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

Chapter 692

[Beijing Yunlan TV Station Studio]

At 2 p.m., the recording studio was brightly lit, and the air was filled with a faint aroma of coffee and the metallic smell of heated photography equipment.

A red light flashed in the control room—five seconds left on the countdown.

"5, 4, 3, 2—"

"Welcome to this episode of 'Beyond the Code,' I'm your host, Lin Zheng."

The camera slowly zoomed in on the host. He was impeccably dressed in a suit, his smile impeccable, but his eyes betrayed a hint of excitement.

"Today's episode may be the most popular in the history of our program."

"Because our guest is not only a technical genius in the gaming industry, but also the only Asian independent game producer on this year's TGA nomination list."

"You may not have played the game he made, but you must have seen its name in countless posts, bullet comments, and videos."

"It has been called a 'pixel-style love letter,' a 'mirror of emotions,' and a 'game that makes you pause your life.'"

"And today, we have finally invited its creator, Mr. Lu Yu."

The camera then pans to the guest seating area on the right.

Lu Yu wore a dark gray hooded sweatshirt under a black tech jacket. His hair was a little messy, as if he had just crawled out of a pile of code. His features weren't sharp, but he had a calm and refined look. He sat casually, but his expression was surprisingly peaceful.

"Hello everyone, I'm Lu Yu, uh... I'm the main programmer of 'Don't Play This Game'."

He spoke slowly and softly, as if afraid of disturbing someone.

Lin Zheng asked with a smile, "Teacher Lu is now known as 'Badminton Master' all over the country, so let's not be polite. Today, let's talk about you and that game that you 'don't let anyone play'."

Lu Yu scratched his head and smiled: "Actually, I've always been quite afraid of this title, after all, our team doesn't even have a proper workstation."

"Isn't your team the pinnacle of the global indie game scene now?" Lin Zheng joked. "Tell me, how did a pixel game become a cultural phenomenon?"

Lu Yu paused, thought for a moment, and then said seriously, "Actually, we just wanted to make a little thing for our own amusement. The initial version didn't even have a title screen; the opening line was: 'You can choose not to play me.'"

"And then...it became a hit."

Lin Zheng raised an eyebrow: "That sounds so Versailles, 'We were just doing it for fun, and the whole world ended up crying'?"

Lu Yu was taken aback, then smiled a little embarrassedly: "Actually... I really didn't think that much about it. I had just quit my previous job without another one lined up, and my savings were only enough to last three months. I was thinking of doing a project to make ends meet. But in the first week, the engine crashed three times, in the second week the artist ran away, and in the third week the planner said they wanted to add a dynamic emotion system..."

"So you didn't give up?"

"It's not that I haven't thought about it," Lu Yu said casually. "It was at three o'clock in the morning that my computer crashed. I saw my reflection on the black screen and suddenly thought... well, I might as well write a game and tell everyone that they can choose not to play it."

Lin Zheng: "Then you wrote a game that no one could quit."

Lu Yu tilted his head and thought for a moment, then said seriously, "I don't know why they don't quit. Maybe... they want to stay?"

After he said that, the entire room fell silent for two seconds.

Lin Zheng nodded slightly: "I've memorized that sentence."

Lin Zheng flipped through the documents at hand: "Do you know how many audience questions we receive backstage?"

"We received over 600 messages just for the question, 'How exactly does your team define a game?'"

Lu Yu blinked: "We... haven't really defined it."

"We just feel that games shouldn't only be about winning and losing."

"It can also be a moment of companionship, a pause, or a moment of forgiveness."

"It's like you're walking down the street and someone taps you on the shoulder and asks if you want to take a break."

Lin Zheng looked at him in surprise: "You guys have turned a game into a form of psychological counseling."

“We did hire a psychological consultant,” Lu Yu said casually. “But she cried after playing the game and said she couldn’t participate anymore, it was too personal.”

Lin Zheng: "..."

Slight laughter erupted from the audience.

Lu Yu seemed to realize what he had said, and a hint of embarrassment appeared on his face: "Ah, I didn't mean to say how awesome our game is... it's just that maybe she happens to resonate with it..."

Lin Zheng sighed, "What you're saying is even more extraordinary than Versailles."

"So, in terms of technology, did you use any new engines or develop any special algorithms?"

