“Hmm... This isn’t how I pictured it.”
Cipher kept refreshing the page.
They had ambitiously counted down together and uploaded the game, but the response was all but nonexistent.
[Downloads: 104]
“Barely over a hundred.”
Entropy looked at the number and let his shoulders droop.
“In other words, apart from our classmates and friends, nobody’s played it.”
“I guess we had our heads way too far in the clouds. I didn’t know reality would be this harsh.”
Root looked deeply dejected as well.
“I don’t think you need to worry too much.”
At Seoha’s words, all three of them turned their heads at the same time.
“Why do you think that?”
Root asked, his face full of expectation.
“Because the quality is good. It’s hard for even one indie game of this level to come out in a year. On top of that, it’s free. I think it’s just a matter of timing, and that someday people will definitely recognize it.”
Creators could not objectively judge just how excellent the game they had made was.
In Seoha’s eyes, “MIT Simulator” was an overachievement that far surpassed everyone’s expectations, a masterpiece that had no choice but to become a hit.
Color returned to the three faces.
“You really mean that?”
“I’m trusting only you, okay?”
“Hearing you say that makes me feel relieved, Seoha.”
For a brief moment, Spectra Works regained their smiles despite their haggard faces.
The next afternoon, a post went up on Reddit.
[Isn’t this game way too realistic?]
-It’s MIT Simulator, and after I made my character study for a week straight, he suddenly had a mental breakdown and ran out of the library. Then he started exercising on his own, met a friend, and went drinking.
Should I have raised responsibility a bit more?
└What kind of game is it?
└A free indie game. Made at MIT. It’s really realistic and complex.
└The character moves however it wants?
└You can set a direction. But it doesn’t just blindly follow. There are so many factors to consider that you need to study it.
└If you play that online, it becomes a completely different game. The offline version seems like just a taste.
One week after release,
word of mouth began to spread in small ripples.
[Downloads: 485]
“The number of users is increasing, but it’s too slow. I don’t even know if we’ll be able to get investment like this.”
Cipher sighed.
Considering an entire week had passed, the results fell far short of expectations.
“But I think there are some positive signs.”
Seoha pointed at the server log screen.
[Waiting: 23]
“If you look at the current users’ login patterns, once someone comes in, they hardly leave. The average playtime is over two hours.”
Entropy blinked.
“Really?”
“Yes. I looked up the statistics, and for free indie games, the average usually doesn’t exceed ten minutes. If it goes over twenty minutes, that means it’s an extremely well-made game. But our game...”
Cipher and Root stared at the screen.
“Then that means there’s nothing wrong with the game itself, right?”
“Could it suddenly shoot up all at once at this rate?”
It was not as if they did not know. They were anxious, and simply wanted certainty.
“It’s not just that there’s nothing wrong. It means the users coming in right now are completely absorbed in the game. It just hasn’t spread by word of mouth yet.”
For them, this was likely a project they had invested more than a year into.
Expectation.
Anxiety.
Tension.
Heavy air pressed down on the clubhouse.
“Someone’s streaming our game!”
Entropy shouted loudly in surprise.
“What?”
“Seriously?”
Cipher looked at the screen and his hands began to tremble.
“I know this person. It’s a channel I watch often...”
“Who doesn’t know him? He has over a million subscribers.”
Root let out a small laugh.
“If that guy uploads a game review, it’ll get at least three hundred thousand views by default.”
[Downloads: 693]
“It’s going up!”
“Wow, this is insane!”
[Downloads: 1,024]
[Downloads: 1,441]
Cipher’s eyes grew wet.
“We did it. We might be able to do an official release!”
And then, almost explosively, the number jumped.
[Downloads: 2,203]
“Oh my God!”
“What on earth is happening?”
The four of them sat side by side and began watching the stream.
* * *
The streamer “Nova” adjusted his microphone volume.
“Hey, friends. The game I’m reviewing today is ‘MIT Simulator.’ Apparently, it was made at MIT, and a gamer I know recommended it to me.”
His face was full of exhaustion.
“Why do I look so tired? I’ve been awake for thirty hours now. After I finished yesterday’s stream, I turned this game on for just a bit.
And since then, I haven’t been able to sleep. I’m telling you, this game is actually insane.”
Click.
When Nova brought over the materials, the NPC began putting something together with practiced efficiency.
“For reference, local mode is trash. The true value of this game comes when you connect online... but the damn server capacity is thirty people.
If you leave once, there’s no telling how many hours you’ll have to wait. That’s why I haven’t been able to sleep until now.”
└Show us gameplay. What kind of game is it?
└Thirty people lol who’s that supposed to satisfy?
└It’s not an official release, right?
└Closed beta?
“To put it simply, this is a game that simulates life at MIT. The goal is to set your initial stats, take an appropriate route, and grow. Even that part is pretty fun. It’s really realistic.
The freedom is incredible. You can interact with almost every NPC, and then the NPCs influence each other too. There’s an affinity system, so you can ask them for all sorts of favors.”
└That doesn’t sound that special. Other games have that too.
└Right. It’s not like reputation grinding is anything new.
└The interaction is kind of interesting. Is the AI they installed that impressive?
“That’s just normal mode. The really fun part is the scenario mode. I’m doing the alien invasion mode right now, and since it’s MIT, I put all my initial stats into intelligence. Then I kept getting killed instantly way too often.
So I switched to a physical build. Now I can beat aliens to death as long as I have an iron pipe.”
└All-in physical build lol how did he get into MIT with that brain?
└The scenario does sound interesting.
“The NPCs are incredibly realistic. It feels like this might actually be how people would act if an invasion really happened.
You guys might not know how amazing this is. But as a reviewer who’s played countless games, I can guarantee it.
