Parallel World

"I'm never drinking again. My head is killing me."

Rubbing his temples, Chen Xu complained as he sat up in bed.

He rubbed his still-sticky eyelids, but once he opened his eyes, Chen Xu froze.

The environment before him was completely unfamiliar.

"Wait, where is this..."

The Next Moment, before Chen Xu could figure out what was happening, a flood of memories surged into his mind.

It took about an hour for Chen Xu to sort through the memories in his head.

It was clear that as a regular game designer in his past life, he hadn't just transmigrated; he had transmigrated into a parallel world.

According to the memories in his mind, he didn't know which node had gone wrong, but this world was completely different from his previous one.

Every industry had undergone massive changes due to advancements in technology.

However, Chen Xu couldn't quite put his finger on the scale of it; the most intuitive change he felt was in the gaming and entertainment industry.

The post-war world had ushered in peace, and with the explosion of technology, the issues of starvation and lack of medical care from his past life were virtually non-existent.

The economy recovered exceptionally fast; people didn't worry about survival, and with money in their pockets, the entertainment industry naturally became the primary focus of development.

The gaming industry was part of this. In his past life, games were long treated as a scourge and a convenient scapegoat.

Domestically, it went without saying, and it was the same abroad. Why did shootings happen so frequently? Because games promoted violence! Therefore, supermarkets couldn't pull guns from their shelves, so they had to pull the source of the shootings: games!

But in this parallel world, it was different. Excellent games were considered art, and top-tier game designers held the same social status as literary masters.

Yet, there was one point where this world differed from Chen Xu's past.

In the gaming sphere, companies like Ubisoft and EA were nowhere to be found, replaced by others Chen Xu had never heard of.

As for the world-renowned game producers from his past life, not a single one existed in this world.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, who resigned from Activision to join FS and pioneered the Soul series; Masahiro Sakurai, who simplified hardcore platformers and single-handedly crafted the legendary Smash Bros. series; Sid Meier, who defined 4X games; Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series; the Houser brothers, who pushed the concept of 3D open-world games to its peak; Hideo Kojima, who pioneered stealth games and cinematic narrative games; and Shigeru Miyamoto, a hall-of-fame producer of video games.

These producers, who had left their glorious names in the gaming world of his past life, had vanished without a trace in this world.

As for Chen Xu himself, he was just an ordinary student who had graduated less than six months ago and was determined to enter the manga industry.

"This world... it really is a paradise for cultural practitioners!"

Recalling some memories and checking information on his computer, Chen Xu couldn't help but sigh.

Strict laws and copyright protection for cultural products were things that were unimaginable in his past life.

"Illustrations?"

Through his memories and the internet, he learned some basic information about this world and noticed some drawing paper on his desk.

They were all illustrations he had drawn previously.

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

Unfortunately, despite submitting his work many times, he never passed the editors' reviews.

As for serializing manga online, it had been lukewarm at best.

Aside from the royalties from his online serials, he had to make ends meet by drawing character illustrations for novelists and concept art for some game companies.

He wasn't famous, and his drawing skills weren't top-tier, varying based on different requirements.

Generally, the quote for a single drawing was around 1,200, and if he ran into a difficult client, he had to revise it repeatedly.

"Manga? I don't know the first thing about that!" Chen Xu recalled the memories in his mind and couldn't help but purse his lips.

Even though the original owner's memories gave Chen Xu knowledge of various painting techniques, it was useless.

After all, the original owner had been reduced to doing illustration outsourcing just to cover his living expenses.

As for the manga of his past life, Chen Xu had heard of plenty—One-Punch Man, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, Detective Conan—he knew them all.

But as for reading them? Sorry.

He had only watched the anime; who knew how to draw those hit manga series?

"Looking at it this way, it feels like I'm going back to my old profession in gaming, and the game development efficiency in this world is a bit high!" Chen Xu couldn't help but click his tongue after learning more.

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

Furthermore, as everyone knows, game production covers many aspects, such as numerical values, art, plot, Level Design, and code.

But the most important and fundamental point is the code.

It directly relates to the performance of your game; it is the skeleton.

No matter how good the gameplay or visuals are, if the code optimization is poor, the game can basically be judged a failure.

However, due to the development of IT technology in this world, artificial intelligence had taken a rudimentary form and was applied to every industry, with gaming being the area most transformed.

Mechanics, commands, and other code were implemented through the official game engine using artificial intelligence.

This completely eliminated the situation from his past life where a programmer had to be sacrificed to the heavens.

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

Of course, while convenient, it is not something every designer can use without limit.

After all, using artificial intelligence for code construction requires massive computational power.

Therefore, every game designer is allocated a fixed amount of resources each month based on their professional rank.

Naturally, one could also set up their own corresponding servers to perform independent calculations, provided they pay the licensing fees.

It is just that the costs of building a server and handling daily maintenance are not exactly cheap.

As for how to become a game designer, there are three methods in total.

The first is to participate in the Game Department's examination held every summer; passing it grants one the title of game designer.

The second is to join a game company, grind for two or three years, and then apply through the company's channels to be reported to the Game Department to become an official game designer.

The final method is to create an indie game that gains recognition in the player market, which is primarily a path for ordinary game enthusiasts who lack a professional background.

The sales volume must reach 150,000, or the cumulative number of reviews must hit 5,000 with a player rating of 8.5 or higher.

Meeting either one of these conditions is sufficient.

As for faking sales or reviews, that is basically non-existent because such actions are illegal, and there are no good consequences for those who get caught.

"It seems quite formal, but at the very least, obtaining the title of game designer shouldn't be difficult for me." Looking at the information he had gathered, Chen Xu stroked his chin and muttered to himself.

After all, he was not alone; the thousands upon thousands of predecessors from the game industry of his past life stood behind him.

Chen Xu had not considered large-scale games at this stage, as he lacked the ability, resources, and capital in various aspects.

However, when it came to small indie games, Chen Xu felt quite confident.

He remembered all sorts of excellent indie games from his past life with perfect clarity.

After learning the relevant information about this world, Chen Xu was fully capable of recreating them.

"Wait, what is this?"

While Chen Xu was deep in thought, he suddenly noticed something.

On the back of his hand was a translucent, blue, spherical mark that looked like a birthmark.

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

"System?"

The word instantly popped into Chen Xu's mind.

Thinking about it carefully, he had already transmigrated, so being gifted a system didn't seem all that excessive, right?

It was just... the name of this system?

'Emotion Collection System'

Looking at the golden, flashy UI interface that resembled a domestic browser game from his past life, Chen Xu fell into a silence.

It was gaudy and ostentatious; he couldn't help but feel this wasn't a very serious system.