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

Pei Shengnan was not without resentment.

He just couldn't admit it yet—they had lost.

And they lost completely.

That was the week before the release of Voidbound.

The pre-launch promotion swept across the internet, and the AR live-streamed launch event, which was created by Longteng Group with an investment of 20 million yuan, became a trending topic.

Pei Shengnan stood under the spotlight, his expression resolute and his tone confident.

"This is our latest masterpiece after 'Anno Wars,' a flagship game that truly integrates action, strategy, social interaction, and an open world."

"We will define the industry standards for the next five years."

The applause of the audience was thunderous.

He remembered that day, backstage, the vice president said to him with a smile, "Peach Blossom Spring? That Lu Yu? His pixelated little game won't last three days of your public beta."

Pei Shengnan simply responded with a faint "yes".

At that time, he truly believed that Lu Yu's games were "emotional toys," while Voidbound was an "industrial-grade war machine."

What he didn't expect was that what truly started the war was the players' emotions themselves.

Lu Yu, however, simply lit a lamp in the distance.

"So what is our current strategy?" Pei Shengnan finally spoke, his voice low and resonant like an underwater echo.

"We plan to... reduce some in-game purchases and launch an 'Emotional Side Story Pack'... trying to create a stronger connection with players through content..."

"Who suggested it?" He suddenly looked up.

"She's the team leader of the content group... She said she's been playing 'Don't Play That Game' recently and found that their storyline design is very 'realistic' and 'companion-like'."

“She suggested that we also try ‘non-goal-oriented’ narratives.”

Pei Shengnan stared at the man, his brows furrowed, and a hint of anger finally appeared in his eyes.

"Have her come to my office."

[An Office Conversation]

"Do you know what you're talking about?"

Pei Shengnan stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, his voice calm, yet concealing a storm.

The girl opposite him, a team leader from the content team who had transferred from the technical team, looked a little pale, but still looked up at him.

"I know. This might be something you don't want to accept."

"But I really think... our problem isn't the gameplay, nor the numbers."

"Yes...we have no human hearts."

Pei Shengnan narrowed his eyes: "Human hearts?"

“Our NPCs are all reciting scripts, the main quests are like work orders produced on an assembly line, and not a single sentence in the dialogue boxes is written by a ‘human’.”

"We were so eager to win that we forgot—a game isn't just about a combat system; it's a 'story'."

"And 'Don't Play That Game'...they're telling stories, telling people stories."

silence.

There was a long silence.

Pei Shengnan remained silent.

He only sat down slowly and closed his eyes after the girl left the office.

That sentence was like a nail, driven into his mind, impossible to remove.

"We wanted to win so badly."

Yes.

He wants to win so badly.

So much so that we forget that the essence of games is not conquest, but resonance.

"Voidbound was at its peak upon release, but collapsed within a week."

Is Longteng Group experiencing a creative slump?

"Do Not Play That Game" defeats "Voidbound," marking the beginning of the emotional narrative era in the Chinese game market?

"Lu Yu won, but he had no opponent."

Major media outlets have published articles analyzing the situation.

The financial column "Beyond the Data" can be summarized in one sentence:

"While Pei Shengnan was still designing the 'user path,' Lu Yu was already accompanying players through the 'crossroads of life.'"

He returned home at three in the morning and sat alone in his study under the dim light.

On the table lay the first business plan he had written when he was young, the paper already yellowed.

At that time, he wrote:

"Games are one of the reasons why people live."

He smiled.

His smile was bitter.

When did he forget that sentence?

He is no longer the young man who stayed up for three days straight to find out the story behind an NPC.

He became a "game company CEO" who only looked at retention rate, DAU, and ARPU.

He had won countless times, but for the first time—

They lost so decisively.

It wasn't because of one person.

It was a defeat to an ideal.

……

At 6:30 a.m., the lights at the headquarters of Youyi Technology had been on all night.

Inside the meeting room, the air seemed to freeze. The heavy curtains were drawn tightly, leaving only a ring of cold white light that illuminated everyone's faces as pale as paper.

Shi Yi sat in the main seat, leaning slightly forward, his hands resting on the table, motionless, like a statue.

He wore a dark blue wool suit, his pocket square neatly folded, his hair perfectly styled, and even his watch was set to the most precise second hand. But his face looked as if it had been crushed by something heavy; exhaustion, anger, and disbelief intertwined to form an almost distorted mask.

