Episode 44: Newspaper Serialization and Competition (2)
“Betrayal? Don’t make me laugh. I never once thought of someone like you as a comrade.”
“Wh... what?!”
Melissa looked shocked, as if she had just heard some cliché betrayal line along those lines.
But that didn’t mean I was actually planning to fight a life-or-death duel against Melissa’s work and walk the path of winner-takes-all.
In the first place, I was in a situation where I wanted even one more writer, so why would I cut down a writer I already had?
I told you, I want to make a fiction magazine.
So what I meant was literally competition.
To put it a little more professionally, I meant establishing a rivalry.
“Originally, no matter what it is, if there’s a competitive relationship, it’s easier to draw people’s attention and make them immersed.”
It would be easy to think of sports teams or idols from my previous life.
No matter how strong or outstanding someone was on their own, there was always a limit to how much they could become a hit.
But if there was a rival, people would become immersed in that relationship, and popularity and loyalty would rise even further.
Well, if you stoked the flames too much, it could go beyond healthy competition and turn into a relationship of mutual hatred where it was you die or I die.
But I had no intention of going that far.
“So please snap out of it.
Only then can I help you with your writing, Melissa.”
“...Huh! What? You’ll help me?
Is that really all right? Just now, you said we were in a competitive relationship...”
“It’s precisely because we’re in a competitive relationship that I should help you more.
It’ll be more effective the more fiercely matched we are, rather than one side being overwhelmingly ahead.”
A rivalry is more immersive when both sides fiercely overtake and fall behind each other.
So even if Melissa’s work improved in quality, it wouldn’t be bad for me.
“And I also want to read something more entertaining from you, Miss Melissa.
As one of your readers.”
“...If you put that much expectation on me, I can’t refuse. I’ll gladly accept your help!”
“Good. Then, first, let’s try increasing the scale of the board game that serves as the background of the work.”
“The board game? I wrote it while referencing the Game of Life that you made, Author Wei. Was something lacking?”
Rather than lacking, it felt a little bland.
As Melissa herself said, right now it was written with the Game of Life as its base.
But since it was a novel, I thought she could write a bit more freely without being bound to the original format.
In a slightly more dramatic and unrealistic way.
That way, the tension and density could be raised with every single turn.
“That certainly makes sense.
If I want to draw people’s attention, it would be better to make it a little more dramatic than something plain and familiar.”
“Exactly.”
Fortunately, Melissa seemed to understand my explanation well and nodded.
But in turn, it seemed she had also found something to be anxious about.
“But will that work?
If the contents deviate too much from the original, won’t people feel repulsed...?”
“I think it’ll be fine.
Well, if it doesn’t work, we’ll make it work.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
What else would I mean?
I meant it exactly as I said.
If people’s interest turned out to be lower than expected.
“As a trump card, I’m thinking of making and releasing a physical version of the board game that actually appears in the work.”
A kind of playable merchandise, you could say.
Of course, I couldn’t actually make the contents of the game spaces become reality like in the novel.
But if people played the newly released board game, wouldn’t they naturally take an interest in Melissa’s novel too?
“Ah, and for reference, in my novel, I plan to reveal one command per character that can actually be used in the fighting game.”
This was a method inspired by game magazines from my previous life.
Since this was a world where not all move commands had been revealed yet, and people even sold information, I figured everyone would rush to read it.
If we did something roughly like this, we should be able to gather plenty of people’s attention.
Melissa looked at me dizzily, as if asking whether that was really all right.
But this much promotion was only natural, and it wasn’t as if I was doing it just for my own benefit, so there was nothing for me to feel guilty about.
All of this was a necessary process for spreading culture!
“Wait a moment. Then if you release that new board game, wouldn’t my goal be achieved even if I don’t serialize the novel separately?
It seems like the number of people who’ll play board games with me will increase drastically...”
“If you put it that way, yes, but if there’s no content to serve as the basis for production, we can’t make it in the first place. The novel serialization comes first.”
And if I only fulfilled Melissa’s goal like that, I’d lose the competitor and comrade who would serialize in the newspaper with me.
I can’t do something that benefits only Melissa for free.
Still don’t get it?
Melissa, you’ve been hooked.
Now it’s time for baked ravioli to become your staple food.
***
There was no denying that the hottest topic in the Kingdom of Justia lately was undoubtedly the newly released fighting game, [Races Fighter].
But that didn’t mean people did no other cultural activities.
They read novels written by Author Wei.
They watched plays at the new theater troupe that Author Wei had supposedly overhauled from top to bottom.
And they also played the board games that Author Wei had developed.
If it seemed like most of them were somehow related to Author Wei, that wasn’t just your imagination.
Because it was true.
“Is there anywhere in cultural life these days that Author Wei’s hand hasn’t touched?
