Game Development: Starting by Healing the Players
Chapter 30: What Did I Do to Deserve This?
"This is the worst a clown has ever been roasted!"
"To be fair, clowns can bring people joy. What does Teacher Zhong do?"
"The person above, has Teacher Zhong not brought us enough joy already?"
"LMAO, thanks to Chen Xu, I learned about Teacher Zhong. Whenever I'm in a bad mood, I just look up some of Teacher Zhong's old quotes and I feel better."
"But seriously, I'm still curious about what Chen Xu's new game actually is. Something about it just feels unreliable!"
"Has he really gotten overconfident?"
"Hard to say. But considering Mirror and Undertale, I'm still going to wait and see."
Following Chen Xu's official Weibo post, many players who had been following him since Mirror and Undertale began discussing the matter.
However, they generally shared the same opinion: they weren't very optimistic.
After all, the development time was simply too short.
...............
Compared with the heated discussions among players, industry professionals, and the media, a game designer at Swordfire Thunder Studio, a studio under NetDragon, was practically trembling as he looked at the news online.
His name was Meng Zuo, and he was one of the main designers at Swordfire Thunder Studio.
He was currently developing a science-fiction game called Galactic Heroes.
The game had been created specifically with the Sci-Fi Game Design Competition in mind.
Being a studio under NetDragon sounded impressive.
But in reality, the company had a huge number of internal project teams, and the Swordfire Thunder Studio he led was only one of them.
Moreover, not every project team could get tens of millions—or even hundreds of millions—in development funding.
Within NetDragon, even a few million yuan was already considered a medium-sized project.
As for Meng Zuo, his goal in targeting the Sci-Fi Game Design Competition was to win first place.
Doing so would help him improve his standing both within the game industry and inside NetDragon, allowing him to obtain better resources and larger development budgets for future projects.
Originally, everything had been going smoothly.
But then Chen Xu suddenly announced that he was also making a science-fiction game and participating in the competition, completely disrupting Meng Zuo's plans.
It wasn't that Meng Zuo was particularly intimidated by Chen Xu.
In fact, he shared the same opinion as many other people: with such a short development period, what the hell could Chen Xu possibly make?
The problem was that the explosive popularity of Mirror and Undertale had given Chen Xu an enormous amount of attention.
To many gaming media outlets, Chen Xu was practically synonymous with traffic.
And to players, Undertale's popularity hadn't completely died down yet. Naturally, they were still paying extremely close attention to Chen Xu's every move.
As for Zhong Mei's sarcastic attacks, to some extent, they were actually giving Chen Xu even more publicity.
And that was what made the whole situation so awkward.
Meng Zuo's Galactic Heroes had specifically set aside part of its budget for marketing.
The promotional campaign had already begun.
But now?
All the attention had been stolen!
There was nothing they could do about it. Although NetDragon was one of the leading distribution-channel companies in the country, and their studio was part of NetDragon, the distribution side was handled by a separate operations department. Their team was an independent development group.
The operations department certainly wasn't going to sacrifice its own performance just to help them.
Want to use NetDragon's distribution channels for promotion?
No problem. Since you're all colleagues and part of the same company, we'll give you an internal discount of 1%.
What? You don't have any money?
Then why are you coming to us?
Get lost!
If you don't have money, don't come asking us. You think our performance targets aren't real?
Looking at trending news such as "Chen Xu's New Game Will Participate in the Sci-Fi Game Design Competition" and "Games Aren't Child's Play: Has the Creator of Undertale, Chen Xu, Become Overconfident?", Meng Zuo felt his heart trembling.
Damn it!
They already had barely any marketing budget, and now they had wasted even more of it for nothing!
"What did I do to deserve this?" Meng Zuo clutched his chest, his face filled with pain.
Looking at the promotional exchange between Chen Xu and Zhong Mei, Meng Zuo suddenly felt like tagging Chen Xu and expressing his disdain for the new game.
