Chapter 122: Revved Up

Usually, videogames had a tendency to make most of their lifetime sales within the first few weeks to the first month of its launch.

The same could be said for [Crashout: Sin City], a game whose sales--especially on AppSphere--had tanked considerably after the first month.

In fact, if not for the guys supporting the game with new content every month, the chances that it would’ve been long buried into the algorithm wasn’t farfetched.

At the same time, it had to be said that it being a feature complete game with no whiff of microtransactions had truly helped to solidify its sales.

Unsurprisingly, these practices also meant that Crashout Interactive had earned a lot of goodwill from their small community of players, all of whom had been willing to open their wallets to support their next game.

True to that effect, when [Gothic Survivors] launched--a game that embodied the addictive gacha-mechanic to a staggering fault but without the microtransactions--it was only natural that these loyal community of a few thousand gamers would be that much more willing to support their game.

Not just with their wallets, but also via recommendations to the gaming community as a whole.

Especially when these devs were teens whom were just fresh out of high school. Honestly, it made for a nice conversation starter, making it even more easy to garner people’s interest with it.

It was also why, there had been a steady increase in sales as the game continued to spread by word of mouth... enough that it soon landed in the purview of streamers.

Streamers whom were often looking for low-investment and low-attention span games that would allow them balance their focus between their audience and what they were streaming.

And at first, it had started with the smaller streamers who only had a couple viewers in the low to high tens. Naturally, clips were made, each one gaining a couple hundred to a few thousand views.

Yet, by the end of the week, more and more streamers joined on the bandwagon, some these streamers already having a loyal community of a couple hundred viewers.

Before long, the domino-effect started happening... or rather, it had already been triggered, only that it was faster this time.

Before the gang knew what to make of it, [Gothic Survivors] landed in the hands of some of the biggest streamers whose content were geared solely towards gaming.

Those were the screenshots that Aiden’s buddies had sent to him, hence the look of utter disbelief on his features.

"Champ?" Richard called out to his son when he noticed his eyes glued to his phone with a stunned gaze.

"You good?" the man asked with a hint of concern in his tone.

In response, Aiden simply angled his phone’s screen over to his Pops, the man walking over to check what had his son so bewildered.

No sooner had he seen it as well, his eyebrows jumped in sync with widened eyes, the realization and understanding dawning on him in sync.

[Gothic Survivors] had gone viral!

And the days that followed after was most indicative of this.

Unsurprisingly, the videos and shorts these big streamers made and uploaded onto ViewTube, amongst several other social media platforms, got a whole lot of positive reception.

Some were roughly in the high hundred-thousand marks, while some managed to get over a million views.

Suddenly, what Theo had reviewed just last week to be a concurrent player count of just 10K+ players, had steadily skyrocketed to over 70K+.

That was far higher than [Crashout: Sin City’s] peak concurrent count of 40K+ players.

One had to note that these numbers were only on Portal as well, which was unindicative of the total playerbase count.

Afterall, not only was there AppSphere to factor into consideration, but there was also the fact that many gamers would actually buy the game itself, only to boot it up once and never play it again.

Then there were the gamers whom would simply toss it into their never-ending backlog of games with ’plans’ to ’eventually’ play it at some point or the other.

And this wasn’t even inclusive of the general FOMO that came from gamers whom weren’t all that inclined towards games of these kind, but simply wanted to try out the newest goodie on the block because everyone else seemed to be doing so.

Safe to say, for as questionable as some of their reasons might be, gamers began purchasing [Gothic Survivors’] en masse.

One that was further bolstered by its ultra-low entry $4.99 price point when compared to several other indie givings in the industry.

Sales racked up so quickly following that, the gang was honestly flabbergasted beyond measure as their prior combined sales of 112K+ across both AppSphere and Portal looked rather cute in comparison to the current 650K+ in combined sales.

It was even more maddening that sales on Portal began to edge ahead that of AppSphere’s, by about 5%, once again solidifying that the PC gaming market had the largest playerbase of gamers.

With this staggering success, came reviews and coverage from several gaming outlets and media companies.

At the same time, these outlets found themselves analyzing just why [Gothic Survivors] became the hit that it was.

