"Hello? Mom? Oh, a blind date? Uh... I can't go. I have to work overtime this weekend. Hey, yeah, that's right. Who told you your son was in this field? How could a coder have Saturdays and Sundays off?"
"Mm, yeah, we'll talk about it later. I'll hang up for now..." Inside the Game Pod, the fat man lied to his mother without changing his expression.
He rarely had a weekend off, so how could he let something as boring as a blind date disturb him? Could girls really be more fun than games?
After hanging up, Pu Yunchuan swiped through the game icons inside the Game Pod, preparing to carefully choose a cultivation game to spend his pleasant weekend on.
Should he solve a suspenseful case with a policewoman today, have a forbidden romance with a beautiful teacher, or transform into a soldier king and conquer a cold, domineering female CEO?
Ah... It really was hard to choose...
"Esteemed player G Ni Tai Mei, according to the latest home-limiting order issued by the Federal Entertainment Administration, multiple cultivation games have been ordered to be removed because they seriously corrode the physical and mental health of young people. These include..."
"What the hell?" The fat on Pu Yunchuan's entire body trembled. He hurriedly opened his favorites to see whether anything had happened to the masterpieces he had collected.
Female CEO's Personal Bodyguard: Removed. Campus Evil Young Master: Removed. Urban Leisurely Journey: Removed...
Reason for removal: The content was vulgar and obscene, excessively YY. According to an investigation, more than seventy players had already died suddenly from excessive immersion, while over a million players had consequently contracted indescribable illnesses. This had seriously endangered the physical and mental health of citizens and violated Articles 43, 71, and 85 of the Virtual Network Law. In accordance with the Administration's requirements, works of this type had been banned, and the designers who created them would be prohibited from releasing new works for five years.
The Game Pod platform firmly supports the Administration's regulations. We hope that all designers and players will join us in resisting vulgarity and building a healthy virtual-world environment...
"F*** you @￥#, you piece of s***##*&, go die, you XXX!"
Pu Yunchuan stared at the announcement. After standing stunned for a full minute, he erupted into a tirade like a shrew, spewing vulgar language filled with things authors were forbidden to write.
After cursing for half an hour, Pu Yunchuan lay panting in the Game Pod, thinking bitterly: What's the point of playing games now? Should I call Mom and tell her I'm not working overtime, so I can go on that blind date?
After thinking it over, he looked at his bloated body and his greasy, exhausted face. He also suffered from an indescribable illness. He immediately abandoned the idea, sighed, opened the game platform, and thought about finding a mainstream game to kill some time.
Titan, Dungeon, League of Legends version 198... As he looked at the games that had once kept him from eating or sleeping, the fat man couldn't summon even the slightest desire to click on them. The brothers who had once played with him had all gone their separate ways—some had gotten married, while others were raising children. Rather than logging in only to see a pile of gray friend icons and feel miserable for no reason, he might as well find a new game to try.
"Hm? Star Sea?" Pu Yunchuan was stunned. Titan was so popular now, yet some clueless company still dared to release a sci-fi game?
Curious, he opened the reviews. One read: "A masterpiece from the people! Its graphics crush every game on the market—remember, every game!! The early-game pace is rather slow, but it offers a one-hundred-percent realistic experience. It feels as though you've truly traveled to another world and begun a new life. This is a game you absolutely cannot miss!"
Graphics: Five stars. Models: Five stars. Gameplay: Five stars for now. Click in—you absolutely won't regret it!!
"What the hell!" Pu Yunchuan's mouth twitched. What kind of joke is this? Which review company is so exaggerated? Even if they were paid to promote it, this is way too over the top. Its graphics crush every game on the market? A masterpiece from the people? If a game like this existed, the gaming media would have already hyped it to the heavens, wouldn't they?
Another unscrupulous review company. I've been around the gaming world for years. Do you really think I'll be fooled by clickbait like this?
I'm going to click in today just to see what this game you've been bragging about is actually like!!
"What? There's a queue?" Pu Yunchuan saw that more than a thousand people were ahead of him and immediately laughed in anger. Some random indie game had been hyped this hard, and now they were even deliberately hiring shills to pull this stunt? Do you think I'll believe your server is actually full?
Tch!
"Hello? Ugly Group? Give me a pork chop bento and three bottles of Warhorse. Yes! The kind that lets you stay awake and fight for two nights straight. Three bottles!"
