Marvel-ous Ninjutsu

00123. Wait, what happened?

After a quiet Christmas with his family, Theo brought forth a question he was putting off asking. The game that he made with Peter and Milly was basically done. They had a survival mode, creative mode, along with multiplayer functionality built in.

Theo just needed to make a website and launch the game now. Once that was done, his company would quickly find it and buy the game. At least that was the plan anyway. He planned ahead and already read books from the library on how to code and build websites. He even shared them with Peter and they practiced building websites on their computers.

The main problem now was convincing his parents to let him build a website. If he was older it might not be an issue, but with his age he was concerned they would reject the idea.

It was a typical Sunday morning for their family when Theo brought up the idea during breakfast. As they were eating Theo asked, “Mom, can I make a website so I can sell my game.”

Daniel turned from feeding Isaac and asked, “You want to sell your game?”

Theo nodded his head as he said, “Ya, like they do in the stores.”

Jacob patted Theo’s shoulder as he said, “There is a lot more that goes into selling video games in the store. Pretty sure you have to work with a company to do that and that company will package your game so it can be sold.”

“But in the book I read, it said you can sell stuff directly from websites. People could download the game directly from the site. The website would be like a store, but only for my game.”

Daniel smiled as she asked, “What about advertising for the game?”

Theo feigned ignorance as he asked, “What's that?”

Daniel fed Isaac another spoonful of food before she said, “It's what companies do so people learn about the product or service they are trying to sell.”

“Oh… I guess that makes sense. People won't buy it, if they don't know about it.”

Theo looked up at his dad as he asked, “But didn't you and uncle Ben say you don't advertise your business?”

Jacob smirked before he said, “We have a very large customer base and a backlog of orders. Plus our customers tell their friends, which brings in more business.”

“Can’t I do the same? I just make the site and if people like it, they’ll buy it.”

Daniel nodded as she asked, “So you think people will buy the game if you make a nice enough website to attract customers?

Theo shook his head before he said, “The website would have some info about the game and a free creative mode people could download and try out. If they like creative mode, they can buy the game itself.”

“What’s creative mode?” Jacob asked.

Milly waved her fork around in the air as she said, “Oh! Milly knows! You get a bunch of different colored blocks to play with and you can fly around and build stuff! I made a giant birthday cake in it!”

Theo chuckled a little as he said, “That pretty much sum’s up creative mode. Instead of all the core features of the main game. Creative mode is for people to mess around and build stuff. Peter and I made a scale replica of the shop in it. We also built copies of our houses you can walk around in.”

Milly nodded along before she said, “I made giant cupcakes and cookies over the houses.”

Daniel smiled before she said, “I’d like to see this creative mode you made. Is it on the home computer?”

Theo nodded his head as he said, “Ya we have a copy of it on there.”

“Alright, since you finished eating. Go load it up and show it to me and your dad.”

Theo nodded before he got up and put his dishes into the sink. Then he headed to the living room and booted up the computer and loaded up a copy of creative mode. It was used by Milly a few times, so there were giant cakes, cupcakes and cookies randomly around the spawn area. There was also a decent looking Statue of Liberty Theo made.

After a few minutes, Daniel came out carrying Issac. She took a seat next to Theo as she said, “Alright, show me this demo you want people to try out.”

As Theo started to explain creative mode and demonstrated how it worked to his mother, Jacob walked out of the kitchen with Milly trailing behind him. Milly started to excitedly point at the screen, telling Theo to show off her cupcakes. But what caught his parent’s eyes was the Statue of Liberty sitting off to the side.

“You can make stuff like that in creative mode?” Daniel asked in surprise.

“You can make pretty much whatever you want as long as you take your time.” Theo said.

“Anything?”

Theo nodded as he said, “Ya, at least I think you can.”

After checking out creative mode for a little while Daniel said, “Alright, you can make a website. But you know they cost money to host and run right?”

Theo nodded as he said, “It was in the book I read. Not really sure how that all works though.”

“It’s fine, I’ll look into it tomorrow. I’ll also look into a merchant processor for your website.” Daniel said.

“A merchant processor? What’s that?”

Daniel stood up as she said, “It’s so you can take in money when you sell your game.”

The rest of the day was spent together as a family, going to the park, playing board games and just enjoying each other's company. The next day since the kids were still out of school for winter break, Theo, Milly and Issac went to May’s along with their mother. They met Peter there and Theo had him help build a website for the game.

It took them a few days to build and test, but at the end of the week with the help of his mom, the website launched. Theo also back tested everything with his clones after launch and once satisfied everything worked correctly, he left it alone to do other stuff. Like working on his go-kart.

While Theo was busy with school, working on his go-kart and helping his dad out around the shop. A few people found his website and tested out creative mode. While Theo never advertised his game, or even used his clones and Vibe to push the website to people. He did optimize the backend of the website to work really well with search engines. 

