Chapter 852: The Churn Rate Is Way Too High
"What... what the hell is this?!"
Old P was completely dumbfounded. This bizarre scene, combined with the sound of the large cleaver chopping meat, completely exceeded the cognitive scope of a normal human being. Add in the ultra-high-definition visuals, the tense and thrilling atmosphere, and the realistic sound effects—the two sensations of extreme realism and extreme absurdity intertwined, leaving Old P frozen in place, overwhelmed and at a loss.
After a moment, Old P snapped out of it. Beside him was an abandoned wardrobe, and he quickly scrambled inside.
"Thump," "thump"...
The giant, pyramid-headed figure continued swinging its cleaver tirelessly. One of the four-legged monsters had already been chopped into scattered chunks of flesh, while the other was reduced to just half a body.
The pyramid head bent down, grabbed one of the four-legged monster's remaining legs with its left hand, and dragged the cleaver with its right, step by step, down the stairs.
Old P felt his heart pounding wildly. With every step the pyramid head took, he could hear the heavy thud of its foot hitting the floor. The corpse and the cleaver scraped along the ground, the blade screeching against the floorboards as the half-eviscerated body of the four-legged monster left a long, long trail of blood behind...
In Old P's ears echoed the protagonist's heavy gasps and rapid heartbeat, and his own condition wasn't much better.
Even though he knew the game didn't pick up the player's voice, Old P instinctively held his breath, not daring to make a single sound.
He was well aware that this was a phase of complete helplessness. If that pyramid head actually found him... with his current little pistol and a dozen or so bullets, he couldn't even tickle that monster.
But... this was probably just a standard scare tactic, right? Right?
Old P peered through the gap in the wardrobe. Outside was pitch black, with only a faint glimmer of light. Judging by the sound of the pyramid head, it was approaching the wardrobe step by step...
Suddenly, the sound stopped.
But the gap in front of Old P went dark.
"..."
Old P's heart was in his throat. Though his vision was completely black, he knew the pyramid head was right outside the wardrobe, standing there silently...
Ten seconds.
Thirty seconds.
One minute.
Old P felt like that minute lasted an eternity, like the end of the world. Still, no sound came from outside, but he didn't dare move a muscle, just cowering in place, trembling...
Finally, the sound of the pyramid head's footsteps and the cleaver scraping against the floor resumed. A moment later came the noise of the cleaver and the corpse being dragged down the stairs, gradually fading away.
Old P stayed hidden in the wardrobe for a long time, until he couldn't hear a single sound anymore, before cautiously crawling out.
Blood. Blood everywhere.
In front of the wardrobe, where the pyramid head had stopped, there was a massive pool of blood. Inside the room, chunks of flesh were scattered everywhere. On the walls, the ceiling—splatters of blood were everywhere, seemingly mixed with bits of gore.
Seeing the scattered flesh, the protagonist couldn't help but double over and start dry heaving.
Old P felt his own stomach churn, but luckily, he was a tough guy. He held it in for a long time and finally managed to suppress it.
"That's it, folks. Sanity's completely drained again. We'll play tomorrow..."
Without even glancing at the chat, Old P instantly quit the game.
...
Those players who refused to believe it and dove back into "Silent Hill" were quickly taught a harsh lesson again.
The outskirts of the town were the first scene, featuring only "the guy with his hands in his pockets" and the thick fog.
The apartment was the second scene. From here on, players would start encountering door-kill scares, light-out scares, and the key monster of "Silent Hill": the pyramid head.
What was especially maddening was that, starting from the apartment scene, "Silent Hill" introduced much more complex puzzle-solving content.
For example, on the player's mandatory path, there was a grandfather clock. Only by pushing it aside could they proceed to the next area. To push the clock, the player had to reach into a hole emitting green liquid to grab a key, open the clock's outer casing, then deduce the puzzle solution from information carved on the wall and a poem in a corner notebook, adjusting the hour, minute, and second hands to the correct numbers before the clock could be moved.
In any other game, this puzzle wouldn't be too hard. But this was a horror game...
The apartment's layout was very cramped, and the rooms all looked basically the same. Players had to explore each room in pitch darkness, relying on the faint light of a flashlight, memorizing the apartment's structure, all while suddenly encountering monsters lurking in the shadows.
If some players got so scared their IQ dropped, they might never find the solution to the clock puzzle, aimlessly wandering around this pitch-black apartment, circling and circling... forever unable to find the way forward.
So, by the apartment scene, another batch of players was on the verge of breaking down, flooding the forums to vent.
"Chen Mo is inhuman!"
"Sarent is robbing us blind for 98 bucks! He must be trying to scare me to death so he can inherit my Thunder Game account!"
"Forget the 98 bucks! Whoever wants to play can play!"
Even those players who refused to believe it barely made it past the apartment scene before calling it quits. No matter how stubborn they were, they hit a wall here and backed off.
Only a handful of players who were really into horror games kept struggling on.
But even for these seasoned horror game veterans, their sanity would drain instantly upon entering "Silent Hill." They had to take long breaks before diving back in, so the game's progress was excruciatingly slow.
Players all lamented: there's no such thing as a free lunch!
It seemed... that grand prize of a free game of choice across all platforms was completely out of reach...
...
Chen Mo looked at the data on his computer, quite dissatisfied. "This... the churn rate is way too high, isn't it?"
According to the backend data, players who made it to the apartment chapter accounted for only 43% of the total player base. Those who cleared the apartment chapter and entered the hospital scene made up just 12%. As for the later areas—the dungeon, the hotel—not a single person had reached them.
The fact that the first act alone, the town outskirts, had scared off over half the players was something Chen Mo hadn't anticipated.
If he compared it to data from games like "Dark Souls" or "Bloodborne" in his past life, the player dropout rate before the first boss was typically around 40% to 50%. That meant nearly half the players quit before even seeing the first boss and never played again.
Of course, the retention rate was higher after that. The dropout rate between subsequent bosses was usually around 3% to 5%. In other words, as long as players got past the first boss, their threshold for suffering increased, and they weren't so fragile anymore.
But in his past life, those games were sold cheaply, and many players bought them just to pad their libraries. That data was different from this parallel world.
And because "Silent Hill" was sold cheaply, many players bought it without a second thought. The result? Over half of them got lost in the fog and churned out immediately?