Lu Yu thought for a moment and said, "Well, actually we're using an open-source framework, and we've modified the rendering logic a bit."

“We don’t have a large world, nor complex AI; we’ve even simplified physical collisions as much as possible.”

"But we have a system, an emotion recording system, which dynamically adjusts the character's attitude and the tone of the narration based on the player's behavior."

Lin Zheng's eyes widened: "You call this lacking in technical skill?"

Lu Yu looked completely innocent: "Actually, it's just setting a few variables and dozens of combinations."

“We don’t dare to make it too complicated, after all, my main development machine is a second-hand machine that was discarded five years ago.”

"With only 8GB of memory, the fan could blow the cat off the table when compiling."

A burst of laughter erupted from the audience.

Lin Zheng said helplessly, "Which sentence in your entire statement isn't a Versailles story? 'We didn't use high-end equipment, we just used a nearly broken computer to write code that made the world cry'?"

Lu Yu scratched his head: "It's not Versailles, I'm really talking about being poor."

Lin Zheng pulled out a screenshot: "This is a scene from Chapter 3 of your game, where players are recovering fragments of their memories in the ruins. The accompanying text for that moment is—'You haven't forgotten, you're just too afraid to remember because the pain is too intense.'"

Who wrote this sentence?

Lu Yu: "Me."

Lin Zheng: "Do you know how many people have made this sentence into their phone lock screen? Some people have even tattooed it on their bodies."

Lu Yu was taken aback: "A tattoo?...That's way too much."

"When we wrote that line, we just wanted players to stay in that still image a little longer."

"Because we know that sometimes, silence is more truthful than words."

Lin Zheng nodded slightly: "You treat players as people, not as users."

Lu Yu smiled and said, "They're not users. They're—the people sitting across from you."

As the program progressed into its middle, the lighting was slightly adjusted, the camera zoomed in, and the shot focused on the two individuals.

The host, Lin Zheng, adopted a more casual sitting posture, a smile playing on his lips, as if preparing to pull out his trump card.

“Let’s talk about something lighter,” he said. “I checked, and your team only has six people. You’ve worked on it for three years and created a game that has become a global phenomenon.”

"Do you know what this means?"

Lu Yu pondered for a moment and nodded: "That means we've been working overtime for three years."

Lin Zheng was momentarily speechless, then burst out laughing: "Your answer is so unpretentious."

"When was the most difficult time for you?"

Lu Yu tapped his knee lightly with his fingers, thought for a few seconds, and then spoke calmly:

"It must have been early spring of the following year. We were almost out of money, couldn't afford the server fees, two people on the team were sick, one person was preparing to leave, and a third of the codebase was deleted during a system crash."

“Back then, we thought about it every day: should we give up?”

Lin Zheng's eyes narrowed: "Then how did you manage to hold on?"

"Well..." Lu Yu's voice lowered, "At that time, I saw a player's message in the backstage."

He paused, as if recalling something.

“He said, ‘My dad died, my mom is depressed, and every day I come home to complete darkness. Only your beta world is bright.’ ‘I know you're over there.’”

Lu Yu's gaze fell on the shadows beyond the lamplight.

"After reading that sentence, I felt that maybe we can't stop."

Lin Zheng was silent for a moment, then said softly, "So you guys made it through."

Lu Yu nodded: "We don't have money, but we have people."

Lin Zheng turned to another page of documents: "Many people say that the plot of 'Don't Play This Game' is written like a life movie, with each chapter like a player's past."

How did you manage to write such a script?

Lu Yu lowered his head and smiled, but his expression was somewhat complicated.

"We didn't write it."

"We are...lived."

He raised his head, a hint of emotion in his eyes.

"The planner, Lao Yu, had been divorced. The third chapter he wrote was written on the day he sat outside the courthouse for two hours."

“A-Lu had a speech impediment when she was a child. The fifth chapter she wrote is about the scene where the protagonist is in school and no one can understand him.”

"Lin Zhen, a script assistant, failed his postgraduate entrance exam that year, and his family pressured him to go on blind dates every day. The line he wrote, 'I want to be myself, not someone else's hope,' was written on his most difficult night."

Lin Zheng listened intently, then asked softly, "And what about you?"

Lu Yu was taken aback, then smiled and said, "It's the ending I wrote."

