Chapter 6: Community-Driven Gacha Game

Mike was busy making some optimizations in his game. Why was he making optimizations when he was already thinking of making a new game?

That's because he couldn't start the development of Cute Girls Academy yet!

He was at the first step of his plan, which was warming up to the community of players he had gathered on his Accord server. They needed to become familiar with him first before he could start development of that game. So he made a schedule for himself.

"After one month, I'll mention it to the server."

Before that could happen, he had to make sure that these people were accepting of anime-styled games filled with female characters. Many times, he had seen communities that looked down on such concepts; either they were anime-styled or the game was just filled with anime girls. His next game would be featuring both, so he couldn't welcome those kinds of people.

The idle game was just a way for him to build up skills. Now that it was giving him small profits, it canceled the humongous boost he was getting from his power. There was no more noticeable improvement in his skills since he got that series of donations. They still were doing that to this day. He wondered where their money even came from. He checked, and out of the thousand, only a hundred players were playing his game. Out of the hundred players, at least twenty of them were constantly donating to him. Nick was one of those big spenders, dropping 100 dollars every week on his lap, but there was also someone nicknamed Mino who constantly dropped 10 to 20 dollars in his account thrice a week.

He couldn't count on Idle Power to improve his skills anymore. In this case, this new game, which definitely didn't have any commercial potential, would be the next game he would turn into his skill-improving seedling. His power was flexible too. So long as there were potential profits in a product, even if the producer themselves were sabotaging their own product, it would only recognize the potential profits it could bring and compare that to the actual profits the creator of the product was making, which would be considered a loss of potential profits. Gacha games were considered to be incredibly profitable, so it definitely would produce huge amounts of improvements in his skills. So choosing this genre was the right choice on his part.

Anyway, as he was going to be mentioning it to the server next month, he busied himself with the idle game.

He just realized that Idle Power's current version had already reached 900 MB in size, and in the background it was consuming at least 1 GB of memory to process itself. That meant, somewhere within the code, there was a lot of garbage that was messing with the system. He also thought it couldn't be helped that it felt like that. There were thousands of animations registered in that game. Even if they were twelve-frame pixel animations only, adding it all up would still end with a large data hog.

He definitely didn't want to change anything in the animation, so he was only going to change the code. His current skill set would let him know what else he could change, replace, and compress so it would lower its memory consumption.

"One month is enough!"

____________________

A few days have passed since they joined the Castro Games Server. Helena was just done with her sketch and was just making the finishing touches before she posted it on the server.

"Done!"

This youthful-looking woman was one of the twenty people who loved Idle Power so much that they kept donating to him. Helena was an amateur digital artist who worked a tiring desk job and a side hustle of accepting commissions for her art. Unlike Nick, who liked good idle games, Helena simply liked casual games in general, and this game attracted her because she also preferred visually stunning ones. The game was clearly conscientious. It was obvious with its in-app purchase option. So she definitely felt like donating just so the game could keep on being active.

After all, it would be a shame if the game was suddenly abandoned.

With the game not having a defined narrative, it became easier to insert themselves in the character. It was also easy to imagine the story progression in the game just by looking at how it progressed from the start. In her own narrative, this character was a dreamer who wanted to be someone strong, and then they trained so hard they just acquired their powers. Now with powers, they decided to become a superhero, defeating thugs, assassins, and crime lords to maintain the peace of their city.

There was the regression system. It was learned for the first time when the character was defeated. She imagined it would be the character restarting their progress because their body was too weak and using what they learned in their past life to gain more advantage, defeating their enemy the next time they encountered them. It was a good narrative idea, and she couldn't help but draw something as inspiration hit her.

In the Castro Games Server, there were different categories. In each category, there were channels. She goes to the art channel in the general category and then uploads her fan art on Idle Power.

Mino: Here's a fan art for the Hero. What do you think?

(Attachment098111920.jpeg)

CastroGames hasn't said anything about it. Even with their inquiry, CastroGames only said that it was up to them how they refer to the player character. So the fandom unanimously decided to call him Hero, because he was fighting criminals in the game.

