Chapter 16: The Consequences of Popularity

The subdivision Mike lived in had a lot of unclaimed, undeveloped areas. Most of them were filled with four-foot stray grasses and trees, which showed how unattended they were. People would usually mistake them as part of a farmland, which was natural as there were always rice paddies in spots that ran from a few barangays. Though inquiring about them let him learn that the place he chose doesn't have any owners.

So, he goes to the relevant offices for it for the building permits and reclamation of land, and then reaches out to a construction firm so they can start building his company. He used twelve million pesos, which was enough to build something that met his standard. The land in this place was quite cheap, and commissioning a new building was half the price compared to a metropolitan city like Manila.

That used up the majority of the wealth he got from that huge donation to CGA, though it still wasn't enough. The company wasn't built yet, so his power hadn't recognized the potential profits from its establishment, which meant it didn't give him any boosts, nor had it registered that any of his product was at a loss.

"The company will take at least two or three months before it's done. I'll have to wait that long before I can start recruiting..."

The remaining cash was spent on his new voice-over studio in QC. Spending all of the fifteen million pesos he got from that sudden surge of donation. This took him a few days arranging for all of this.

It still wasn't enough. Just when he was done spending anything he earned from CGA, he was suddenly smacked by another batch of big donations.

"400,000!?'

He was speechless. He wondered just who these rich people were who dropped him hundreds and thousands of dollars until they reached that amount. Sensing the lack of improvement of his skills from CGA, he knew that these mysterious donators were at fault.

"Why is this happening? Have they not read my notice at the start of the game!"

He decided to spend what he got that day, adding another thirteen million to the budget for the construction of his company, along with some additional requirements for them. A few hours after he does that, he suddenly receives a call from his bank account provider, telling him about suspicious activities on his account.

Thankfully, he managed to clear it up. If his bank information had been frozen, it wouldn't even be considered a loss from any of his games, as he hadn't used any at all on the operation of his game. Most of it was for the expenses on equipment for his new voice-over studio and the preparation for building his company near his home. So long as it wasn't built yet, his power wouldn't consider it.

He couldn't afford to let the relevant party freeze his account. That would be detrimental without any benefits to himself.

"... Really, just where did these donations come from?" He wondered to himself while nursing his forehead.

____________________

Dreamy's stream has attracted the attention of avid gacha gamers. Then these gacha gamers joined the CGA server, tried the game, and were so mesmerized that they went through their respective forums dedicated to gacha games so they could recommend it. This slowly spread the name of Cute Girls Academy to the internet until it reached a few relevant people for it.

One of those people was a Tremble streamer who usually streamed different gacha games and recommended what he considered good ones. He had at least five hundred thousand followers, and he was known to prowl through many gacha game communities. This guy was called Doctor_Andy. His main gacha game was Archbishop, a popular tactical RPG/tower defense gacha game created in China.

He coincidentally learned about this game after his usual lurking in some of the gacha communities he secretly joined. Seeing the clips these people recommending this game had attached along with their posts, Andy was intrigued and decided to join the server. He was utterly baffled the next day when he learned that it was only an indie company who made it.

"This quality... by only a person!?"

Intrigued, Andy decided he wanted to support the developer in his own way.

"I have to stream it!"

And so, he opened his Tremble account and then started making the preparations. First, he read about some tips on the server and took some images of the game to turn into his thumbnail before actually starting his stream. When the stream started, hundreds of viewers immediately entered his waiting room.

"Hello, Doctors, Sensei, Commanders, Shikikan, and the likes! This is Doctor Andy, and today we are going to try another gacha game called Cute Girls Academy!"

He started with that after some time of waiting. The following was his reaction throughout the stream.

In the prologue:

"Let's see... wow, there's a prologue. Unfortunately it's not voiced... wait, it's voiced!?"

"--Phantasm, fantasy... Welp, I can't read all of that. It's too fast! And what is Phantasmic?"

"Oh my god, Phantasmic looks gorgeous! Look at that design, and this game has EN Voices! This is already the best game!"

"Bahahahaha, I just read moe, otaku, and dere and you said it's serious!? This is freaking hilarious!"