So it was no surprise that people found the site the same day it launched. The only problem was one of the people who found it. They were a user of his Vibe platform and while not very famous yet, they still had a small following. So after they found the website and tested out creative mode for a while, they uploaded a video titled, ‘Check out this free building game!’

In the game play video they built a bunch of random art pieces and some famous buildings. That simple video spread quickly and within a week, over thirty thousand people visited the website and downloaded the demo. But the bigger surprise was that over a thousand people bought the game for its twenty-five dollar price tag. 

During that time more videos were made with people showing off all the cool stuff they made in creative mode, which made more people become aware of the game. But the thing that made the game really take off was a new video by the first person who posted about the game. After their first video in creative mode, they bought the game and spent the past week playing survival mode.

Their survival mode video called ‘Get this green thing away from me!’ literally exploded in popularity and tripled their follower count within a few days. The video was so popular it ended up on the front page of Vibe and things just took off from there. By the end of the month the number of people who purchased the official game was a little over one hundred thousand and counting…

Since Theo worked so hard to automate Vibe and everything else, he didn’t know how popular his game had become. When he wasn’t in school, at his father’s shop or spending time with family. He would be training in magic with Tao and Agatha, training people in chakra control or visiting Tony and working on JARVIS or the cell phone project.

The first person in the family who found out the game blew up was Daniel when she received a call from the bank asking if she wanted to invest some of the money in her bank account into some stocks or bonds. At first she was confused, since one bank account was used for the business and was also cash heavy to help run the business. The other two accounts were for the family expenses and Theo’s account for his game.

At first she thought they were talking to her about the business account, but after talking to the banker for a few minutes she realized they were talking about Theo's account. At that point she asked, “How much is currently in the account?”

“It looks to be just over two point five million dollars.” The banker said.

“Oh… Wait! How much?!”

The banker could be heard typing before she said, “It’s currently at two million, five hundred and fifty two thousand, eight hundred and fifty dollars. With another one hundred and twenty thousand, six hundred dollars in pending deposits.”

“Are you sure it’s that much?” Daniel asked in surprise.

“Yes, Mrs. Mercer.”

“... Okay… I’ll have to get back to you on this. Thanks for the information.” Daniel said quickly before she hung up the phone.

Daniel was stunned for a little while before she went to her computer and checked out Theo’s website. He left her a login so she could check the backend of the site and see how much traffic the site received over the past month. It also shows how many people downloaded the game demo, and how many people bought the game itself. The numbers just reinforced that her son at almost eight years old became a millionaire…

While she was on the site, she also checked out the forums that Theo made and saw post after post of people talking about the game and sharing things they created so far. Hundreds of screen shots of beautiful art people made using creative mode. While people on survival mode shared guides on how to survive, what to look out for, how to craft certain items.

Daniel couldn’t help but smile as she scrolled through posts of people praising whoever made the game. She also found a post from the Vibe user who posted the first video about the game. She ended up watching the video on vibe and then checked out the user’s profile and realized the reason the game became popular was because of all the videos this person made. They currently had six videos all about Theo’s game and each video had at least a million views. With one video having over five million.

Daniel closed down the computer and then made a few phone calls to May, Mary and Sara. She invited the whole family over for dinner that night and said she had an announcement to make. After that she ordered pizza to be delivered for dinner and then went to the store to get a few things.

A few hours later, Jacob came home with the kids and a little after that, everyone else showed up to the house. Once everyone was there, Daniel pulled Theo, Peter and Milly to the middle of the room. She wore a big smile as she said, “Sorry for all the secrecy today, but I wanted everyone to find out at the same time.”

“Now everyone knows Theo and these two created a game and even made a website so people could buy it. I didn’t think much about it, till I received a call from the bank today about Theo’s bank account.”

Jacob smiled as he asked, “Someone bought Theo’s game?! That’s great, how much did he make?”

“Someone bought the game already?!” Theo asked excitedly.

Daniel smiled down at Theo before she patted his head and said, “Yup. You actually have a pretty big fan base. A lot of people really like your game.”

Theo glanced up at his mom as he asked, “A lot of people? So like a hundred people?”

Daniel shook her head before she said, “More. A lot more.”

“A thousand?” Theo asked.

Daniel pushed Theo gently towards the computer and said, “Go check the website, so everyone can see how many people like your game.”

As Theo turned on the computer everyone came close and started to crowd around to see the screen. As Theo was logging into the computer Jacob asked Daniel, “So Theo sold over a thousand copies of the game? That’s a pretty good start for his college fund.”

Daniel smiled as she pointed at the screen that Theo just pulled up and waited. Everyone was quiet as they looked at the number on the screen that was currently going up by two or three new sales every minute or so.

Jacob counted it a few times before he asked, “Theo’s a millionaire?”