Inside Information?

Wu Guoyi's proposal sounded simple enough, but hiring someone to compose and write a song cost money, and bringing in a big-name star would be even more expensive. With Lu Wu's current means, he simply could not afford it.

So Lu Wu temporarily gave up on the idea. Things like a theme song could wait until the game had grown to a certain scale and he had sufficient funds.

Hearing that Lu Wu had no immediate plans to create a theme song or battle-scene BGM for the CGs, Wu Guoyi was quite surprised. However, Lu Wu's reason was that he wanted Players to experience the game in its original, unadulterated form.

Wu Guoyi had nothing to say to that. He merely felt that Lu Wu's ideas were rather unconventional and never would have guessed that Lu Wu simply had no money.

After all, in his eyes, a development team capable of producing a game of this scale might not be wealthy, but it certainly would not be unable to afford a theme song.

After ending the call, Wu Guoyi logged into Platform173's management page and looked over the fifteen games that the reviewers had selected with ratings above eight.

Of those, three games had received high scores above nine from the reviewers.

They were Battle Online—10 points, Natural Evolutionary Calamity—9.2 points, and The Rise of Protoss—9.1 points.

Seeing Battle Online ranked first, Wu Guoyi revealed an unsurprised expression. All eight reviewers had awarded it full marks and unanimously believed in its potential.

Now that the evaluations were complete, Wu Guoyi immediately made the decision. Starting tomorrow, Players would vote and score the fifteen games on the PK rankings.

Naturally, the three highest-rated games would be promoted first on the opening day. All fifteen games would be promoted within five days, followed by a half-month wait before the final evaluation.

Wu Guoyi naturally informed Lu Wu of this news in advance, leaving Lu Wu and Bei Li extremely excited. They believed that with the quality of this game, a group of fiercely loyal Players would definitely emerge.

Meanwhile, in the heart of Shenkai City, inside the headquarters of Tamron Game Studios.

"Boss, look! The game evaluations on Platform173 are out!" A thin, bespectacled man stared excitedly at a notification on the Platform173 account.

"Holy crap, Boss, we got a 9.2!"

Hearing that, the man addressed as Boss hurried over to the screen. Seeing the huge 9.2 score, a smile appeared on his face.

Natural Evolutionary Calamity had taken them a full seven years to develop and had consumed an enormous amount of effort.

Behind that score lay the blood, sweat, and sleepless days and nights they had poured into it.

"Looks like first place is—" The man was about to say that first place was in the bag when he suddenly noticed that another game stood above his own.

"Battle Online, ten points!" The smile on Li Tianxia's face abruptly froze.

He sent his underling away, then sat before the computer with an uncertain expression.

In Li Tianxia's opinion, the game his studio had made should have firmly held first place. Yet there was actually another game with a perfect score. He could not accept it for a moment and even suspected that there was some insider dealing in this event. He refused to believe that his game had lost to someone else's.

He opened Battle Online's game page and saw that the description for this perfectly rated game actually claimed its realism was close to 100%. This only strengthened Li Tianxia's suspicions that there was something shady going on.

He immediately took out his phone, searched through his contacts, found Wu Guoyi's number, and dialed it.

Beep... Beep...

A moment later, the call connected.

"Brother Li, it's been a long time. What brings you to call your old brother today?" Wu Guoyi's cheerful voice came through the phone.

"Brother Wu, I treated you like a brother. I joined the game evaluation event you planned, and you pull shady tricks on me? Aren't you looking down on me too much?" Li Tianxia said in a low voice, suppressing the anger that was about to erupt.

Wu Guoyi was initially stunned by those words, but then anger rose within him as well. He thought someone in charge of the event he had planned was manipulating things behind the scenes, something he absolutely would not tolerate.

"Brother, tell me exactly what happened. If there's a problem on my end, I'll definitely give you an explanation!"

Wu Guoyi's assurance eased much of Li Tianxia's anger. He then said, "You know about Natural Evolutionary Calamity, the game our team spent seven years developing, right?"

"Of course I do. How could I not know about the sword your Tamron Game Studios forged over seven years? I remember your game made the top ten on the most-anticipated new games list last time."

"Since you know, can you explain what exactly is going on with Battle Online?"

Hearing that, Wu Guoyi suddenly understood why Li Tianxia had called. He could not help finding it both funny and exasperating. "Brother Li, are you saying you feel frustrated and unconvinced because Battle Online took first place?"

"If the game were well made, why would I be unconvinced? But you put an 800 MB game in first place, wrote in its description that it was nearly one hundred percent realistic, and shamelessly gave it a score of ten. I just want to know how many benefits that piece of trash gave you for you to promote it like this. Aren't you afraid of tarnishing your gaming platform's authority?"

Li Tianxia poured out everything he had wanted to say in one breath.

Wu Guoyi burst into laughter. "Brother Li, now I understand why you're so angry. How about this? Since the top three games will all be added to the platform homepage for promotion tomorrow, download it and try it yourself. If you think the game doesn't deserve ten points, I'll personally take it down and put your game in first place. How about that?"

"I'm giving you that decision. That should show enough sincerity from your old brother, right?" Wu Guoyi added with a laugh.

Li Tianxia, who had been prepared to demand answers, was utterly confused. "Brother Wu, what do you mean by that?"

"No matter how much I say, you won't believe me. Once the game goes live on the platform tomorrow, try it yourself and then get back to me. That's it. I have something to do, so I'm hanging up."

After Wu Guoyi ended the call, Li Tianxia frowned deeply.

From Wu Guoyi's words, he could tell that Wu Guoyi seemed to have no doubts whatsoever about the rankings. Moreover, Wu Guoyi had told him to try Battle Online himself, which clearly showed how confident he was in the game. Li Tianxia could not make sense of it.

Even so, Li Tianxia still did not believe that the game his team had created would lose.

If he had lost to The Rise of Protoss, made by Demon Wolf Studios, he would have found it easier to accept. After all, many Players had been looking forward to that game even during development, and public discussion often compared the two games set to release during the same period to see which would come out on top.

But losing to a game he had never even heard of, one whose description sounded absurdly unrealistic, was something Li Tianxia could never believe. What major production did not receive some publicity before release?

"It goes live tomorrow, does it? I'd like to see just how good this game really is!"