"Kochou... So from Doctor, we're now Principal. Amazing, I got another profession under my resume. What, what do you mean it's not valid? It's definitely valid!"

The main lobby and the tutorial:

"Wait, what happened to Phantasmic. What happened to the mysterious woman from the prologue? Her voice sounded so carefree!"

"Well, she's pretty thorough at explaining everything. She's quite fun... but I'm sure some people would just skip the tutorial. It's pretty long..."

"Three different game modes? What the heck is the dev thinking!?"

"There are only twelve characters in the game. All of them look lovely."

"There is a story mode in this game too!?"

Reaction to Gacha:

"Okay, why is there a Kuroko lookalike here? And did I see a Clia expy!?"

"Why does this girl look familiar... Vtuber? What do you mean by A?"

"Rose Garden Mary? Marilyn Moonlight Caldera? Those names sound like someone's OC in Accord! Well, they look gorgeous, so whatever!"

"Out of everyone here, this Yamiko girl is the only one wearing a school uniform. Girls, this is an academy. Why are you all cosplaying!"

"Okay, this girl looks amazing. Her name... what kind of parent would name their daughter Crystal Maiden?"

"This Magium... I think she's going to be my waifu. Huh? What do you mean she's an airhead?"

"Lilith's design is good, but she looks like a teenager. Nope, nuh uh!"

"Oh, one is a wannabe ninja, and another is an actual ninja. Cool."

"This girl looks dignified... what, she's a hero?"

"What do you mean I can't buy Pages? What, I have to contribute to the server? It actually meant it when it said community-driven!?"

"Oh, I can just play the quest and get Pages? You should have told me at the start! Come on guys, let's do the quest!"

The game modes:

"Let's try mockup challenges... another lobby again!? Wow, why does it look like the UI for Princess Saga...? What, it's inspired by Princess Saga!?"

"Okay, cool. It's actually Princess Saga. I see you, Castro!"

"Okay, gameplay is the same as Princess Saga. It's very simple, and the number of characters makes it easy to understand what role they cover. It's just a shame the characters don't have a voice yet in this game..."

"Cool, so this game mode is for casual players then. Nice."

"Now let's try the exploration mode. Oh, 3D model!? Why does it look 3D!?"

"It's asking me to choose which student I want to use in exploration mode. Well, of course I'll choose my waifu Magium!"

"Huh... what? It only has the academy grounds. Well, I'll choose it... Woah!? It's 3D!? It's not an error at all!?"

"Holy crap, this looks like one of those games from Hoyoworld! Control is also smooth!"

"Uh, there is no combat mode, unfortunately. It's only walking around an empty school ground. It still looks amazing, so I approve!"

"I can't believe the dev put two different games in a single gacha game. What a madlad! What about the third game mode?"

"... What the hell, it's three games in one! What are you smoking, dev!?"

"Now it's high-quality pixel art, and it's a dungeon crawler. Really, how did the dev manage to do all of this... wait, enemy mobs are visible on the map? Well, let's try fighting one of them.... Wow, what's this? A JRPG? This will be easy!"

"Okay, it looks easy, but it's tedious. The more AGI my character has, the more I need to choose my actions carefully. And the mobs here can also do multiple actions in a single turn. What do you mean there are counters and defenses? Am I playing a Project Luna game?"

"I'm stupid. There's an auto button, and I'm not using it. Phantasmic told me about it awhile ago and here I am forgetting about it like an idiot..."

"... Okay, I find the appeal now. Preparation phase is tedious, but when things get to action phase, fight looks crazy. I see you there, Castro, I see you."

After the seven-hour stream, the hundred viewers had turned into five hundred viewers. This doesn't really reflect the total amount of views, which actually exceeded a thousand, as there were many who looked at the video and then left after a few minutes. Most of these people were interested, and a few immediately left to try the game themselves.

After Doctor_Andy's stream, a lot of gacha players and other people interested in anime-styled games learned about CGA. They joined the server and learned more about the game. A few of them were streamers, so on the next day, they also streamed about the game. The entire week when Mike was busy with the establishment of his company, buying and setting up equipment in his new voice-over studio, and then taking care of the problem with his bank account, the popularity of his game skyrocketed.

