So at lunch with her coworker who supported her most in her MAA playing career for Canada’s Death Fiscalists, they discuss an upcoming indie horror game release, which that coworker deemed of interest to Karine after the debacle of MAA:

“Look at this game: it’s looking for beta testers, I think you might have wanted to play it since what you’re doing in there amounts to ranged tanking” her coworker tells her about the game.

The trailer released from the closed beta build of that game involves character creation, unfinished condo towers and players wielding PLAGF (i.e. Chinese army) weapons... So many PLAGF weapons that the game almost feels like a Norinco ad in game form. And the game itself feels like it’s more of a first-person shooter than a horror game.

“Are this game’s developers Chinese?” another colleague asks the two.

“Why? There are times where I feel like there’s too much emphasis on local purchasing! Video games aren’t like food!” Karine retorts. “You make me feel like you wouldn’t play a Chinese-made video game based solely on the country of origin!” She then turns to the first coworker. “As for ranged tanking, isn’t that how most ranged DPS would feel when you play a ranged DPS in single-player content?”

“The developers are actually based in Quebec. I wonder if you played FPS games before; you might have a hard time taking cover initially if you didn’t” the first coworker answers both people.

As they keep watching the trailer, they also realize that one of the levels involves a high-speed car chase across Guangdong, and another level in Luoyang where the player must face the ghosts of dead customers whose families sacrificed everything to even own a condo in that city.

“The devs may as well call this action-horror game Evergrande: The Game, if they can secure the rights to use the Evergrande name and logo. There is just too much pointing at Evergrande that it would be obvious to anyone who have any knowledge of Chinese economy!” Karine comments on what she views as the biggest opportunity the devs can seize.

“Karine? Do you plan on streaming the game? I watched you play MAA, tier in, tier out, but I knew that often women were pushed into healing provided the game has healing, a girl played in group content, and knew what she was doing mechanically!”

“I don’t interact the same with a fight when I tank vs heal, but I converted Monseigneur into a tank because, in the early days of MAA, there just wasn’t a whole lot of tanks”

By then Karine starts signing up for the open beta of what she called Evergrande: The Game, or, for short, Evergrande. Asking for her email address, username, date of birth and other information deemed necessary by the game’s devs to access open beta. I really hope that game’s manufacturer is not going to release the game without first securing the right to use the Evergrande name and logo. A Canadian attempt to secure the rights to use these would raise eyebrows in Shenzhen or Guangzhou. However, at this point, Evergrande’s manufacturer appears to be banking on Evergrande’s despair to wring even a nominal amount of royalties for these rights. It would suck for that game if they fail, Karine ruminates, believing the game’s future to be shaky. I would love to see whether there’s a political loyalty system in place… at this point, this sounds a lot like my idea for a zombie apocalypse horror movie/game.

The devs’ answer is quick: Karine is allowed into the open beta of Evergrande. And she announces her followers on Twitch (provided there are any remaining from her MAA days willing to watch her) that she’s back on air for the open beta testing of that game.

As soon as she returns home that day, she braces herself for lengthy installation time for the beta build of Evergrande. Which, because of the game’s weight in Chinese content, she decides to open her stream by cooking up… Cantonese chow mein. Especially fitting since the game is implied to start in Shenzhen, and hence Cantonese food is common there.

“Welcome to this stream of Monseigneur, my first stream since MAA’s closure! While I wait for the open beta build of Evergrande to be installed on my computer, I shall cook and eat Cantonese chow mein on air!” Karine starts streaming and cooking the chow mein.

“I didn’t think that the choice of a game to stream would have influenced the food you eat on air!” Adèle, one of her loyal followers, comments in the stream chat upon on air.

“Yeah, I saw you eat fish and chips for dinner on day one of Operation Heathrow’s RWF, and jeyuk bokkeum for lunch on day two!” Caroline comments in the stream chat while watching her ex-GM in MAA cook on a stream, months after they last interacted.

“Once I am done eating, I will start playing Evergrande. I will warn you, however, that, since the game appears more based on first-person shooters, there’s going to be a learning curve, but taking cover will not be wholly foreign to me” Karine warns the audience who’d still watch her even after being away from streaming since MAA’s closure.

I forgive her for what she did to me back in Tartarus. No use dwelling on the past. That chinoiserie looks tasty though, Caroline muses as she watches her ex-GM cook before linking the recipe on the stream chat.

“I really hope that I can get to at least the Guangdong car chase level tonight...” Karine sighs, while the installation of Evergrande is at 60% when she starts eating the chow mein.

Because she knew a few newer games would hold new players’ hands to some extent, she is left wondering how much hand-holding there is. Under what forms, too, since she also knows that not all hand-holding is made equal from a player standpoint. However, she knows that a poor new player experience can do a game in. And sometimes bring down its manufacturer along with it.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Once she finishes eating the chow mein, her followers ask for various things such as what drew her to eating Chinese food, or even Korean food, what interested her about Evergrande, and insolvency as a follow up to the question about Evergrande. As the game’s installation ends, her followers are treated to her making the character she will start playing the game on.

“It will take a while because I expect this character to stay with me for the entire duration of the open beta phase” Karine warns her viewers as she uses sliders for various parts of the character’s body.

