Parallel World

"I'm never drinking again. My head hurts way too much."

Rubbing his head, Chen Xu complained as he sat up from the bed.

He rubbed his still-sticky eyelids, then froze when he opened his eyes.

The surroundings before him were utterly unfamiliar.

"Wait, this place..."

Before Chen Xu could figure out what had happened, countless memories surged into his mind.

It took him roughly an hour to sort through the memories in his head.

Clearly, he had not only transmigrated from his past life as an ordinary game designer, but had also arrived in a Parallel World.

According to the memories in his head, something must have gone wrong at some point in this world's history. In any case, it was completely different from Chen Xu's past life.

Every industry had undergone enormous changes thanks to advances in technology.

Exactly how enormous, Chen Xu could not say, but the one industry where he felt it most directly was gaming and entertainment.

After the war, the world entered an age of peace. With technology booming, there was basically no longer a problem like people being unable to afford food or medical treatment, as in his past life.

The economy had recovered at an astonishing pace. With people no longer worrying about survival and having money in their pockets, the entertainment industry naturally became a major direction for development.

The gaming industry was part of that. For a long time in his past life, games had been treated like a monstrous scourge and a convenient scapegoat.

There was no need to mention his home country; the same was true overseas. Why did shootings happen so often? Because games promoted violence! So supermarkets could not take guns off the shelves; instead, they had to remove the source of shootings: games!

But the Parallel World was different. Outstanding games could truly be called art, and top game designers enjoyed the same social status as literary giants.

At the same time, though, there was another difference from Chen Xu's past life.

In gaming, developers such as Ubisoft and EA were nowhere to be found, replaced by companies Chen Xu had never heard of.

As for the famous game creators from his past life, not a single one existed in this world.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, who left Activision and joined FromSoftware to create the Soul series; Masahiro Sakurai, who simplified hardcore platformers and single-handedly created the legendary Smash Bros. series; Sid Meier, who defined 4X games; Hironobu Sakaguchi, founder of the Final Fantasy series; the Houser brothers, who brought the concept of 3D Open World games to new heights; Hideo Kojima, pioneer of stealth games and cinematic narrative games; Shigeru Miyamoto, a hall-of-fame video game creator.

These creators, whose names had once shone brightly in the gaming world of his past life, had vanished without a trace in this world.

As for Chen Xu himself, he was an ordinary student who had graduated less than half a year ago and had been wholeheartedly hoping to enter the comics industry.

"This world... really is paradise for cultural workers!"

Recalling some of the memories in his mind and looking up more information online, Chen Xu could not help sighing.

Strict laws and copyright protection for cultural products—such things had been unimaginable in his past life.

"Illustration?"

After learning some basic information about this world through his memories and the internet, Chen Xu noticed several sheets of drawing paper on the desk.

They were covered with illustrations he had drawn before.

After graduating before his transmigration, the original owner of this body had always wanted to become a manga artist.

Unfortunately, despite submitting his work many times, he had never passed an editor's review.

He had also serialized some comics online, but they had failed to gain much attention.

Besides the royalties from his online comics, he had to support himself by drawing character illustrations for novel authors and making Concept Art for game companies.

He was not well-known, and his drawing skills were far from top-tier. Depending on the client's requirements,

he generally charged only around 1,200 per drawing, and difficult clients would demand endless revisions.

"Comics? I don't know a thing about that!" Chen Xu pursed his lips as he recalled the memories in his head.

Although the original owner's memories gave Chen Xu mastery of all kinds of drawing techniques, that was useless.

After all, the original owner had ended up relying on outsourced illustration work to cover his living expenses.

As for the comics from his past life, Chen Xu had certainly heard of plenty of them. He knew One-Punch Man, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, and Detective Conan.

But as for reading them, well, sorry.

He had only watched the anime. Who knew how those wildly popular manga were actually drawn?

"Looking at it this way, it seems I'll have to return to my old line of work—games. And this world's game development efficiency is kind of insane!" After learning more, Chen Xu could not help clicking his tongue.

Unlike in his past life, where every game company developed its own game engine, companies overseas mostly still followed that model, but the domestic market had official game engines provided by the government.

Moreover, as everyone knew, making a game involved countless aspects, such as balancing, art, story, Level Design, and code.

But the most important and fundamental part was code.

It directly determined how a game performed; it was the equivalent of a skeleton.

No matter how good the gameplay or graphics were, if the code and optimization were poor, the game could basically be declared a failure.

But due to the development of IT technology in this world, artificial intelligence had taken on an initial form and been applied across every industry. Gaming was one of the fields most transformed by it.

Code for mechanics, commands, and the like could all be implemented through the artificial intelligence functions of official game engines.

This completely eliminated the kind of situation from his past life where programmers were sacrificed whenever something went wrong.

If someone had to be sacrificed, it was usually the designers.

Of course, convenient as it was, not every designer could use it without limits.

After all, using artificial intelligence to build code required massive computing power.

So every game designer received a fixed amount of resources each month based on their professional rank.

They could also build their own servers for separate computing, as long as they paid the licensing fees.

However, building servers and maintaining them on a daily basis was not cheap either.

As for becoming a game designer, there were three methods in total.

The first was taking the Game Department exam held every summer. Passing it earned one the title of game designer.

The second was joining a game company, putting in two or three years, then applying through the company's channels. Once it was reported to the Game Department, one could become an official game designer.

The final method was creating an independent game that gained recognition from the player market. This route was mainly for ordinary game enthusiasts without professional backgrounds.

Either its sales had to reach 150,000, or it needed a cumulative total of 5,000 reviews with a player rating above 8.5.

Meeting either condition was enough.

As for faking sales or positive reviews, that basically did not happen, because it was illegal. Anyone caught would face serious consequences.

"Looks pretty formal. Still, getting the game designer title shouldn't be difficult for me." Chen Xu stroked his chin and muttered to himself as he read through the information.

After all, he was not alone. Countless predecessors from the gaming industry of his past life stood behind him.

He had not considered making large-scale games at this stage. He lacked ability, resources, and funding in every respect.

But when it came to small indie games, Chen Xu was quite confident.

He knew all too well about the countless outstanding indie games from his past life.

After learning the relevant information about this world, recreating them would be entirely within his capabilities.

"Wait, what's this?"

As Chen Xu pondered what to do next, he suddenly noticed something.

There was a translucent blue spherical mark on the back of his hand, like a birthmark.

Chen Xu rubbed it with his thumb, and a transparent UI window suddenly popped up.

"A system?"

Those two words instantly sprang into Chen Xu's mind.

Thinking about it carefully, he had already transmigrated, so getting a system on top of that did not seem too excessive, did it?

It was just that... the system's name?

'Emotion Collection System.'

Staring at the gaudy, golden UI, which looked like one of those domestic browser games from his past life, Chen Xu fell silent.

It was flashy as hell. It really did not feel like a proper system.