Chapter 328 - 246: Launch! Devil RTS (Part 2)

Chapter 328: Chapter 246: Launch! Devil RTS (Part 2)

Spiky Shield could have killed them seven times over in three minutes.

The biggest difficulty of this "hail-a-hitter" mission was being careful not to permanently cripple these thugs.

"Hello, this concludes the service from Beastman Spike Shield. Please remember to leave a five-star review."

After a polite bow, Spiky Shield departed.

Scattered on the ground were the tightly bound "heroes" of the Panjiao Gang.

"We’re sorry, we were wrong! Please spare us just this once..."

"It had nothing to do with me! He made me do it! He said he wanted revenge on you!"

The thugs were a mess of snot and tears, busy betraying one another.

Another major reason Tieflings were so disliked is that they couldn’t even manage to be impressive villains.

The more impressive villains at least had fan clubs.

They’re all red.

A true, unprovoked cataclysm could only be Zog, never a Tiefling.

Old Mike ignored the pleas of these vermin and began to carry out his human resources duties.

He fished a pile of Scrolls out of his bag.

"You’re... offering us jobs?" one of the thugs asked, his eyes welling with tears as he saw a glimmer of hope.

"Something like that."

Old Mike then took out a box of Seal Paste, coated their fingers, and pressed them onto the Scrolls one by one.

To make it easier for the illiterate masses to sign Contracts, a thumbprint was an acceptable alternative to a signature.

"You’ve lost your chance at a normal job. But slave labor is still labor, so cheer up."

"What? Slaves?"

Building a large city quickly is difficult with just an eight-hour workday.

So, Zog’s plan was to provide good working conditions for good workers.

And Slave Level working conditions for Tieflings who didn’t want to live a proper life.

Sixteen hours a day, no days off all year. If you tried to slack off during hard labor, you got your choice of the whip, electrocution, or dripping wax. Pick your favorite.

Repeat offenders caught by an Adventurer Corps usually ended up as slaves.

During a transition from feudalism to capitalism, implementing slavery might sound like taking a step backward.

But if it works, use it.

Zog had no desire to build a massive prison just to feed and house incorrigible Tieflings, only for them to complain about prisoner abuse when they didn’t have new games to play.

「The next day, at Zog Group.」

Zog, clutching his new game design document, wriggled out from a pile of encyclopedias on Devils provided by the Church.

’In truth, this kind of research could have been completely delegated to my employees,’ Zog thought. ’However, as a Dragon producer, I should understand and control the project’s overall direction and some of the details. That way, I can justifiably meddle during the development process. Having suffered under bosses who knew nothing about the details, I don’t want to inflict the same harm on my own employees.’

Arriving at his office, he called out.

"Elsa, notify the game department. We’re having a meeting. There’s a new project."

"Understood. The report on the first week of Tiefling recruitment is on your desk."

Zog glanced over the report.

In Twin Tower City alone, 541 were recruited and 1,228 were captured in the first week.

’As expected of Tieflings,’ he thought. ’Their path dependency on crime is a bit severe. The number captured was more than double the number recruited.’

The first batch of workers with civil engineering experience had already boarded a ship for Deepwater City.

The rest, lacking relevant experience, needed to undergo job training first.

To that end, they had contracted many municipal engineering projects in Twin Tower City.

Repairing bridges, paving roads, clearing sewers, that sort of thing.

Just to get some practice.

The basic structure was two Zor architects leading fifteen to twenty Tieflings, forming a construction team.

Normally, a team shouldn’t be this large, but there weren’t enough Zor architects to go around.

Besides Twin Tower City, Tiefling recruitment would soon begin in other cities, at which point the Zor would be in even shorter supply.

It couldn’t be helped. The Zor were a rare people.

The good news was that most Tieflings lived in medium to large cities, so the recruitment drive wouldn’t have to cover too many locations.

That these temporary, inexperienced construction teams could get municipal contracts was, on one hand, due to the power of Zog’s reputation.

