Indie game dev

Today was Saturday. It was also day of the national competitions. Shuvam made preparations in such a way that after the top 100 teams of the country have been selected. People could view the matches for free. The viewers would use the the teleportation channels after the selection of top 100 teams and view the matches for free. Whereas after the top 10 teams are selected, people have to pay.

People then have to pay 1 crystal for 1 match. Until then the teams go through elimination method. After the 5 teams are remaining, they will each have 4 matches with the remaining four, the one to win the most matches would win. If two have equal wins, they will have a rematch.

In this final five matches, people have to pay crystals to view matches of their preferred finalist. He also decided to gift 2 crystals to the team members for each viewer the team gets. The crystals would be divided in between the players of the team equally.

Today was the nationals, even though it was supposed to be a day off from school but the dean still had called all the first year and second year students of the game design bachelor's course in order to cheer and watch the performance of their college's official team. He had even threatened them saying he would decrease credits of the students who don't show up.

The game would start at 10 AM in every country's timeline. In some countries the competition had already started where as in some it would start a bit later. It was 9:00 Am right now. Shuvam frowned as he recalled the dean's threat and left for college. He reached the college at 9:20 which was 10 minutes faster than the set time.

For some reason he was feeling a little down. He remembered how he used to smoke in the 9th and 10th grade when he felt depressed or anxious. On the way to college, he bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and tossed it inside his bag.

He parked his bike and went to the roof to have a smoke. He finished one cig in about 5 minutes. He went down to the computer room, the room was already filled with people. There were twenty computers that were turned on and people with headphones were sitting in front of them while playing crystal wars. ' It seems two teams are going to participate. ', he thought. He was always oblivious to matters at college except for the first two classes so he didn't know.

He just sat in a corner, took out his headphones and started to monitor the situations of various countries. Various people had been live streaming their competition videos. The was hot on YouTube and it kind of helped him increase the users in the game. Due to the requirement of crystals to watch the finals and stuff, the crystals were also being sold pretty quickly.

After a while he found out that the people at his college were just too excited about the game so they had made two teams name Black box academy (1) which was the official team with the most skilled players whereas the second team Black box academy (2) was the the secondary team consisting of students who didn't want to back off from playing just because of their slightly lacking skills.

The projector was turned on and one of the students was projecting the official team's leader's live footage. The leader of the team was a second year student. The college only had first and second year students in the bachelor's game design program because the bachelor's program had just started last year. Last year there were about 20 students where as this year there were about 30.

The dean was hoping that they could get a good place in the competition so that it could boost their college's reputation. Shuvam noticed that Alisha and the boy Yogesh were on the official team whereas Sandesh was in the secondary team. ( Note - Yogesh and Sandesh are the guys who approached him on the first day of school. )

The teleportation gates started operating, people were rushing in. The players of a single group didn't have to be added into the same gate they would have to create ten person team ahead of time and go in. The matchmaking started and people were randomly matched. The new maps were unfamiliar to all which made it even harder for people to make use of the environment.

The matches continued for about 6-7 hours. Shuvam didn't even know what was happening. He had been watching anime and kdrama during this whole time.

The official team had secured second position whereas the secondary team had secured ninth position. Alisha was waiting to see how shuvam reacts when she looks at him. She looked around the room and finally found the figure she was looking for. But she frowned upon seeing that he was on his laptop and was not paying attention to her and the championship. He didn't even care. ' I bet he was here because of dean's threat. ',she thought and pouted before running to her friends who were cheering for her.

Shuvam looked up and found that they had secured 2nd and 9th position and couldn't help but think, ' They have some skills. '

The money was flowing from his account like water. Teams who were getting the 1st, 2nd or 3rd place would have the prize money distributed to the team member's accounts equally. Those who had connected their bank accounts or other services connected to their account would have their sum transferred to their e-bank accounts where as the people who didn't have such services connected to their player ID would get their money in the player ID and would get a prompt from system to merge a bank account with their game account.

The first place in Nepal was taken by Heaven breakers mercenary (1), second place by black box academy (1) and third place by Everest guild (1). The (1) showed that more than one teams participated from these groups and these three were the major teams of their respective groups.

Among all, black box academy was the most famous because it was the only group which had two of its group get into the top ten rankings.

John was ecstatic as this was better for their college and decided that he would let them play every year in this kind of competitions. John decided to treat all the students for this achievement. He called over the one of the peons of the college and sent him to get various drinks and beverages along with vegetable and meat skewers.

Shuvam very much wanted to leave but he thought it would be too rude and decided to stay. He felt somewhat uneasy and went to the roof. The weather was nice, wind blowing and the cloudy sky made the temperature a bit lower.

Shuvam sat down with his back to the wall and enjoyed the scenery while lighting a cigarette. He finished the first one, then second, he kept smoking while gazing at the clouds, buildings… He felt lonely right now. He had thought of Pallavi when the championship was being started. He had been feeling down since that.

While Alisha had noticed that Shuvam was not here. She went to look for him. She found his bike in the parking area so started to look in the building for him. When she went to the roof, she noticed he was smoking there. There were lots of finished cigarette butts on the ground. (Note - they call those stuff cigarette butts right, you know the think at the last of a cigarette which has a filter and stuff. English is my second language so not sure lol )

He was gazing at the clouds while smoking. He hadn't noticed her. She felt that he was really sad right now. His eyes were empty and lonely. She immediately had a thought that she would would always in future, ' I want to make him happy. I want to see him smile. I want to rid him of his loneliness. '

She then tapped his shoulder from the side and smiled before saying, " The drinks and skewers are here. Aren't you coming ? "

Shuvam was lost in his thoughts when someone tapped his shoulder. He turned around and saw Alisha.

" In a bit. You go ahead first. ", he said while standing up and rapidly smoking. He intended to finish the cigarette before going down.

" Oh. I will wait. ",she said and waited.

Shuvam soon finished the cig. He picked up his bag and went down with Alisha. He had a few drinks and had some meat skewers. He just drank the soft drinks as he had to go home while riding his bike. Shuvam really was oblivious to his surroundings. He didn't even notice all the unfriendly gazes the first and second year people were giving him when he was eating along with Alisha and her two friends.

After the meet in the roof, he decided to ' interact ' with Alisha. He also found out that the two friends of Alisha were Anju and Megha. After everything was done, everybody started to leave while the team players decided to go to a restaurant to further celebrate.

Alisha and her friends invited Shuvam but he rejected. Shuvam went home and started to draw. After a while, he had an uneasy and lonely feeling in his heart. He then, just went to sleep while listening to songs.