Chapter Summaries

Lin Lixin brought Albert Bandura in as a consultant and reviewed Blizzard Studio’s proposed setting and demo for Diablo. He praised the team’s work, then told them to tear down the demo and start over.

• Lin Lixin explained that Bandura would advise the team on social learning and arcade-driven build sharing without interfering in development.
• Lin Lixin asked Mike and the others about their Diablo setting, and they showed him drafts inspired by his rough framework.
• Lin Lixin reviewed the setting and found it lacked Diablo’s dark religious-horror atmosphere, though he considered the restrained story a workable foundation.
• Lin Lixin said he would personally begin development with the team, and Mike showed him their early demo.
• After examining the demo for ten minutes, Lin Lixin told the team to tear it all down and start over.

Lin Lixin rejected Blizzard Studio’s demo as a Diablo project but recognized its potential and explained that he wanted a real-time roguelite with randomized dungeons and frequent rewards. He sent the team to Las Vegas for specialized training, while Sam began discussing Lin’s plan to adapt arcade rentals into paid, time-based access to computers with PC games.

• Lin Lixin told Mike Morhaime and Blizzard Studio to archive their polished RPG demo because it did not fit Diablo, then explained the project should draw on Rogue’s randomized dungeons while using real-time roguelite combat.
• Lin Lixin outlined how Diablo would soften permadeath and use frequent randomized rewards, then told the Blizzard team to pack for training in Las Vegas.
• Sam visited Gary at NovaArcade headquarters to discuss Lin Lixin’s plan to expand the arcade rental model beyond arcade games.
• Sam proposed setting aside arcade space for computers with mainstream PC games installed, charging customers by the time they played.

Lin Lixin visited Las Vegas to study Stephen Wynn’s casino business and gather ideas for a new game project. After Lin outlined how mobile games could turn gambling mechanics into a global digital business, Wynn realized how far ahead GameNova was and wanted to join its rise.

• Lin Lixin and the Blizzard party arrived at the MGM Mirage Hotel, where Stephen Wynn had arranged VIP suites for them.
• Lin met Wynn in his private suite and explained that video games would increasingly resemble the gaming business.
• Wynn described how Hotline Miami’s focused visuals, music, rapid retries, and strong feedback kept players feeding coins into arcade machines.
• Lin imagined mobile games letting players spend money through their bank accounts, packaged as attractive free-to-play entertainment.
• Wynn grasped the scale of Lin’s digital business vision and felt like a raw recruit who needed to get aboard GameNova’s accelerating train.
• Lin called the idea “digital capitalism” and said the project was only an early feasibility test because the necessary infrastructure was not yet mature.

Lin Lixin used a casino visit to show Mike and the team how Diablo could turn random rewards into an addictive gameplay loop. He explained how loot, builds, progression, and social sharing worked together, leaving Mike with a clearer design model for the game.

• Wynn led Lin Lixin, Mike, and the team to a VIP casino room, where Lin Lixin compared roulette, slots, and other games to Diablo.
• Lin Lixin and Bandura played against Wynn, while Mike and the others experienced how intermittent rewards and rising bets kept players engaged.
• After three days, Mike presented a revised design structure for Diablo, and Lin Lixin explained that the game used multiple interconnected loops rather than a rigid short-and-long loop formula.
• Bandura described how leaderboards, shared builds, and equipment displays could form part of Diablo’s long-term social loop.
• Lin Lixin explained how players’ gradual progression led to a build-enabling drop and a sudden surge of power, making the search for more powerful gear an ongoing source of excitement.

Lin Lixin explained that Diablo needed a gear-driven design built around randomized affixes, prompting Mike and the Blizzard team to restart their demo. He then introduced Vivian to Sun Yansheng of C-Cube, whose hardware-based video compression research could help solve the game's storage limits.

• Lin Lixin rejected Blizzard's v2.2 demo and explained that its gameplay needed more depth despite limits on the game's world size.
• Lin Lixin taught Mike that Diablo's central design was gear-driven, with items carrying randomized affixes, special effects, and set bonuses.
• Mike grasped that Diablo's loot system worked like a slot machine, and agreed to tear down the existing design and start over.
• Lin Lixin left to address the game's capacity problem and brought Sun Yansheng to meet Vivian.
• Lin Lixin explained that C-Cube was researching dedicated hardware chips for encoding and decoding compressed data.