Anyway, the art Helena uploaded was a cartoonized rendition of Hero. He was wearing the businessman set, one of the first three equipment sets implemented in the game, and was drawn shooting somewhere on the screen with his gun. There was an explosion behind him, and some stickmen mob were blown away in the distance, making it look very colorful and at the same time showing how cool this character was. Fan art like this was incredibly rare for a community of an emerging idle game.

It was natural the active members of this server would like it.

Shork: Nice art, Mino! ;thumbs up;

Lima: Looks great

Mr. Red: Amazing

Idle_Nick: Nice ;thumbs up;

Mino: Thank you <3

They might be simple praises, but it was enough to feel appreciated for her work. These people were also the most active members of this Accord server, so it felt like everyone liked her art.

After she was done talking for a bit on the art channel, she scrolled through a different channel in the Idle Power category and clicked the devlog. She felt a bit sad seeing the new devlog that the developer posted a few days ago.

CastroGames: The next major update might appear after this year. Expect minor updates this year.

What to expect on the updates this year:

- Game optimization

- Data optimization

- Minor changes in what each power could do

- Bug fixes

What to expect when the full version drops:

- 20 new options for Activity

- 10 new options for Knowledge

- 200 new unlockable powers

- 100 new perk options on the ascension tree

- The three stages in the current version will be merged into a single stage

- Two new stages

- 10 new equipment sets

- 20 new weapons

- A lot of new titles

That is all. Thank you as always for your support, and I look forward to these updates!

Helena could only sigh as she read that. It was still in the middle of September, so that basically meant the game wouldn't get new content for four months at minimum. The game was fun, but she knew she couldn't keep playing a game that only had several hours of content within four months. It would be inevitable to get bored at that time.

She let out a sigh as she scrolled on the general category and looked at the general channel. There she could see CastroGames was just discussing something.

CastroGames: So guys, what do you think of Azure Archive?

Idle_Nick: ... Isn't that a gacha game?

Shork: UOOOOOOOOOGH ;crying; ;crying;

Mr. Red: Cute and funny ;crying; ;crying;

Shirocc: (Large image of a crying emoji)

Lima: Isn't that the game that the Chirper crowd keeps crying about?

Idle_Nick: What the hell is wrong with the crying emoji people ;confusion;

This has been happening for a few days now. She still wondered whether Castro Games was just a single indie developer or a small indie game company, but anyway, the handler of CastroGames always dropped by to chat for a few minutes about the game, making small talk before suddenly changing the topic to something like this.

Sometimes, they would ask what they think about various gacha games. Then they would ask about some of the anime that was filled with female casts in it. Others seemed to have not thought much about it. Helena was just the only one, and she became curious.

'Is the one handling this account loved anime?'

Helena would admit she liked anime, but she wasn't addicted to it. She could be called someone who casually liked it, and she doesn't mind if there were anime elements in a show. Though she still preferred indie animations like Deathbots and Carnival Glitch from MeTube. Their 3D cartoonish artstyle was much more her vibe than japanese animations.

She was curious, but she wasn't vocal about her suspicions. At the end of the day, she thought the guy behind CastroGames might just be an otaku who loved cute girls doing cute things.

____________________

When the next month started, CastroGames suddenly dropped a bomb in the general channel.

CastroGames: What do you think about gacha games?

It's just a seemingly simple question, but Helena had a sense of foreboding.

Mino: Why do you ask?

CastroGames: I'm planning to make a gacha game.

That bad feeling became true. Helena couldn't help but feel disappointed as she read those words.

'So in the end... it becomes like this...' She sighed solemnly.

It was obvious why a game creator would be making a gacha game.

They wanted to make money!

Gacha games were just glorified gambling dens in the form of a game. It doesn't even give anything back to the players. The only thing players could get was the satisfaction that they pulled some character images that moved, while the developer got all their money. It was deceitful and reprehensible in her eyes.

She felt betrayed. It felt like the CastroGames she knew were no longer there.

'Is this still the conscientious gamedev that we know?'