By drastically reducing the crime problems caused by Tieflings, Zog Group now had an excellent reputation in the city as a socially responsible corporation.

On the other hand, Zog wouldn’t subcontract the jobs he took on eight times over...

In short, the future of Deepwater City currently looked like a realm of vibrant growth and fierce competition.

「Half an hour later.」

The key leaders of the game department gathered in the conference room.

Zog turned on the slideshow. The title was a brand-new term.

Real-Time Strategy Game.

"What we’re going to develop next is a real-time strategy game with the war between Devils and Humans as its theme."

"Uhh..."

Uffie raised her hand.

"I know you’re about to ask what a real-time strategy game is. I’ll explain."

Real-time strategy games, or RTS, are a type of strategy game. They were once wildly popular, an absolutely mainstream genre in the gaming industry that produced many classic titles.

However, as the industry evolved, the genre was gradually phased out. The companies that had made their names on RTS were no longer in great shape.

The reason for the genre’s decline was actually very simple.

It was too hard.

When the barrier to entry for something is too high, it’s destined to have a small audience, especially when that thing is a game whose primary purpose is entertainment.

As a genre centered on one-on-one player combat, getting started in RTS requires a long learning period.

You had to learn all the different units, factions, and basic tactics, memorize a ton of hotkeys, and battle the AI for hundreds of hours. Then, thinking you’ve finally gotten the hang of it, you excitedly jump into matchmaking—only to get beaten so badly you can’t find your own mother.

It wasn’t like a shooter, where a newbie could occasionally get a lucky shot on an expert and was bound to get a kill eventually.

Nor was it a team-based multiplayer game where, upon losing, you could use the best method for reducing frustration: blaming your teammates.

"’We were winning, but my team threw the game.’"

"’Who let them get so fed?’"

"’I was so fed in the early game!’"

In an RTS, when you lose, there’s only one reason: you suck. Add to that the long period of torture before you get any positive feedback, and its decline was almost inevitable.

Fighting games were a similar brother in misfortune, but in those, you only had to control one character at a time, and rounds were short.

They were somewhat more approachable than the frantic-fingered real-time strategy games.

As a game, it was more of a sport than entertainment.

Still, Zog planned to launch this type of game in Feilin.

First, because playing games here wasn’t something people did in their fragmented spare time.

Right now, gaming was a rather "important" affair. People set aside large blocks of time to earnestly experience this interactive art form.

Second, the needs of a certain subset of competitive players were not being met.

There’s a type of player that just loves to compete in games. The fiercer the competition, the happier they are.

Toto, for example.

She could no longer find an outlet for her gaming talent.

She had tried speedrunning all sorts of games. Auto-battlers and card games were too casual by comparison.

This "God of Games" had been feeling very pent-up lately.

With a real-time strategy game, Zog wanted to open up the esports market.

Playing them yourself was mentally exhausting, but watching others play could be quite interesting.

Finally, there was one more point: RTS games were a fertile breeding ground for many other game genres.

So many games had evolved from its foundations.

Zog planned to include a map editor with this game, like a simplified game engine. It would allow players to create maps and code logic for objects on them—to make games within the game.

The development of the new game engine had already greatly simplified the difficulty of game production.

Magic logic could be implemented using graphical logic modules similar to "Blueprints."

You couldn’t code overly complex Magic with it, but it was sufficient for lower-level functions.

By including it in the editor, even people who didn’t know Magic would have the chance to create games.

Zog looked forward to the day when all sorts of new games would "sprout" from the player community.

Zog spent about twenty minutes explaining to everyone what a real-time strategy game was.

"I get it. It’s basically an auto-battler that isn’t turn-based, where you can control every piece individually," Uffie said.

"More or less."

Zog thought for a moment. ’That’s actually pretty close,’ he mused, ’just a bit more complicated.’

"In any case, I’m naming this project—"

The slide changed to the next page.

"Red Alert!"