Chapter 4773: Changes in the Doujie (Part 2)

He laid out his idea, and the first to frown were Luxi and Eternity. Both belonged to the cosmic administrators — in other words, programmers. The first thing they thought of was whether this could be realized. After all, this amounted to granting players the powers of a Creator, even if only within a virtual universe; implementation would still be difficult.

"It'll probably take both Big Bosses to act," Luxi said. "I'm not sure they'd be willing to grant multiverse players that kind of authority, even if it's just in an independent virtual universe cut off from the outside world. I'm not even sure they can do it."

"That is indeed a problem," Shiler said. "You go ask first; we'll keep discussing. If it turns out to be doable, try to have it ready by next season at the latest. The players' patience is running thin."

"Ready by next season?" Owen looked pained. "If what you say is true and we have to completely transform into a game platform — developed, designed, and published by the players themselves — that's not a small amount of changes. Only a week left; I'm afraid we won't make it in time."

"No, we don't fully transform yet. We just change the season gameplay to this as a test. If the response is good, we can transform later; it won't be too late."

"That's a good approach," Walt said. "At the start we can also do prompted creation, and limit the scale of dungeons — like making a pilot episode for an animation. If the response is good, we expand the scale."

"I'm sure it'll be very popular." Spider-Man also stood up. He was from Earth-616, the original Earth — that is, the Amazing Spider-Man of the fused Earth — recruited by Shiler into the Doujie design team. Also recruited was Gwen Stacy, for a simple reason: both were video game enthusiasts, and both were young, able to represent the preferences of young superheroes.

"I know what you want to do," Gwen Stacy said with a straw in her mouth. "You just want to make *beep* — or *beep* — right? Those platforms have developed well, and the games on them are fun too. You'll definitely pull it off."

Shiler hadn't muted her; the beeps were his own mental fill-ins. But Shiler knew what she meant. Game consoles were more popular in the West, and there were really only two most popular consoles; Gwen Stacy was referring to their game stores.

Although Shiler had no intention of selling consoles — they had already advanced to the point of not needing hardware — the software ecology of console manufacturers was still well worth referencing.

For instance, if you make a console you need exclusives, and first-party exclusives at that — unplayable on other platforms — so people will buy your machine. At the same time you show sincerity to players, and can offer a subscription with free games for members to cater to casual players.

At the same time you must ensure a steady stream of developers willing to publish their games on your platform; without that it won't work either. Best to also have an active community, plus collections, achievements, and other systems that incentivize players to play games.

These are all doable. Moreover, Doujie is basically a monopoly industry right now, so there's not much need to worry about competition. Even so, Shiler still wanted to do it as well as possible, because he could be a profiteering merchant, but not an incompetent doctor. The original purpose of establishing Doujie was the common progress of the multiverse — a goal worth his full effort.

"I'll make a front-end prototype first." As Art Director, Walt volunteered. "Make it in the style of an event page first, then add various functions inside. As for the theme... how about calling it 'Co-Creation'?"

Everyone strongly approved the name. Spider-Man eagerly volunteered: "Gwen and I will make a few icons for the dungeons we want to make; you can put them up to see the effect."

"Then I'll handle the economic system," Shiler said. "We'll definitely take a cut, but not too much. Currency issuance and recovery need to reach a balance. If we're doing a comprehensive overhaul, the economic system has to be redone too."

"Then I'll do a questionnaire survey," Owen said. "Start with our side, then go next door and ask what they think of this model."

Everyone attended to their duties, heads down working hard. For a while the office fell quiet — some drawing, some doing accounts. Walt was actually using hand-drawing, but one had to admit his hand-drawn skill was formidable. Doujie had received all kinds of bad reviews, but never for the seasonal UI — every one was beautiful and fit the theme, thanks to Walt, this stubborn old artist who insisted on hand-crafting.

The Amazing Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy discussed softly. They'd played many games and knew well how game UIs and icons should look. Gwen Stacy's comics fundamentals were also solid; they planned to make a comic-themed platformer mini-game first.

Shiler's accounts were easy to figure. After all, Doujie points weren't real currency; no matter how many were hoarded, they weren't pegged to real-world assets — at most they were used within Doujie. If they used points to buy real assets from other people, that was none of Shiler's business. To him, even buying a few planets from someone else didn't count as a major transaction, so there wasn't a serious balance issue.

Before long Luxi returned, bringing good news: "My dad said it can be done. OAA's side was a bit stingy — gave fewer threads — but it passed. Still, I suggest you run a small-scale test first. I feel this operating system will go catastrophically haywire in their hands."