Lin Lixin pushed GameNova to develop dedicated codec hardware and assigned Carmack to build its encoding and decoding algorithms. At Blizzard, he urged Mike to improve Diablo’s loot system with player-friendly drops and deeper crafting, leaving Mike reconsidering what made a loot-grinding game fun.

• Lin Lixin told Vivian and Sun Yansheng that GameNova needed to design specialized codec chips and establish its own hardware and standards, including an early bet on MPEG.
• Lin Lixin gave Vivian a new architecture proposal and asked Carmack to handle the software algorithms for encoding and decoding.
• Mike showed Lin Lixin Blizzard’s new equipment system, which randomized gear affixes and stats.
• Lin Lixin demonstrated that the system could give a mage useless agility gear and argued that drops should favor equipment suited to the player’s character.
• Lin Lixin proposed deepening equipment crafting rather than frustrating players with bad drops, and Mike reconsidered his concern that players might enjoy the game too much.

Lin Lixin sought an artist who could capture Diablo’s corruption-and-decay aesthetic and invited Gerald Brom to see how GAMENOVA supported its creators. Brom followed him through the studio campus, where the chaotic Bullfrog Studio left him stunned.

• Lin Lixin decided to find an art director and identified Gerald Brom, a young dark fantasy artist working for TSR, as a suitable candidate for Diablo.
• Brom told Lin Lixin that he admired GAMENOVA but feared commercial work would damage his art, and Lin acknowledged the company’s industrialized approach while defending its creators’ freedom.
• Lin Lixin invited Brom to tour GAMENOVA’s studio campus and introduced him to Infocom and Activision.
• Lin Lixin brought Brom to Bullfrog Studio, where a shirtless producer stood on a table shouting with a poster, leaving Brom bewildered.

Lin Lixin showed Stephen Wynn Diablo, explaining how its intuitive controls and loot-based progression made its complex-looking arcade cabinet easy to play. The demo ended with Lin revealing a new time-based payment model, leaving Wynn to consider how it would work.

• Brom delivered a Gothic illustration of Diablo's Butcher, impressing Blizzard's team and prompting Lin Lixin to push ahead with the game's art and CG cinematics.
• Lin Lixin arranged for Blizzard to work with Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic on Diablo's cinematic, while rumors of GameNova's upcoming release spread ahead of Presidents' Day.
• In Las Vegas, Lin Lixin demonstrated Diablo's cabinet to Stephen Wynn and explained that its many controls matched intuitive actions, keeping the game's cognitive burden low.
• Wynn watched Diablo's dark opening cinematic and questioned how the lengthy, story-rich game could function as an addictive arcade game.
• Lin Lixin explained that players could save progress with a GameNova All-in-One Card and introduced time-based payment instead of charging for lives.

Wynn tried Diablo and initially dismissed it as a conventional RPG, but its atmosphere, responsive controls, and glowing loot quickly drew him in. The chapter left him hooked after he picked up a dropped sword.

• Wynn questioned Lin Lixin's confidence in Diablo's hourly payment model, and Lin Lixin invited him to try the game.
• Wynn began a new game, chose a class, and entered Tristram, where Hans Zimmer's music and the quiet town unsettled him.
• Wynn followed the town's guidance to the dungeon entrance and heard a wounded man blame Archbishop Lazarus and the Butcher for the deaths there.
• Wynn entered the dark dungeon, opened a coffin, and fought a skeleton that rose from a pile of bones.
• Wynn saw a glowing sword drop from the skeleton and hurried to pick it up, becoming hooked on the game's loot.

Wynn explored Diablo’s skill trees and descended to the dungeon’s second floor, where he opened a bloodstained room and encountered The Butcher. The monster charged him as its voice boomed through the speakers, leaving Wynn startled and under immediate threat.

