Chapter 5: Problematic Earnings

He hadn't experienced a repeat of that time he got a large donation after several days. After a week, the traffic on the Woogle Play page of his game calmed down. Even with such a carefully crafted game, being incomplete and lacking content doesn't retain them after a long time. The common problem was that, after playing for a few hours, the game basically ended. There was no replayable factor in the game. Despite that, the potential of his game, as detected by his power, was so much that it was still giving him a lot of improvements to his skills just because he was losing out on what his power considered as potential profits for this kind of game.

And he had no reason to follow his power's direction just to earn a profit. He would go on with his plan even if it bankrupted him.

The large donation from last time had cancelled what improvement he should have gotten on his game's potential profit loss, but that was only for a single day. It continued working again the next day, as he had no profits at that time.

Currently, he was making the regression system. It was a system that would introduce that replayability to his idle game. The regression system was simple in design. With the improvements he got from his idle game development, it didn't take him long before he was done. It just took him two weeks because, other than the regression system, he also made unique animations for other mobs from the other stages. This was easy because his skills improved so much that he managed to cut out many cumbersome processes when animating and shortened his animation time by a few minutes. His pixel art skills had increased so much that if someone asked him to draw one, he would instantly finish before a minute passed.

That might sound impossible, but for him, whose skills in mouse stability and familiarity with his tools were maxed out due to the amount of potential losses he was accruing, pixel art was so easy for him that he could draw one even with his eyes closed, so long as he had a clear image of what he was illustrating in his mind.

'That boost will be stronger if I have an actual loss in profits...'

His power worked on two things. Potential loss of profits and actual loss of profits. Potential loss of profits was just a projected amount of profits he could get from the quality of his product that he missed out on, basically losing it due to one reason or another. Actual loss of profit, though, was a physical thing. It indicated the amount of money he actually lost in his account. For an actual loss of profit to occur, his product, his game in this case, must have a factor in why he lost the profit.

Compared to potential loss of profits, which his power converts into additional improvements of skills that were distributed based on how much he used a skill to make a certain product, actual loss of profits acted as a multiplier. For example, a potential loss of a million dollars would just give him a skill improvement that was the same as spending a million dollars to improve their skills. If he actually lost money from the product, then it would multiply the effect of the potential loss of profit he had from that product by the amount of money he actually lost.

So basically, if he wanted to further take advantage of his power, he had to cause trouble through his game that would cause others to basically make him pay for it. It could be done through refunds or even lawsuits that would make him lose.

But he had no reason to do that.

He wasn't deliberately making a bad game to disgust players. He was making his dream game. If he was just here to increase his skills, then he would have done and made something utterly offensive that many would slap him black and blue fron both on the internet and in reality. There was no way he would make something like that. He wanted players to like his game while minimizing the profits he could get. That was the only way to both satisfy his desire to make games and to improve his skills to make it possible.

Anyway, his power only applied a boost from the potential loss of profits from his game. Even without the multiplier, though, the quality of his system was solid enough that his power considered it a great loss that he was even marketing it as a free game. That was how highly his power evaluated his game system.

It was understandable why his power rated his game system high. An AI system that actually understood spacing and could even recognize patterns so that they could behave accordingly to it was such an advanced concept that it was a waste to even put it in an idle game. For such an AI, it was much better to put it in an action game, adventure game, or even other types of games where that kind of AI could be used to turn up the difficulty against players. Hardcore players would love it, and that kind of game would generate enough fame and profits for whoever did it.

This was why he managed to max out his current skills. If he wanted to, he could just move on and make a proper idle game without any of these added features. Or if he felt like it, he could even start a career as a pixel artist or an animator. His skill improved him so much he was comparable to an expert artist and a godly programmer.

Going back to the topic, he managed to finish version 0.4.0 with the addition of the regression system and finishing all the unique animations for every mob that he implemented in the last version. He had also added ten more powers that could be unlocked in the game and had also finished all their animations. The coding for it was also easy because, with the entire system being solid enough, he could just add another and copy existing codes and change the appropriate ones to make it work.

So that was why it took him two weeks to finish this update.

"Now I just have to finish the gameplay loop, and everything is basically done!"

What he called a gameplay loop was just another feature in the game that was possible after the player experienced regression for the first time. After the first regression, the player would unlock a new power called [Soul Container]. This power unlocked a new currency in the game called Souls. Along with that, this would also unlock the [Ascension] tab, which was a new tab that used Souls to get perks from a perk tree. He hadn't managed to implement it yet in this version because the implementation of the [Ascension] tab was another giant compared to the [Power] tab.

