As an intelligent program, Alice could post and reply on major gaming forums day and night, promoting Stardew Valley.
Although Alice was quickly muted and banned by the forum administrators, the reputation of Stardew Valley had successfully spread out.
Soon, people downloaded, installed, and began trying it out.
These trial players were quickly captivated by the game, sinking into the joy of farming and unable to extricate themselves.
“To continue playing, please purchase a registration code. Price: $10/each.”
When the 30-minute trial period ended, players currently playing Stardew Valley immediately found themselves unable to control the game and received a pop-up prompt.
This was right when they were gradually getting familiar with the gameplay and starting to get addicted to it.
“Oh, S**t!”
Seeing the prompt, these players immediately cursed out loud one after another.
Then they copied down the address, hurried to the nearest post office, purchased a $10 money order, and mailed it.
Since mailing took time, these players who temporarily couldn’t continue playing could only rush to the forums to post.
“This is definitely the most fun game I have played in all these years!”
“An absolute masterpiece! Once you enter the game, it will make you completely addicted!”
“Stardew Valley, a 10/10 game worth recommending!”
“…”
Relying on word of mouth from these people, Stardew Valley quickly became a hit on major forum websites.
More and more people began downloading, trying it out, and then running to the post office to remit money.
Mark was too young, so the remittance recipient he left was Rosalie.
Therefore, Rosalie had to run to the post office every day recently to collect mail while cashing the money orders.
At first, there were only a few hundred dollars in money orders every day, but later it grew to thousands and tens of thousands of dollars per day.
In just one week, Stardew Valley sold 20,000 copies, earning Mark $200,000!
“This… I didn’t expect, Mark, your game to sell so well!”
Rosalie was also shocked by Mark’s money-making speed.
The money she had earned through years of hard acting, added together, wasn’t as much as Mark earned in this one week!
Mark had confidence in the game he made.
With the money, Mark upgraded the hardware for Alice at the first instance!
Nowadays, a top-tier supercomputer cost tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, which Mark certainly couldn’t afford.
A mid-range enterprise-level supercomputer also cost millions of dollars each.
With Mark’s current funds, he could only spend $50,000 to purchase a 4-node personal supercomputer cluster for Alice.
The computing power of this personal-grade supercomputer was only one-hundred-thousandth of a top-tier supercomputer, but it was still much stronger than the original home computer.
After transferring Alice’s code to the personal supercomputer’s hard drive, her operating speed instantly received a tremendous boost!
When responding to Mark and Rosalie’s commands, Alice almost no longer experienced delays or lag.
Afterwards, Mark purchased a batch of ultra-precise cameras and installed them all over the house.
If anyone illegally intruded, Alice could detect it immediately and sound an alarm.
After time-traveling to the Marvel Universe, Mark had always lacked a sense of security.
After all, he was not a real Superman, and had only acquired the Super Brain as his sole superpower for now.
Mark’s body was still like an ordinary person’s; an ordinary bullet or a disease could take his life.
Previously there were no conditions, but now that he had money, Mark naturally used it to increase his personal safety at the first opportunity.
Perhaps only when he unlocked more of Superman’s abilities in the future would the sense of unease in his heart disappear!
“Rosalie, time to get up! Today is the day to head to Bell Film Company to join the crew, please make preparations in advance!”
Early that morning, after waking Rosalie up, Alice reminded her.
“Mom, have you memorized all your lines?”
While having breakfast, Mark asked Rosalie.
“Rest assured! Not only have I memorized all the lines, but I also have a clear idea of how to act on set!”
Rosalie confidently patted her chest, then looked at the big screen opposite: “This is all thanks to Alice, who constantly helped me correct my problems, so that my acting skills could improve so quickly!”
This was a feature Mark had added to Alice some time ago.
She filmed Rosalie’s expressions and actions while acting, then searched for similar scenes from a movie library to perform frame-by-frame comparisons.
Among these objects of imitation, many were Shadow queens, so Rosalie’s acting skills naturally improved very quickly!
Alice, who had changed into a red princess dress, appeared on the big screen.
She lifted the hem of her skirt and curtsied towards Rosalie’s direction: “Rosalie, you’re welcome, this is all what I should do.”
“Alice’s movements are getting smoother and smoother, and her tone is increasingly like a Zhenren (Immortal)!”
Rosalie looked at Alice with a face full of affection, just like looking at her own biological daughter.
Mark curled his lips, feeling that ever since they had Alice, half of Rosalie’s maternal love for him had been divided away.
After finishing breakfast, Rosalie and Mark took a taxi together to Bell Film Company.
Caleb gathered the crew members together and held an initial meeting first.
There were more than twenty people participating in the meeting, all of whom were actors playing different roles in Dreamland Children’s Park.
The other staff members had already taken the filming equipment in advance and headed to the shooting location.
“This is Rosalie, she will play the female lead Joanna Perry in the show. This is her son, who also plays her son in the show, Cale…”
Caleb first introduced Rosalie and Mark to everyone.
“Clap, clap, clap!”
The other crew members applauded one another, expressing a welcome to the two of them.
However, Mark noticed that some people in the crew looked at Rosalie with eyes of either puzzlement or unconvinced resentment.
They clearly didn’t understand why Caleb would let a nobody like Rosalie play the protagonist of this show!
Especially two of the actresses, whose gazes towards Rosalie were even somewhat unkind.
They had originally also set their sights on the female lead of this show.
These two considered themselves far superior to Rosalie in terms of both seniority and acting skills.
They didn’t expect that the protagonist would end up being taken by Rosalie, leaving them to only play supporting roles.
Naturally, they were dissatisfied with such a result, feeling that Rosalie must have had some shady deal with the director Caleb.
Mark took out the laptop he was carrying on his back and placed it on the conference table in front of him.
This was the latest model computer he had just bought for $20,000.
Noticing his action, the people around didn’t pay much attention, thinking it was just a child playing around.
Mark secretly aimed the camera at the people inside the conference room, lowered his voice, and said: “Alice, pull up all the public information of these people.”