Chapter 467 - 300: The Anti-War Art Festival
Generally speaking, turning a serious event into entertainment is not a good thing. But that’s exactly what was happening.
Thanks to an absurdly brilliant idea from Asmodis, a regional war had been utterly transformed into a source of amusement.
Feeling down? Then head over to the Devil’s livestream and send a few gifts. Watch the Devil put on a show, mowing down the Villain army to cheer yourself up.
Feeling great? Head over to the Devil’s livestream and send some gifts, too. Just to celebrate.
Asmodis’s livestream had already shattered the concurrent viewer record previously set by the Church’s livestream.
Apparently, people preferred a good show to prayers.
Whether it left you impressed or in despair, at least it was never boring.
The Devil’s greatest victory over the Church.
Livestreaming!
And they were constantly innovating, pushing out new features. First came weapons with custom text, then custom images, and finally, they even rolled out custom Illusions.
They didn’t just customize the weapons; they even customized the fiery explosions.
Picture this: a shell would rocket over, killing Villain soldiers while a line of text simultaneously burst forth from the flames.
"XX loves XX forever..."
It was hard to imagine a human could come up with something like this.
Then again, it wasn’t a human who came up with it.
Asmodis even launched an advertising slogan: "If you love him/her, fire one off for him/her."
It sounded a little weird.
Fortunately, this was still a simple era. "He" and "she" were all the pronouns you needed.
If paying for a live strike was already bizarre, confessing your love in the middle of a battle was completely beyond Zog’s comprehension.
What kind of thought process connected love and death in such a literal, physical way?
This was the most hellish of all Hell jokes.
What Zog found even harder to understand was that this feature was actually quite popular.
The people of Feilin clearly had a unique way of thinking.
Asmodis took it even further, introducing a "Prestige" grenade that each account could only gift once, as a show of true love.
After it was fired, you’d even get a ring made from the shrapnel sent back to you.
Zog didn’t understand. Zog was thoroughly shocked.
’Asmodis has really mastered the game.’
’A good thing, though.’
Because Zog took a hefty cut from every single gift sent in that livestream.
’Felt damn good.’
So Zog threw all his promotional weight behind the Hell livestream. The Dragon and the Devil were partners in crime.
They made money, the audience was entertained, and the people of Augustine gained a glimmer of hope for freedom.
A world where only Villain gets hurt was born!
The Devil’s success made other organizations see the value in livestreaming. Many began to wonder if they should also invest a fortune and give it a try.
Having people throw money at him was, of course, fantastic. But Zog, in a move that was out of character, actually dissuaded most of the merchant guilds that impulsively wanted to start their own livestreams.
He advised them not to just burn their money for nothing.
This made the negotiating guilds rather uncomfortable; they thought perhaps they hadn’t offered him enough money.
In truth, Zog was thinking about the future of the livestreaming platform.
The cost of entry for livestreaming was currently too high, but in theory, it wouldn’t be long before those costs came down significantly.
Besides, the biggest channel for livestream monetization didn’t exist yet: selling products.
Relying on gifts alone was not a great way to earn money, and finding someone like Asmodis who could generate revenue with such surreal content was exceptionally rare.
Otherwise, not every streamer back on Earth would have eventually pivoted to selling products.
Selling products required e-commerce, and e-commerce required logistics.
Zog didn’t have that, and neither did the Continent.
The current method for long-distance transport of goods was teleportation.
And that was no good for logistics.
With shipping fees several times the price of the items themselves, it would be a miracle if anything sold.
So, venturing into the livestreaming business now was, nine times out of ten, a money-losing proposition.
Zog was worried that if these people all rushed in on impulse now, they would suffer huge losses, cry their eyes out, and then lose all faith in the livestreaming industry.
Then, down the line, when the infrastructure was in place, costs were lower, and monetization channels had expanded, it would be a huge problem if they were too afraid to try again—once bitten, twice shy.
He couldn’t sacrifice a much larger future harvest for a little immediate profit.
It was better to use this opportunity to build some goodwill with the major merchant guilds.
And so, for once, Zog acted with "conscience."
He passionately explained the pros and cons of livestreaming to these guilds, while also painting a tantalizing picture of the future.
After his spiel, the representatives from the major guilds all praised Zog in unison for being such a fine business Dragon.
Achievement: Peer Recognition. Acquired.
However, while Zog’s image had become quite respectable in the eyes of his peers, to his own employees, he seemed anything but.
"What do you mean, ’take care of’ this anti-war art festival?"
Zog looked at the employees from his game department.
They had banded together today, chosen a few core members as representatives, and come to Zog to ask him to do something about the anti-war art festival that was currently all the rage.
Zog had heard of the festival, but he hadn’t paid it much attention.
It was apparently a call to artists all across the Continent to create works of art on the theme of opposing war and pursuing peace. These works would then be publicly auctioned, with the proceeds donated to charitable causes in Augustine City.
It was a very common type of charity event, the kind that popped up every so often. This one was just a little larger in scale, but otherwise unremarkable.
"Can one of you please explain to me what exactly you mean by ’take care of’?"
Zog asked, completely baffled.
"It’s... it’s..." Uffie was among the representatives—a girl who was clearly a tech specialist but insisted on dabbling in art. She spoke up, a little embarrassed. "We want you to use your usual methods... the media, public opinion, that sort of thing... to ruin the art festival’s reputation."