Regression already boosted point generation and max point capacity depending on the player's progress in the stage. Each time they increased their familiarity in the combat stages, their point generation and max point capacity would double. This multiplier would be more potent at later stages. So just adding this new feature was enough to satisfy that replayability.

So now, after he was done with the regression system, he immediately started programming the ascension system that would further lengthen the playtime of the players.

"After I put in that system, this game can truly be considered an idle game!"

____________________

At the fourth month of the Idle Power's development, he finally did it.

Version 0.5.0!

Having not seen any errors in the previous version, where he had to patch it and make any modifications, he goes ahead and puts in the ascension system, which included the [Soul Container] power, the new currency, and the ascension tree.

"This game is basically complete!" He said, gazing at the monitor of his work computer with wide-eyed excitement.

Though even if that was the case, he still hasn't labeled it as a full version. Why was that?

That was because the content within was still lacking for him!

There were only twenty-four options that could be unlocked on [Activity], ten actions on [Knowledge], and then fifty powers implemented in the game.

That's not enough for him!

"This is Idle Power. It should be a game about getting more powers. That's why I have to put every imaginable power in this game!"

That's right. The sole reason he hasn't labeled it version 1.0 was because it was lacking in his eyes. He wanted thousands of powers being thrown around the screen. He wouldn't make this game if that wasn't the case. Other than that bias, there was still a lot of content he wanted to add. He wanted to further improve the AI of the game because currently, the highest intelligence score for an AI to behave like a tool-assisted speedrunner was at the 1,000 intelligence score mark. This was an idle game, so number inflation was a normal thing. That kind of limitation was just bad. He had to accommodate the increasing numbers in the game.

He wanted more improvements so both the player character and mobs would act according to their intelligence score. It would be bad if the player character had a 50,000 intelligence score and it still could contend equally with a mob that only had a 1,000 intelligence score.

"How should I fix that?"

He decided to take a break after the update and make some plans for it.

____________________

He spent an entire day thinking about it, deleting plans he wrote on his notepad app and writing down other ideas one after another. It took until evening before he found a solution.

"That's it!" He stood up from his chair. "I just have to add it!"

The idea he got was simple. He was going to add interactions in the environment. Objects could be added so the character would pick them up and either use them as weapons or throw them. Obstacles could be used to block enemies or even used as a weapon if the player character has enough strength for it. They could even make arrangements to trap other mobs or even break objects if that could help them.

"It will become more complicated, but it doesn't matter. If it will make the game more visually appealing, then I will do it!"

With this kind of idle game, Mike has long realized that graphics would help this game greatly. If the auto-combat scene looked more flashy, it would satisfy the players even if they just watched. Playing passively was the purpose of idle games anyway, so he didn't have to worry about the mechanics of it. The game just needs to have great graphics in the combat stages.

"That added more to my workload, but this is just right. It's all to make my dream game!"

And so, he resumed developing his game once more.

____________________

--In one of the game forum communities for idle games--

[NEW GAME] Idle Power

Hey, I just found a new game. It looks great. The auto-battler looks neat. I can just watch my character beat up mobs forever.

What do you think, guys?

(Likes 111) (Share) (Reply)

(Replies)

"Cool game."

-"Great game."

--"Awesome game."

---"Amazing game."

----"Godly game."

-----"'Cool game.' ahh comment."

------"Lmao ;laugh;"

"I just tried it. It's a solid game from its progression, the visuals, and the newly added prestige system, but other than that, it's still lacking so much.

I want the developer to add a thousand more powers! "

-"Is it really that good?"

--"Yeah, it's cool. The auto-battler section is definitely the highlight of the game. It won't ask you to micromanage. You just have to watch and see your character improve on his own."

---"Alright, I'll try it."

"Hey, is it just me, or did anyone notice the gamedev updating the game so fast?"

-"What?"

--"I just noticed that Regression was introduced three weeks ago, and then the Ascension feature two weeks after that. Isn't that incredibly fast?"

---"Maybe the team just has a backlog of updates already prepared?"

----"They should have put it all at once if that's the case!"

-----"... Then, I'm not sure..."

-"Nah, you're tripping ;laugh;"

--"I kid you not ;deadpan;"

-"Its an idle game. It's easy to update it ;laugh;"

--"Easy? Aren't you that one who kept promising to make your non-existent idle game? If it's so easy, where is your game now?"

