Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

Then, without realizing it, they became deeply immersed in the world of Stardew Valley and couldn't extricate themselves.

What? A whole night has passed? What on earth happened?

Almost everyone who has played this game will express similar sentiments a few days later.

Chapter 531 A video game you'll absolutely never regret

531

Stardew Valley's graphics are definitely a typical example of low-quality games, yet such games are incredibly addictive.

Few who have played this game can resist the temptation of this crazy farming experience every day.

Each day is a milestone, making people subconsciously feel that the day is only perfect after it's over, and giving up halfway is like abandoning it halfway.

They continued this work of farming and mining day after day, which was even harder than going to work, but people still enjoyed it.

Of course, simply playing farming and mining wouldn't be enough to fascinate these people, let alone make them forget to eat and sleep. This game has some additional gameplay besides farming.

By holding festivals and celebrations, you can increase your affinity with those around you. Once you reach a certain level of affinity, different characters will begin to provide assistance to the protagonist or advance the plot.

In Tokyo, at the game review company founded by Kazuo Murakami, it was already 11 a.m., but the office was deserted, with only a building cleaner who looked to be about fifty years old cleaning the company.

"It's been three days already. Is this company about to go bankrupt?"

The cleaner stood in the aisle of the office area, looking around in confusion.

About three days ago, the company's employees suddenly arrived very late. If it were a normal company, the boss would definitely be furious and make these employees understand the workings of society.

But the company's boss was a young man. Instead of scolding the late employees, he took the lead in not coming to work and gave the employees a day off. This was the first time the cleaner had ever seen anything like it in his life.

However, after the one-day holiday ended, these employees still did not come.

Then came the third day, and these employees still haven't arrived.

This made the cleaners suspect that the company might be preparing to go bankrupt.

This is understandable. This company doesn't seem serious at all like a typical company. Instead, it's very casual. Employees don't wear uniforms, the relationship between superiors and subordinates is very harmonious, the bosses don't act like bosses at all, and the employees don't have any sense of self-discipline. Such a lax company is bound to not last long.

The cleaner sighed, then quickly cleaned the office area before moving on to the next company's office.

In fact, the company shows no signs of going bankrupt; on the contrary, it is doing better and better as the gaming industry grows.

With the support of Youxing Electronics Entertainment, the professionalism of this review media has always been highly recognized. Perhaps the growth rate will be slow and the revenue will not be as high as those review agencies that accept advertisements casually, but it is definitely not a problem to support a dozen editors and make a small profit.

Kazuo Murakami is not the kind of person who is very ambitious about asset expansion, which makes his employees look less like employees and more like unemployed people.

Why has no one come to the company for the past two or three days?

There's no other reason than they're all playing Stardew Valley.

Those who frequently come into contact with cutting-edge video game content are also the group most easily captivated by video games.

Once they genuinely approve of a game, they become completely hooked.

On the fifth day, when the old cleaner in charge of the building's cleaning was almost thinking the company was going to go bankrupt, he finally saw a few young employees dragging their tired bodies to the company.

"What...what have you done?"

The old cleaner was very surprised. These people hadn't come to work, but they all looked terrible. What had they been doing?

Could it be that they have found new jobs, and are working very hard at them?

"Good morning, uncle. We're here for work. I'm so tired these past two days. If I didn't come to work soon, I'm afraid I'd die suddenly."

A fellow employee who had also come to work next to him nodded in agreement, saying, "That's right, these are probably the craziest few days of my life. I even feel like I could keep playing like this forever."

The old cleaner naturally didn't understand what was going on, but judging from what these young people said, it seemed that the company hadn't gone bankrupt. It was at this moment that Murakami Kazuo finally showed up.

Even though Murakami Kazuo was young enough, he looked much more haggard at this moment, but there was still a glint of excitement in his eyes.

Good morning, everyone.

"Good morning, Murakami-senpai... Ah, Murakami-senpai, you don't seem to be in particularly good shape."

Murakami Kazuo turned to look at the other person, gave a wry smile, and said, "Don't you look the same?"

In his nearly ten-year history of playing games, Kazuo Murakami has not been so engrossed in a game in a long time.

Despite the fact that this game doesn't have very good graphics—it should be the kind of low-quality game that was outdated years ago—it still manages to create a unique charm.

When he saw that several of his employees were also playing Stardew Valley for several days in a row, just like him, he finally confirmed one thing.

That means my previous views on video games were probably somewhat superficial.

Perhaps video games don't rely entirely on graphics to succeed, nor solely on so-called big productions. Take this video game released by a mysterious individual, for example; he suddenly found long-lost enjoyment in this game with its terrible graphics.

I never imagined that farming and mining could be so interesting every day.

However, games are ultimately just something to make people happy, but they are definitely not the whole of life. After staying up all night for several days and playing Stardew Valley for a long time, he decided to return to the company. He also contacted his employees by phone to prepare to officially start his new job.

Several days later, he had already decided what his first job should be: to write a review of Stardew Valley.

This time he will write it himself.

At the same time, he also developed a stronger interest in his former mysterious benefactor, Nintendo, who is, damn it, the world's ruler.

So many years have passed, and he has no way to contact this mysterious benefactor. What has the other party experienced all these years, and what were their thoughts when they developed such a game?

Aside from its somewhat retro-looking graphics, this game is practically flawless.

At the company, he greeted the employees who looked similarly haggard, then went to his desk and opened his word processing software.

In the past, when he wrote some game reviews, he would use some conventional phrases and then make some simple judgments.

This time, however, he had none of the usual vocabulary and phrases he was used to; all he could think about was his love for Stardew Valley.

