@sirflimflam I think it's the fact that he's never had any kinds of success for several years, and here it is a game where there are "people" who lives thanks to him. It causes him to feel needed, and therefore supplies him with purpose. I believe that's why he's so desperate, clinging to his self worth which is tied to the life-like game.
...Yeah, this gets you invested, and it's great. Rather, this is the point. Even if you think they're just NPCs, if you can worry and care for them, then it doesn't really matter how alive they actually are.
@sirflimflam Yeah, this story is quite nice, but the MC's emotion and reaction towards his game is too unbelievable. This is really the worst part of the story and you can see the author trying really hard to force it.
Later, there's even evidence of it not being a game, but the MC goes through some extreme mental gymnastics to convince himself it's a game while still having this insane attitude of treating the game not like a game.
@sirflimflam oh good catch there, failing to protect his sister probably left him with a lot of issues, and now he has an outlet to start trying again. I missed that the first time around.
If we see it as the MC suspecting that maybe they are real, and trying hard to make sure they survive in case they are, then it can make more sense. This would also explain why he wants to try so hard to convince himself it is still just a game, though, no matter how real they may seem to be, because he is worried that he might not be able to keep them all alive, and it would weigh on him too much if he really thought that he had let a real person die. So he tries to keep them alive in case they are real, and tries to convince himself they aren't real in case he can't keep them alive. Both are designed to help keep him from feeling too much guilt (especially since he has trauma/guilt from not protecting somebody before now).
It does still feel a little forced how quickly he acted, but looking at it from this perspective helps it make a bit more sense, at least for me.
@throwaway4ccount Yeah, it makes more sense in your way, but unfortunately, there's no indication of that being the case. He legit thinks it's a game and his unnatural emotion towards it is simply because 'the CG is so real',
and when evidence pops up, he just went 'meh, it's good service', even when one said evidence is in the form of an unknown species staring at him in the face IRL.