You said you were going to make games, how did you become the richest man without doing anything?

Chapter 689

The comments section below Reddit is flooded with messages:
This game is going to create a completely new genre.

[An emotional game. I won't let you win, I'll only let you experience it.]

I just want to hug the developer.

This is not a game; this is a confessional.

Comments and bullet screen messages kept increasing, flooding the entire page like an avalanche.

Meanwhile, Matt Thorson, the producer of Celeste, also spoke out on social media:

"I thought 'Azure' was difficult enough."

Then I played this game and realized that the real challenge is the emotions.

Looking at these familiar yet distant names, Lu Yu felt a little dazed for a moment.

Those indie games he spent countless sleepless nights playing through during his university years, the developers he'd only caught a glimpse of at GDC, and the creators he'd followed on social media for five years without ever interacting—they're now actually talking about his games.

It's not that it's "technically advanced" or "has innovative features," but rather that "it understands me."

One night, Lu Yu opened YouTube and clicked on a video titled:

The director of "The Last of Us" talks about "Don't Play This Game" on a podcast.

The video begins with Neil Druckmann's laughter.

This man, hailed as the "father of emotional games," frankly admitted to the camera:

"To be honest, I thought I would never be amazed by games again."

"Then I played this weird little game from China called 'Don't Play This Game'."

"Minimalist graphics, no combat, no levels, no objectives."

"But... God... I cried in the second chapter."

"When that NPC told me, 'You don't need to fix me, just stay with me,'"

He paused for a moment, then lowered his voice.

"That's the sentence I most wanted to hear when I lost my brother."

There was silence.

The host's voice was slightly hoarse: "This... is too heavy."

Druckmann nodded: "Yes. But that's the point of art. It hurts you, and then it heals you."

On the official social media platform of TGA (The Game Awards), a poll is underway:
Do you support "Don't Play This Game" for a Best Narrative nomination?

The comment section was almost unanimously flooded with messages:

[Support, strong support.]

Forget about best narrative, this should be Game of the Year.

This isn't a game; it's psychotherapy disguised as pixel art.

Lu Yu suddenly remembered that in the year he was nominated for the TGA awards, Death Stranding and Sekiro were equally famous.

He was sitting on his bed in his dorm room, debugging his demo while scrolling through the live stream chat.

"When will domestically produced games get nominated?" he said that day.

Now, his game is being pushed onto that stage by players, producers, social media influencers, and industry leaders all over the world.

Masato Takahashi, a VGA Asia regional judge and editor-in-chief of IGN Japan, wrote the following on his blog:

“We once thought that the pinnacle of Asian storytelling had stopped with ‘Yakuza,’ ‘NieR,’ and ‘13 Sentinels.’”

"But this pixel game from China unexpectedly shattered our expectations."

"It has no combat system, no upgrade system, and no bosses."

"But a line of narration reminded me of my mother's last words when she was seriously ill."

“You don’t need to beat me, you just need to be with me.”

A very special comment from a player has also appeared in the Steam review section.

ID: @ThatGuyFromMinecraft (suspected member of the Minecraft team)
The message is as follows:

"I have built the world."

But this game created me.

Thank you. "

Lu Yu glanced at the IP source in the Steam backend; it was from Microsoft.

He smiled and didn't say anything more.

I just silently clicked "Developer Reply".

“We are all building each other, even if it’s just with pixels.”

That night, Lu Yu didn't go home. He sat in front of his computer and typed an email.

The recipient was a member of his team, and the subject was:

"We are being seen by the world."

The main text consists of only one sentence:

Do you guys remember that night in the conference room arguing about whether the 'exit button' should flash?

"Right now, producers all over the world are watching that button."

Old Yu sat at the conference table, his eyes somewhat unfocused. His right hand clutched a can of Red Bull, while his left held a printed copy of media excerpts—a new batch of commentaries compiled from foreign websites that afternoon.

He looked up at Lu Yu and said, "Do you know what? We are now being reported on by eight major global media outlets, including IGN, Polygon, RockPaperShotgun, GameInformer, Eurogamer, Kotaku, GameStar, and 4Players."

"It was like a blizzard that came out of nowhere; we didn't even know how it happened."