Maybe he could start a confrontation between the two sides and use the resulting controversy to increase the visibility of both himself and his new game.
But he stopped himself.
It wasn't because he thought he would lose. It was because he was different from Zhong Mei.
Zhong Mei's He School Culture & Entertainment might not have been very large—it was basically just an indie game workshop—but at least he was the boss himself.
Meng Zuo, on the other hand, was a producer under NetDragon. If he dared to jump into a public confrontation, he'd be completely screwed.
After all, he would have no legitimate reason for doing so. Even rebels in ancient times had to proclaim that the imperial court was corrupt and tyrannical, or shout something along the lines of, "Are kings and nobles born to greatness?"
If he simply jumped out and started arguing with Chen Xu, it might feel good in the moment, but the trouble afterward would be considerable.
Having to apologize would be a minor issue. What Meng Zuo was really afraid of was that the players' resentment toward NetDragon would be redirected toward him, while he might also end up taking the blame for problems caused by other departments within the company.
Then everyone else would be making money while he got hit with disciplinary action after disciplinary action.
That would truly be a tragedy.
Having the spotlight stolen was already bad enough. If he ended up carrying a massive burden of blame on top of that, the situation would be utterly miserable.
But now?
He still felt terrible!
Especially when Meng Zuo thought about the person responsible for all of this, Chen Xu.
Chen Xu didn't even know what was happening.
He hadn't even done it deliberately or specifically targeted him.
That made Meng Zuo feel even more aggrieved.
How was this fair?
There was an old saying: a gentleman can wait ten years to take revenge.
Although he couldn't blame Chen Xu entirely, Chen Xu was still involved in what had happened.
So at that moment, Meng Zuo had already begun imagining exactly what he would do.
"You stole the promotional spotlight from me, so let's settle this at the competition with our games!"
"Although I have a feeling you might not even pass the review process, I still hope you can win some award at the very bottom of the rankings. That way, you'll at least be invited to the Ministry of Games' offline award ceremony."
"When that happens, I'll shake your hand in front of countless players, Ministry of Games officials, and game media representatives. I'll smile and say, 'I've heard so much about you,' and then praise your new game for being really well made!"
Meng Zuo stared at the headlines about Chen Xu with envy. He took a deep breath, closed the webpage, and continued his elaborate fantasy.
Red carpets, media, handshakes, speeches.
A month from now, that would be the perfect day for his revenge!
.........
Meanwhile, in the Nebula Games office, Chen Xu had no idea that someone had already started imagining how to take revenge on him.
He has been extremely busy lately.
On one hand, he had to keep up with the development progress of To the Moon. On the other, he had to conduct recruitment interviews.
Chen Xu had posted the relevant job openings on various forums and communities in the game industry.
With Undertale attached to his name, he had to admit that the company had attracted quite a few people working in the game industry.
The problem was that very few of them satisfied Chen Xu.
After reviewing all the resumes, Chen Xu sighed.
"Ah... Hiring people is difficult."
According to the plan, the development department needed to recruit another junior artist to help him and Ruan Ningxue share some of the workload.
They also needed a systems designer and a level designer.
But so far, Chen Xu hasn't found any particularly promising candidates for those three positions.
At that moment, there was a knock on the office door.
After Chen Xu responded, the door opened and a man in his thirties walked in.
His name was Zhang Yida. He was the manager in charge of marketing at Nebula Games. Game promotion and related business operations were his responsibility.
"Mr. Chen, we've confirmed the contact information for the relevant organizers," Zhang Yida said. There was some admiration on his face, along with a hint of hesitation. "But are we really going to do this?"
"Mm. Go ahead and contact them directly. Just make sure the subsequent public disclosure and oversight procedures are properly handled," Chen Xu said with a smile and a nod.
After chatting with Zhang Yida for a couple of minutes, he left the office.
Chen Xu then turned his attention back to his computer and continued working on the development of To the Moon.