Chapter 93

“Wouldn’t it be better to work together if you’re giving away 10% of the net profit for all that?”

I shook my head at Han Yuseong’s words, who was ranked first among cousins like a tongue in Hanbrush’s selection.

“It’s hard to work together when our ideas don’t align. I could see us parting ways eventually.”

“But you handed over all decision-making power to your sister, right? Still not good?”

“That’s why it’s even less appealing. I prefer someone who can handle the annoying tasks outside of game development for me.”

“True. If I’m going to do it myself, I might as well do it alone. And most of it can be solved if I put in the effort. It’s more economical to give incentives and use me rather than giving away 10% of the net profit.”

“Sometimes I wonder about the limits of Yuseong’s abilities.”

All that can be solved by putting in effort, huh?

Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for your life to go global rather than being under me?

Or not.

Anyway.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really like mobile games.

I don’t hate them. I just don’t like them.

There’s a huge difference between these two statements.

Hating them would mean I think mobile games ruined the gaming industry.

It would mean I think the gacha business model (BM) has caused significant harm to the gaming industry and that the existence of gacha games has prevented AAA games from being made.

On the other hand, not liking them simply means mobile games aren’t my preference.

It’s similar to not liking console games or MMORPGs.

Not liking MMORPGs doesn’t mean hating them, right?

It’s just not my taste.

That’s the level of my feelings towards mobile games.

I understand that games need to be light in gameplay and controls to be enjoyed easily outside, but it’s just not for me. Please, spare me.

That’s the feeling.

Originally, I dumped a truckload of money into “Fate/Grand Order” to offer tribute to Nasu Kinoko. I was far from hating mobile games.

In summary, I tried mobile games a few times but eventually quit because they didn’t suit my taste…

However, there was a part of mobile games that I liked.

It was the gacha.

You might wonder if liking gacha means liking the game, but what can I do? The part I enjoyed the most in mobile games was the gacha.

Of course, I didn’t like all aspects of gacha.

I believed complete gacha should be banned and disliked the absence of a ceiling.

There was one part of gacha that I liked.

The thrill of fighting against low odds and winning.

Victory was the key point.

It wasn’t about spending money.

While you inevitably spend money fighting those odds, with a monthly package and a systematic gacha plan, the expenditure wasn’t surprisingly high.

Even then, you could still fail miserably, but that’s part of the fun of gacha. Without that risk, the thrill of winning would be less.

If you think this is just the fun of gambling, you’re not entirely wrong, but it’s a bit different.

The principle of gambling is spread everywhere and is being utilized. Even SNS and short-form content aren’t different in mechanism from gambling.

So, can’t we think of gacha as a slightly evolved form of that?

No?

Actually, it’s true. Gacha is just gambling.

But what can I do? It’s fun.

As I said, I’m not an artist.

If I think something is good, I borrow it immediately. I don’t oppose it just because it might damage artistic integrity.

This time, it was gacha’s turn.

In my opinion, this game suited gacha the best.

There are various types of gacha games.

Users aren’t simple enough to spend money just because the BM is gacha.

There needs to be a reason to spend money, so game companies usually choose one of two options.

First, competition. This was the specialty of Alpha’s game company.

Simply put, it was a BM that made players stronger the more they spent.

The method I’ll introduce later also made players stronger by spending money, but the first method was fundamentally different.

You spend money to become stronger than your “opponent.” That was the core.

The strength of this method was that it could significantly increase the demand for spending. Humans are creatures who don’t hesitate to use any means for victory.

If the opponent spends 10 million won to become stronger? Then I’ll spend 10 million won too.

If they spend 100 million won to become stronger? Then I’ll spend 100 million won too.

It was like that.

Unreasonable strength that disrupts power balance?

Even better.

Whether you spend money in anger at the injustice or to show off the injustice, it all leads to spending.

Of course, the competitive gacha BM isn’t without weaknesses.

The weakness of competitive gacha BM is that it easily increases user fatigue.

It’s close to a chicken run BM. That’s why users of Alpha’s games often expressed feelings of being “squeezed dry.”

Inducing competition is psychologically and financially painful.

Yet, the fact that you can’t let go proves there’s a unique fun, but the problem is that this BM, which is easy to copy, is at its core.

It’s relatively easy to mass-produce similar genres? And it makes a lot of money?

There’s no reason for other game companies not to follow.

And that’s why Alpha’s is currently struggling.

