Chapter 0: Please Call Me a Game Designer
As a game designer, Chen Mo felt that his life was perfect.
Every game he had developed was recorded in the annals of gaming history.
"Journey" won seven major awards at the World Game Developers Conference, including "Best Visual Art," "Best Game Design," "Best Sound," and "Innovative Game of the Year."
"League of Legends" had reached its seventh year, still sitting firmly at the top of the PC online gaming throne without any suspense, while the S-series World Finals set new records in popularity and viewership.
"The Last of Us," "Uncharted," and "GTA5" swept the globe, selling tens of millions of copies and breaking numerous records.
VR games "Outlast," "Glory," and "Thriller Park" revolutionized the VR gaming industry, being hailed as classics by countless game designers and studied repeatedly.
Even the casually developed "Honor of Kings" and "Onmyoji" dominated the mobile gaming market year after year, with no rivals in sight for what seemed like a lifetime.
Not to mention the card and board game platform he built in just two months—it was like printing money while lying down.
And then there was "Train of...", well, that slipped out. He really hadn't developed that one.
If there was any regret in his life, it was that his habit of daydreaming during overtime work had never quite healed.
To be clear, all of the above was Chen Mo's fantasy. In reality, he was the lead planner at a domestic mobile game startup. After working overtime for over two months straight, he inevitably developed some symptoms of daydreaming.
Like other game planners, he had entered the industry full of dreams. But after years of overtime, if there had ever been any dreams, they had long been worn away by reality.
Still, even now, Chen Mo insisted on calling himself a "game designer" rather than a "game planner." That was probably his last holdout.
Chen Mo glanced at the programmer sitting at the workstation next to him. On the desk sat last night's instant noodle cup, his hair was a mess, and he had two huge dark circles under his eyes.
No helping it—the programmer had stayed up even later than him.
Chen Mo had no idea what kind of creatures programmers were. He felt like he'd drop dead after just five more minutes of staying up, yet those programmer guys could hover in a near-death state for months, even bouncing around energetically after declaring, "Once we fix this bug, we can go live!"
Sigh, they were all miserable souls.
"I'm so sleepy. I can't take it anymore. I need to lie down for a bit."
Chen Mo didn't know if he lay down or passed out. He just felt his vision go dark, and then he was unconscious.
Whether it was an auditory hallucination or not, Chen Mo heard a voice in his dream.
"Game loading..."
"Main objective: Become the greatest game designer in a parallel world."
"Side objective one: A single game's monthly revenue exceeds 2 billion."
"Side objective two: A single game's monthly active players exceed 100 million."
"Side objective three: Develop games covering three platforms—PC, mobile, and VR—with a classic work on each platform."
"Side objective four: Enter the World Hall of Fame and achieve super-first-tier celebrity popularity."
"New player reward: None."
"Game difficulty: Highest."
"Game guidance: Disabled."
"Parallel world switch countdown..."
"Three..."
"Two..."
"One..."
"Game start!"
Genius remembers this site's address in one second: