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

Lin Zheng drew the first card, glanced at it, and said, "First question—'Have you ever regretted making 'Don't Play This Game'?'"

After listening, Lu Yu remained silent for a few seconds.

He slowly put down his water glass, gazing at the indistinct black shadow at the edge of the stage, as if sorting through an old memory.

"In the beginning, yes."

His tone was calm, but carried a hint of weariness from a long-awaited reunion.

“We were really suffering back then. No one voted for us, no one believed in us, and we even started to doubt ourselves: were we too arrogant?”

“We tried to say that ‘games can also convey emotions,’ but even the platforms were unwilling to recommend them because they were ‘not exciting enough.’”

“We said ‘narratives can be without a goal,’ and we were criticized for ‘having no design.’”

"During that period, every time I opened my eyes, I thought about deleting the database and running away."

"But later, a player sent an email saying that he had left the suicide group because he played our game."

“At that moment, I knew—I don’t know if this path is right or wrong, but it’s worth it.”

Lin Zheng nodded gently, a hint of emotion flashing in his eyes.

"So, you don't regret it."

Lu Yu smiled, as calm as ever: "I don't regret it."

Lin Zheng drew the second card and read aloud, "The second question—'What's the one thing you most want to say to the players?'"

Lu Yu did not answer immediately.

He lowered his head, his fingers interlaced, as if he had been chewing over the words repeatedly before uttering them.

"What I want to say is—thank you for not giving up on 'listening'."

"In this era of loud noise everywhere, you have chosen a quiet story."

"I know you didn't stay just for fun."

"You are because... you want to be understood."

"And we... just want to tell you: you are not alone."

Lin Zheng looked at him, opened his mouth, but ultimately said nothing, and simply put the card down gently.

He knew that the weight of those words was something no host could add.

“One last question.” Lin Zheng picked up the third card, raising his eyebrows. “This question comes from a seventeen-year-old girl who said, ‘If I also want to make games, but I have no money, no resources, and no one to support me, should I persevere?’”

This time, Lu Yu's eyes changed.

It was a kind of steadfastness that rose from tranquility.

He sat up straight and looked at the camera, as if trying to penetrate the long distance on the other side of the lens and reach the girl's world.

I want to tell you—you've already begun.

"If you have this idea, you're already on your way."

"In the beginning, I had no money, no resources, and not even a computer."

"I wrote my first screenplay in an internet cafe, using a pirated engine, and even the mouse was broken."

“I’ve also been criticized and laughed at, with people saying ‘you’re not suited to make games,’ ‘you have no talent,’ and ‘you don’t understand the market.’”

"But I didn't stop."

"It's not because I'm so great."

"It's because I have no way out."

"So if you really like it, don't listen to those 'realistic advice'."

"Because reality forces you to give up your dreams."

"You don't need to create a world-class work right from the start."

"What you need is to move forward one centimeter every day."

"That's enough."

Lin Zheng looked at him silently, but a light flickered in his eyes.

The entire studio fell into a strange silence.

Some audience members lowered their heads and wiped their eyes, some nodded slightly, and others had already silently opened their phone's notes app.

"Alright." Lin Zheng took a deep breath and stood up. "We have a little surprise for the last segment of the program."

The screen lit up, and a transparent cube slowly rose from the table in front of Lu Yu.

Inside was a yellowed piece of paper with handwritten text on it.

That's the first line of the movie "Don't Play This Game"—

"You can choose not to play with me."

Lin Zheng explained, "This is a handwritten draft you uploaded to Bilibili three years ago when you were playing the demo. We asked your editor friend at the time to help us find it and specially reproduced it."

Lu Yu stared at the paper, a long-lost look of astonishment appearing in his eyes.

He wrote that piece of paper in his rented room, using a lunchbox as a mat, when he had a high fever of 39 degrees Celsius.

He was sitting on the floor, wearing socks with holes in them, and when he finished writing that sentence, only one thought was on his mind:

"Nobody will play this game."

But now, it is framed in the light, like some kind of monument.

Lu Yu reached out and lightly touched the transparent glass with his fingertips.

He suddenly laughed.

It wasn't a polite laugh, nor was it a laugh required by the program; it was the kind of laugh that comes from a long-awaited reunion.

"thank you all."

"Thank you... for remembering us, and for remembering that sentence."