---"Relax. Unlike Castro Games, I'm only a single person. It's hard juggling between my work and my game development."

----"First, it's easy. Then it's hard for you. You're a riot ;laugh;

-----"This is what's hard with people like you. You don't think about the health of gamedevs like us smh"

------"Yeah. It's been two years since you promised your game. Why don't you show any progress? You think we're stupid?"

----"Stfu"

["Comment Deleted"]

-"I ain't reading allat"

-"Stfu"

-"It's easy because they are a team? How about you? It's been two years, and it's all empty promises! Then you have the gall to ask for donations?

You're truly shameless ;scoff;"

--["Comment Deleted"]

---"Why are the mods not banning this guy yet?"

---"Oh yeah, because everything is easy if you have a team and its hard for you to make a simple number generation program.

Hey bud. I made one overnight. Guess what? It doesn't take a week to make a simple idle game, and having a job is not a good enough excuse when you haven't even shown a single hint that you're making one!"

---"Oh cool. Where is your game then?"

---"'Waaa waaa, they have a team so its easy. I don't have one because I don't have time due to work waa waa ;cry; ;cry;'

Bro, have you seen the auto-battler in that game? That will take years to animate all of that! Unlike you, they are still pumping out more updates, and this is just an indie game!

Oh, and if this is a team, then their in-app purchase doesn't make sense.

How could their boss pay their workers if they only have that as a source of income?

Maybe you should get a life? I refuse to believe you're actually working ;laugh;"

----["Comment Deleted"]

-----"Get triggered bro"

-"Just shut up, bro"

-"No one asked"

-"What did they say?"

--"Something about Castro Games being a team and it's easy to make idle games. You know, this is the same person who said he had an interesting idle game concept and hasn't done anything yet for the past two years..."

---"Oh... that person."

-"Oh, aren't you that guy who kept asking for donations to help you get inspiration?

Get tf out of here!"

"Hey guys, isn't it strange that Idle Power only has a single in-app purchase that costs a buck? How will they profit from it?"

-"Yeah. It feels like they are losing a lot."

-"I think so too."

-"You're right."

-"I want to support them more!"

--"If you want to support them, they have a PayBud link on their witch.io page. Just go there and donate."

---"For real? I'll do that now!"

---"What? Why is it so hidden?"

----"Idk ;shrug;"

----"They're so shy. I have to shove my money on them!"

----"Are they scared of money? We should support developers like this more!"

-----"Yeah. The game is fun, and there are no ads. If we don't support this game, the team might just quit and abandon this. We cannot afford that!'

------"I agree ;thumbs up;"

------"Yes, we have to support them!"

------"The quality of the game is so high. I can't go back to playing other idle games!

I approve ;thumbs up;"

------"I hope they update more."

____________________

Lately, his improvements have stalled greatly after updating the game to version 0.5.0. While potential profit loss could make additional improvements to his skills, actual profits reduced that greatly. Currently, he was steadily gaining profits. It never fell down. He was getting a constant stream of money every single day.

Of course they were just bits of ten or twenty dollars everyday, though sometimes he was getting donations from his PayBud. That further decreased the perks he was getting from the potential loss on his game. He still hasn't met the average mark for his game's potential profits, but actual profits were enough to diminish the gains he got from his power.

So his skills haven't improved since the last few days he started implementing additional features for the combat system. It wasn't really a problem to him, though, because, even with the improvements to his skills dwindling, he already had more than enough to input all of the content he was planning for without getting into a slump. He had already made all the essential code for the game. He was just adding collision boxes for the objects and coding what each object could do. He had already made a simplified physics engine in the game through the powers like [Telekinesis] and [Magnetism]. He just had to expand on this physics engine and apply it to everything else in each stage.

It was a series of copy-pasting and adding more strings of new code just to meet these criteria. It was easy for him even if it took him a long time. Despite having a new keyboard and computer, it still couldn't keep up with his speed. The improvement he got was already at the peak of human skills when it came to typing speed. He knew each button without looking and never had to worry about making a typo. His worry was only about the amount of code he had to input and the processing speed of his computer.

Even with that, he felt it was a shame that his improvements were weakening due to the profits he was getting. He was grateful for the income, but it also slowed his progress on his skills. He was planning to build up his skills until he could make any games he wanted before thinking of profiting from it, but now he was faced with this problem this early.