I'm staying up all night in this queue. I want to see what this damn game looks like!!
"This is..." Pu Yunchuan stared blankly at his surroundings. Could I have waited too long, fallen asleep, and started dreaming? Sure enough, the rumors that Warhorse could keep you awake for ten all-nighters were nothing more than hearsay.
But if this isn't a dream, these graphics are insanely awesome!
"Hey, newbie!" Just as Pu Yunchuan was marveling at everything, a burly green giant shouted from beside him, "What are you standing around for? Sign the contract and go get the surgery. Make room for the players behind you. Don't hold up the people in line!"
"Oh, okay..." The fat man hurriedly nodded.
He had seen situations like this before. When a game had just launched, the Newbie Village would sometimes become overcrowded. To keep the map from lagging too badly, there would be a player limit, resulting in queues. But how many years had it been since such a thing had happened?
There were countless game companies nowadays, not to mention all the private studios and designers. More than a thousand games were released every year. In recent years, the only game to have produced such a spectacle, with its Newbie Village completely packed, was Titan, which had been delayed for twenty years.
He had always assumed the company had hired people to create fake queues, but judging by the expressions of those around him and the game's graphics, there really did seem to be this many players.
"This contract..." Pu Yunchuan stared at it, somewhat dazed.
The Green Giant beside him said impatiently, "You're really going to read it line by line? It's not like you're actually selling yourself. Sign it quickly and stop holding up everyone behind you!"
"Oh, okay..." Pu Yunchuan hurriedly nodded and signed. Yet after he finished, he couldn't tell whether it was just his imagination, but he felt as though he had lost something.
"Quickly, quickly! Get inside and queue for the surgery!"
"Surgery?" The fat man hurriedly asked, "What kind of surgery?"
After learning more, Pu Yunchuan finally understood the game's premise. Players could use biological surgery to change into a new species. It was a rather interesting setup.
He walked to the outside of the Biology Lab, where a green ball of light handed him a form. It listed the available biological surgeries—in other words, the available races.
Pu Yunchuan looked it over. There were three races available. The first was the Green Titan, like the ones maintaining order in the hall. They looked similar to Hulks—huge and thickset. Pu Yunchuan naturally had no interest. Although he was fat, he had always preferred playing agile and elegant ADCs in both Dungeon and League of Legends. He had never cared for brainlessly stacking defense on warriors. Besides, the form stated that the Green Titan's early-game occupation was mining.
Mining? What kind of joke was this? I've got perfectly good girls to meet, and I'm supposed to come into a game and mine? Do you really think I've got rocks in my head?
He immediately looked at the choices farther down.
The second was the Developer. Its evolutionary direction was the brain, allowing the modified person's brain region to reach its maximum potential and thus granting terrifying computational abilities. Its later paths involved careers such as administration, scientific research, and precision-instrument operation. Early on, it was responsible for operating various precision instruments in the base and breaking down the energy from Fire Ant Mine.
The third was the Wood Elf. Its evolutionary direction was more complicated. After retaining the brain in the initial stage, it would become a pure Spirit Body, and only afterward evolve the perfect ** unique to the elven race. Once it had **, its evolutionary paths would become highly varied. During the first stage, it could only use the form of a Spirit Body to maintain the base's crops and track and cultivate biological specimens.
After reading it, the fat man was completely dumbfounded. The early-game choices were either mining or farming? There wasn't even a single path that involved going out to level up and fight monsters. What was this game trying to do?
Could it really be asking the players to build a base together and then expand into space?
Damn, the designer's ambitions are huge!
Even with artificial intelligence and high-energy computers, no mainstream game had managed to break away from the level-up-and-fight-monsters model. All those claims about high freedom and innovative gameplay were complete bullshit. That was also why he had later become obsessed with cultivation games: no matter how much he fought, everything was the same, and it naturally became boring after a while.
Could this game be trying to step into an entirely new field?
The fat man immediately grew excited. Regardless of whether the game eventually fell apart, just having this ambition was enough for him to support it wholeheartedly. Once it entered open beta, he would even pay ten thousand Federation Currency for it!
"Hey, hey, what are you spacing out for? Everyone behind you is waiting. Hurry up and fill it out. Are you going mining, farming, or working on an assembly line?"
"Mining! I'm mining!"
Compared with turning into a ball and floating around everywhere, becoming a Hulk and mining sounded more interesting...
Before you continue