Before the week ended, tens of thousands of players got attracted by the game, and then half of these players learned about the lack of microtransactions in the game. They have also been members of the server for a few days, so they knew just how flexible the game was and how they could influence it by contributing more in the server. They felt like they became part of the development team and not just players. With such a mentality, even if they were newbies, they wanted to contribute more.

And most gacha players had cash to spare. For them, the only way they could contribute to a game was to spend money. So they decided to spend it on him. They lurked through the server, discovering Castro Games' donation link, and then they poured their money into his PayBud account.

Their donations ranged from a simple ten dollars to ridiculous whale-like spending like one thousand dollars. There are even at least three whales who dropped ten thousand dollars, wishing for the game to continue longer and also for Castro Games to improve their server, as it was still laggy.

The sudden surge of active players made the game laggy, but their enthusiasm about the game nullified the negative effects of the higher ping and server lags. With the label of being an indie game, most players were understanding. They already found this kind of game quality acceptable, as only one person was programming the game. And with them feeling more involved due to the nature of it being a community-driven gacha game, they were more than happy to keep donating every day.

That is why all of the expenses that put CGA and even Castro's Vocal Studio in the red were gone. They have been covered by the sheer amount of support he was getting.

And it wasn't done yet. The popularity of CGA was continuing to rise as more people learned about the game through other streamers who got interested in it.

____________________

With the popularity of CGA came many problems too. Helena's face was ruined with a frown as she glared at the screen where she was currently grilling a new member who was acting inappropriately in the server.

RainbowWarrior777: What do you mean it's not accepted? Isn't that a cute girl?

Mino: Your OC is a man. The image ref is a boy. It doesn't matter how you spin it; that's a man. Pronouns don't matter to that!

RainbowWarrior777: Ew, stupid. Her pronouns are she, and she looks young, meaning she's a girl. Do you hate gays that much?

Shirocc: Bro, that's a guy ;rofl;

Shork: Another one? Haven't you read the rules?

RainbowWarrior777: I read it, and I said my OC is a cute girl. You all are just transphobic!

(RainbowWarrior777 has been muted in the server for 24 hours. Reason: Stfu, we have our rules, and you keep ignoring what our mods are saying. Cool your head first and actually read the rules first before doing something like this again. ~Idle_Nick)

Andrea998: Oh my gosh, this server's a mess. Mods are powertripping.

Sandra888: Oh right, I thought this would be an inclusive space, but the mods here are absolute creeps ;tremble; ;tremble;

Lima: What powertripping? It's written clearly in the rules that you can only put cute girls in the OC submission. Anything that doesn't look like a girl will not be accepted.

People, read the rules!

Sandra888: Then you should change the rules! It's garbage and doesn't consider us at all!

Andrea998: That's right, I'm lesbian and I feel uncomfortable with the lack of representation for us in this game. If you want more players, you should consider adding more gays and lesbians to your roster!

(Andrea998 has been banned from the server. Reason: Then leave. You're not my target audience. ~CastroGames)

(Sandra888 has been banned from the server. Reason: Get out. You're not welcome here. ~CastroGames)

CastroGames: @everyone

I didn't think I'd have to clarify this, but other people don't seem to have reading comprehension, so I'll repeat this again.

We only accept cute girls in the OC submission. I don't give a fuck if you think your furry OC or your Gay OC has that she/her pronouns or whatever, if they don't look like a cute girl in my eyes, then they are not accepted.

Character must look like a girl or a woman. They need to have clear human features, not just vague shapes of whatever you can think of. I am not looking for monsters, I am not looking for animals, and I am not looking for men. I am looking for cute girls.

I also don't want something sneaky, like a girl being formerly a boy or something. I don't want female-looking boys, actual furries, deliberately ugly characters, fat characters, girls that has the spirit of a guy, girls that is formerly a guy in her past life, futas, self-inserts that just wants to make a harem from the OCs in this game, "girls" that looks more man than guys themselves, troll character concepts, and characters with disgusting concepts (you know what I mean)

If you are still confused about this, then look at the comparison below.