Lin Zheng solemnly extended his hand: "No, we should thank you."

"Thank you for showing us that games can also be another form of embrace."

In the third week after its official launch, "Peach Blossom Spring" surpassed 20 million downloads worldwide, maintained a stable Steam rating of 9.7, and received widespread praise from mainstream overseas gaming media as a "pixel masterpiece of Chinese slow-paced life." Meanwhile, a strange shift was quietly taking place in China's financial and business circles.

This time, they are no longer focusing solely on the game itself.

Their attention began to focus on a name.

A man who appears mild-mannered and unassuming in the gaming industry, yet is quietly hailed in the field of business management as a **"practitioner of a new generation of humanistic management thought"**.

Lu Yu.

The founder of Taoyuanxiang Studio and the producer of "Don't Play This Game" and "Taoyuanxiang", is 32 years old and an independent developer. In the early stages of his entrepreneurship, he had no funding, no publicity, and no brand endorsement. He relied solely on a script and an old computer to build a digital utopia that evoked global emotional resonance from scratch.

The first to speak out was "Modern Entrepreneur".

The cover of that month's issue of the long-established business magazine featured Lu Yu's silhouette by the studio window, with the headline:
"The game is not his final product; emotional management is."

The subtitle is more straightforward:

"Lu Yu: In a team without KPIs, a world-class hit product was created."

The article immediately sparked heated discussions among entrepreneurs upon its release.

Sunlight streamed through the gaps in the blinds onto the natural wood tabletop, and a faint lemon-mint scent filled the air—A-Lu's newly replaced diffuser.

Lu Yu sat in the main seat of the conference room, wearing his usual dark gray hooded sweatshirt, with a gentle expression, as he bent down to feed the cat dry food.

Sitting opposite me was Xie Nanzhou, the editor-in-chief of "Finance and Economics" magazine. He was in his fifties, with a full head of silver hair, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, and dressed elegantly. His notebook was rustling as he turned the pages.

"Mr. Lu, are you really not setting KPIs?" His tone was filled with barely concealed curiosity.

Lu Yu looked up and smiled gently: "Setting KPIs is useless." "Our team has ten people in total, one or two each of planners, programmers, artists, composers, and scriptwriters. Setting KPIs is less useful than just asking them if they are in a good mood today."

Xie Nanzhou was slightly startled, a look of surprise flashing in his eyes.

"Then how do you measure output?"

“I don’t measure,” Lu Yu said calmly. “I only make sure of one thing—that they don’t hate what they do.”

He paused, then patted the cat's head. "I believe that as long as people don't hate their jobs, they will naturally want to do them well."

Xie Nanzhou was silent for a moment, then lowered his head and wrote in his notebook:

"A model of humanistic management: no KPIs, and emotional well-being as the primary driving force."

"The first time I met Mr. Lu was at a code review at 3 a.m.

"I thought he was going to yell at me, since I had written a time-triggered program as an infinite loop."

"He just looked at me, handed me a glass of water, and said, 'Have you been sleeping poorly lately?'"

"I was completely stunned."

"Starting the next day, he transferred me directly to the scriptwriting team and told me not to touch the programming yet, but to write down what I wanted to say first."

“I wrote in my sleep for three days, and he actually revised it seriously and even added music to it.”

Do you think he's gone mad?

"But those three days were the happiest working time I've had in recent years."

—Excerpt from "Lu Yu Through the Eyes of Employees" in the "Jiemian Management Scholar" special issue

Why didn't we vote for Peach Blossom Spring?

Inside the meeting room, a partner at a leading venture capital firm stared through gritted teeth at the rapidly growing user data on the screen.

The assistant whispered a reminder: "At the time, they didn't have a business plan or undergo due diligence. They only said that what they were making wasn't a game, but... a 'digital emotional haven'."

Can you value sentiment?

The partner slammed his fist on the table: "Am I uncultured?!"

"Right now, everyone around the world is touting their 'emotional management philosophy,' 'anti-market operating model,' and 'decentralized narrative structure,' while I'm still here researching DAU and LTV!"

The assistant timidly added, "The latest issue of 'Business Wisdom' has also published an article, saying that Lu Yu's approach of gaining long-term trust without seeking profit is a 'model of reverse management'."

The partner leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh.

"All I want to know now is—was he faking it, or did he really see through it all?"