And man there’s a lot of them. Length and thickness for limbs, waistline, hip and chest width, belly size, shoulder size and width, hair length and so on. The fastest things for her to decide on are shoulder size and arm thickness: she maxed both out on her female character.

At least this game’s devs understand the need to give players a choice in body types. MAA was good in that respect. However, I expect players wanting in on PvP to make their characters as slim as possible, Karine muses while she keeps adjusting the character settings for the rest of her body. And, by some miracle, gender seems to not have much of an effect on how fat the characters are.

But at the bottom left corner of the screen, she sees a line about carrying capacity, which increases as her character gets taller and heavier. And it also seems like HP scales with the carrying capacity.

“I had no idea you could make characters that fat in this game!” a surprised Caroline comments on the chat. “This isn’t like MAA!”

“MAA allowed characters that fat, but unlike MAA, I have the feeling that body type will have a gameplay impact in Evergrande! What satisfied me in MAA was creating characters who might be on the thicker side, but not necessarily fat” Karine responds to Caro.

With the end result having more or less the same body type as her beloved Monseigneur. Now, however, her character’s face is not going to be the same as that of either Monseigneur or Clavet; she seems willing to accept a more Chinese-esque face. And she will be asked to name the character after the body is set.

“Let’s roll!” Karine announces to her viewers as, rather than to start the campaign, she instead goes to the firing range.

So while FPS lovers might be disappointed by the game’s limited selection of weapons, Karine does some target practice on each weapon. Starting with the QSZ-92, the game’s only playable pistol. Because she feels like she will need to deal with moving targets throughout the game’s campaign, she goes directly to moving target practice. She struggles with aiming even a QSZ-92, at least initially, emptying several 15-round magazines before she scores direct hits at ranges she feels would be realistic to fire one in an unfinished condo.

However, she feels like there would be good reason to believe that there might be situations where she will need to fire at longer ranges than, well, point-blank. Such as defending the entrance of an unfinished condo tower. She then switches to the QBZ-191, an assault rifle, loading it with a 75-round drum magazine for moving target practice, taking place on the ground floor of an unfinished condo tower.

And, even though she doesn’t feel like she will need to fire one that often, she still feels the need to practice some on a QBU-10, which fires much bigger rounds than a QBZ-191, and at much longer ranges, but its magazine can only carry five rounds.

“In past horror games I played, ranged DPS never seemed to take place at longer ranges than assault rifle range, but the devs must have good reason to put a sniper rifle into the game. Maybe there’s some level where I might have to pick off an enemy from an unfinished condo tower” Karine sighs, frustrated with aiming a QBU-10.

“You kept talking about unfinished condo towers. What does Evergrande have to do with unfinished condo towers?” Caroline asks on the stream chat.

“I will answer that later, once we get to the opening cutscene”

Then comes the grenade, which is something she’s much more familiar with aiming since it would be more similar to launching holy flares or casting alcohol clouds in MAA. And finally, a jian, which is much like melee weapons in other horror games she played in the past, and it plays out in a more hack-and-slash way.

Once Karine feels sufficiently confident that she can get started playing the actual game, the viewers are treated to the opening cutscene. It opens with the judgment of the High Court of Hong Kong, ordering Evergrande’s liquidation.

“For those among you who don’t follow international economic news, Evergrande is the largest real estate bankruptcy in history. And it was the result of bursting the Chinese real estate bubble. I won’t go into detail right now, because I believe the game will sprinkle details about its causes!” Karine comments about that aspect of the game.

Oh God, LGFVs, and how any attempts at tax reforms in China must include greater taxation powers to the provinces. Land sales were the main source of revenue for local and provincial governments since they couldn’t tax the population directly. And fiscal imbalance only encouraged provinces to fight over real estate projects, with any shortfalls being covered by borrowing from LGFVs, Karine muses, triggered by the mention of LGFVs, or local government financing vehicles, in the opening cutscene.

Then Karine starts playing the opening level of the campaign, where the player, an independent board member (i.e. not involved in the day-to-day operations), attempts to escape the Evergrande headquarters in Shenzhen. Especially when angry homeowners are storming the HQ, but somehow, it feels like a tutorial level to her.

As in MAA dungeons, back in the day, she drags the angry homeowners into a corner. Once she turns a corner in the hallway, she throws a fragmentation grenade at the hostile homeowners, in hopes of buying some time for her to get to the getaway car in the basement.

But when another horde of angry homeowners converges on a different position, she is told to get behind a desk…

“She seems to be able to get some mechanics down, but what will it be like when enemies don’t fight at point-blank? It won’t always take place in rooms the size of unfinished condos!” Caroline warns her ex-GM.

“My own friends were all aim and no brain kinds of FPS players; she feels like the opposite of that! She can only aim grenades!” Adèle comments on her friends playing FPS on the stream chat.

Karine seems to have a few problems aiming a QBZ-191 at a range that’s only slightly longer than what she would expect out of an unfinished condo. Just a little less than at the firing range earlier. Tabarnak! The last horror game I played prior to playing MAA was more hack-and-slash than Evergrande is! I might need something different out of the next trip to the firing range after this level ends! After all, practicing smarter, not harder, got me through MAA, but it won’t mean the same here.

Yet, somehow, she fends off the horde by using up a second frag grenade, whose detonation is very loud, and then makes a run for the elevator when the homeowners are under the shock of the flashbang.