The others seemed to feel the same sentiment as her as they bombarded the gamedev with questions.

Shork: Are you abandoning Idle Power?

Lima: Will there be no updates in the game anymore?

Idle_Nick: You disappoint me @CastroGames

Shirocc: If it's not free, I won't play it!

Her mood was ruined due to imagining CastroGames being another gamedev who only thought about getting money from players. She was already planning to quit the server after some time when CastroGames quickly replied.

CastroGames: Don't worry, I'm not going to abandon Idle Power. It's one of my games too, so I will keep updating it as much as I can.

As for whether this gacha game will be free, of course it will. This game will be a non-profit game created by the community itself.

Basically, I'm asking whether you want to join me and make a gacha game for the community.

His words made her stop in her tracks, her mind halting for a moment as she tried to process what he was implying.

'... Non-profit gacha game? Is that even possible?' Helena tilted her head.

No one has heard of a non-profit gacha game. Gacha games were naturally profitable. If it wasn't profitable, it couldn't be a gacha game. In-app purchases were the entire business model for every gacha game. That wasn't non-profit at all!

Idle_Nick: ;confusion;

Shirocc: ???

Lima: What?

Shork: Nani?

The others were also confused about it. It was natural. Non-profit and gacha game don't complement each other. Without caring about their confusion, CastroGames continued.

CastroGames: I'm planning to create a community-driven gacha game. This gacha game will depend on the community surrounding it.

'A community-driven gacha game? What is that?' Confusion whirled in her thoughts as she typed her question.

Mino: What do you mean?

CastroGames: For example. Have you considered making an OC in a series you like and dream of making that OC be part of that series?

In this game, I will be accepting these OCs. The characters of this game will all come from the community, who make their own OCs!

Original Characters, or OCs in most roleplay servers and other creative forums on the internet. It's a term popularized in an old site for amateur artists and fanfiction creators. She knew it because she was part of some roleplay servers and art servers in Accord. To hear that in the mouth of the gamedev, though, was unheard of.

She was shocked when she processed what he was talking about.

"Wait... seriously!?"

A game that would accept OCs from the community. That kind of game was never heard of. Helena felt her heart beating fast at that.

'If that is true, then...' She recalled her original characters that she had buried in the depths of her mind.

Idle_Nick: Seriously?

Shork: Are you serious gamedev?

Lima: Wait, what about their rights to their OC? Will they be giving those rights to your team?

Helena gasped before quickly nodding at Lima's response. It was a good question. Helena felt reluctant to part with the characters she made from her childhood. Even if they were the part of her life she seriously didn't want to recall anymore, they were still characters that she poured her heart and soul into making and accompanied her in the lonelier parts of her life. She couldn't bear the thought of some random person ruining the characters she made with her all.

CastroGames: Of course. As it is a community-driven game, the owner of the OCs will naturally hold the rights to the character.

I simply want to make a game that will showcase these OCs, and also make the community part of the development part of this game.

She gasped at that, her eyes wide in shock. The developer was essentially promising to work for them without even owning the intellectual rights to their character. It was basically saying they would work for free.

She felt moved, but her rational part held her back, making her both flustered and suspicious.

Idle_Nick: Isn't that too generous?

CastroGames: I know, but I always dreamed of making a game like this. Don't you think it will be great to have a game where the community controls the flow of the game process?

Helena could only nod at that. That thought hadn't come to her mind, but thinking about it now, she felt it would be an interesting game.

Shirocc: Okay, why gacha game?

The amateur female artist narrowed her gaze, putting all of her attention on the screen as she saw the notice below stating that CastroGames was typing. It didn't take long before CastroGames responded.

CastroGames: Because it's fun.

"Seriously?" Helena furrowed her brows in disbelief.

He wanted to make it a gacha game just because it was fun?

She couldn't understand the logic at all. She doesn't find gacha games fun.

Lima: How will your team profit from it?

CastroGames: I told you, right?

It's non-profit. I don't want to charge any amount of money in this game.

Shork: Is that fine? Your team might resent you for that...

CastroGames: No need to worry. I'm the only one who works here.

