Chapter 8 (1/2)

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

Translated by Coldtaco

Edited by Aelryinth

The hour for the video game experience round had ended. The emcee walked to the front of the stage.

“Alright, the video game experience round has ended! Did you guys manage to find a game you like?

“Let’s move onto the next stage, but first, let’s look at the results these twenty games have achieved so far. Please look at the screen.”

The audience shifted their gaze towards playtime and the number of recommendations for the twenty games, displayed on the main screen.

The audience let out an audible gasp.

“What the… No way!”

“T-that game’s so nonsensical. This is crazy!”

“How could the gap be that big?”

“I thought there were standards! Emcee, are there cheaters?”

Everyone was drawn to the numbers FlappyBird managed to achieve: a total playtime of 349 hours, 544 recommends!

On the other hand, the second place Hunter Island only had 92 hours of playtime, with only 330 recommendations!

The emcee was also shocked, as it was his first time seeing the numbers. He also had the same thought as the audience: the numbers must be wrong!

The judges were also at a loss, finding the numbers unbelievable.

How was this possible? There were a total of seven hundred people in the audience, meaning that they all averaged half an hour on this game!

Five hundred and forty-four out of seven hundred people were willing to recommend the game to others. These numbers defied logic!

Chen Mo wasn’t too surprised, as the numbers were within his calculations.

In reality, FlappyBird wasn’t some kind of alluring game; it was the exact opposite—torturous. If this game was put onto the market, the majority of players would close it after five minutes.

3However, the target audience was in a video game design competition, meaning that the competition for FlappyBird wasn’t mature, well-developed games, but instead disastrous entry-level games.

The other works weren’t able to hold the audience’s attention for long. Therefore, a majority of them chose to come back to FlappyBird to grind out their score. The more stubborn among them spent all their time grinding FlappyBird.

With that in mind, FlappyBird achieving so much playtime was quite normal.

1The emcee held his earpiece and whispered for a few moments before raising his head and telling the audience, “I have just confirmed with the technicians, the numbers are indeed correct. These are the final scores of the twenty games.”

There was still a lot of commotion going on among the audience.

Many in the audience refused to believe that FlappyBird could achieve that result, especially those who felt nothing for games like this and had only played the game for a few moments.

However, most of the audience accepted it as the truth.

“Is this game actually that great? It looks so simple it hurts, the game mechanics are incredibly shallow. How could it be in first place, and be that far ahead of second place?”

“What’s so strange about that. Just think about it, how much time did you spend on it?”

“…at least forty minutes.”

“I spent nearly an hour! My head is still hurting from all that grinding.”

“Right? When I close my eyes, all I see is that stupid bird bobbing up and down, I can’t help but play…”

1“Look, there’s nearly six hundred people on the leaderboards. The top two hundred are all over twenty and many of them over forty-five. Think about how long you played to get to twenty.”