Gamer Superstar

Chapter 83 83 - Collabs?

"You made a game?!" Ethan asked in surprise as he ran over to the computer and sat down in the chair I was sitting in, looking at the screen with curiosity and excitement.

In my little brother's mind, it didn't even seem to occur to him that the game I was playing could be bad.

Seeing Ethan running, Isabella also came running quickly while standing next to Ethan, looking at the computer screen with curiosity.

"Yeah, I was looking for something to do in my spare time, so I started studying programming to make this game." I explained as I picked up the computer mouse and set The Lazy Song to play on easy so Ethan could try the game out while I explained how it worked and showed him a few seconds of the song.

With a nod from him, I released the mouse and let him play.

When I saw the delighted look on his face and Isabella's sparkling eyes, I realized that I might have won my first player! Haha.

Unfortunately, I couldn't use them as much of a reference because I think Ethan had a pink filter on everything I did, seeing those things as the most incredible things in the world, while Isabella probably had the same thing for Ethan, seeing everything he did as the most incredible things in the world.

But I could see that they were really enjoying themselves, and that was enough for me.

When Ethan finished The Lazy Song, he got a C, which wasn't terrible, but he missed a lot of notes.

What surprised me was that when Isabella started playing, she did very well and got a B on her first try.

This ignited Ethan's competitive spirit and he started playing much more seriously and focused on beating her score.

This led to him getting a B grade, scoring 290 points more than her, which made Isabella get competitive as well and raise her own score to an A rank, which led to Ethan playing the song again with more focus and also getting an A rank, but he was a few points behind Isabella.

Seeing the two of them having fun competing made me realize that this was going well.

Even though the game wasn't finished yet, the players were already happy with the game, and there were no bugs while they were playing, which was good news.

"Noah, can you install this game on my tablet? I want to practice more!" Ethan said suspiciously.

And seeing the way Isabella was looking at him, I figured there was something wrong with that, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

"I haven't made a mobile version yet, buddy, but I can do that in a few days." I said, shaking my head.

Unlike the previous Osu, which was made in a very old programming language, I was taking advantage of modernity and had already made the game in an engine that allowed the game to be easily converted to mobile, so releasing it on mobile in the future wouldn't be too difficult.

"Okay..." Ethan said a little frustrated, but didn't push the issue.

When my mother heard my music playing non-stop in the basement, she came to see what was going on and why the kids had disappeared. When I told her I had made a game, she was very impressed, but she had a hard time playing it with a mouse and decided to just give me moral support while I smiled.

Liv and Emily also came to see what was going on in the basement when they went to the living room and found no one there.

When they heard about the game, they wanted to try it too, and while Liv got an A on her first try at the song on Easy, Emily surprisingly tried the song on Medium and got an A!

The difference between the song on Easy and Medium wasn't small, making the song at least 50% higher on the other difficulty.

This showed just how good Emily was at a game she'd never played before!

"Woah, you did great, Emily!" Liv said, surprised to see how well her new friend could play!

"I play a lot of games at home!" Emily said excitedly to Liv, until she looked at me in surprise and was embarrassed to say it.

Did she think I would find it strange that she liked to play games?

Realizing that she was someone who had experience with games, I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask her all my questions about the game to someone who really understood.

"So, Emily, since you're used to playing games, what did you think of the game I'm playing?" I asked.

Avoiding looking at me and staring at the computer screen, Emily replied. "I thought it was pretty cool, even though it's pretty easy, I saw you made it harder, didn't you? It looks really good, I've never seen a fun music game before, this style you made looks really good," she praised.

"Is there anything you suggest I could improve?" I asked.

"From what I've seen, you're still making the game, right? So I think this is still in alpha, it's hard to ask for too much, but what could be refined better in the game are the animations, either the animations of the circles forming, the movements of the slides in the circles, or the animations of the circles disappearing, for something even more satisfying, apart from the audio, which is already great". She said as she clicked through the game interface, pointing out the points they were making.

Getting that kind of feedback was good, even though I didn't have any great intentions for the game, treating it as a way to have fun when I had nothing to do, it was still good to get feedback on where I could put more effort and improve.

Since they still wanted to play, I just sat down on a sofa next to them and let the 4 of them play and compete with each other over their scores.

Surprisingly, even though there was only one song, they kept playing for several hours!

I was getting tired of listening to my own The Lazy Song, but they didn't seem to mind.

Later, Emily and Isabella's mom came to pick them up, so Ethan and Liv went back to practicing their instruments and I went back to the computer to edit the videos until it was time for my show.

When it was time for my show, while I was on stage at the bar, I realized how much easier it was to perform here.

Also, this was my second time at this bar, so it was the first time I was performing in a place where a large portion of the audience already knew me, which made it even easier!

This was a feeling that other artists usually had before me, because they usually got fixed spots in the bars and always performed at the same times, unlike me, who had been performing in several different bars since I started.

This was all thanks to Selena, who, unlike the other Rank F and Rank E artists, who were practically ignored by their agents, making them take the easy way out, Selena with me was 100% dedicated to my career and didn't care how much work it would be to book me to perform in several different bars.

The advantage I had was that I got to perform for a much bigger audience than the singers who always perform in the same place, the disadvantage was that every show I did was the same because it was my first time in that place.

Luckily this time I was back at the Blackout Bar and the audience here already knew me, so singing here was very relaxing.

This time there was no one to hassle me while I was performing among the Rank D artists, in fact there were even a few artists who came up to me and tried to make friends with me.

I was happy at first, but when they started showing me their MeTube channel, I began to understand why they were so excited to talk to me.

Many of them didn't even hide it and directly asked me if they could record a song with me to post on my channel.

Which just made me roll my eyes and politely walk away.

When they showed me their channel, I saw that unlike me, who had quickly gotten my 70k subscribers by focusing on quality instead of quantity, their case was the opposite.

There were Rank D artists with over 100k subscribers, with more total views than me, but that only grew with their songs getting 40 to 60k views, but they posted so many songs over the years of their careers that the channel grew little by little.

From what I saw of their music, the songs were very generic and soulless, which also just captured a generic audience that didn't care about them, even though they had over 100k subscribers.

It's not that I'm trying to say that I'm much better than them, because I took finished songs from my old world, but I dedicated myself to producing the songs, editing them, focusing on other ways to make the channel grow with the vlogs, thinking about the best marketing strategies.

Instead of just focusing on the easy part, like them, which was just singing and putting a video with the lyrics on the screen, I really dedicated myself to improving everything in general.

Thinking about it also made me curious about writing a song myself in the future. Of course, I didn't think about it as a rule, since it would be easier to make a career with songs from my old world, but it might be fun to make an original song, right?