Chapter 753: A New Invitation

This game invitation felt somewhat familiar, resembling the Pain Game from the very start of this stage.

The invitation for the Pain Game had restricted the game type to a choice of Distribution, Selection, or Elimination, with a free choice of type but the theme fixed to Pain. Xu Yiheng had ultimately chosen Selection-type, likely because that category offered greater freedom, neither as safe as Distribution-type nor as extreme as Elimination-type.

His final winning bid had come to a staggering 1.19 million.

A Single Word to Settle a Case had also been secured through bidding, with a final winning bid of 320,000 plus the entirety of the Imitator's own game earnings.

As for the Jury Game and Trust Marketplace, since Lin Sizhi hadn't qualified for either, he had no way of confirming whether they'd been secured through bidding at all, let alone what the final bids had been.

He could only make a rough estimate based on the bidding patterns from the Pain Game and A Single Word to Settle a Case.

Selection-type games tended to command noticeably higher bids, since they involved more participating players and offered more room to manipulate the rules for excess profit.

Following that logic, this Selection-type game's required bid probably wouldn't exceed 1 million again, especially given how badly things had ended for Xu Yiheng.

An Imitator who spent too much on bidding effectively boxed themselves in: to recoup the cost, they'd need to design something more extreme, which in turn carried unnecessary risk to themselves.

Even so, the average winning bid was still unlikely to fall below 500,000. Xu Yiheng might be dead, but the New World surely still had no shortage of Imitators willing to bid.

After all, the Pain Game's bidding hadn't started at 1.19 million either. It had climbed there through several Imitators bidding against one another. Xu Yiheng was gone, but the other Imitators willing to bid remained.

Even so, judging from the details of this particular invitation, the competition among Imitators this time didn't seem to be entirely fair either.

Lin Sizhi went back through Wei Yinzhang's sketches once more, looking for material suitable for a Selection-type game.

The main question he needed to work through now was how much visa time to bid, and, once he'd successfully won the bid, what standard to use for selecting players.

Four days later, in the morning.

[Good morning, everyone.]

[The Gallery will open in 1 hour.]

[The name of this game is Endorsement Game. The game's objective is Player Selection.]

[This game draws players from 16 communities, totalling 112 players.]

[Each community may send 7 players to participate, under the following rules:]

[1. Participating players must be fixed at 3 men and 4 women.]

[2. There is 1 slot for voluntary participation.]

[3. Remaining slots will be filled by sorting players by 'number of games participated in, from fewest to most' (participation counts from the first stage will be halved).]

[4. If gender requirements are not met, the list of required participants will be automatically adjusted.]

[5. It is preferable to include one male player with 'outstanding physical appearance.']

[Please confirm your voluntary participants as soon as possible and prepare yourselves.]

A one-hour countdown appeared on the large screen.

Huang Shengjie looked surprised. "Huh, this Selection-type game has a lot of conditions attached to it!"

Geng Yuxia asked, somewhat reflexively, "What does 'automatically adjust the list of required participants' mean?"

Under rule 3, players with fewer game participations were more likely to be selected. In the second stage, Geng Yuxia had participated in relatively few games, so under this rule she would very likely be pulled into the game.

But if the gender requirement genuinely couldn't be met with the initial selection, she might end up excluded, which would be good news for her. Her visa time was still comfortable for now, and given that Selection-type games carried some risk of death, avoiding entry was preferable if possible.

Yao Yuan's brow furrowed. "Taken at face value, the final roster has to be exactly 3 men and 4 women, no exceptions.

"They'll first sort the community by 'games participated in, from fewest to most,' select the bottom 7, and then adjust from there.

"Say the initial list came out to 4 men and 3 women. The man with the highest participation count among those 4 would get bumped, and they'd move up the list to find one more woman, bringing it back to 3 men and 4 women.

"The same logic applies in reverse if women are overrepresented.

"There's also the one voluntary slot, which carries no gender restriction, so we could use it to replace a same-gender player if needed.

"And ideally, one of the three men should have a notably attractive appearance. That line in the invitation isn't a hard requirement, but there will presumably be some benefit tied to it once inside the game.

"If the forced-selection list already includes someone like that, it doesn't matter much, and we can use our voluntary slot to bring in a stronger core player to lead the group.

"If not, it gets more complicated, and we'll need to weigh trade-offs between a strong 'team lead' and a good-looking male player."

Lu Bingjun thought it over carefully. "Alright, let's first work out a preliminary roster based on everyone's game participation counts.

"Yao Yuan, do you still remember how many games everyone played during the first stage?"

Yao Yuan had already grabbed paper and pen and begun a rough tally. "Let me work through it from the start. It'll take a bit of time."

Lu Bingjun nodded. "That's fine, we have time. No need to rush."

Based on the typical frequency of one game per month, Community 2's veteran players had likely participated in an average of around 3 games during the first stage. Of course, someone like Lu Bingjun, who had already served as a core game player back then, likely had a higher count.

Lu Qi found herself holding onto a bit of wishful hope, thinking she might not be selected. Although she'd only joined during the second stage, she'd already participated in 3 games: the Prison Factory, the Jury Game, and Trust Marketplace. She hadn't originally intended to enter the latter two at all, practically dragged into both.

Now, though, that history worked in her favour. On the selection list, she might be less likely to be picked than veteran players who'd only participated once during the second stage, since first-stage game counts would be halved in the calculation.

Yao Yuan finished his initial tally for Community 2's veteran and newer players, then turned to Lin Sizhi, Shen Bowen, and Zhang Yan.

"How many games did each of you participate in during the first stage?"

Lin Sizhi didn't answer directly. "A lot. It shouldn't come down to me."

Shen Bowen said, "3 times."

Zhang Yan added, "4 in the first stage, 3 in the second."

None of this information had been on Yao Yuan's records before. He quickly ran the numbers and arrived at a conclusion.

"Based on what we have now, counting to one decimal place, the bottom 7 by participation count should be:

"He Qinyun (2.5), Geng Yuxia (2.5), Shen Bowen (2.5), Lu Qi (3), Qin Cheng (3), Zheng Chunhua (3.5), Zhou Wanlin (3.5).

"After that come Yao Yuan and Lu Bingjun. Even though we've each only played one game in the second stage, our first-stage counts were both 6, so our totals come out to 4 each."