CastroGames: Some character concepts that can be accepted

(Image of a cat girl)

(Image of a dog girl)

(Image of a girl in a school uniform)

(Image of a beautiful woman in a dress)

(Image of a witch)

(Image of a girl in a mechanic outfit riding an open-seat mech)

(Image of a gorgeous woman in shades)

(Image of a young elementary schooler)

(Image of a slime girl)

(Image of a female knight with a very large sword)

(Image of a lamia)

(Image of a medusa)

(Image of a girl with rabbit ears)

(Image of a scylla)

(Image of an arachne)

(Image of an elf)

(Image of a small dwarf girl)

(Image of a girl with white angelic wings)

(Image of a red-skinned girl with demonic horns)

(Image of a green-skinned girl)

(Image of an alraune)

(Image of a fairy)

(Image of a mermaid)

(Image of a feminine-looking figure made up of the galaxies and the stars holding an entire planet by her hands)

(Image of a sexy woman)

(Image of a dark-skinned woman in a belly dancer outfit)

(Image of a woman in office wear)

(Image of a policewoman)

(Image of a busty nurse)

(Image of a young girl in a yukata)

(Image of a woman wearing ancient Japanese-themed armor, fighting in the center of an encirclement)

(Image of a short-haired woman in a casual male's outfit)

(Image of a woman with a toned body, exercising her arm with a dumbbell)

(Image of a girl with scales on her arms and legs)

(Image of a ghostly girl, her upper body the only thing shown while her lower half is hidden within the wall)

CastroGames: Character concepts that will not be accepted

(Image of a guy)

(Image of a boy)

(Image of a feminine-looking boy with an obvious bulge in his pants)

(Image of an actual blob)

(Image of some deep-sea monster with many teeth)

(Image of a monstrous sahuagin)

(Image of a creature in space with many tentacles, eyes, and mouths)

(Image of a robot)

(Image of a flesh monstrosity)

(Image of a very fat character with multicolored makeup and wearing an incredibly loose outfit)

(NSFW image of a half-deformed woman with flesh and bones sticking out of her rotting body)

(Image of a werewolf)

(Image of a pregnant woman)

(Image of a woman with hairy legs and armpits)

(Image of a rugged-looking Black guy with neon-colored hair and cyan lipstick)

(Image of a creature with a bird head and a sexy woman's body)

(NSFW Image of some sort of creature with an exposed brain that has an eye on that brain, and that brain is connected to a busty female body through some sort of flesh appendage in its headless bloody neck)

(NSFW Image of some female-looking creature with large amounts of unknown, bubbly, disgusting greenish liquids leaking out of every orifice from her andsome smoke lingering around, indicating the horrendous smell it has)

(Real-life image of a woman)

(Image of a cartoon female character with a triangular head)

(Image of a wrinkly old woman)

(Image of a woman with realistic details of sagging skins that it looked as if her skin was falling off)

CastroGames: If you can't accept any of that, then leave the server. I only cater to those who want to play my game!

@moderators If these people keep forcing their agenda in this server, ban them. Otherwise, give at least three warnings to anyone who is unaware they are breaking the rules.

Mino stared at the screen after the gamedev suddenly swooped in and made a long post about it. She felt a bit relieved. For several hours now, there have been new members who joined just to troll or push their agenda on this server. Even she, someone who doesn't really interact with those kinds of people, realized that those people were bad news.

It surprised and amazed her when Castro actually addressed it this early, instead of lurking on the server and watching how things would go down. Most game developers, both indie and large game companies, don't address this kind of thing in fear of the backlash. The game developer showed just how different he was compared to those game companies.

Though, it worried her. Even when she doesn't participate in this kind of stuff, she knows people like this who clamor about inclusivity and acceptance wouldn't just go quietly. She had seen some examples of it through the news and the internet. They always try to cancel what they don't like and would double down if they couldn't force whoever they were trying to scare.

'I hope nothing bad happens...' Helena thought, praying like that within her heart.

____________________

["Are you sure you will be fine, Mike? People might suddenly cancel you on Chirper?"]