"Why are they even donating to my PayBud account? I didn't even put it in the game. It's only linked within my witch.io..."

It might be hypocritical because he planned for at least one person to donate to him if they ever saw his PayBud account, but he couldn't help but complain about it. He didn't expect people to just look at his PayBud account instead of being satisfied with the Supporter Pack on his game.

The bad thing was it wasn't stopping. Even though it was an idle game with only a few hours of content inside it, the ten percent of people from the thousand who downloaded it seemed intent on just supporting him constantly with their donations. He wondered why they even bothered. A single donation was enough.

"... Whatever. I should just focus on my game."

Shaking his head to get rid of those thoughts, he returned his attention back to his idle game.

He had no problem with the coding. The animation was the one he was having trouble with.

"I can finish pixel animation quickly. They don't need too much detail to finish it all, even if they are hand-drawn. The problem is the amount..."

There were just too many he had to do. By adding environmental interaction, that was a few hundred animations just for the player character, as they needed to act on a lot of things depending on the environment. If they could interact with a rock, they needed at least two animations for throwing the rock and another three types of animations for using the rock as a melee weapon. He could just copy that animation to other objects that the character picked up on the ground, but he felt like that would be too dull. Once more, it had to do with his obsession to make a game that was close to his dream.

He doesn't want to take a shortcut and divert it from his idealized vision.

"And talking about weapons..."

He realized that the character was only using their legs and fists when they weren't using their powers. That was bad. It was so dull that he wanted to add more into it. They were fighting bad guys, evil beings, and monsters. They couldn't be just punching them just because they have powers. It would be much cooler if they had equipment.

"The question is how I can implement the equipment system with the object interaction system." That was his problem.

It would be bad if the item the character looted would just be thrown away after they found something on the ground. That would lose the point of the equipment system itself.

So that was what he was trying to solve right now.

____________________

A month quickly passed. Early in September, Idle Power got another update. Nick immediately updated his game to version 0.6.0 while reading the update log on the Woogle Play page of this game.

"Overhauled the combat section's top-down view into an isometric art? Characters can now interact with objects?" His eyes settled on the highlights of the update.

Throughout this month, Mike had decided to shelve the thought about equipment and solve the object interaction first. He had also changed the artstyle into an isometric artstyle instead of the usual 2D top-down overview. Other than that, there were no added features in the game.

Even with that, the improvement was evident when he played the game. The alleyway now looked better than just the typical squares they were represented with in the past version. In this version, he could see how big the buildings were, and the environment could easily be comprehended by sight alone. There was also other background stuff around, like trash bins, trash bags, rocks, and some other objects he couldn't understand yet.

"Woah!?"

He was surprised when his character kicked one of the trash bags with the effects of one of his powers, and it soared quickly towards a group of enemies. The trash bag exploded into a heap of garbage, and it caused damage against the group of enemies and even inflicted status effects on them. He tapped one of the enemies and saw that the status ailment they got was called "Stink".

"He added something like this!?"

His surprise wasn't over. There was a lot of new animation content that was added in the game. Other than that, it was hidden, but the AI's intensity was modified so it wouldn't just handle the recognition of the enemy mobs surrounding them but also the objects in their surroundings along with the environment itself. They could make their own pathing logic depending on their intelligence stat, and hidden attributes were also added to their behavior, so while some of the mobs were incredibly good at using certain objects, they were worse when it came to others. Status ailments also became a factor in their intelligence too. The player character was, of course, the only one who had no limitation, though the ceiling they needed to reach in their intelligence score to become proficient at everything was a lot.

Now, the player character wouldn't be dominant even if they had millions of points in their intelligence. At the same time, other enemies were also limited in what they could do. It became balanced enough that the environment and the objects on each stage became the limiting factor to the AI's competency.

And that made for extremely immersive fight scenes. He watched as his character, who now had a ten thousand intelligence score due to having unlocked a lot of perks and powers, was using the entire environment to the fullest. He carried one mob and slammed them into the wall. Sometimes he slammed them into the mirror or just piledrove them into a trash bin. They also threw the lids for trash cans like boomerangs or just used their powers to add more effects to the objects.

Objects could burn, freeze, electrify, and many more. The player character could even dab poisonous liquid on some objects and inflict poison on enemies through that.

Enemies' behavior had changed, so instead of them fighting like they were hypercompetent combat gods who had clairvoyance, it just became a high-speed fight where one side had clear weakness, and they weren't so competent that they were dodging powers and attacks at frame-perfect angles.