• Wynn equipped a slightly stronger weapon and examined the Warrior skill tree, growing interested in the dual-wielding skills while Lin Lixin kept commenting on his choices.
• Wynn learned that the dungeon’s layout was randomly generated and made his way down to the second floor.
• Wynn found a room enclosed by iron bars, noticed blood beneath its door, and hesitated before opening it.
• Wynn discovered a slaughterhouse filled with corpses and recognized the enormous, cleaver-wielding monster inside as The Butcher.
• The Butcher shouted, “Ahh... fresh meat!” and charged Wynn before he could react.

Wynn died to the Butcher and lost his equipment, but Lin Lixin showed him how the TalEth runeword turned a plain breastplate into powerful gear. Wynn saved his game and agreed to hear Lin Lixin’s proposal, as preparations began for a Diablo arcade setup at the MGM Mirage.

• The Butcher chased down Wynn’s Aidan and killed him, dropping all his equipment on the second floor.
• Wynn failed to recover his corpse, so Lin Lixin guided him to use runes in a two-socket breastplate from his stash.
• Wynn socketed Tal followed by Eth and created Stealth, a runeword that granted powerful bonuses including faster movement.
• Lin Lixin ended the trial session, and Wynn saved his game before agreeing to hear his proposal.
• Workers installed Diablo arcade machines and large displays on a renovated floor at the MGM Mirage, where a test message announced a player’s unique item drop.

On Presidents' Day, Phil gambled in a Las Vegas casino while his friends went to play Hotline Miami. After hearing that the casino's new GameNova game supported multiplayer, he agreed to check it out, setting the stage for his life to be ruined.

• Phil won another poker hand with a full house while his friends lost and decided to play Hotline Miami.
• Phil declined to join them, saying he disliked frantic games that demanded little thought.
• The dealer told Phil that the casino's boss had bought new games from GameNova for Presidents' Day.
• As her shift ended, the dealer invited Phil to try the new multiplayer game with her.
• Phil accepted the invitation and agreed to go take a look.

Wynn saw Diablo’s success at The Mirage as evidence of a vast gaming market, while Lin Lixin and Mark Cerny examined Sony’s Discman D-99 and its 1-bit DAC. Lin Lixin predicted Sony’s dominance in portable music would soon end because lossy compression could let handheld flash memory store music.

• Wynn watched Diablo-related revenue grow at The Mirage and ordered staff to organize gaming events with playtime prizes.
• Lin Lixin left Blizzard’s celebration banquet and returned to headquarters to inspect Sony’s Discman D-99 with Mark Cerny.
• Lin Lixin and Cerny identified the D-99’s 1-bit DAC as Sony’s solution to distortion in digital audio.
• Cerny expected Sony to dominate portable music for years, but Lin Lixin disagreed and showed him a codec chip made for Diablo.
• Lin Lixin argued that lossy compression could shrink CD music to a tenth of its size and fit it on a handheld’s flash memory.

Lin Lixin proposed developing Patapon, a handheld strategy-adventure rhythm game that used drum commands and dynamically assembled music to work around limited audio storage. He recruited Cerny and Hans Zimmer to begin the project, with Zimmer tasked with testing real-time music synthesis.

• Lin Lixin explained why GameNova would postpone pursuing MP3 players while laying groundwork for the technology.
• Lin Lixin built a four-button drum pad and introduced a portable game concept centered on rhythm-based commands.
• Lin Lixin named the new project Patapon and described its mix of rhythm gameplay, strategy, adventure, troop management, and crafting.
• Hans Zimmer enthusiastically joined the project and identified the four drum sounds as commands for the game.
• Lin Lixin asked Hans Zimmer to create dynamically assembled music from short samples, with seamless changes between marching, combat, boss battles, and celebrations.

Lin Lixin sought Saul Bass to direct the minimalist art for Patapon, but Bass warned that players might find the style crude. Lin Lixin urged him to help create a new trend, leaving Bass poised to decide whether to take the job.

• Lin Lixin adapted Patapon’s circle-and-square designs to GAMENOVA’s ABXY buttons and decided he needed to build a stronger art team.
• After Vivian called about their audio-chip project, Lin Lixin put the art work aside and chose Saul Bass as a potential art director for Patapon.
• Lin Lixin and Brom visited Saul Bass at his studio, where Lin Lixin showed him a sketch of a Patapon.
• Saul Bass worried that Patapon’s stark black-and-white minimalism would look crude to ordinary players and declined to commit to directing its art.
• Lin Lixin argued that GAMENOVA could shape trends rather than follow the market, then asked Saul Bass if he wanted to create one himself.

