So maybe he had bitten off more than he could chew.
Ethan had easily finished the creation of the first 5 levels for Geometry Dash in 9 days. Working under a time dilation was a godsend as he could drastically decrease the needed rest periods. Everyone needs to eat and sleep, but Ethan had discovered that as long as his screen in open the dilated effect still functions so he altered the programing in his computer to have a manual on/off button. With that addition he has essentially enabled him to continuously work at 2x speed.
As long as he remains within the same area that is. In his experiments Ethan found that the moment he leaves his apartment the computer automatically turns off.
At first he had been irritated, but then shrugged. He already has an immense advantage, so why get upset about something so small. Anyway, turns out that creating an option for the customers to create their own levels, upload it to a central server, download others, and play them was extremely complicated. Who knew?
Ethan will deny ever slamming his desk in frustration at constantly working and reworking the same thread of codes over and over and over and over again. But, it did cause him to re-evaluate his entire plan. He has been wasting so much time trying to do something that he just doesn't have the necessary experience and skills to pull of so Ethan put down a note to come back to the idea once he can.
On the bright side he had found a way to draw more attention. When he designed Flappy Bird he had not added in one of the key money making functions, ads.
Now when anyone thinks of ads they instinctively cringe and throw themselves into a rage, but Ethan has a plan. He had spent an entire day, not under time distortion to avoid unnecessary confusion, sending out emails and phone calls to various companies. From local mom-and-pop shops to international conglomerates Ethan proposed to place an advertisement towards all of his players.
Most had passive aggressively told him to go away, but a few showed interest. Implementing the update to the codes framework to allow the ads to play after the player dies. Should the player watch to the end instead of skipping they will receive an extra life. This will continue for a total of 3 lives, or 2 ads, until an option will show to either purchase extra lives or restart.
Ethan hardly negotiated when presented the opportunity aside from looking through the contracts to make sure that he hadn't been screwed over. Only 2 out of the 13 companies had tried to do something that basically gave them all the profit from the game in its entirety. Naturally their offers were rejected and blacklisted from ever being involved with any future endeavors.
Wonderful thoughts of how they will come back begging to be apart of his journey when he gets far more popular flooded his mind when he went to sleep that night.
Interestingly, any watch time towards advertisements get a double value in the system as it is counting the playtime and some form of viewership payment. Sadly the system had not given Ethan any advise as to the conversion rate of views to points, but he just shrugged. Why worry about an unexpected benefit when he didn't even try to get it?
Unsurprisingly the system had forced him to pay an 'Update Fee' of 20 points, but whatever. At this moment there were no more than a couple thousand total players of Flappy Birds, so he wasn't getting back much anyway.
-Game Designer in DC-
The following month was when everything exploded.
Truth be told, Ethan was slowly going crazy. See the system requires a standard publishing fee along with a fee to change minor details to allow for proper usage in both Wayne Tech and Luthor Industries softwares. Sure he could focus on one in particular, but that would ruin his ability to grow and potentially alienate an entire group of customers. Why would he ever do that?
So when thinking in those terms the baseline cost for each game is 150 points. And even that is to not pay the system to include flip phones. Very quickly Ethan came to understand why starting up a new business is extremely difficult.
He has been working nonstop to pump out as much content as possible only to put these projects aside as he doesn't have the correct funds. By now Ethan has a small, barely noticeable dent on his desk from slamming his fist in frustration.
Thankfully his efforts were showing dividends. After putting out Geometry Dash with the advertisement function already added into its software there was little need to update it. Starting out with 10 different levels with vastly different themes and difficulties has lead to it becoming a hot topic among kids. And that's without talking about his stroke of genius.
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He added his own creations into his ad system. Every time someone watches an ad on anything that is produced by him, they have a chance of seeing another of his games. Genius!
Now he did run into a slight snag initially. Creating an advertisement is nothing like a game. In fact it has to be cinematic similar to watching a teaser trailer. Thankfully the Game Shop sold several skills that have come in handy for him. [Coding], [Cinematography], [Producer], and [Sound Design] have been godsends.
