บท 13: 13 – First game
The first thing I thought of to get illiterate people to use the Internet would be to make some kind of text-to-speech tool that would read all the text on the screen so that the believer could understand everything that was being said.
The usefulness of this for books would be very high, but I had already done some tests and making the Internet reproduce sounds was still very expensive...
While the cost of using the Internet per hour was 0.5 Divine Power Points, if I added this option, I might not make a profit or even make a loss, since I would only receive 1 Divine Power Point and spend more than that to make the Internet available to the believers for an hour.
So doing this now was not feasible.
Of course, as I became more powerful, my control over my divinity would increase, so I could tweak it better and unlock more functions in the future.
But for now, my focus should be on finding a way around this problem.
And one of the ways I came up with was to make a game!
Of course, for people in this world who have never seen anything like the modern games in my world, there's no point in me developing Elden Ring and getting them to play it - they'll be more scared than entertained.
Not to mention that I couldn't even make games that advanced while I'm so weak.
But I could start with easier games.
"Father Robert." I called to the old man who was gathering books and things needed to teach people how to write.
When he heard me call his name, the old man looked at me with bright eyes and quickly approached. "Yes, Lord Athenos?"
"Tell me, what kind of games are most common among the commoners?" I asked.
"Games?" The old man asked puzzled.
"Yes, games, like cards, or something to bet on, what is usually entertaining people in the kingdom of Arcantor?" I asked.
When he heard my explanation, his face lit up and he quickly began to explain.
"The most common games in taverns among men are dice games or checkers... or fighting..." He said the last part a little embarrassed.
Hearing that, I realized he hadn't said card games. "Are there any kind of card games that use playing cards?"
"Cards? Playing cards? I don't think I've ever seen anything like that, Lord Athenos, maybe there is something like that among the nobles, but we commoners just play simple games." He said modestly, making me nod.
Considering that card games required that the cards in the deck be identical to avoid cheating, it was understandable that this type of game hadn't been popularized in this world yet.
This was an opportunity for me.
Although the deck had letters and numbers, even if the players were illiterate, they could just memorize the symbols and colors, and they would know exactly what the cards were called.
And since entertainment in this world was extremely precarious, with people having to throw dice to play and have fun, if I put deck games on the Internet, it would possibly become a fever among the commoners!
So while I kept part of my consciousness in the mortal world with Robert, helping him plan the school and how to teach the population, my body in the divine world quickly began to develop the game.
First, the game had to be simple.
Designing the deck of cards was the easy part, the hard part was "coding" the game and making it work exactly the way I wanted it to, like an internet app, and then setting up a way for players to play against each other online, or even a way for nearby players to play together.
So I started developing.
First, I decided to start with three types of games available.
Solitaire, where the player would play alone with the sole purpose of organizing the shuffled cards, moving them between different columns according to certain rules, usually alternating colors and sorting them from ace to king, until all the cards were organized into four complete piles, one for each suit.
The game wasn't competitive at all, although I added a score and leaderboard to make it more fun and addictive, but I knew this game would be dominated by more casual players.
The second game I would make would be Black Jack, a card game where players compete against the dealer, in this case an NPC from the Internet, trying to get a hand with a total value closer to 21 without going over that number. The goal is to beat the dealer, either by reaching 21 with the first two cards (a blackjack), or by having a higher value hand than the dealer without going bust.
This game would be a cooperative game, since the players wouldn't be competing against each other, they could get together in groups and have fun playing against the dealer.
And the last game would be the most competitive of the three, poker.
A card game where the player was dealt 5 cards and could bet against the other players to see who had the strongest cards.
The fun of poker was in the betting, so I had to think of a way to make it so that there was betting, but that it didn't destroy the players' lives...
Until I thought I could make it so that players could buy up to 30 chips a day with 3 Internet Coins.
That way, players could bet on the Internet without losing their real life income.
Of course, if players wanted to bet with real money, just like they did in craps, that was none of my business, nor was I anyone's babysitter.
With this structure in place, the next step was to program all the features I'd come up with and make it look good to the public.
To do this, I took a lot of inspiration from the designs of the poker apps in my old world, with a green velvet table, avatars representing the other players joining the table, and a beautiful woman as the game's dealer.
The table and cards could be reused in all three games, so I just had to focus on programming the differences between the three games.
I finished the game in a couple of hours.
The problem was that my Divine Power, which had risen from 1,495 to 1,722 in the last two days, now fell back to 1,310, as I had spent 412 Divine Power points to create this new game, bringing me to my lowest Divine Power point yet.
But I didn't mind too much, because I knew that I would get it back quickly.
So, not wanting to waste any time, I tested the game's features to make sure there weren't any bugs, and noticing that everything was working perfectly as it should, I launched it on the Internet!
- Eliot's POV -
When Eliot saw his friends commenting on the Internet and talking about how amazing it was to be able to read such incredible stories on the Internet after being introduced to it by a friend of a friend, he began to feel jealous...
As someone who never had the opportunity to learn to read, Eliot never felt that this was a big problem for him.
He still managed to work as a bricklayer, he earned enough copper coins to buy food for his family, even if it wasn't luxurious food, and he even had a few coins left over to have fun betting with the other men in the pub.
But ever since one of the men had shown them the Internet and they had all been so amazed at the books and stories they could read for free, Eliot had started to feel left out, because he could see that the Internet was really quite interesting, but unfortunately he couldn't enjoy any of it because he couldn't read.
He had prayed to the God of the Internet to find something interesting for him on the Internet, but the only fun he could find was to stare at the beautiful, delicate covers of books without being able to read them....
Just as Eliot was about to put the book away out of boredom, a window appeared on the screen with something written on it.
Although he was amazed, Eliot couldn't understand what it said, so he didn't worry too much and closed the book.
But when he heard what his friends were saying, Eliot was confused.
"What is this, a warning?" One of his friends was puzzled.
"Yeah... I guess I'll try to read this warning and see what it's about..." Another of his friends commented with concentration as he stared intently at the screen.
"Read it out loud!" Another friend, who couldn't read either, asked the man to read it out loud so he could understand.
Eliot heard this and thought with disdain, "What's the point of him reading it out loud? We won't even be able to enjoy it, because it will tell us...'.
But even though he thought this with disdain, Eliot kept his ears open and waited for the words of his friend who could read.
But even though he could read, the man wasn't very good at it and read very slowly.
"Warning... a new... App... has arrived on the... Internet! A new application has arrived on the Internet!" He got excited as soon as he read this.
"A new app?!" Another man asked in surprise.
"What's this new app about?" Another man asked.
Hearing that it was a new app, Eliot, who had just discovered what an app was, became interested. Will I be able to have fun with this new app?
"The new... App... is called... CardMaster... with games... fun! The new app is called CardMaster with fun games!" The man read it twice to make sure, because he was excited.
"There really is a new app in my book!" One of the illiterate men looked at his book and was shocked to see the new app with an image he had never seen before.
The icon of the app was the icon of 3 cards with a crown on top, which made the commoners shocked and curious as to what it was.
"Is this something from the nobles?" One of the men asked uncertainly, making the other men worry.
"I'll see what it is!" One of the men said excitedly as he clicked and opened the application under the curious and attentive eyes of the other men.
In the eyes of the men who could read, this app was very interesting and innovative, but in the eyes of those who couldn't read, like Eliot, this app was what they expected!
Although there was writing on the screen, all the important things had drawings indicating what they were for, making it easier for them to understand how to use the app, and to Eliot's surprise, he even learned how to play cards!
In just one night, the Internet, which was still somewhat unknown to the people, became something very popular and talked about in the pubs and inns of the town!
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