"Yeah, it's fine. It's not like I am making the game to profit."

["Well, if you say so..."]

Mike sighed after that call. He knew Catherine was worried, but he wasn't really that concerned. He had repeatedly said that he would only accept characters that could be defined as cute by a normal anime lover. He doesn't have time to please other strangers who don't care about the product he was pushing to the public.

His game was for those who were interested in anime-styled waifu-gathering games. It was simply that kind of game. He wouldn't care even if the community itself flipped their attitude and suddenly demanded things antithetical to the core concept of the game. It was called the Cute Girls Academy, so obviously the characters must be cute girls.

Cute might be subjective, but it doesn't matter. He already defined what he considered cute in this game, at least.

"Anyway, I should finish this up before April comes!"

He quickly started making preparations before the month changes. His current plans were implementing a new stage and a few powers and equipment in Idle Power, finishing the combat mode in the exploration mode of CGA, adding another world in mockup challenges, and adding more loot, mobs, and another dungeon in group activity.

He felt a bit depressed having lost his multipliers. Even his boosts on any of his games were gone. His voice-over studio wasn't also giving him any boost, as his power considered it a part of CGA's profitability when he put the voices he recorded from his friends. CGA and his voice-over studio were linked together in their profitability.

Fortunately, he gained enough improvements to his skills to bulldoze through many of his planned updates. Before April arrived, he quickly finished everything he was going for.

"Next is my new game!"

The reaction to his new game mode on CGA was mixed. There were those who liked it and those who found it a bit difficult to understand. It was easy at first, as newbie players started at level 1. Though others who have been playing it since day 1 of its release were having a hard time. The status of their characters was in sync with their status from the mockup challenges, so these long time players already have strong students when starting group activity.

With high-level characters and endgame equipment from mockup challenges, their AGI score was quite high. Characters would gain an action slot for every ten points in their AGI. Each action slot could either be used as a primary action or be linked as a secondary action, creating a macro for their entire turn. This was very complicated because they needed to predict what the enemies would do and hope they would gain an advantage from their decision. They had to read their skills, understand what each could do, and use them effectively to win against their enemy. That would take a lot of trial and error and a lot of time familiarizing themselves with every moveset in the game.

Characters have a lot of movesets they could use as an action. Normal attacks alone have at least fifteen variations, ranging from overhead attacks to low kicks and the like. There were others who had more normal attack variations; each could deal with specific movements from their foe's side. They also have many skills, magic, and other special abilities. The amount depended on what Mike had cooked up while reading their character document and what their owner had decided to add. This further adds another complexity, as each had their own different effects, animation speed, and the like.

It was a lot more complicated than mockup challenges. At least in mockup challenges, everything happened automatically. The only thing they had to do was tap the portrait of their character whenever their SP was full so the student could use their ultimate skill. This one doesn't have that. It might have hundreds of movesets, which showcased what the characters could do, but it was overwhelming for casual players. Others even complained about it.

Even if that was the case, Mike found it was a success because he wasn't really targeting the casual players. His main target for this kind of game were those hardcore RPG players and those who loved reading the entire mechanics of the game so they could make their own meta. They were a niche circle, and he was definitely sure that players who liked this kind of game didn't exceed a million.

"My other games are already making me money, but it's not stable. There will come a time when people don't find Idle Power and CGA to be that fun, and that will greatly affect the revenue I can get from them. That's why, while it's still early, I need to make a game that will make me money so I can continue maintaining my other games. I need money from all of it."

He wouldn't expect any boost from this new game, as his main purpose for it was simply to earn money. He was hoping that CGA's surge of popularity would stabilize in the future so he could enjoy the benefits of skill improvements once more.

"I already thought of the core gameplay of the game. Next is thinking about the setting and other miscellaneous stuff I can add from it."

He started making a draft now that he has some spare time. Well, even if he was making a draft, he already had a general idea of what direction he would take the game. This game was one of those ideas he had from his hundreds of game idea drafts saved in his folder. He mainly dubbed it as the Macro Turn-Based Role-Playing Game, but there was another genre for it other than its combat system.