"What!?"

That was news to her. They always believed that Castro Games was a small team. They haven't expected him to be the sole member of this indie game company.

Shirocc: ... So, what's the title of the game?

She was also interested in the answer.

CastroGames: Cute Girls Academy.

"... Huh?"

She was dumbfounded.

____________________

The game developer of Idle Power talked about their plans for their new game, Cute Girls Academy. The setting of the game would be in a place called the Imaginary Wonderland. To summarize what this setting was, it could simply be explained as closely related to a dream world. It's not really a world that existed within dreams, but it was technically like that.

In their explanation, they chose this kind of setting because it would make it easier to fit various themes and settings from other community members. It doesn't matter what kind of setting their original characters came from. They would all fit in this setting, just like how most roleplay servers in Accord forced their settings to be accommodating to many people.

Next was the player character. They planned for their player avatar to be the principal of the nebulous zone they called the Academy. This player avatar was a mysterious entity whose existence was connected to the Imaginary Wonderland, and they had been in this place for a long time before a certain entity calling themselves the Record of Phantasm whispered to them new knowledge. This new knowledge gave them purpose.

They wanted to teach cute girls!

It was a dumb plot that forced the basic topic of the game itself, which was the collection of cute girls as students of this academy. This nebulous entity would be going around different worlds, recruiting every cute girl they found to become a student of their school. As for the teacher, it would be the one who whispered this knowledge to them.

And then, this would be where they could insert any character they wanted. The plan was for them to make their OC and submit it to an artist. CastroGames was the only developer on the game, so he would be the one making the art for their submitted OCs, though others from the community could also submit their art for their OC if they wanted it to be in their style. The only rule for accepting the art was that it should be in line with CastroGames' aesthetics, which were anime-styled. Another rule was for the submitted OC to be a cute girl.

Other than that, they are free to submit any characters they can think of.

Of course, CastroGames doesn't allow characters that have clear references from other well-known IPs. So they couldn't just make an OC that was a saiyan, an OC who had the power from a devil fruit, an OC with zanpakutou, and any popular reference from other IPs. They needed to be original with their submitted character.

He said that they could put a reference, though it had to be very obscure and didn't completely mirror what it was actually referencing. They said that, in this current age where almost everything has already been used by others, it was impossible to be completely original. Helena approved of that, because it truly was impossible to be absolutely different than everyone else.

Other than that, he told them that the genre of the game, other than being a gacha game, could be anything. They could decide what would be the core gameplay of this gacha game and if they would add minigames, quests, rewards, or anything they could think of. Plot would also be up to them.

They were not allowed to make changes to the OCs of the other members and would need permission from them before they could make some story arcs that would involve those characters. They also couldn't make OCs that had any connection with either the Record of Phantasm or the player character, as that would be either godmodding or metagaming, and in roleplay areas, it was heavily frowned upon, as it gave unfair advantages to that person and even allowed them to hog everything as if it was a contest instead of something for fun.

Though there were other absolute rules, they also had to follow them after their OC became a character in this game. First was that they had to accept that their character was subject to fanservice, whether it be minor or major. They also had to accept that the developer could modify the art of the OC if they didn't meet his criteria. They also had to consent that their accepted OC could, at any moment, be deleted if they ever broke a rule in the community itself or just did something so horrible that they had to be kicked out of the community server. CastroGames said that, even if their OC became popular, they would never hold the rights of the character, and if ever the person was kicked out of their server for some reason or another, the character would go along with them. This was, unless the owner of the character gave permission to use them even if they left the server.

That was how the game would basically work, and the community guidelines as to how they could submit their OCs and control the flow of the game.

It took a whole day of the developer explaining everything and answering all of their questions for clarification before they slept. Now it was the next day. Helena quickly came back home after work and then turned her Accord account on before going to the new server CastroGames made.

It was the Cute Girls Academy official server.

And in this server, there were only ten members in it. The others were still unconvinced or were uninterested in this kind of game. It was only them who joined because they either wanted to support the developer or they were interested in the game concept itself.