It wasn't just limited to the first stage. The second stage, "The Streets," and the third stage, "Syndicate Compound," were filled with a lot of objects that their character could interact with. There were guns they could shoot, light switches they could turn off, water pumps they could blast open, and many more.

He had spent his entire week catching all of these added details before he was done, immensely satisfied with the new experience this idle game gave. Nick was just thinking of dropping a donation again to show his appreciation to this idle game when another update shook him.

He immediately checked it and saw that this time, it was another major version update. In version 0.7.0, Castro Games had added a new currency called Cash and [Inventory] and [Equipment] tabs to the game.

"Uoooooooooo!!!!"

Nick was fired up.

____________________

It might be a wonder how Mike solved his problem on the conflict between the object interaction and equipment system functions in just a single week, though there was a simple explanation for it. He had been working on it in tandem with the object interaction feature. He was just fixing the bugs he found in the equipment system when he postponed its release and put the previous update first. It was why he even shelve the thought because he got a headache at that time that he just put the update first.

Now in this new version, equipment wouldn't be thrown by the character by adding a few strings of code that basically made it so the equipment was considered a permanent fixture in the character rather than a separate entity. Basically, they were like how the powers of the player character work. They were like unlockable content that the player character could just use whenever. The only difference was that the player themselves was the one equipping it instead of just letting it be used whenever by the player character when it was unlocked, like the powers.

Due to time constraints, only seven types of weapons had been implemented. Bats, swords, guns, rods, axes, slings, knuckles, and knives were the only ones he managed to implement. This was because he made different types of animations for each weapon type to further make the combat section more immersive. As for the other types of equipment, like clothing and pants, he also made a few because he had to redo every animation of the player character with it having these pieces of equipment. So there were currently three sets of equipment in the game, one set for each stage.

This update alone was enough to make the people who got attracted to this game go on an uproar. They felt like the game developer truly appreciated the donations they got, and they were dedicated to the development of this game.

Due to that, more donations fell through Mike's PayBud account, and while it still doesn't reach the projected profit they could gain from the quality of their game, it thoroughly damaged his chances of improving his skills.

"This is bad... Why are they doing this?"

The updates he made were just some aesthetics he thought he personally liked. He doesn't expect other people to like the content he made so much they poured their money into his e-bank account.

"If this goes on, it will take me years before I get the skills to make my dream game..."

He still wasn't satisfied with his skills. In the future, he wanted to make a very massive game that surpassed every game in this world. He still didn't have enough skills for that to happen.

"... This game is not giving me enough improvement. It seems like I need to consider making another one..."

He looked at his personal computer and opened a file. Within that file were a lot of notepad files titled differently from each other. These notepad files were game ideas he wrote in the first few weeks since he got his power. He put them here so he wouldn't forget these ideas even if a long time passed.

"... It seems like I'll need to make an Accord server to make my next game." His eyes settled on one of the notepad titles, and he opened it.

It was one of the game ideas he had been daydreaming about for a long time since he was in highschool. Since he played gacha games, he always wanted to make one. The idea was a gacha game, though the concept was impossible from a commercial perspective because of one thing.

It was a community-driven gacha game!

This idea, where the community surrounding this IP would be the one to drive the flow of the game itself, was impossible. That wasn't just profitable; it was a waste of time for every game developer. He hasn't written any business strategy for the game, nor any estimated profits he could get from it. He simply wanted to make this game for a childish reason.

He wanted a game that could accept characters created from the community to be official characters and collect them.

The name of the game showed what kind of game he wanted to make. A game that only catered to otakus.

"Time to start development of Cute Girls Academy!"

Cute Girls Academy. A game he always dreamed of making!

____________________

Before he could make his impossible dream game, he first had to invite a community to work with him. It wouldn't be a community-driven game if there was no community around it.

And the community he was going to build was those who became fans of his idle game.

In just three days, version 0.7.1 was uploaded on both Woogle Play and witch.io pages of this game. There was a simple update added to it.

He added more titles in it and also a link to a new Accord server. This Accord server wasn't a server for this game. Rather, it was a server for Castro Games itself.

Nick, nor any of the players of this game, was aware of Mike's intentions. They simply were happy that there was now an official Accord server on their game. They joined it without thinking so much about it.

Idle_Nick: Good evening!

Idle_Nick: ;Accord_waving sticker;

CastroGames: Nice to meet you!

And in this server, he would turn them into fans of his new game!