It’s not for nothing that Alpha’s came to me to find a breakthrough.

Currently, this competitive gacha BM is in bad shape due to the fundamental fatigue caused by numerous similar games and BMs.

Existing users are gradually leaving…

But no new users are coming in? It was a common sight in games on the brink of collapse.

Well, at least you made a lot of money.

Let’s have a drink.

Next up, let’s talk about gacha BM.

Affection.

It’s a method that stimulates the player’s desire to own things and opens their wallets.

There’s been a lot of debate about who started it, but I’ll use <Fate/Grand Order>, which I found the most fun, as an example.

Objectively speaking, there was no reason to do gacha in <Fate/Grand Order>.

Competitive elements? None.

Ranking elements? Didn’t I just say there’s no competition? There’s nothing in the game that compares you to others.

Story? It’s easier if you have good characters, but it’s not like you can’t play without them.

In terms of actual gameplay, there was no reason to do gacha in <Fate/Grand Order>.

In fact, many people questioned whether this was even a game.

And yet, <Fate/Grand Order> became a monstrous game that earns a billion dollars every year.

How?

It was all thanks to ‘Nasu Kinoko’.

The original <Fate series> he created, the scenarios he participated in, made players feel affection for the characters in <Fate/Grand Order>.

It’s not like otaku buy figures to throw them away, right?

It was a similar context.

In short, this gacha BM that leverages affection was, to put it bluntly, a ‘digital figure’ business.

With that, I’ve roughly explained gacha BM.

So, if you ask which of these two gacha BMs you’d use…

I’d say both.

[Alphas: You’re crazy.]

Don’t worry, Alphas. I’m not planning to take over your territory.

After all, I could only make what I found fun.

I’m not interested in methods that provoke excessive competition… so I won’t go that route.

But I’d say it’s more like adding a spoonful of competitiveness.

Do you get what I mean?

[Alphas: You’re just crazy.]

Leaving the clingy Alphas (who was never like that) behind, I turned on my computer.

I had already sketched out the general plan, so all that was left was fine-tuning.

Using the information I gained from beta testing <Cosmic Osuary>, I added elements to the game.

After about a day, two games were registered on the store.

<Cosmic Osuary> and.

<Cosmic Origin>.

Two games, just like that.

*

Han Yoorim’s game finally launched, and countless people started downloading it.

Especially <Cosmic Osuary>, which saw a massive number of downloads, largely due to unintended widespread promotion.

<Cosmic Osuary> is a game where players need to host their own servers for multiplayer.

So, those who wanted to play multiplayer used Han Yoorim’s official server hosting service instead of hosting on their own computers…

And everyone was shocked.

<Hey, what’s this official hosting service?>

There’s no limit to server size, no cap on the number of users, and it’s not even paid?

Not to mention, there’s zero lag. Is this even technically possible?

-It’s not like this is the only thing Han Yoorim has done in her games.

-Honestly, the cloud service tech alone is unreal. Forget everything else, how did she even solve the packet issue? It’s not like Han Yoorim rolled out some ultra-high-performance network worldwide.

Adopting this player-hosted server model is usually about cost-saving and resource distribution for game companies.

So, even when Han Yoorim was beta testing <Cosmic Osuary>, there were many questions like:

Wait, if you’ve implemented cloud service tech at this level, wouldn’t it be a hundred times better to just go online?

Why the player-hosted server model?

Of course, all those questions were answered when <Cosmic Origin> was released.

Ah.

So, she was planning to release an online game too?

Confirmed.

“Gacha games are a bit iffy.”

Ga Joon-sik muttered as he downloaded <Cosmic Origin>.

Ga Joon-sik, who had been part of the vanguard in pay-to-win RPG games, didn’t mind spending money on games, but he wasn’t a fan of gacha games.

It was simply a matter of interest. He wasn’t the type to particularly like figures.

<ㅇㅇ님이 10000원 기부> (User ㅇㅇ donated 10,000 won)

-So, are you not gonna play?

“Of course, I’ll play.”

Not playing a trending game on the streaming scene was like saying you wanted to fall behind.

Besides, he had already uploaded a lot of <Cosmic Osuary> content on MTube during the beta test, so now it was <Cosmic Origin>’s turn.

Ga Joon-sik casually started the game.

Really casually. Like, gacha games are all the same, right?

Forgetting for a moment that the person who made this game was Han Yoorim.