As for Idle Power, to prove that he wouldn't abandon it, a new update was uploaded in the game. It was just an update that polished the codes, which lowered the memory consumption on their phone when running it, making it lighter on other low-tier phones. It doesn't really matter to Helena, as she used a high-end phone, though it made her relieved seeing the developer still caring about the game even with this big new project they were undergoing.

"Where is it... ah, there it is!"

After finding what she was looking for, she sat back in her chair and then inserted the old USB drive into her computer. Trepidation gripped her heart before her muscles relaxed after seeing that it was still working. Within the USB drive were countless PNG files and a few notepads with titles that could only be seen as names. Reading them made her feel a strong sense of nostalgia and, at the same time, made her spine shiver in embarrassment.

"... Really, what am I thinking about naming someone Rose Garden Mary?" She shook her head, cringing for a bit as she muttered that name.

It was just an OC she made when Stumblr was still active. Even the bright green colors of the cartoonish sketch on the preview made her cheeks heat up in shame. She shook her head, then stared at her screen with determination.

Despite the embarrassment, she truly loved her characters. Most of the time, there was a certain wish in her mind where she wanted at least one of them to appear in a game. She might be hyper casual on her games right now, but in the past she was an avid Flash player. She played many Flash games in her childhood. It was also where she got her aesthetics when drawing her own characters, which, now that she thought about it, looked extremely childish.

She always wanted one of her OCs to feature somewhere on the internet. Even be mentioned one time in old MeTube videos. It was why she even joined Stumblr. Just having one of her OCs plastered on the internet made her happy. It also started her career as a digital artist, though it didn't take off. She only had average skills for it.

Now, her dream of having her character featured in a game would come true. It might be from a newbie indie game developer, but it still felt like a great honor for her. She couldn't make a satisfying remake of her OC's concept art. Now she could finally see them in another style that was better than hers.

"Okay... let's try this..."

With that, she submitted her first character in the server.

____________________

Mike knew he was being too ambitious when he explained everything about Cute Girls Academy, though he wouldn't compromise even if that was the case. He had decided to turn this game into his flagship title. If someone thought of Castro Games, they would think of Cute Girls Academy.

That's because this game has everything he liked. Anime girls and gacha games!

It was a shame that he only managed to gather ten members to this server. Idle Power's popularity had declined. There were still donations, but it slowed down enough that he was feeling the improvements in his body once more, though it was still so small that it barely made it worth it. Even if he was getting the improvements, he was already in the process of making his new game, so he wouldn't stop now.

Currently, there are four character submissions in his game. At the same time, Idle_Nick had taken the role of deciding the contents of the game and was in the process of making a document that listed everything he wanted to see in this game. This would be the core gameplay of the game.

As it was a community-driven game, of course it had to go through a voting process. Everyone would vote on whether they would implement the submission to the game, and they needed a majority vote to pass the submission. It was just right. It followed the spirit of the democracy, which was just appropriate for a crazy game concept like this.

While he was waiting for that, Mike was busy making a sketch of the only official character in this game. That was the Record of Phantasm. Based on his created setting, the Record of Phantasm was the embodiment of fiction, or the literal fantasy in physical form. In his setting, this entity has been corrupted by humanity's modern perception of fantasy, so they took the form of a cute girl. Now this entity referred to herself as Phantasmic.

Phantasmic would act as the assistant and guide on the menu screen and every mechanic in the game. They would basically be everywhere on the menu, regardless of where the player goes. In the story, they would act as the teacher for every character accepted in the academy, and the one that would teach them some technical knowledge like science, algebra, and other weird stuff like the occult.

As for the player's avatar, while they would act as the principal, they would also be in charge of teaching the other students any subject that Phantasmic doesn't touch. They could even step on the subjects that Phantasmic already taught if it would make the plot between the player and character progress. The most important thing was that the player must have a bond with every character in this game. That was the essence of this game.

It was following the formula of most gacha games that were predominantly filled with females and the MC being the only male. They naturally need to have a connection with every character because there would be no point in putting them in the game if the player themselves couldn't interact with them.