"Why? Is the development system hard to use?"

"It's not a matter of difficulty. It's that carbon-based lifeforms inherently cannot understand these things." Luxi looked pained; he didn't even know how to describe it. "Aside from a tiny handful of geniuses, others can't even correctly observe the universe — similar to ordinary people without professional training who can't read program code at all, let alone operate it. Cosmic Structural Science is hundreds of thousands of times more complex than code, and the Creation System is hundreds of thousands of times more complex than Cosmic Structural Science. If you aren't born knowing it, you basically won't ever learn it."

"Is there no way to simplify it?" Shiler asked.

"That's the problem. I'm not a Creator either; how could I touch the underlying code? If I touched it, I'd be the one crashing with errors. This thing has no room for improvement — it's simply not a mass-production tool."

"We never wanted everyone making games anyway," Shiler said. "That would guarantee a flood of trash. If operating this is hard, it acts as a filter instead — those who stand out, no matter how bad, have a baseline, don't they?"

"So who exactly can operate this system?" Spider-Man asked. "Can I?"

"If you mean using it like an extension of your own body, nobody can — not even me, or this program wouldn't error constantly. But if it's just basic functions, building something like a playground, actually a lot of people can do it. You definitely can too; it just takes learning."

"Give an example?"

"Batman and Iron Man both can. Mister Fantastic and Doctor Doom go without saying. And some beings of different station and life forms should also be able to, like Doctor Manhattan. Aside from those super-geniuses, it comes down to whether they're willing to learn."

"Can they really learn?" Walt asked with curiosity.

"They can. It's just too complex and too soporific." Luxi shook his head. "When I taught at the magic academy before, hardly anyone wanted to listen."

"Back then they had no use for it," Shiler said. "Passion is the best teacher. If they can make money with this, or use it to fulfill more practical needs, they'll definitely be willing to learn."

"Hope so," Luxi said. "I'll send you the system package in a bit. Spider-Man, you help me test it — anything you don't understand, come ask me."

With that, Luxi hurried off. The Amazing Spider-Man watched his back and asked: "Why's he in such a rush?"

Spider-Man didn't know, but Shiler did — Luxi was definitely going to find Anatoli. Those two had been busy settling old scores these past days, but getting the system package was already an unexpected windfall; let him go do whatever he wants.

They went back to work. Shiler was about to study the revenue split further when he noticed a private message incoming — from Arkham Batman.

"Free? Meet at the Presidential Palace."

Shiler confirmed this message was for him — that is, for Greedy. Because if it were for someone else, Mr. President would've been polite. And the reason Arkham Batman wasn't polite to him was because Arkham Batman still owed him money, and in this day and age the debtor is the grandpa.

Shiler still went to Arkham Batman's Presidential Palace. Note: this Presidential Palace was built later, and the door had a giant bat emblem — making up for his regret of not changing the stars on the national flag into bats.

Shiler walked in, and Arkham Batman quickly came up to greet him, shook his hand, and the two headed inside with no pleasantries. Arkham Batman cut straight to it: "Heard about that Manhattan Amusement Park that's been hot lately?"

"What?" Shiler thought he'd misheard. He thought it meant the Manhattan in New York, but New York's Manhattan didn't have an amusement park. If forced to say, Central Park had an amusement park, but that was for kids — not an amusement park.

But he suddenly realized: on the DC side, New York was a small city, and apparently didn't have a Manhattan borough. So this Manhattan could only refer to Doctor Manhattan.

"What is that thing?" Shiler asked.

Arkham Batman glanced back at him, a bit surprised: "You didn't get the ad?"

"Where would I receive ads from?"

"Right, you're not in the Batman multiverse community, so you probably didn't get it."

"Wait, besides Doujie you have other contact methods?"

"How could we not? You still don't know Batman?"

"Based on what?"

"The power of the Seven Lanterns." Arkham Batman gave an unsurprising answer. "The First Lantern helped too. It hasn't been long since it was built, but not long after completion someone came to run ads. And not just us — many important universes received targeted placement. The neighbors probably got it too; go ask and you'll know."

Shiler was genuinely a bit surprised. The Central Universe indeed hadn't received any ads — possibly because although this universe was called the Central Universe, its actual geographic location should count as outside the Seven Rings. The other party's ads might be based on the Main Universe placement; reaching them would take a while.

Shiler directly sent Strange a message, asking if he'd noticed anything unusual in the Main Universe. Strange replied quickly: "The Main Universe Avengers are researching this right now."