"Agh! So boring!" screamed a frustrated young man in front of his monitor. On the screen, tiny humans were moving from right to left, seemingly doing something. "Isn't there any realistic life simulation game?" he muttered before closing the game and opening the search engine. He carefully typed the words "Realistic Life Simulator Games."
After hitting enter, countless results appeared. "This nonsense again," he said, looking at the first results with headlines like "Top 10 Realistic Life Simulator Games," but they were all ads paid for by various forums.
Unfazed, he kept scrolling down, moving to the next page countless times until he reached the 10th page. There, he saw a game he had never seen or played.
'LiveIn' was the game's name, and he clicked on the page, then went straight to the game synopsis. "'With LiveIn, experience countless lives you couldn't live. See the paths you couldn't take. Be the future you couldn't. Join now, create your first Viver, strive for accomplishment, and become the legend written in history books.'" The more he read, the more excited he became. But he wasn't stupid—he had fallen for this kind of trap before. Beautiful introductions to games, but once you download and start playing, you realize it was all a lie.
He opened another tab, searched for the game's name, and looked for gameplay videos and information about the studio that created it, but no matter how much he searched, he couldn't find any details. Feeling dejected, he returned to the game's page and saw that there was actually a video section. Once there, he saw a few videos with various titles about gameplay.
One of them showed how to create a Viver, a human he could control. The second showed a very realistic world, almost like his own, filled with humans with bright yellow marks on their heads. He learned that those created by players would have the same mark.
"With each video, I want to play this game so badly," he muttered, his eyes glued to the screen. Finally, the last video played. It showed everything the player could interact with. He could steal, have sex, drive cars, build houses, and do many things he had never seen in a game before. His blood boiled.
'This is it! The game I've been yearning for!' he thought before clicking the purchase button. He quickly filled in the payment information and completed the transaction in less than a minute. With a "Thank you for playing our game!" message on his screen, the game, LiveIn, began downloading, and he waited patiently.
"Henri! Dinner's ready!" A loud call from downstairs pulled his attention away from the monitor.
"Coming, Ma!" he replied, quickly getting up from his chair, descending the stairs, and moving toward the dining room.
"The useless one in the house is here!" A young lady around the age of 20 said sarcastically. Then she looked at Henri with a taunting expression.
"You want to get beaten again, Eva?" Henri replied, showing her his fist. The next moment, something hard hit his head, making him hiss in pain.
"Talk nicely to your sister," an elderly man said. He was almost sixty but still burly and full of vitality.
"Dad, she was the one who provoked me first!" Henri replied, his voice getting softer with each word. He knew he was wrong, but he still wanted to argue. Even though his sister was provoking him, she was right. At 22, he was still unemployed. He couldn't break his gaming addiction, while his 20-year-old sister was earning five thousand dollars a month in a country where the minimum wage was 2,500 dollars.
She was smart, beautiful, and successful—every man's dream and Henri's nightmare.
"Stop playing around and help your mother," Henri's father said before sitting at the table. Henri then got up and helped his mother set the table.
After praying and thanking for the food, they began feasting on a perfect meal.
Finishing his food, he cleaned up and quickly rushed to his room, eager to play the new game. But his hopes were shattered when he saw the download wasn't finished. Even worse, it said it would take about a day to complete.
Feeling down, he decided to play some offline games to satisfy himself while waiting for the download to finish.
After a few hours passed, the night had come, and Henri could feel sleep creeping in. His eyes were closing while he was forcing them to open. Then, accepting his defeat, he shut the game and looked at the LiveIn download progress. Henri was happy that his download speed had increased as people inside the house were sleeping. Now, the estimated download time was down to 10 hours.
Seeing it, Henri happily went to bed, shutting his eyes for some good sleep.
. . . .
When he woke up in the morning, the first thing he did was check the download progress. Seeing it still needed an hour before completion, Henri went downstairs, grabbing something to eat for breakfast.
The house was empty as everyone else was working except Henri. It wasn't something to enjoy for him, as he could feel his own failure. Sitting at the dining table alone while munching on the sandwich he made, Henri also questioned himself.
