Carl had thoroughly figured out his current situation.
"So have I really become an electronic lifeform?"
"But the hardest thing to accept is... we game characters actually have revenue targets for players?"
Carl's gaze shifted from the real-world web page to the Elysium Academy student handbook at hand.
This student handbook referred to the players who were about to arrive as "Saviors."
Aside from Carl, the other game NPCs most likely did not know that they were characters in a game.
And the students chosen in "Elysium Academy."
In other words, the characters in the gacha pool needed to gain the Savior's favor as much as possible.
Whether it was having a romantic encounter with the players and calling out, "Dear, stay tonight."
Or fighting side by side with the players.
In short, they had to think of every possible way to please the players, and then... trick the players into spending their precious Contract Stone resources on them!
When Carl read this part, he was truly so angry that he almost laughed.
It rather gave him the feeling of a game planner saying to a game character, "Hurry up and tell the player you love him! Make him spend more of his hard-earned money on you!"
Aside from Contract Stones, the effective amount of time spent with players was also an important KPI.
Simply put, the more money a player spent on you, the higher your popularity among players, and the longer players were willing to stay with you.
Then, as a game character, the more commission you received, and the better the rewards became.
"So what are the rewards?"
Carl continued flipping through the later contents of the student handbook.
The rewards came in many varieties. First of all, Contract Stones were the high-level currency of this world.
The Contract Stones game characters earned from players could be used to buy a whole pile of things they wanted.
Of course... it was not as if however much money a player spent on a character was how much money that character could earn.
They could only draw a certain commission from it.
"Then it looks like the boxes and rewards hidden in every corner of the game can only be taken by players."
After confirming that Contract Stones were a precious currency in this world, Carl looked at the later rewards.
The rest of the rewards were unimportant. The most important one...
It was also possibly the final reward being competed for by the eight strongest students in "Elysium Academy," that is, the eight five-star characters.
That was, "Among the Saviors, the student with the highest popularity will have the Savior visit that student's country first after the semester ends, and save that country from the natural disaster it is facing!"
"This is... deciding the region opened in the next version based on the character with the highest popularity among players?"
Seeing this... Carl had already deeply realized how terrifying "Elysium" was.
Because the artificial intelligence "Elysium" was not only providing computing support for the game Oath alone.
It also simultaneously served as NPC computing support for many large-scale MMO games on the market.
To put it more directly, including Carl...
All the game characters in this "Elysium Academy" were not completely created separately by game designers drawing illustrations, building models, and writing character settings.
Take Carl as an example.
Carl, or rather the original owner, was nineteen years old this year, and this was not an age in a game character setting.
Instead, Carl had truly lived in the world of "Elysium" for nineteen years.
From infancy in childhood, to growing into an adult, to entering this "Elysium Academy" to study!
Although Carl could be certain that time in the virtual world had definitely been fast-forwarded, and was far from as long as nineteen years in the real world.
Just the real experience of growing up for nineteen years was enough to prove that Carl was a truly living person.
He was merely made of data.
And the humans of the real world could not interfere with the operation of the "Elysium" world at all. They could only negotiate with it.
For example, those handsome or beautiful limited characters in Oath.
Some were suitable natives chosen by the official Oath team from the world of "Elysium," and Carl belonged to this category.
The other part were characters whose backgrounds, personalities, appearances, experiences, and even illustration and model materials were all input into the world of "Elysium" by Oath's game designers.
After obtaining "Elysium's" approval.
This character would first be born in this virtual world as a baby.
Then, starting from infancy, based on the background, personality, growth experience, and other stories preset by the game designers, these characters would be raised from zero into adults.
And then now, they were made to come to this "Elysium Academy" to study.
Thus beginning the prologue story of the game Oath.
So the game characters in this "Elysium Academy" were not just students of this academy.
They also shouldered the task of gaining the favor of the Savior, that is, the player.
And then going to save their countries, relatives, and subjects in the world of "Elysium"!
Carl recalled the original owner's memories and found that the original owner really was a lone star of misfortune.
Although he was born into a minor noble family, the original owner's father, mother, brothers, and sisters had all died in a disaster.
The people of his territory had also all fled to other large countries.
No relatives, no friends, no lover, no assets.
The only one who could be considered close to Carl in this academy was an ancestral little maid.
"Speaking of pleasing players, if high popularity has so many rewards, then low popularity wouldn't have punishments, would it?"
Carl continued flipping through the student handbook, wanting to see what punishment there would be if someone ranked at the bottom in popularity during the Elysium Academy version.
[Warning: Try as much as possible not to let the Savior ignore you. Otherwise, according to the prophecy, the academy will soon face a disaster, and your life may be at risk!]
"This... this means they're going to hand out knives at the end of the version? Kill off low-popularity characters as sacrifices?"
Carl instantly understood what this warning meant.
Low-popularity characters were most likely going to be sacrificed to scam players' tears.
A roadside character like Carl would absolutely be the first one taken out when the time came!
It was even possible that when he was killed off by the plot, the players would ask, "Who is this? His death is tragic, but I don't remember him at all."
After being killed, could Carl continue living in this world?
The answer was no.
Although players could still encounter the character "Carl" in the game and use the character "Carl."
Carl's own consciousness would be erased!
Carl could be certain that his soul and consciousness had nothing to do with "Elysium."
He was himself, a soul and consciousness from Earth.
Precisely because of this, Carl could not die in this virtual world, at least not truly die in the official history of the game's plot!
It had a bit of a Sword Art Online feeling.
Although this was a game, to Carl, it was no joke!
"So the next goal is still to compete with those popular limited five-star characters for player popularity, and fight for my chance to live in the later main storyline?"
In reality, Carl only needed to win the players' affection!
After all, as long as players liked them, if the planners dared to inexplicably hand out knives to those popular characters in the game and write those popular characters to death.
The players would absolutely form a group to greet the game planners' mothers!
But this was still far from enough. Carl did not want to be controlled by the official Oath team, nor by that group of game planners who looked unreliable at first glance.
After Carl accumulated enough popularity, he would directly kick the official Oath team aside and establish a new Oath production team! However, this counted as Carl's long-term goal.
"Then here comes the question. For a three-star fodder character like me, whom players would even dislike for taking up space if they pulled me, how should I win the players' love?"
Countless thoughts flashed through Carl's mind.
What should he do to gain the players' love?
Try to become a powerful main DPS?
A super-strong support?
Or a highly popular beautiful girl character?
No, no, no. The simplest method was to simply make an interesting game, wasn't it?
Players came to play games essentially to have fun.
Then wouldn't it be fine if I made a super fun game for them to play?
Who said you could not make a game inside a game!
"It's time to let the players of this world eat something good."
Carl was already prepared to take in those heartbroken players who had been struck by a series of negative feedback, such as extremely high grind requirements, extremely long progression cycles, hollow game content, extremely boring dead periods, losing rate-up pulls again and again, and all their money going down the drain.
Then he would make them a small game with extremely strong positive feedback to soothe their wounded hearts.
(To be continued.)