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

Chapter 482 Another weird bug in the project!

Under Liu Mengyuan's leadership, the entire team felt revitalized, as if bathed in a spring breeze. Everyone, working together and dividing up the responsibilities, began to diligently create the game's content.

Throughout this process, Liu Mengyuan would occasionally inspect everyone's work and offer appropriate guidance. The team's atmosphere suddenly became much more lively, and even the company's corridors and lounges were gradually filled with the sound of whispers discussing the game system.

"Say, should we increase this boss's health a bit? That way, players will have to kill him more often and spend more money for the ultimate weapon?"

"Great idea! And the drop rate should be set to be very brutal, so that everyone will suffer terribly just to get the legendary equipment!"

Under the leadership of Liu Mengyuan, "氪金测试:卧平人生" seems to be about to stage a two-pronged approach of "gorgeous content" and "external exploitation marketing"
……

Inspired by Liu Mengyuan, the entire project team seemed to have rekindled their fighting spirit and began to work tirelessly to add various interesting content and game mechanics to the game. They hoped that this would add more fun to the upcoming "exploitative experience."

Firstly, in terms of the combat system, they adhered to the concept of "making players linger for the ultimate equipment" and made many innovations to the original design:
For example, the boss monster stats have been significantly adjusted: while the health of ordinary monsters is very low, starting from the fifth stage, the health and defense of all elite monsters and bosses skyrocket to terrifying levels. Some bosses even have health points of over ten million, making it impossible for ordinary players to kill them with single-handed attacks.

"To obtain orange gear, players must painstakingly farm materials and continuously upgrade their equipment," the system designers explained. "We estimate it will take at least 20 upgrades before the equipment reaches a level that can withstand the monsters' defenses."

At the same time, the drop rates for weapons and equipment have become extremely harsh. It's reported that the drop rates for all rare orange equipment have been infinitely reduced, and even if you do find orange equipment, its stats are far from perfect. To obtain a truly ultimate piece of divine equipment, players will have to invest a large amount of money and repeatedly enhance their weapons dozens or even hundreds of times.

"We designed it this way to make players feel like they're being exploited!" the engineer said proudly. "Without spending tens of thousands of dollars, you'll never be able to assemble that ultimate weapon. When players are forced to shell out money again and again for the legendary gear they desire, that exhausting and helpless experience is the true feeling of being exploited!"

Beyond the combat system, the storyline also emphasizes an "exploitative experience." According to the producer, the game's main storyline is broken down into hundreds of side quests, each requiring players to purchase advanced levels or advanced equipment before completing them.

"In the main storyline, when players are forced to pay just to see the next chapter, I believe they will feel the despair of being completely 'held hostage by the content!'" said the story designer. "But in the end, when they finally understand the full story and see the metaphors that satirize social reality, I believe they will applaud!"

At the same time, the game's social system is designed to allow players to experience the exhilarating feeling of "being abused" socializing. The system stipulates that in order to chat with other players, one must first purchase a certain amount of "magic chat stones." Furthermore, even if one has purchased chat stones, if one hasn't upgraded to a certain friend level, the voice chat function won't work, forcing players to engage in casual conversation via text.

"We want to consciously cultivate that 'social anxiety' experience!" the designer explained with a smile. "We hope that through this suffocating feeling of half-communication, we can force players to spend a lot of money to build friendships!"

Furthermore, the game's character designs are also quite exploitative. To be fair, aside from the slightly eye-catching female characters, the game is generally quite explicit. The swordsman character appears shirtless and heroic, while the mage character wears only a shirt and boots, with nothing underneath.
"Today's players, to be perfectly honest, have become fatigued by all the revealing clothing and body imagery," explained the artist. "So we've resorted to extreme marketing tactics, using sex as bait, to force players into buying all sorts of rare fashion items just to see the more striking outfits and figures!"

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. As a masterpiece claiming to "reinvent the exploitative experience," the team has meticulously designed other aspects of the game. For example, the achievements system requires money to unlock, the pet system requires a maintenance fee, and guild features also require payment. In short, every aspect of the game seems to be designed to exploit players' wallets.

"We spent the better part of six months designing 'exploitation points' for every system to squeeze the most out of players," the game director said with a smile. "Once released, I'm sure a large number of players will experience the thrill of being exploited firsthand. Word of mouth will spread, and the game will become a long-lasting hit!"

