike someone with 30 Mana Units that could only make a game with maximum 300 Mana Units.

Of course, Howard's talent wasn't just in the total amount of Mana he had, since according to the reports David read, he also had a great creation ability, being able to make monsters and scenarios in a much shorter time than 99% of the other students. If this boy had good creativity, David was sure that Howard would be the student with the greatest chance of being able to meet his expectation to develop something innovative.

Unfortunately, from what the teachers observed, this student's creativity was only average. He was good at developing what was asked of him, but he had a hard time coming up with new things.

Looking at the list of candidates, David was surprised to see that Howard had apparently submitted his game 24 hours ago!

"He sent the game 24 hours ago and I can't find the game in the list?" David wondered, confused, and started looking for the game sent in by Howard.

This time he made sure he paid attention to it. As one of the professors at Harrington University, David had access to the Developers' name, so he could see what the name of the Developer who made the game was, as well as the stage name the Developer decided to use.

But despite looking at the long list of over 100 games, David was already scrolled up to the top 15 and still hadn't found Howard's name.

"It's not possible for the game he made to be in the top 15 in just 24 hours, right?" David wondered in confusion as he watched closely. "The number 15 is not him, nor the number 14, nor the 13…"

He calmly looked at each of the Developers up to the Top 5 and did not find Howard's name, making him go back to the list with the names of all the Developers and make sure that he had really published his game.

"He actually published this…" David frowned and decided to look at the top of the list.

[Spear Throwing Training - Nexus Gaming (Jacob Thompson) - 2831 Downloads.]

[Residual Devil Village - Eletronic Arts (Gabriel Howard) - 2379 Downloads.]

[…]

David was so shocked, he had to rub his eyes.

"Howard's game is in the Top 2 in just 24 hours?!" David screamed in fright.

Knowing for sure that this game was by Gabe Howard and that it was only published 24 hours ago, David was really shocked.

"What is it about this game that's so attractive to players? It's been a while since I've seen an F Rank Developer make a game that grew a following this fast, except if they used external promotions to do so?" David wondered suspiciously.

Opening the game page, David saw that it was a Zombies game with a slightly scary aesthetic, which made him raise an eyebrow.

"So he decided to affect the players' emotions… It looks like he got the hint," he said as a smile appeared.

He was responsible for tipping the Developers at the end of the letter that repetitive movements aren't the only way to make players develop their skills. As a C Rank Developer, David was already aware of a recent discovery by mankind, that emotions are also responsible for influencing the amount of knowledge players received from training while playing games. But this kind of information was normally not transmitted openly to novice Developers, as the Alliance used it to test Developers and try to find talent among them, making this information common only among Developers Rank E and above.

Of course, even though Developers with higher Ranks knew this information, humanity faced the difficulty of how to apply it. Many developers still didn't understand how games could induce emotion in the players, so the vast majority of developers just preferred to make games that bring a little happiness to the players while still doing the standard model of training in games.

But looking at the game cover on the store page and the tags the game had, which included the tag "Horror", David was shocked at the idea Gabe had come across.

"This is a genius way to use player emotion!" David said as he looked at the pictures with the Zombies. "Making players afraid of monsters is a great way to induce emotion, making their training more effective!"

As David scrolled down the page, he noticed something that confused him. "A video? What is this about?"

Watching the strange video being streamed, David started to watch it curiously.

[Eminent ones, hear our voices, united in reverence.]

The image of the group of people dressed in peasant clothes praying hand in hand was something quite macabre for the players, but David's eyes were startled for another reason.

"What a realistic human!" he said in shock as he paused the video to take a closer look.

"Hell, with the level of detail he put into these humans, it's understandable that it took him so long to publish the game, as it must have taken him at least 10 days just to get these people developed!" David said in amazement.

Suddenly, when the scene changed to the view of the village with the view of the castle in the background, David had to pause the video again and admire the detail that this map had.

"How much Mana was spent to make this world?" he wondered.

But when the trailer reached the 45 second mark David was really shocked. On screen were at least 10 different Zombies, all of which were extremely detailed, to a degree that David was blown away.

"Is this something an F Rank Developer would be able to do?" David wondered, not knowing what to say. The level of detail on these Zombies was so high that even he believed he would need at least 5,000 Mana Units of trial and error before he could make a zombie as realistic as one of these, and that's considering he would be making a Zombie with Rank F strength. If he were to make a zombie like that with Rank C strength, that value would be multiplied several times! And this was with the experience he already has from having played dozens, if not hundreds of games until he reached Rank C.

Now to see a Developer Rank F make a Zombie as realistic as this in just 20 days, with a maximum of 2,000 Mana Units available, and he still made humans as well in addition to a scenery as beautiful as he did… Even if he let an ordinary Rank F Developer with 10,000 Mana Units take this on in 20 days it would be almost impossible for a Developer to manage to do this!

David's shock was only heightened when he saw the other species of monsters appearing in the trailer, be it the giant Zombie with a big hammer, or the woman who looked like a vampire. Even that woman with the cut mouth who looked like she could control insects, each of these monster species was enough to make an F Rank Developer busy for months, but Howard had done it in just 20 days…

When David finished watching that video, he realized there was something he hadn't noticed.

"Was this video telling a story?!"

He was so focused on the quality of modeling that he didn't even notice that this video was telling a story!

Watching it again, David felt his heart race, thinking about how great Howard's idea was to make a trailer telling a story about his game to entice players to download it!

"Such an interesting story, even I'm in the mood to try it now! I don't think I've seen anything this interesting even in books made by the most renowned authors in the world, but Howard is making it into a game? Will it even be this good?"

David was uncertain. But sensing how excited he was to try the game made by Howard, David figured that at least his student was doing something right with it, so as a good Dean he should try this game with great enthusiasm!

'As soon as I finish trying this game and evaluating it I should take it to the director of the University. Surely she will be happy to see that this was made by one of our students! Perhaps we can even help promote this, as it will raise the image of our University!' David thought excitedly as he set the game to download and turned on his Virtual Reality Headset.

Despite being a Game Developer, he still needed a Headset to play, but unlike Players, as a Game Developer Rank C, he had tens of thousands of Mana to enjoy games with, so while most Players could only play for 2 hours on maximum, David had all the time in the world to enjoy the game and analyze it perfectly.

—

Gabe didn't know it, but his game had attracted the attention of one of the top Game Developers in his city, while the Game Developer at the absolute top would soon find out about it too.

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