He stared intently at the line of data on the projection screen:
On its tenth day of release, Abyss Fantasy's user retention rate dropped below 20%, its TapTap rating was 4.6, the "bad review" tag was highlighted in the Steam review section, the refund rate exceeded 27%, and the Weibo hashtag #AbyssFantasyCrashed# became the number one trending topic.

The last page of the presentation contained a chart.

Comparison chart.

On the left is the user curve for "Abyss Fantasy," a beautiful parabola that plummeted from its peak on launch day, like a kite with a broken string.

And on the right—

It's the curve from "Don't Play That Game".

Gentle yet stable, like a seemingly inconspicuous but steadily rising stream, silent yet unstoppable.

Shi Yi's eyelids twitched slightly.

He felt as if his eyeballs were nailed to the screen, unable to move.

My fingers clenched involuntarily, my knuckles turned white, and my joints cracked slightly.

"This...this is impossible." He finally spoke, but his voice was hoarse and strained, as if someone had choked him. "We conducted three rounds of user research, three closed beta tests, and eight KOLs to generate buzz. We burned through fifty million in marketing budget—"

"How could we possibly lose?"

No one answered.

The entire conference room was completely silent.

The marketing director kept his head down, even trying to suppress his breathing, as if afraid of being affected by the suppressed anger.

The head of the technical department quietly moved his chair, trying to get away from the main fire zone.

An intern planner's phone vibrated with a notification, and he was immediately met with glares from several people around him, turning his face pale on the spot.

Shi Yi simply sat there, like a lion trapped in a cage, his eyes filled with utter disarray, yet he refused to bow his head.

He stared at the comparison photo as if he were looking at another face.

Lu Yu's face.

He gritted his teeth and muttered under his breath, "What right does a useless otaku who makes storylines have?" He remembered it very clearly.

He had heard about "Don't Play That Game" at a dinner party when the project was initiated.

“Pixel art style? No combat? No social interaction? Not even a recharge option?” He laughed three times at the time, “That’s not a game, that’s an emotional dumping ground.”

He even posted a cryptic message on his WeChat Moments:
"When you don't want to make money, everything you do feels like playing."

The comment that received the most likes was from the vice president of a major game company: "We'll see how it goes when the data goes live."

But no one expected the outcome to come so quickly.

On the night of its release, "Abyss Fantasy" attracted millions of viewers in the live stream, KOLs flocked to the test, and it remained on the trending search list for three consecutive days.

At that time, "Don't Play That Game" was unknown and didn't even make it into the top 50 on the charts.

That night, Shi Yi drank half a bottle of whiskey and smiled like a winner who had already won a bet.

However, in the second week, user retention for "Don't Play That Game" increased instead of decreasing, and its popularity spread from the community to short video platforms, and then to overseas players through word of mouth.

They don't rely on publicity, buying trending topics, or spending money.

They simply created a game that "makes you want to stop."

He, Shi Yi, tried every means possible, but couldn't keep the player for even three days.

They say we 'have no soul'.

The content team leader, his voice trembling, uttered those words: "They said our characters were like AI-generated ones, that our protagonists had no emotions, that our world was empty, dead, and cold..."

Shi Yi turned his head abruptly, his eyes filled with disbelief.

"We spent 40 million on modeling, wrote 500,000 words of world-building, and hired three screenwriters to participate in the script! You're telling me we have no emotions?"

“They said that the old man at the village entrance in ‘Don’t Play That Game’ sits on the same rock every day and says to you, ‘The sun is shining nicely today’… is more moving than the 500,000-word plot we wrote.”

He stood there, stunned, as if struck by a thunderbolt.

In that instant, he finally understood.

Their game is "storytelling".

But Lu Yu's game is "to live with you".

This is not a failure of technology.

This is a failure of "belief".

He lost.

He lost to someone he once looked down upon.

He stood up abruptly, the chair making a screeching sound on the floor.

"All go out."

No one moved.

"I said—get out, all of you!!!"

The conference room instantly descended into chaos, with documents flying, chairs clattering, and everyone scrambling out as if their lives depended on it, fearing that staying even a second longer would mean being blown to bits.

The door slammed shut.

Only Shi Yi remained standing in the huge conference room, breathing heavily, like a mad wolf that had just retreated from the battlefield.

He slammed his fist on the table.