So, he couldn't help but type out a title: 'A captivating virtual farm, a video game you absolutely won't regret playing'

Chapter 532 The Little Dark Horse

532

"Farming, gathering, mining, fishing, preparing for celebrations, and even getting married and having children—you might find these things quite confusing, but what would you think if I told you that this is one game with many gameplay options?"

"I'm afraid you'll have the same doubts I had when I first encountered this game: What's so fun about this kind of gameplay? Our daily lives are already like this, why would we want to find that kind of life again in a game? It just doesn't make sense."

"Video games should be filled with fantasy or eye-catching shooting, racing, and sports games. What fun can there be in ordinary life?"

"Indeed, the content looks really boring at first glance. Even The Sims is just a role-playing game in disguise. If you really had to do farm work, mine, fish and gather resources, it would be unacceptable."

"But I want to tell everyone reading this review that it's perfectly normal to think that way, but thinking that way will make you miss out on an amazing game, and that game is called 'Stardew Valley'."

"This is a game with somewhat rough graphics and terrible animations. It doesn't give a very good first impression from any angle. But that's just the surface. The real core will definitely surprise you. You'll only understand why I say it's so fun to try these things in life again once you've actually tried it."

"Farming, gathering, mining, fishing, preparing for celebrations, even getting married and having children—all of these are so similar to real life, yet there are many differences. In the world of Stardew Valley, you can experience a unique warmth, allowing you to briefly forget the troubles of life, just like the letter left by the protagonist's grandfather at the beginning of the game, hoping to bring the protagonist inner peace. And those who have played this game will definitely gain the same feeling..."

Kazuo Murakami went to great lengths to praise the game using all sorts of superlative terms.

This is a game that truly moves him, which is very rare for him.

So he willingly took the initiative to promote the game, hoping to let more people discover it.

After posting this article, Kazuo Murakami once again immersed himself in the world of Stardew Valley. He has now started his third save file, striving to achieve perfection from the very beginning, leaving no room for criticism.

About two or three days after he posted this article, it was exactly one week after the release of Stardew Valley.

In just one week, Stardew Valley players' average online time on the Battle.net platform reached over six hours.

Generally, a student or working adult has about eight hours of work time per day, and about eight hours of rest and sleep time. The remaining eight hours are for daily life.

A single game now occupies six hours of these people's eight-hour daily routine, nearly 80% of their time, which is enough to prove that this game has made many people addicted to it in a very short period of time.

That's not all. After a week of fermentation, the game sold 50,000 copies in its first week.

This isn't much for Youxing Electronic Entertainment; they can count the number of games that sold a million copies in their first week on one hand. But this game is different.

This game has no special appeal and looks terrible. Compared to other games of the same era, it's really rough. It hasn't even been released on mainstream consoles or handheld platforms yet, and it's chosen the currently least popular PC platform. It doesn't seem like it has any chance of becoming a big hit.

Zhu Youxing estimated that the first week's revenue would be around 10,000 to 20,000, so 50,000 was actually beyond his expectations.

However, he soon learned that Kazuo Murakami had also played a part in this.

This person voluntarily became a shill for the game, enthusiastically promoting it and even posting several recommendation articles. If it weren't for the fact that Zhu Youxing knew Murakami Kazuo was a person who adhered to his principles, and that he had made the game himself, he would have suspected that Murakami Kazuo had taken advertising fees from the game to promote it.

With Murakami Kazuo's recommendation, this now quite famous person immediately triggered a chain reaction, reaching sales of more than 50,000, exceeding Takeyusei's expectations.

Zhu Youxing naturally wouldn't miss this opportunity for promotion.

Seeing that even Kazuo Murakami was actively acting as a PR force, he also directly invoked his company's name to announce the sales figures for Stardew Valley in its first week.

The reputation of Battle.net as merely a StarCraft launcher is gradually fading, and Stardew Valley is now at the top of the best-selling list on the Battle.net store page.

Battle.net is still a very young digital gaming platform, and everything is still in its infancy. It only has two games, StarCraft and Doom, to support it. Nobody expected that a small but promising dark horse would suddenly emerge during this process.

It only costs 1,700 yen, which is more expensive than a steak. The only downside is that the game is not a physical version, only a digital version, which makes some physical collectors unhappy.

However, this does not affect the game's popularity.

After Kazuo Murakami actively promoted the game, and Yusei Electronics Entertainment also began recommending it through its own channels, more and more people became interested in Stardew Valley, especially white-collar workers who are generally around twenty-two or twenty-three years old and have only recently entered the workforce.

One of them, Chiaki Suzuki, became completely addicted to the game after just one try.

In his daily work, his spirit was almost crushed by the continuous workload, and he even fell into a state of temporary collapse and confusion.

At this time, Stardew Valley appeared. He was originally a StarCraft player, but he was the kind of player who was bad at the game but addicted to it. He was often annihilated by advanced players.

The feeling of losing every day in competitive games is no less than being relentlessly scolded by your boss at work, and over time he has become somewhat tired of it.

Just then, Kazuo Murakami, whom he frequently followed, published a review of Stardew Valley and gave the game a five-star rating at the end of the article.

Five stars! This is the first game besides Yusei Electronics that has received a five-star rating from Kazuo Murakami, so no matter what, Chiaki Suzuki has to give it a try.

Then, he too succumbed.

However, he is different from other Stardew Valley players. When he plays the game, the first thing he thinks of is his parents in the countryside.

Chapter 533 This world needs more independent games

533

When I was a child, I ran around in the fields, watching tiny insects scurrying about. Occasionally, some squirrels or birds would steal crops from the fields.