“That line, ‘You can choose to leave, I won’t blame you.’”

Lin Zheng nodded, his eyes filled with respect: "Your plots are like they were carved out of the very bones."

Lu Yu shook his head: "We're not writing a script, we're... writing about ourselves."

He said calmly, “We don’t have big data or a business model. All we can write about are our past failures and choices.”

“You see, the characters in the game walk very slowly. That’s not a style. It’s because we were all too tired that year.”

Lin Zheng tapped the screen, playing a piece of background music from the game.

The long, drawn-out piano music seemed to come from a distant snowy night.

He remarked, "This song, 'You Can Stay,' is the least game-like background music I've ever heard."

"I heard your music producer is a girl who sings at bars?"

Lu Yu nodded: "Yeah, we can't afford a professional music team. I heard her sing at a livehouse, and after that, I went backstage to ask her if she wanted to write music for the game."

"She asked me if I would give her money, and I said I didn't have a budget."

She thought about it and said she could give it a try.

Lin Zheng asked in surprise, "It's that simple?"

“It wasn’t that simple,” Lu Yu said with a smile. “I cried after listening to the first piece she wrote for five seconds. Not because I was particularly moved, but because it was so accurate.”

"She later told us that she wrote a song when she was a child, which was written for her father whom she had never met."

"She said she didn't have many works, but she knew what 'waiting' felt like."

Lin Zheng said softly, "So your soundtrack is like signing your soul."

Lu Yu nodded.

"We have no money, but we are honest."

"If we can't move people with techniques, then we'll use... our true 'self'."

Lin Zheng changed the subject to something lighter: "I checked, and before your game was launched, there was almost no promotion or pre-launch hype. How did you do your marketing?"

Lu Yu thought for a moment: "We didn't do any marketing."

Lin Zheng was taken aback: "Then how did you become famous?"

"Well... on the first day of its release, a player posted a screenshot on Weibo saying that he was so frustrated by the game that he cried for two hours."

"Then the next day, a content creator made a commentary video saying, 'I don't want to finish the game, I want to stay here.'"

"Then, a foreigner posted on Reddit that this was the first Chinese game he had ever truly mastered."

"And then...it became a hit."

Lin Zheng's eye twitched: "You relied entirely on word-of-mouth from players throughout this whole process?"

Lu Yu nodded: "We haven't bought any trending topics, haven't placed any ads, and even the cover image on the Steam page was something I cobbled together using Meitu Xiu Xiu in the middle of the night."

The whole place burst into laughter.

Lin Zheng sighed, "This isn't Versailles, it's metaphysics."

Lu Yu said earnestly, "I don't think it's because we did a good job, but because everyone is too lonely."

"We just happened to create a place where people can stop and linger."

Lin Zheng's eyes lit up, and he asked with a smile, "So now the question is—is your next game under a lot of pressure?"

Lu Yu gave a rare wry smile: "It is a bit big... We haven't even decided on a project name yet."

"But one thing we are certain of."

Lin Zheng raised an eyebrow: "What?"

Lu Yu looked at the camera, his tone calm:
It doesn't pander to anyone.

"It will not repeat itself."

"We will still write about things that are not popular, things that no one wants to say, but that many people have experienced."

"If it can accompany someone else, that's enough."

The program is nearing its end.

The lights gradually softened from their initial brightness, and the stage transitioned from pale blue to a warm beige, like returning from an endless world of code to the light of a desk lamp.

Lu Yu remained seated, his expression calm, his eyes still clear.

The host, Lin Zheng, put down the information card in her hand, took a deep breath, and softened her tone considerably.

"To be honest, Teacher Lu."

"I've done so many interviews over the years and met countless game producers, but there are very few like you who never boast from beginning to end, yet amaze everyone in every way."

Lu Yu smiled and took a sip of water.

"I believe that things that are truly important never need to be exaggerated."

"If you just say it out loud, other people will hear it."

Lin Zheng nodded, then turned to the audience: "Our last segment is the audience Q&A session."

“This time, we received more than three thousand questions, and the backend has selected three of them to ask Teacher Lu.”

"Are you ready?"

Lu Yu shrugged: "Come on, I hope it's not about making me sing."

A burst of soft laughter erupted from the audience.

(End of this chapter)