Sound Design had been the first of his purchases for a low low price of 150 points, but it was worth it. It should be noted that Ethan is complete trash at creating sound tracks. He relies completely on the system to add it in when publishing and Geometry Dash required him to pay 25 points per level.
Yeah, that hurt a bit too much.
Now he has all the knowledge necessary for him to at least create basic tracks and has spent time practicing. Strangely the Producer skill has compounded on top of this. Initially for creating his trailer, the Producer skill encompasses everything that requires a producer. Funnily enough, there was a lack of the system shoving knowledge into his brain and instead a sixth sense type of thing. Ethan could instinctively tell when something should be done to make the overall experience better.
Problem is that these things take time to properly implement and learn what is the right course of action. There was one particular case where he just sat there for 5 hours constantly changing two or three things because his skill was telling him something was missing, but not knowing what to fix. In the end he just left it because what else was he supposed to do.
Cinematography naturally was bought to make the ads as well as thinking on any cinematic cutscenes or trailers for the more expensive games he intends to make later on.
Now Coding was an interesting one. The skill that was first given to Ethan, Programming, came with the knowledge of how to code and program software. Coding has essentially given Ethan the knowledge of advanced coding techniques and tricks to make everything run faster and easier. It was with this that Ethan discovered that simply adding more code to get something to work slowed down the servers and slimming down the software allows for more players to be on the servers at the same time.
Properly geared up, Ethan took the country by storm. Mobile game after mobile game was released and added to his company's portfolio, gaining an increasing amount of intrigue by more businesses wanting to use his ad system for their products. He worked near constantly in the red, often times using up his points immediately when the option to publish something was available. If it wasn't something new then he was updating everything at one time where he could to make it run smoother.
Since the release of Geometry Dash, Ethan had been shoving more and more into the faces of the market. Fruit Ninja, Bloons TD, Plants vs Zombies, Kingdom Rush, and DragonVale. Each one published as soon as he finished it and had the 150 points. Each one had an ad system that raked in more money. Each one bringing in more players.
With all the new traffic of kids, and even bored adults, playing his games, Ethan had gotten some more Achievement rewards. For having 10000 total players downloading his games he received another time distortion. It had taken him from 2x to 3x the temporal flow and he was over the moon. Afterwards it was 1000 players on the same game at one time, but the reward from each game was different this time.
What Ethan had been given for each of his games that reached 1000 concurrent players was a choice between two options. He was being presented with an option between an Active Bot or a Passive Bot. What that means, he didn't know until he tried out both.
He learned that an Active Bot will work in the background at the same time as Ethan is working. This bot will work at around 20%, or 1/5th of his own speed and efficiency, but will know what it is that he wants to do. Great, worked like a charm in finishing up Geo Dash's last 3 levels and fixing a few minor background issues on everything else. Sadly he had to purchase a tracking function on what it worked on from the shop, but whatever. He was already happy and there was no need to ruin it.
Passive Bots seemed work very differently. They are always on, but are a far more long term situation. The way they operated is that for everything that Ethan can get done in an hour, these Passive Bots will take 24. Very bad if not for the fact that even when he is not in his apartment or whatever is designated as his home, these PB's will continue to work as if they were him. Just slow.
Between all his games only Flappy Bird, Geometry Dash, Fruit Ninja, and Bloons have gotten this achievement. Ethan current is using a set-up of 3 AB's and 1 PB's to help him out.
Ethan can't be doing everything and this was his saving grace on not having to run the risk of sharing the secret of the system with anyone else. Perhaps he may find someone that he could trust in the future, but this is still Gotham. There is no way in hell that he could ever let anyone else know about this in the city.
Though, he is running into a bit of an issue lately. The system shut him out.
Apparently holing oneself up in their home for 72 hour long work days, every day tends to lead to insanity. At first Ethan found the notion that the system, the thing that started this whole mess, is concerned for him hilarious.
He even asked the system where this new found love came from. He shouldn't have been surprised at the response.
'Host is a human.'
"What does that mean?" How is that supposed to answer anything?
'Humans are social creatures. Should the host be met with a lack of social interaction, the sanity and continued efficiency of the host is in jeopardy.'
Yeah, it all is because he might not be working at his best. Not any real concern at all.
Never.