* *Management and People*: "Lu Yu's Gentle Management: Driven by Trust, Not Goals" * *The Way of Capital*: "The Myth of No Financing: He Beat All Algorithms with Zero Budget" * *Corporate Chronicles*: "He Didn't Talk About Growth, Yet He Created the Gentlest Business Miracle" * *Flow*: "From Emotion to Productivity: Lu Yu Redefines 'Work State'" *The Future of Organizations*: "Management Philosophy in the Post-KPI Era: Starting from Peach Blossom Spring"

Do you consider yourself a capable manager?

Facing the reporter from "Business Weekly", Lu Yu looked down at the plot document newly submitted by his employees, as if he hadn't heard clearly.

“Management skills?” he repeated softly.

"I think I'm just more afraid of people getting hurt than others."

"I've seen too many projects die from pressure, from passing the buck, and from the perfunctory attitude of 'I'm just completing the task.'"

"So I want to try another way."

"I don't ask them to be fast, I only ask them to be genuine."

"If they could genuinely put a piece of themselves into the game, then the game wouldn't die."

He closed the document and smiled: "So it's not that I'm managing them, but that they're making me believe that people can shine without oppression."

[External Commentary - Joint Editorial]

"Lu Yu's management style is a rare kind of 'anti-industrialization management' - he does not pursue process standardization, maximum production capacity, or optimal efficiency."

"What he pursues is a 'balance of emotional ecology within the organization'."

"In this era of KPI-driven and OKR-driven development, he used an almost lost method—understanding and trust—to build a creative utopia that does not rely on capital but can grow on its own."

He said he wasn't the boss; he was "the first person to move a chair and sit down."

"But it is precisely this seemingly least authoritative leader who makes his team members seem to be fighting for their 'self'."

Scene 5: Ah Lu's WeChat Moments

Alu posted a picture on her WeChat Moments showing Lu Yu trimming a cat's nails in a meeting room.

The copy is only one sentence:

"He never talks about management, yet he makes you willing to write for him until 3 a.m.

The comments section was lively.

[Lin Zhen]: He wasn't managing; he was accompanying.

[Old Fish]: I used to think I was just a good-for-nothing, but now I think I'm a good-for-nothing with some value.

[Music by Xiao He]: The only time he got angry was when I didn't eat breakfast.

[Lu Yu himself]: ...How am I supposed to recruit people if you keep doing this?

[Conclusion]

In this era, business media are accustomed to using terms like "growth curve," "return on capital," and "product iteration speed" to evaluate an entrepreneur's value.

But Lu Yu's answer was a different curve.

A curve that starts from the human heart and returns to the human heart.

He doesn't give orders loudly, doesn't make strict demands, doesn't ask about reports, and doesn't promote a wolf-like mentality.

He just sat there quietly, listened to you finish telling him your dream, and then told you:

"This dream could perhaps be written into a game."

Therefore, everyone is willing to give their all for this dream.

—

He is not running a company.

He is building a world that can be trusted.

A ray of morning sunlight streamed through the blinds of the old-fashioned studio, dust motes floated gently in the air, and it was so quiet that you could almost hear the cat purring in the corner.

Lu Yu was the first to arrive, as usual.

He was wearing a dark blue trench coat, with the canvas bag he hadn't taken off the night before still slung over his left shoulder, and a cup of freshly ground black coffee in his right hand. When he entered the conference room, his footsteps were so light that they were almost silent.

He didn't turn on the light; he just sat by the window, put down his bag, and opened his laptop.

The moment the screen lit up, his expression became focused and quiet.

It was a kind of composure born from accustomed solitude.

It is also a kind of naturalness that has long since separated the word "leader" from one's identity.

He's not here to "supervise" anyone.

He just came to be with them, hoping they would wake up sooner.

At exactly seven o'clock, A-Lu pushed open the door with messy hair, yawning and holding a paper cup of milk tea.

"Brother Yu...you're not asleep again, are you?"

She plopped down on the sofa, curled up in a ball with her milk tea in her arms.

Lu Yu didn't turn around, but his typing pace slowed down slightly by half a beat: "Slept for three hours, so I guess I made a profit."

The door opened again, and Lin Zhen walked in carrying a stack of printed scripts, a piece of bread dangling from his mouth. (End of Chapter)