Hello, I’m game-loving novelist Yuki Shinobu, and I’ll be your host for the evening. Did you enjoy my story about recruiting a new party member to the labyrinth team, and the hard-mode mechanics along the way? For those of you reading the afterword before the novel itself, I hope you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
Let me talk about games for a bit. PvP-centric games aren’t that popular in Japan, but there’s still a lot of variety if you’re willing to search. A lot of people think PvP games aren’t fun unless you’re good at them, but the truth is, nobody would play those games if the only way to enjoy them was to be a master of the controller. There’s no shortage of games that value decision-making, planning, and teamwork, rather than raw skill.
Dealing with people can be difficult sometimes, but you don’t stand to lose anything by trying it out. Like, there was this one survival game that was recently brought over here, with zombies and dinosaurs. I wonder if anybody else plays it? Anything goes, as long as your computer has the specs to run the game. No notion of right or wrong, just individual accountability. Groups form and compete, fighting until one side runs out of resources, money, or willpower. There’s no button to report harassment or bullying to a mod or anything like that. I’m sure a lot of people think it’s too difficult and awkward, since there’s barely a Japanese community. But for me, it was at least interesting to experience that novel world, so detached from Japan, and all I had to do was reach out and try it. If another player approached you, pointing your weapon at them threateningly was a common greeting. Sometimes other players would just attack you without a word. Farming locations for precious resources were a major point of contention. It was really different from what you typically see in Japanese games.
For someone accustomed to that kind of world, like our hero Aoi, real life is lukewarm in comparison. That said, one thing he and I share is that our friends suspect us of having masochistic tendencies thanks to our taste in games, so I kinda try to keep quiet about my hobbies, generally.
Let me close out by saying thank you. Thank you to Itsuwa Katou, for making the awesomely cute and kickass illustration of Mary for the cover. Thank you to Mr. K, for helping me so much with editing, all the way to the end. And a very heartfelt thank you to all my readers, for picking up this book.