'Why am I like this? I was also successful in my studies. It's all because of those damn games.' He searched for answers, but all he could find were his failures. All he could offer were excuses for his failure.
He spent half an hour eating a sandwich before going upstairs to his room. He sat on his chair and checked the download progress. It was still downloading, and the estimated time was reduced to half an hour.
Deciding to read some news, he opened the social media app and went straight to the news accounts.
*Will the Economy Ever Recover?*
From the top experts of the field, we asked the question: will our economy recover?
— "Looking at the government, which only favors one side, it's not possible to recover. With increasing taxes for export and import, foreign investors are choosing other countries to invest, which results in our loss. My suggestion is that the government should give tax exemptions for foreign investors for a year and let them settle here. The same goes for our investors. Pick some industries to give tax exemptions, such as energy fields or waste resource recycling, rather than feeding their ally politicians."
> Maxwell Richmond.
— "I still have family to feed. I won't be answering your question."
> Elizabeth Hamilton.
"Huh, good luck standing against the dictator," Henri muttered as he read the article. "He only gives money to the people who help him sit on the throne. It's been ten years since he was elected president." He added while scrolling down.
There were various news covering events happening in the country as well as abroad. The more he read, the more pessimistic he became.
"Riots in Serbia, Georgia, Turkey... well, they are all standing against the government. Why are we not?" He asked, shaking his head. Though I wouldn't join, it would be nice to watch the government crumble, he thought before noticing the download progress was about to finish in a minute.
Then, the progress bar reached the end, and Henri watched with anticipation. But before he could do anything, the computer went silent, and his screen blacked out. All Henri could see was his reflection on the screen, with a wide smile on his face. The next moment, his smile faded and was replaced by growing anger.
"Fucki—" Before he could finish swearing, his computer hummed, and the screen showed the installation progress. Then, a light ball shot out from the screen, going into his brain and knocking him back to the ground.
.
Beginning the installation on the player. %10.....%30.....%60.....%100
Installation completed.
Troubleshooting....
No errors found.
Enabling remote gameplay...
Restricting access to the main device...
Completed.
Biometric lock applied.
Blood lock applied.
Adjusting world...
Completed.
World status:
Population: 8.000.000.000
Difficulty Level: 2—Hard Mode
Player compatibility: ... %100!
Vivers Injection: Possible..
World Suitability: %100
Adjusting the reality...
Completed.
Ready for gameplay.
.
.
.
"What the hell!" Henri woke up from the sleep he was having on the ground and quickly checked his monitor. Seeing it in perfect shape, he sighed. But what the hell was that light? he questioned while looking at the screen. It must have been a hallucination, he shook his head.
Clicking on the big "Play" button on the screen, he opened the new game. In the loading screen, he was greeted by an incredibly beautiful woman introducing the buttons on the main menu. Her voice, probably belonging to one of the voice actors, calmed Henri's mind.
"Ah, I could listen to her talk all day," he muttered while listening to the woman.
"Now then, since we are ready, why not start with choosing your world settings?" The woman said as she vanished from the screen and another tab opened. "In here, you can select what kind of world your Viviers will be living in. But be careful. Different worlds mean different difficulties. The difficulties range from '0,' the easiest, to '5,' the hell mode, ultimate difficulty." Henri listened carefully, and he saw difficulty changing with each world setting he adjusted. He then chose a preset world setting that was the same as his own. The difficulty showed was '2'—Hard Mode. "Hah, that's underestimated," he blurted out before looking at other worlds. They ranged from cultivation worlds to the pantheons, where gods reside.
"Oh god, there are so many options. Let's start with something similar," Henri said and chose the world setting of his world. "I can always change it if I don't like it," he said before something caught his eye: Supernatural settings for the world were active.
"Let's leave it like that, I wonder what it'll change," Henri muttered, then moved to the next tab.
"This tab is for creating the ultimate life, a Vivier. In here, you can choose preset Viviers or create entirely new ones from scratch to your liking."
"Oh, I'll be creating the most handsome and most beautiful couple the world has ever seen!" Henri said before diving into the creation process.