Lu Yu didn't speak, but just looked down at the piece of paper beside him.

The paper contained a commentary by Jonathan Blow, author of *Braid* and *The Witness*, who was once hailed as a "philosopher of games."

他说:

"Don't Play This Game" is a rebellion against "playing" itself.

It doesn't guide you to victory, but rather to face defeat.

It doesn't make you pass the level, it makes you stop.

This is a calm, restrained, and elegant form of narrative violence.

After reading it, Lu Yu remained silent for a long time.

He recalled that back in college, he and his roommates would spend an entire night working together on the projection screen in their dorm room to unravel the map puzzles of "The Witness," all in an effort to understand the concept of "the beauty of stillness."

Back then, they said, "If Blow could ever praise me even once, I would die happy."

Now, he really did praise it.

He didn't just praise them; he said they were engaging in "narrative violence."

This is not a frivolous compliment, but a creator's profound respect for another creator.

Lu Yu leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes briefly, and spoke in a voice so low it was almost inaudible:

"Did we really...do we do it?"

That very night, an event that shocked the entire gaming industry quietly occurred.

Valve's official account retweeted the launch trailer for "Don't Play This Game" on X (formerly Twitter).

With text:
"This is a game we wish we had been on Steam ten years ago."

It reminds us that the significance of a platform is not just about selling entertainment.

It's about giving memories a place to reside.

The comments section exploded.

Some say, "Steam is finally no longer just a game marketplace; it has begun to collect human emotions."

Some joked, "Does Valve's reposting of this game mean it was harder to make than Half-Life 3?"

One person wrote earnestly, "I found the reason why I left home when I was 15 in the game."

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the GDC developer conference is in full swing.

At one of the sub-forums, Louise Granel, an art and game curator from France, stood at the podium and displayed a screenshot of a game.

In the scene, the protagonist stands on the verge of program crashing, the pixelated world peeling away piece by piece, with a silent blue light in the background.

She addressed all the developers present:

"They made a game that never encourages you to continue."

But that's precisely why you want to stay.

This is an emotional rebellion, a narrative inversion.

This design is precisely the emotional structure we need most in the post-pandemic era.

Thunderous applause erupted in the hall.

At the same time, "Don't Play This Game" was also officially nominated as...
BAFTA British Academy Games Award for Narrative Game of the Year.

This is the first time in history that a Chinese indie game has been nominated for this award.

A spokesperson for the British Council admitted in an interview: "This is a breaking down of cultural boundaries."

It doesn't learn narrative techniques from the West; instead, it tells the story of human loneliness in an Eastern way.

That nomination letter is still posted on the wall of Lu Yu's studio.

The line above reads:

"Your work is not a game. It is a letter."

One morning, Lin Zhen opened her email and found a message from...

The email from "Thatgamecompany".

The sender was Chen Xinghan, the creator of "Journey" and "Sky: Children of the Light".

The email was very short:

"I saw myself in your game when I was making Journey."

We all want to make a game where nobody can win.

Because there are no winners in life.

Only people walking.

Lin Zhen stared at the letter for a long time without moving.

He once said in a late-night live stream, "If Chen Xinghan can see my code one day, I'm willing to work for a year without pay."

Now, he sees it.

And he said:
"You're walking too."

That night, Lu Yu started a surprise live stream.

The title is simple:
[For those who are still willing to listen to us]

In front of the camera, he was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, his face looked a little tired, but his eyes were very clear.

"Hello everyone, I am Lu Yu."

"We won't talk about technology or sales today."

"I just want to tell you something."

He paused, his breathing slightly rapid.

"Did you know? Our game has recently received letters and emails from more than seventy countries."

“There was an American girl who said that after playing the second chapter in the mental hospital, she was willing to speak to the caregiver for the first time.”

“A Syrian refugee posted on Reddit that the ‘quit’ button in the game made him decide not to end his life anymore.”

“There was an old man from Argentina who used translation software to type out ten paragraphs just to tell us that he finally understood why he was lonely.”

Lu Yu's voice was a little hoarse.

"We did this not to cure anyone."

"But if it can really accompany you a little further, then we won't have done it in vain."

……

At three in the morning, the studio lights were still on.