He would make an open-world game with various customization settings. There would be no main character in the game; rather, the player would be like a participant to the events of the world itself with their groups of characters that they have created. It would be like those RPG games where players could make their own party and roam around the world with that party.

The basic concept was that guilds became popular in this fantasy world, and many had erected their guilds to pursue their own ambitions. Then, one particular guild, a group of people with various backgrounds, have gathered in a single caravan, going on a journey and meeting different people along the way. They would help them, cause chaos, or anything, spreading either their infamy through evil deeds or their fame through their virtue. Empires, kingdoms, hordes of monsters, ancient ruins, mystical areas, treasures, dungeons, and many more. It would be a story of travelling around the world and spreading their name.

The game would be called The Wandering Guild.

And unlike his first two games, this one would be a standalone game.

____________________

At the start of April, the new updates on both CGA and Idle Power made people excited. Idle Power has twenty new powers they could learn, ten new pieces of equipment, and then a new stage. Along with that were many bug fixes and other system optimizations, which made their game experience smoother.

Cute Girls Academy got a lot more updates than Idle Power, though. There was the seventh world in the mockup challenges, and along with it was the hard mode version of it. Other than that, there was the second dungeon implemented in the group activity, along with the addition of ten more skills for each character. The gamedev had also added multiple hidden rooms on the first dungeon and made some area bosses on both dungeons so players who liked this game mode could play it for a long time.

The most surprising update of all was the expedition mode. They have been promised that a new feature would be implemented in this game mode from the server. They didn't expect that they would get something more from it.

In the exploration mode, a new area was added. They could jump there instantly by choosing at the area selector when opening this game mode or simply enter it through the path leading outside the front gate of the academy. This new area is called The Wonderful Prairie. It's the same area as the one shown on mockup challenges, specifically its very first world.

As was shown on the simulated world map in the mockup challenges, this new area had replicated everything from it. Unlike the simplified version of the world map at the mockup challenges, The Wonderful Prairie was incredibly detailed and vast. The monsters they've fought on its simulated version were there, in their full 3D model. Horned rabbits, predator flowers, hornet bees, goblins, and the hobgoblin—all of them moved dynamically compared to their simple behaviors in the mockup challenges.

At the same time, the students themselves, who could only walk, jump, run around, and interact with objects at the academy grounds, could now fight against the mobs. The transition between neutral stance and then combat stance was smooth. Neutral stance was when they could simply move around the map without being able to use any attack or defense commands. The buttons around the screen at that time were simple. Just a joystick and three buttons for interacting with some objects, jumping, and then crouching or kneeling. When they got close to an enemy, or the system detected an attack directed at them, they would immediately enter a combat stance, which would change their UI into different buttons for battle commands.

Each character had different types of battle commands. They had the usual normal attacks, and then they had the default three buttons around the normal attack command, the first two being called skill buttons, and the last one being the ultimate skill button. What was unique about this was that players could customize their battle command buttons. They could either add more skill button commands or even ultimate skills if the character had more of them. They could arrange where each button was positioned on their screen and even customize the size of the button themselves or its opaqueness in relation to the stage itself. Normal attacks could also be customized by their own. They could make their own set of combos and even put conditions by adding more in their action slots in the menu. Their action slot was linked to their group activity version, which meant the amount of their slots depended on their AGI score.

Mike made this so players could customize their own moveset for their characters. He got the idea for the combat customization from games like Empire Hearts and Devil May Laugh. Unlike those, though, this one gave players full customization freedom for their movesets. They could personalize their characters to their own preference, and it also showed whether the player was a casual one or a hardcore player with in-depth knowledge of every ability from a student.

He had been working on this system for months now, and it was the first time he implemented the system after he was done making the entire level of The Wonderful Prairie. He had put a lot of easter eggs, hidden chests, hidden areas, and other scenic views on this stage following the examples of New Fantasy XV, most of Hoyoworld games like Deus Impact, and the modern open-world Legend of Link games.

With such vast new updates, CGA players celebrated.

They didn't notice that, along with that update, Castro Games made an announcement about making his own game. Most of them were focused on the CGA updates.