Only Game, office, afternoon.
Animator Xu Hong yawned and stretched. Having just wrapped up a VR project, he seemed rather idle.
The other two were in much the same state, each doing their own thing.
Xu Hong picked up his water cup and was about to take a sip when a pop-up suddenly appeared in the lower-right corner of his desktop. It was an ad promoting their own 21 Points.
Seeing it, Xu Hong grinned.
"Our ads have made it into our own office, huh? By the way, have you guys played the game?"
Modeler Qiu Yuan immediately nodded.
"Of course I did. I played it the moment I got home from work that day. I have to say, this game is freaking amazing. I made every single item in it, yet playing it gave me this strange, unfamiliar sense of wonder."
Xia Nianzhen, who had been listening, chimed in as well.
"Brother Qiu, your modeling is incredible. At first glance, I almost thought it was real footage. It feels so immersive to play!"
Xu Hong agreed wholeheartedly and nodded in praise.
Qiu Yuan, on the other hand, scratched his head a little sheepishly.
"It's not really like that. I did make all the assets, but I think President Meng must have modified my project files. That's why the models are so detailed."
"President Meng modified the files?"
Xia Nianzhen blinked, suddenly doubtful.
"Is President Meng really that capable?"
"Hey, do you think President Meng really handled everything else in the game himself, aside from what we made?"
"How could that be possible!"
"No way."
The two men burst into laughter.
"Forget a VR game on the scale of 21 Points. I don't even believe President Meng made Dark Forest all by himself."
Xu Hong sprayed some water on the potted plant on his desk and flicked the tip of a green leaf.
"Do you know Extreme Warrior from last year? It was a 2D side-scrolling action game, two gigabytes in size, and more than ten people spent four years developing it. Compare that with 21 Points, which we finished in a month. You get what I mean, right?"
Qiu Yuan even held his cup as he smiled and turned toward Xia Nianzhen.
"You haven't cleared 21 Points, have you? Once you beat it, the game automatically shows a credits list. I took a close look. The development group had around a hundred names, including Chinese names, English names, Japanese names, and Russian names."
"So President Meng has a separate development team. Maybe they're in China, maybe overseas. But either way, there should be at least around a hundred people."
Xia Nianzhen was stunned when she heard that, unable to think of anything to say for a moment.
Xu Hong nodded in agreement.
"You can tell just by looking at our company's staffing. President Meng only hired the three of us, which means what he lacked were people like us. So I have reason to suspect that Only Game is only responsible for supplying President Meng with the art assets he needs. As for things like game frameworks and code development, another development team of President Meng's handles those."
At that, Xu Hong waved his hand.
"Honestly, that's better. Being away from them means I don't have to revise a single file over and over. If the motion-capture footage I shot before had been submitted at my old company, someone would definitely have come over to lecture me, saying this part wasn't natural and that part wasn't standard. Here with President Meng, the first draft passes every time. Hahaha."
Qiu Yuan immediately echoed him.
"Exactly, exactly! Mine passed on the first draft too. I thought it was because I'd entered a new environment and worked overtime, pouring my heart and energy into making qualified assets, so they didn't get sent back for revisions."
Xia Nianzhen looked at the two men and remembered that her work seemed to have passed on the first draft too, without ever being returned for changes.
"Uh, me too."
Just as the three of them chatted because they had nothing to do, Meng Shu came out.
The boss was on the move!
Xu Hong and the others immediately shut their mouths by reflex and lowered their heads over their computers, pretending to work.
Meng Shu's eye twitched at the sight.
He shook his head inwardly.
There was no need to do that around him. If there was work, they worked; if there wasn't, they could do something else, as long as it did not affect their colleagues.
In his original world, for the sake of his employees' health, he had even set up a gym filled with exercise equipment and required employees to spend at least two hours a week working out there, rather than sitting for extended periods.
So although he was an entrepreneur, he was still somewhat different from a capitalist.
Seeing the three of them acting like this now, he almost wanted to laugh.
"Alright, get ready and come to the meeting room. We have a new project."
After saying that, Meng Shu carried his laptop straight into the meeting room.
The three people in the office area were left staring at one another.
No way.
21 Points had been released for less than two days, and there was already a new project?
Curiosity filled Xu Hong and the others' eyes. They picked up paper and pens and hurried into the meeting room.
Once inside, they saw that the projector was already on.
A WeChat meeting interface was displayed on it as well.
This... was a remote meeting!
Xu Hong and the other two exchanged looks once again.
Could it be that other members were joining this meeting?
They did not ask or dwell on it. After finding seats close together, they quietly waited.
Meng Shu put on his Bluetooth headset and tested the call.
A short while later, five users appeared in the WeChat remote meeting.
After confirming that they could speak to one another and see the shared screen, the meeting for the new game project began.
Meng Shu stood at the front, looked at the three people below him, cleared his throat, and spoke calmly.
"Alright. Aside from us, today's meeting also includes the publisher, Infinite Network Entertainment."
"This time, I'll mainly be talking to everyone about the plan for our next game project."
As he spoke, Meng Shu opened the PowerPoint presentation on his laptop.
A huge title appeared on the projection screen, clearly visible to Xu Hong and the others.
Visage
Uh.
What a strange name.
That was the first thought that came to all three of them.
"Can everyone see the screen?"
Meng Shu looked up and confirmed once again.
[Yes, we can see it clearly.]
[We can all see it. Please go ahead, President Meng.]
[It's good now, President Meng. You can begin.]
Several voices immediately rang out from the laptop, male and female alike. They must have been people from Infinite Network Entertainment, as President Meng had mentioned earlier.
"Alright, can everyone see the title on the PowerPoint? This is our next game, Visage."
"As for why it has such an inexplicable name, you'll understand once you learn about the basic plot and gameplay."
Meng Shu moved to the first slide of the presentation, which listed the game's genre and overview.
"This will still be a horror game, and it needs to support VR. I want to push for a breakthrough and make it more fun and scarier than the previous two games. So I chose a paranormal ghost theme that almost no one has explored, to distinguish it from the first two survival horror games."
The PowerPoint switched to a sketch of a house. It showed not only the general exterior of the building, but also many close-up sketches of its interior structure.
"I've set the game in the 1980s, inside a massive mansion in a fictional foreign town."
"What players need to do is explore this large house. While being hunted by ghosts, they must also gather clues and uncover the truth and story behind the game."
"In this game, I made a bold innovation. That is..."
Meng Shu braced both hands on the front table, swept his gaze over the three people below him, then looked at the laptop screen.
"...Players cannot fight."
The moment he said that, Xu Hong and the other two froze.
Players could not fight?
What kind of bullshit mechanic was that!?
If horror game players could not fight, then what the hell was the point of playing!?
They would just wait to get killed by ghosts!
There would be another chapter later. Also, please send recommendation votes and monthly votes!!!
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