And, of course, with it being a gacha game, the gacha mechanic couldn't be ignored. Normally, gacha games separated their characters through a rarity system. There would be a 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star character, or if they were being fancy enough, it would be a Rare (R) character, Super Rare (SR) character, and Super Super Rare (SSR) character. It really depends on what the game designer decided for it.

Mike wouldn't include something like that. For him, every character was equally important to each other. This was why the chance rate to get one of the characters was equal for everyone. The only time they would have a higher chance of getting a character was when banners for them occurred. Those were the most exciting parts of a gacha game. He couldn't just not implement them when he himself fell victim to character banners of his favorite characters from other gacha series.

This would mean that, when a banner comes, it would be easier to roll for the featured character than anyone else, because everyone had equal chances to be pulled on a regular banner.

Though it doesn't matter. He even preferred that to the other gacha games that pushed SSR characters into the lowest possible rate, which made it difficult to pull them even if a person whaled for them. This game would be a casual gacha game, so that kind of system was not needed.

Now, for a gacha game, premium currencies were a must. He couldn't just combine regular currency with it. It would make the gacha mechanic useless if players could just gain the currency for it as easily as the regular ones. No, he had to make a separate currency just for the gacha.

As to how they could get it, he would definitely not put it behind paywalls. This was a non-profit game, so microtransactions were immediately banned in his mind. His plan was to connect this game to the official Accord server of Cute Girls Academy. Members could connect their Accord ID in the game, and then, if they contributed to the development of the game, they would gain premium currencies for it. They could also gain premium currencies from events, quests, daily quests, and other things that he was still thinking about.

The point is, they will get premium currencies without ever having to pay for it!

That was the extent of his draft about this game. He had already made a sample program for the gacha game. Now, he was just making art for the game itself.

He was having a hard time for it.

"... I didn't expect it would be this hard..."

He was currently making a high-quality art of the mascot of the game, Phantasmic. Long purple wavy hair, purple eyes, and a slender body with curves in all the right places—that was the human form of the one known as the Record of Phantasm. This full-body art took him an entire day to finish, and this was just the standing pose for her.

He didn't expect his illustration skills were still not enough to finish this fast. He had been so used to low-detailed pixel art that when he started making a sketch, it took him half an hour just to make the rough outline. Now it was the next day before he was done. It was a good thing that his aesthetic translated to high-quality anime-style drawings with his pixel art skills, even if this took him too long.

"... And I have to animate this too..."

He didn't want this game to be a low-quality one. He wanted the characters to feel more alive. So even if it was troublesome, he had to make idle animations for them. The quality had to stay the same too. He wouldn't want to make it too uncanny. Balance was needed for this kind of thing.

"I should have started this last month..."

He sighed, regretting his decision to make two games at the same time. It was his decision to continue Idle Power, and he thought his skills were enough that it would be easier for him after he was done with the immediate problems on Idle Power. He was too naive to have thought of that.

He stared at his sketch of Phantasmic before shaking his head.

"Nope... I'm tired. I'll continue this tomorrow. Before that though..."

With that decision, he quickly navigated his screen until he was at the official Accord server of this game, and then he posted the finished artwork of Phantasmic at the devlogs channel before he called it a day.

That art took him an entire day. He was mentally tired.

He decided to rest for now.

____________________

"Oh... wow... it works like this too?"

When morning came, he noticed a clear improvement in his digital art skills. He wondered what it was and immediately recalled the info he got when he woke up with his powers.

"Anything that could potentially let me earn... does that mean--!?"

He stared at the art he posted on the devlog channel, and within his mind, he just knew his suspicion was right.

He didn't market it. He hasn't even stated that he was going to sell it or something. Still, his power still recognized it. So long as he did an action that could potentially let him earn, he would gain skill improvements from what his power considered a potential loss.

Publishing something on the internet was already considered selling his service to the outside world. There were many artists who posted their art in Accord version to find commissioners. That meant, even if it was unintentional, his power considered his actions the same as those digital artists.

He could gain improvements by just posting art on Accord!