"We will begin with the prize for the most entertaining fight of the match. I know, I know, you all want to get to the winners, but first, we must shine a light on everyone else who performed admirably today.
The three nominated fights, by a vote of the audience's replay viewing habits, are Julius versus Ming, Ragnarocker versus BussayyyBoi, and Blood Goddess Versus Lord PockiPock. It was a shock to see a last-minute fight make the list, but you now have a final chance to vote for the winner." The announcer declared, bringing the fights up on the big screen above the stage, as well as everyone's individual screens.
The first one was an evenly matched duel between competent rogues, and very interesting for Max to watch, but unfortunately, the contestants didn't get to vote on this category. The second was a marvel of incompetence, with two completely inept warriors who hadn't activated any skills comically flailing at each other, while the final match was the humiliation of Lord PockiPock.
Unlike what Max had suspected, it was not a close fight. He had precast an incredibly powerful Fire spell and roasted nearly half of Nico's life away in an instant, then insulted her a few times before she got ahold of him and beat him near to death before dragging him to a mud puddle and attempting to drown him.
The timer counted down from thirty seconds and the crowd decision was in. Ragnarocker and BussayyyBoi had won the most entertaining fight of the night.
With how the fight actually went, it was a dubious honor, but the crowd loved it.
"Next up will be the fan choice for the favorite individual kill." The announcer declared, and dozens of popular kills filled the screens of the audience's monitors.
"We have our top 5, now begin the second round of voting." The announcer man called in a fake happy voice, while the contestants stared at the screens, some laughing some glaring. One of the options was Max killing Callsign Flood, another was Nico killing Nekkbreaka, the berserker whose head she tore off when she first met up with Max. But the top kill went to comedy value, the same as the best fight did.
PrincessAria, a famously beautiful streamer had jumped off a cliff to avoid certain death, not wanting her opponent to get her points. But she landed on the top of a witch's staff, impaling her chest and giving the points to a player that never even saw her coming. The look on her face, both in the game and when she won was enough to have half the contestants roaring in laughter.
"With the major categories finished, we have one final category left. This one is a split category, for best and worst sportsmanship. Both the audience and the contestants will have a chance to vote on this one since they will have had very different experiences."
Max thought long and hard, coming up with one player who went out of his way to duel to 50 percent with others at the start, so they could learn to use their skills and another who harassed the female players until they hounded him right out of the game.
The players' votes were all over the map, but the groper came up second on their list of worst sportsmanship. The top vote? Blood Goddess. Taunting them to their deaths enraged well over half the players into voting her for their most despised opponent.
Best sportsmanship as voted by the players, went to Callsign Flood, who had helped a lot of players out and even gave away his out-of-date weapons, not realizing that he could trade them back to the shop for credits.
That went a long way to helping his online reputation, and his decision to full-time stream the new game.
From the audience side, the groper won worst sportsmanship in a landslide, while Max's efforts to train the lower ranked players put him narrowly over Callsign Flood's early efforts to gear them up.
"And now for the rankings, and the winners of today's top prize, the resort vacation for two to Comor's top all-inclusive resort. In tenth place, we have Ming, who has earned the Narrow Victory trophy, as the final winner of our top prize." The announcer made his way through the victors, stopping to say a little something about each of them, and plugging the streams of those who gamed professionally, which was everyone except the fifth place Loqueisha, who wasn't a Gamer, but an adult entertainer.
Her online site got much more attention from the audience than the others for some unknown reason though.
"And now for our runner-up, SlumDogRaider. Though he tied for the lead in points, his one solitary death put him in second place on the leaderboard. He is not an online persona, in fact, we know very little about him that isn't classified. But put your hands together for the player who came in only a single kill from ultimate victory." The mystery got the crowd charged up and Max waved at the crowd happily, watching as they realized from his appearance that he was a soldier and had likely altered his previous online handle for the tournament due to security reasons.
"And our winner, the one and only Blood Goddess, who suddenly went offline two years ago, but made a huge comeback today. Do you have anything to say to your loyal fans? Any word of a return?" The announcer asked.
"While I won't be making a return to the gaming circuit in the immediate future, I can assure you all that my future endeavors will still make your live streams, even if you don't realize that it is me. It has been a pleasure to be here today, and experience this wonderful new virtual reality game. If I had to suggest one thing though, whoever set the taste profiles for players has no taste buds." The audience cheered and stomped on the ground until the arena shook in celebration of her win, while the developers laughed themselves to tears at the thought that someone actually bit enough players that they could do a taste test sample of them.
But this was why open betas were more valuable than the ultra-secretive development model that this game used, they brought in players that thought of things that a single group wouldn't have ever tried. Since there was an option to make your player have fangs, they should have foreseen it, but very little thought was put into the taste of objects in the game.
It was just another item to add to the emergency last-minute updates to be completed before the game officially launched that weekend. They had done well though, the list was short, and the confidence that they could get it all done on time and not need to rush out a patch only days after release to fix known errors was high.
As they made plans to update the game, the announcer gathered the top ten winners to give interviews and do an infomercial for the resort that they would be staying at. They would be doing ongoing videos with the winners during their stay, as part of the tournament conditions to advertise the resort. Most wanted to do them in their streaming persona, but Nico and Max had other ideas. Once they arrived at the resort, they would be soldiers on leave again, and both thought it would be good for troop morale all over the Empire to see that they had been able to compete here and win during their standard leave.
War drained every aspect of body and soul, so seeing the light of hope for a fantastic vacation would motivate the troops.