In this way, with the full support of Liu Mengyuan, Lu Yu's two-pronged strategy of "exploitative marketing" and "game content contrast" was gradually implemented to the end. As the release date approaches, whether this game will reach another extreme in "exploitative experience" as expected will soon be revealed.
……

Just as the entire team was working tirelessly to add various "exploitation elements" into the game, an embarrassing situation arose - bugs were rampant, almost causing them to fail.

In fact, from the very beginning, Lu Yu set the unprecedented slogan of "lying down": in order to reflect the theme of "low-cost exploitation" of the game, he required all members to meet "the minimum requirements during the production process, and never allow overtime work."

"We want to create a typical 'worker exploitation' environment!" he said. "We must make it clear that workers are not contributing anything more to the company. It's like workers on a factory assembly line, who stop working and go home as soon as their eight-hour shift is up!"

At first, everyone was skeptical. After all, creating a high-quality game usually requires the team to work overtime and make a lot of hard work. But after following Lu Yu's philosophy of "to show the sense of being exploited, you have to make the exploitative products yourself," everyone was determined to "lay low."

Things quickly went awry. As development progressed, more and more bugs began to wreak havoc across various systems, disrupting the gameplay experience. Yet, even with these serious quality issues, no one on the team was willing to work overtime to address them.

"That won't work! How can we provide extra labor for the company?" The planner shook his head. "That would defeat the purpose of lying flat!"

"That's right, Mr. Lu is trying to create a situation where employees are exploited to the extreme," the programmer agreed. "If you ask us to fix the bug, wouldn't that mean we're just being obedient and being honest workers?"

Gradually, the team's atmosphere became somewhat slack and unfocused. During meetings, no one mentioned the game's bugs or performance issues, instead dwelling solely on Lu Yu's theories about how workers should raise their revolutionary consciousness.

Whenever someone mentions the progress and quality of the game, there are always people who arrogantly retort: ​​"The damn capitalists are exploiting us again! Have you calculated every penny of your hourly wage? They don't even pay overtime!"

The most embarrassing thing is that even the artists are no exception. They simply stop polishing and optimizing the 3D models regularly, and are only responsible for completing a "roughly formed" model and then hastily throwing it into the scene.

"We're standard assembly line workers, aren't we? We do whatever the capitalists demand," someone said confidently. "If we start working overtime here, what's the difference between that and being exploited?"

In this way, under the complete dominance of the "lying down workers" concept, the game quality problems became increasingly serious, but no one in the entire team was willing to stand up and solve them.

Ultimately, this situation is nothing short of a massive bug—all the facial details and animation effects of the game's art models are distorted in all sorts of weird ways! You might see the protagonist suddenly open his mouth and make an exaggerated, weird face, or even see a character twisted into a ball while walking.

"Is this game meant to portray the experience of being exploited, or the experience of being exploited as a worker?" one player exclaimed after seeing it. "Why do the characters look so low-brow?" Faced with the impact of this bug, the team was in an uproar. Some realized that if this flaw appeared after the game launched, all the previous efforts would be wasted.

"Everyone, cheer up! Our game is going to be in trouble if this continues," someone shouted anxiously. "If we don't speed up the optimization, even if we make the experience as exploitative as possible, players won't buy it!"

"But you want us to work overtime to optimize the game. Doesn't that go against Mr. Lu's requirements?" another person asked in return. "We should just stick to being standard exploited workers, right?"

Just as everyone was arguing, Liu Mengyuan stepped forward in time and made a "compromise" suggestion that made everyone suddenly realize:
"Everyone, I've figured it out now. We shouldn't go against Lu Yu's ideas. That would only put us in a passive position. Why not change our thinking and secretly work harder on the game before he notices?"

"Just think of it as giving everyone a chance to make the most of their remaining energy. He keeps saying he wants to make the game into an exploitative product, isn't he just hoping we can put our heart into it and make it a good one?"

"So, working overtime to optimize the game now is, in the final analysis, just a way to secretly support Lu Yu's ideas. As long as we don't show it and do our best quietly, I believe that once the game is online, both parties will be very happy!"

With Liu Mengyuan's mediation, the initially tense atmosphere dissipated and eased. Those who had previously harbored doubts about the "lying flat" concept finally regained their fighting spirit.

"Meng Yuan's words make a lot of sense. If we secretly complete the game, we can be considered to be fulfilling Lu Yu's long-cherished wish, intentionally or unintentionally!"

"That's it, everyone, take some time out of your busy schedule to work hard and don't let that guy look down on us!"