It’d actually be harder to find something like that, wouldn’t it?”
“He creates all kinds of new culture.
And existing writers are also being influenced by Author Wei.”
“That’s how great Author Wei’s influence on the cultural world is.
There’s a reason even the priests consider him an apostle of culture sent directly by the Goddess.”
When discussing the cultural life of the Kingdom of Justia these days, it had reached the point where one could not leave out Author Wei.
Considering that this one writer, who had suddenly appeared in the world as if he had truly fallen from the sky,
had turned the kingdom upside down several times in just a few years, it was only natural.
“Isn’t the hottest thing right now, [Races Fighter], also Author Wei’s work?”
“They say he received help from others in making it, but the source of such mystical ideas that transcend the era can only be Author Wei. Of course.”
As a result, it was only natural that interest would shift to the other works of Author Wei, who had created it.
It was common these days to see people get into his other works in reverse after playing the fighting game.
And among Author Wei’s other works, the most popular one was, as expected, the comic.
Since it was mostly made up of pictures, it was easy to read and had great delivery, and on top of that, it came for free when you bought the newspaper. Naturally, it had to be the most popular.
“These days, it isn’t just the Publishing Guild’s newspaper. I hear other newspapers are introducing comics too?”
“Ah, I heard Author Wei generously released the method of drawing comics without asking for compensation.
So it seems more and more painters are crossing over to become comic artists.
I read some not long ago, and there were a few that were decent in their own way.”
Well, even so, it was still hard to beat the fun and fame of the original.
So people bought the Publishing Guild’s newspaper with the four-panel comic in it as if it were part of their daily routine.
They quickly flipped to the back and enjoyed the comic first, then just as they were about to return to the front and read the articles.
“Huh? What’s this? Why are there more pages at the back?”
They discovered that there were new pages after the comic page, which should originally have been the end.
“Could it be? Is there an extra serialization today?!”
At first, they were excited, wondering if there was more content today.
But the moment they saw it was only text rather than a comic, they immediately fell into disappointment.
How petty, making them get their hopes up only to let them down!
But soon after, they immediately realized it was a little too early to be disappointed outright.
“What?!
They’re starting regular novel serializations in the newspaper now, not just comics?”
“And together with the author of [The Villainess Does Not Fall], who once worked in coordination with Author Wei?”
“Since other newspapers have started introducing comics too, it looks like the Publishing Guild has drawn a new blade.”
“So do you dislike it?”
“Of course I like it. Do you even need to ask?
Damn it! I’ll have to keep buying the newspaper from now on.”
A new regular novel serialization had begun on the added pages.
“Let’s see, the novel written by Author Wei is...
Oh! It says it’s the background story of [Races Fighter]!
Of course, the characters from the game appear as the protagonists.”
“Is that true?
Khh—! As expected of Author Wei. He scratches exactly where it itches.”
“The characters’ appearances were attractive and all, but we had no way of knowing what kind of narratives they had. Now we’ll finally find out!”
The first one was a background novel for the fighting game [Races Fighter], written by Author Wei.
It was a replacement in novel form for the story mode that ultimately could not be implemented due to technological limitations.
Things like why on earth these warriors were fighting each other.
And the characters’ real names, stories, and move names, when until now they had only been referred to by their race and technical characteristics.
“The elf archer... no, Meiren is over a thousand years old?
No, even if she’s an elf, isn’t that too old?
I feel like the users who mained her will start disliking her, saying she smells like an old tree.”
“Tsk, you don’t know what you’re talking about!
If you say someone is eighty years old, they just seem ordinarily old.
But if you set it high, at over a thousand years old, it instead becomes mysterious.”
It was already a game at the cutting edge of the latest trend, and on top of that, the veiled story everyone had been curious about was being revealed.
People cheered and went wild.
All the more so because it was a work by Author Wei, whom they trusted to deliver.
And that also meant
that an even stricter comparative gaze would be applied to the work that came next.
“The next work’s theme is board games?
Aren’t board games ultimately the losers of the era, pushed aside by fighting games?”
“A story about a fighting game and a novel about a board game?
This seems like an awfully unfavorable fight.”
“As expected, Author Wei’s level isn’t something just anyone can follow.”
From the selection of subject matter to the author’s name value,
at first, it was naturally compared to Author Wei and could only be looked down upon.
Still, since they had already bought the newspaper, they flipped to the next page to read the rest.
“What!”
“No, what in the world is this...?!”
The people felt an even greater shock than they had from Author Wei’s novel they had just read.
—No! We landed on the monster wave space!—
—Damn it! Hurry and get ready! If we can’t stop them, we might really die!—
—Aaaah! Why did I choose merchant as my job at the start?!—
Because the magical board game was turning the contents of the board game into reality.