Lin Lixin used GameNova’s long-running audio technology work to design a Vorbis codec chip ahead of MPEG’s emerging standards. After Vivian began turning his design into hardware, GameNova aired a music video for Patapon featuring its music, visuals, and game design.

• Lin Lixin learned that Sun Yansheng had gone to meet MPEG and decided GameNova should advance its own audio format instead.
• Lin Lixin recalled how he had developed Vorbis and Vorbis-Ogg over several years, beginning with audio compression for 1942 and later using it in GameNova games and consoles.
• Lin Lixin designed the architecture for a Vorbis codec chip and handed the remaining implementation to Vivian.
• Vivian reacted skeptically to Lin Lixin finishing the complete chip design in one evening, then took responsibility for the next stages of development.
• GameNova and partner television channels aired a Patapon music video featuring Hans Zimmer’s music, Saul Bass’s visuals, and Lin Lixin’s game design, leaving viewers humming its refrain.

Ella received Patapon and discovered that she played as the Patapon tribe’s god, using rhythmic war-drum commands to guide the tribe. After Harper joined the crowd chanting the game’s infectious tune to buy it, Ella began her first adventure and set out to find Spear of Protection Pon.

• Ella struggled to stop chanting Patapon’s tune at breakfast, and Harper promised to buy the game if the children behaved.
• Harper found a huge crowd chanting “pata pon” outside the game store and joined the line to buy Patapon.
• Allen and Ella returned from school to find the game waiting; Allen went back to Biohazard while Ella started playing.
• Ella learned that the player was the Patapon tribe’s god, then followed the tutorial to beat the war drums in rhythm.
• Ella discovered the “pata pata pata pon” command and began advancing to find Spear of Protection Pon.

Ella played Patapon, learned its rhythm-based commands, and became absorbed in building and arranging her army. She stopped when her mother called the family to dinner, saving and shutting down the game while Allen waited at the table.

• Ella struggled to keep the beat, then reached Fever and felt synchronized with the Patapons as the spear Pons joined her flag-bearer.
• Ella cleared the first stage and learned the Song of Battle, using it to order the spear Pons to attack a wall.
• Ella played for over an hour, unlocking equipment, troop types, formations, and new ways to configure her growing army.
• Ella noticed that the next stage would unlock a new drum, but her mother called her to dinner.
• Ella saved and shut down the game, then joined Allen at the dining table.

Ella, Allen, and Harper found Patapon’s rhythms creeping into their everyday behavior as the game spread across the country. Saul Bass saw a child’s handmade Patapon figure and, inspired by her enthusiasm for the characters, designed a line of merchandise that he presented to GameNova.

• At dinner, Ella discovered that Allen and Harper were unconsciously responding to Patapon’s rhythms, while Allen admitted the game’s music had affected him all afternoon.
• Saul watched Patapon players across Los Angeles and reflected that the minimalist visuals he had designed were successful precisely because players barely noticed them.
• A girl playing Patapon told Saul she loved the Pons and wanted merchandise, then showed him a handmade, one-armed Spear of Protection Pon.
• Saul left after watching the girl play and earn Spear of Protection Pon a new spear.
• The next day, Saul called Lin Lixin to offer a complete Patapon merchandise lineup, and Lin asked Sam to review the designs and arrange production if they were suitable.

Lin Lixin ordered Nexus to end paid email and launch free Nmail, intending to build dominance by attracting users and their attention. He assigned Carmack to create Stars, an email-based asynchronous 4X strategy game, and began planning to handle its technical development himself.

• Lin Lixin told Nexus’s staff to discontinue paid email and offer free email services to every user.
• Lin Lixin said GameNova would fund the expansion and promotion of Nmail, which he wanted to become synonymous with email.
• Lin Lixin assigned Carmack to make a turn-based 4X game played asynchronously through email.
• Lin Lixin chose a space theme for the game and named it Stars.