So, under Liu Mengyuan's call, the entire team quietly launched a "secret campaign." Everyone, without drawing attention to themselves, squeezed out their own time to optimize the game, adding various details. Some worked overtime debugging the code, while others quietly sculpted the intricate models.
Thanks to everyone's tireless efforts, the game's quality was finally brought back to normal, preventing the rampant bugs that severely affected the experience. Lu Yu seemed unaware of all this, and the entire process was carried out secretly behind the scenes.

As the release date approaches, the game "Krypton Gold Simulator: Lying Down to Survive" seems to have been secretly endowed with the dual meanings of "exploitation" and "being exploited" in both content and experience.
……

Faced with a serious bug in the game that caused character models to distort, the entire team was at a loss. Fortunately, our technical director, Chu Xiong, stepped in and provided a miraculous solution that would successfully resolve the bug.

"Everyone, we have a magical AI that can help us cleverly package this bug into gameplay!" Chu Xiong announced, "It's Melissa AI. It's good at turning all kinds of unexpected things into game mechanics!"

Melissa AI is a gaming artificial intelligence system developed independently by the company. It is trained to identify all seemingly buggy or abnormal content in the game and automatically analyze whether these contents can be reasonably integrated into new gameplay.

Once Melissa AI determines that an action is feasible, it immediately generates new rules for the game, transforming the original bug or anomaly into a new and interesting game mode. For the R&D team, this is undoubtedly a time-saving and labor-saving way to solve bugs.

"This way, we won't have to worry about character model anomalies anymore," Chu Xiong said confidently. "We just need to hand the game over to Melissa AI, and it will automatically transform these anomalies into a brand new gameplay experience!"

With that, he immediately activated the Melissa AI system and loaded the entire game into it. Over the next few hours, the AI ​​began rapidly analyzing every anomaly in the game, determining and categorizing it.

Ultimately, Melissa AI made an unexpected assessment of the game character model's malfunctioning bug: it concluded that this distorted behavior could be interpreted as a completely new "expressionist" gaming experience.
Based on this judgment, Melissa AI generated the following new rules for the game:
“Expressionism Mode: In this game, all character models will show varying degrees of exaggerated deformation in certain situations to reflect and express their inner emotional fluctuations at that time.”

“Specifically, if the character is currently in an angry or highly stressed state, their face and body will be strangely distorted, representing their inner rage; on the contrary, if the character is currently in a peaceful or relaxed state, the model will remain normal, showing their inner peace.”

"Players can sense the pressure and emotional intensity of a character by observing the degree of deformation of their model. When the model deforms to a certain extreme, it means that the character's emotions have become extremely out of control."

The entire team was amazed after seeing the rules generated by Melissa's AI. What was once considered a flaw in the character model was magically transformed into a brand new "expressionist experience"!
"This is completely subverting our understanding of game interfaces and visual expressions!" someone exclaimed. "It's so creative to use character transformation to directly experience the inner world!"

"That's right. Isn't the selling point of our game to embody the feelings of the exploited class? Now, by showing the inner ups and downs and struggles in this way, wouldn't it push the sense of presence of the exploitation experience to a new peak?"

In this way, Melissa AI, leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, cleverly transformed a previously troublesome bug into a brand-new, cutting-edge gaming experience. And with the entire team's support, this "expressionist" gameplay experience was incorporated into the final version of "Krypton Gold Simulator."

In story mode, whenever a character faces plot pressure or encounters a severe blow, his model will be exaggeratedly deformed into a distorted face, and even the body lines will be distorted to the point of being almost out of shape. Only when the plot pressure is relieved will his model return to normal.

Players can sense the level of stress a character is under by observing their degree of deformation. If the deformation reaches its extreme, it means the character is on the verge of losing control of their emotions.

The same expression is also incorporated into the combat mode. When the character is in a passive defensive position, its model will deform into a cowering and distorted posture, representing fear and anxiety; while when actively attacking, the model will transform into a hideous monster, interpreting the inner violence and brutality.

In short, through the repackaging of Melissa AI, the seemingly low-level BUG in the game has become a huge creative plus, providing players with a unique visceral experience interaction.

The staff were all amazed by this: "What a magical effect of artificial intelligence! Not only did it save us a lot of optimization time, but it also gave our game such a brilliant selling point!"

"Yes, this creative way of reflecting the inner world through visual distortion will surely be highly praised. I believe this will become a highlight of the human touch in our exploitation-themed game!"

(End of this chapter)