The comparison image on the screen jumped slightly.

He looked at it, his eyes no longer filled with anger, but with an indescribable emptiness.

It was as if I suddenly realized that I might have been going in the wrong direction this year, or even this decade.

He sat down, slowly took off his glasses, and rubbed his temples.

Exhaustion washed over me like a tidal wave.

He suddenly remembered that early morning when he was alone in the server room watching the first line of code of "Abyss Fantasy" run.

He was genuinely excited and truly passionate back then.

But later, all he had left was "winning".

But Lu Yu still loves.

The phone screen lights up.

Someone shared a video of a player saying "Don't play that game".

In the scene, a pixelated little girl stands by a lake and says to the player:
"You don't have to keep moving forward. Sometimes, stopping takes courage too."

At that moment, Shi Yi's eyes reddened.

For the first time, he broke down in tears in his office.

It wasn't because I lost the game.

But because——

He finally admitted that he was no longer the person who loved "games".

[Shenzhou - Tenghui Group Headquarters - Boardroom]

The temperature in the conference room was set very low, and the cold air silently flowed down from the cracks in the ceiling, making the air in the room feel as stagnant as a steel plate.

A dozen or so directors sat around a nine-meter-long ebony conference table, and none of them looked too happy.

Some people gripped the meeting materials tightly, their knuckles turning white; some frequently checked their watches, sweat beading on their foreheads; and others simply lowered their heads and remained silent, their lips pressed tightly together, as if suppressing some emotion that might erupt at any moment.

At the far end of the conference table, Lin Jingchuan, chairman of Tenghui Group, was looking down at a tablet in his hand. On the screen was the latest data report from the "Quantum Rift" project.

His brow had never furrowed since the first page.

"In less than two weeks after its launch, daily active users dropped from 3.5 million to 870,000, the TapTap rating fell to 4.2, the Steam negative review rate was 42%, and no one in the overseas market paid any attention to it. The operations team reported that the community was completely out of control."

The report echoed in the conference room, its tone steady yet deadly.

Each number was like a cold bullet, precisely piercing the psychological defenses of everyone present.

"Let me put it this way," the vice president in charge of marketing added in a low voice, "we spent 300 million yuan, and all we got in return was what the players call a 'technological shell'."

He paused, his voice slightly hoarse: "Someone made a satirical video on Bilibili, titled—'Quantum Rift: You're not traveling through time and space, you're traveling through disappointment.'"

For a moment, only the low hum of the air conditioner could be heard in the conference room.

Lin Jingchuan slowly put down his tablet, his gaze sweeping over everyone at the conference table. His eyes were devoid of emotion, yet more oppressive than any anger.

He was fifty-six years old, impeccably dressed in a suit, his gray hair meticulously groomed, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes betraying years of calm and strategic thinking. He exuded the aura of a leader of a business empire.

But today, for the first time, that aura showed signs of cracking.

"You guys tell me."

He spoke, his voice so low it seemed to come from underground.

"This is the product you've been talking about that can 'compare to Taoyuan Township'?"

No one dared to answer.

Lin Jingchuan slowly stood up, placed his hands on the table, and his eyes were sharp as knives.

“From the very beginning of the project, we were determined to ‘break the boundaries of narrative and reconstruct emotional interaction.’ We hired four PhDs to design the content, bought two Hollywood scripts, invested in ten collaborative brands, and invited thirty celebrities to participate in the first collaboration.”

"The results of it?"

"We created a 'high-tech shell' that players would want to quit after five minutes of playing the game."

“We thought we were making a movie, but it turns out the players just wanted to find a place to sit down and catch their breath.”

"Can any of you tell me what exactly we're fighting for?"

Hearing this, the director in charge of strategic investment finally couldn't hold back any longer, his voice trembling but urgent: "Chairman Lin, it's not that we haven't tried! Quantum Rift's technology is indeed industry-leading. Our engine's performance in ray tracing and particle simulation is number one in China, even surpassing mainstream overseas AAA game developers—"

"But players can't see it."

Lin Jingchuan interrupted him, his heavy tone silencing any further explanation.

"They don't care how many cores your processor has, or how many terabytes of memory cache you use."

"They just want to see one character hand them an umbrella in the rainy night."

“And we gave them an interstellar base, which was completely empty.”

The room fell into dead silence.

Everyone realized—Lin Jingchuan had broken down. (End of Chapter)