No indie game has ever implemented an AI engine at this level. No, even if you go up to AAA games, it’d be hard to find one.”
└Really?
└It’s that impressive?
└What is it even like?
“I was wondering what kind of magic MIT had pulled, but the answer was in the credits. The engine designer was Yu Seoha. You know, the person who got famous recently for smashing Logia?”
Nova played the video.
WEEEEEEEEEE—
Sirens rang across the campus as aliens appeared.
A professor in the middle of class looked outside, then led the students to a shelter. Campus security tried to fight back, but they were no match.
“You have to build affinity steadily. Then you can craft items suited to each department. For example, this place here is the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
I’m going to make an amazing war hammer. This is just my guess, but I think each department has different weapons it can craft.
Modern firearms seem like they’d be possible in mechanical engineering, and if you go to nuclear science and engineering, you might be able to make nuclear weapons.
Civil engineering or architecture is useful for making a hideout. If you get hurt, you can go to the Health Sciences and Technology Research Institute...
In this way, you decide your growth direction based on the affinity you’ve built.
And you can think of the major you choose at the start as the race in a fantasy game. I chose mathematics, and it came with a trait that gave me an extra five percent understanding of engineering.”
└What? This is way more serious than I expected.
└A strength-based math major lolololol
└At this rate, won’t they end up building a spaceship too?
└An Iron Man suit! There has to be one. There’s no way engineering nerds could resist that.
“Now I’m going to make armor. I’ll become a medieval knight and beat aliens to death. Later, I’ll raise engineering and try riding a mechanical horse too. That’s the dream!”
Nova smiled brightly in anticipation as he manipulated the UI.
“Now, I’ll get metal from the materials science NPCs and...”
Click.
The screen froze.
Nova blinked.
“Huh?”
No matter how much he clicked the mouse, the game did not respond.
“Wait, lag? Don’t tell me it crashed?”
[Server connection lost]
[Session ended]
[Waiting: 192]
The chat exploded.
└Congratulations! Server’s dead!
└What’s with the queue lololol
└How long are we supposed to wait for that many people to clear out?
└Agh! I just downloaded it and tried logging in, but there are already over five hundred people waiting.
└It’s increasing in real time. Are the viewers teabagging Nova?
“N-No! My big, beautiful war hammer! I even gave the NPC all the materials! I still need to get my armor fitted!”
That was the reason the download count had suddenly surged.
* * *
Spectra Works clubhouse.
Cipher sprang up from his chair.
“Queue at nine hundred—no, nine hundred forty. It just passed a thousand!”
Entropy checked the server status with a terrified face.
“This is weird! This shouldn’t be happening. CPU at ninety-three degrees, this is insane. Fan RPM is over four thousand!”
The server groaned with the sound of an airplane taking off.
Vroooooooom—
The empty cans left on the table were rattling from the vibrations.
“At this rate, it really is going to explode. Please hold out. If it blows up now, all the users will run away!”
The in-game situation was probably hell at the moment.
Root clutched his head and cried out in despair.
Everyone felt the same way.
People were showing interest now, but in a few hours, they might forget it as if it had never happened. They wanted to keep the newly arriving users no matter what.
Seoha was just as flustered.
But he soon regained his composure and thought about how to resolve the situation.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
The log window opened.
Seoha’s eyes moved rapidly left and right, scanning the logs pouring down like rain.
If everything had gone according to design, this should never have happened.
But during development, the code had passed through too many hands.
‘All calculations should be done locally, and the server should only receive the result values, so why is this...’
As Seoha read through the logs with fierce intensity, his eyes stopped in one place.
‘Here it is!’
In MIT Simulator, countless algorithms were running simultaneously.
Pathfinding, action determination, load balancer, predictive cache.
As these four interacted, a new rule that no one had designed had appeared.
‘Emergent Behavior.’
“Did you find something? A bug?”
Entropy asked in a desperate voice.
“This isn’t a bug.”
“Then...?”
“This is a generated behavior model. An AI I didn’t design has been born inside.”
The three of them were horrified.
“I’ll try modifying it from now.”
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
“What are you going to do?”
Seoha did not answer.
Instead, he opened four log streams at the same time and began following their flow with his eyes.
‘A self-sustaining behavior loop created by the entanglement of four algorithms.’
As he read, the flow became visible.
One algorithm predicted another algorithm, that result was cached again, and as that cache was redistributed by the load balancer, an unintended function had emerged.
Then who was the culprit?
“Here!”
Seoha picked out a single line from among the countless logs.
A module that had not originally existed.
“Can’t we just delete it?”
Seoha shook his head.
“No. This routine is already connected to the other algorithms. If we force it off, the system will collapse.”
“Then what do we do?”
Entropy was on the verge of bursting into tears.
“I’ll straighten out the traffic.”
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
Seoha rearranged the connections between the algorithms. If he clearly separated each of their roles, interference would not occur.
Tap.
When he entered the final command, the server let out a wooong sound as if exhaling a breath it had been holding.
The CPU temperature and fan RPM began dropping sharply.
[Server Load: 94% → 68% → 43% → 21%]
“What planet are you from, programmer?”
Root, the system engineer, was horrified.
Both identifying the cause from the logs alone and modifying it on the spot were things that made no sense by common standards.
“It’s because it’s the engine I designed.”
Seoha shrugged.
“The lag is gone! Everyone’s logging back in!”
Cipher shouted.
The queue continued to grow.
1,221, 1,880, 2,540...
The download count had already far surpassed ten thousand.
“Hurrah!”
“We did it! This is a real success!”
“Sniff... sob.”
The three of them looked at Seoha.
If he had not been there, they would not have been able to accomplish even one thing properly.
They quietly approached Seoha, wrapped him in a tight embrace, and cried.