Obviously, they could simply point fingers to the streamers that popularized it and call it a day.

However, it wouldn’t explain how the game had managed to maintain the concurrent player count that had now dropped from its former 70K+ but had steadied around 55K+ over the course of the past few days.

The answer to that question however, came as quickly as they were asked.

A bargain price for value, one that offered dozens of hours of replay value with zero predatory microtransactions or loot boxes.

An automatic auto-attack feature that let players focus entirely on positioning, dodging, and picking upgrades to create a steady dopamine loop of clearing massive enemy hordes.

Bite-sized runs tightly paced at 15 to 30 minutes, making it easy to play ’Just one more run.’

Constantly drip-fed progression, with every run--winning or losing--unlocking new characters, weapons, hidden combinations, and stages to give players a permanent sense of growth.

Probably the one that had stuck with these analysts the most, was that Crashout Interactive had essentially popularized and revitalized an old school cult genre--at least in their alternate rendition of earth;

The bullet-heaven et survivor-like genre.

This was all to say, that it didn’t take long before some of these outlets began sending mails to Crashout Interactive for an interview.

Afterall, though they’d dug up enough information to know that six youths were the ones behind it, they at least wanted to get some sense of insight into how they’d managed to come up with it.

Besides, it was the time of interview that could do quite well if they positioned it right and rode on the current hype of the game.

Unfortunately, the gang had refused each and every one of these interviews.

It would a be a lie to say they weren’t tempted to get their five minutes of fame in the spotlight... but the interesting thing was that they had once, and they’d realized it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Instead, they’d realized they’d rather spend that time working on the next game or pushing towards their individual goals.

As long as they continued to cultivate their good relationship with their budding community and continued to make good games, that was all that really mattered they believed.

In any case, Aiden had woken up far earlier than he usually would today as he quietly walked down the stairs.

Glancing over to the digital clock in the living room which read 2:47am, the young chap stealthily made his way into the corridor that led into his Pop’s room.

In his field of vision was his system, the translucent green panel reflecting his most recent stats.

-

[Aiden North] – Life Points – [10.065]

⸢Stats

› Mind — S

› Strength — B+

› Stamina — B+

› Agility — B+

› Charm — A-

⸢Skills

› {Type Designing - A}, {Digital Illustration - A}, {Drawing - A}, {Cooking - A}, {Brewing - A}, {Singing - I}, {Dancing - I}, {Writing - I}, {Lettering - I}, {Driving - N}, {Programming - I}, {Riding - N}, {Video Editing - I}.

⸢Special Skills

› {Insight}, {Midas Touch}.

⸢Titles

› {Expand}

⸢Achievements

› {Expand}

⸢Shop

› Browse Catalogue.

⸢Daily Quests

› {Expand}

⸢Exclusive Quests

› {None}

⸢Time-limited Quests

› {Expand}

-

⸢FAQ⸥

-

Considering he’d previously had 4.065LPs in total, one that had been bolstered by the past three weeks and three days by his daily quests, that was what accounted for the current 10.065LPs that he had.

Quietly slipping into his Pops room, the man out like a log of wood after another stressful day at work despite all the warnings he’d gotten from the doctor, Aiden casually tugged on {Midas Touch}.

-

› {Richard North} – [7.5 LP].

└ Heal?

-

Clearly surprised to see the amount drop by a couple LPs, Aiden didn’t bother thinking too much as he went ahead with it.

Then, upon watching the familiar green hue exude over from him to encompass his Pops, only to vanish a minute after, he immediately pulled up the man’s stats to assess it again.

-

[Richard North]

⸢Stats

› Mind — C+

› Strength — B+

› Stamina — B+

› Agility — B+

› Charm — B+

⸢Skills

› {Architecture - I}, {Construction - A}, {Driving - I}, {Cooking - I}, {Brewing - N}.

-

With a quiet but genuinely relieved sigh, Aiden quietly made his way out.

Now that his Pops was in tip-top shape once more, he could finally return to utilizing his LPs as he’d planned for all his prior goals.

Added to that, today was the day he’d finally be receiving all 25,000 units of his beverage from SlurpPAK and the youth couldn’t be more revved up to see how it would perform once it hit the market.