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

On an early spring afternoon, in the office area of ​​Taoyuanxiang Studio, sunlight shines through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto the wooden floor, and the air is filled with the mixed aroma of coffee and takeaway milk tea.

However, the office at this moment does not have the passionate and competitive atmosphere of the past, but is instead filled with a wonderful "Buddhist" atmosphere.

The planning department's whiteboard was densely covered with ideas for various game mechanisms, but the handwriting stopped at three days ago and there were no further revisions.

The program group's code submission record has dropped from 200 updates per day to 5 updates per day, and three of them were to fix "code errors caused by a programmer's cat accidentally stepping on the keyboard."

On the art team's work schedule, the status of all character modeling is uniformly marked with a prominent "to be optimized" sign.

Everyone knows the reason—

Their boss, Lu Yu, activated the "powerful lying down mode".

Just a few days ago, Taoyuan Township’s latest project, “Don’t Play This Game,” entered a critical stage of development.

The core concept of this game is a reverse psychology game design - the name of the game is "Don't Play", but its gameplay is extremely free and full of exploration, and even encourages players to "lie down" and "enjoy life."

However, just when everyone thought that this development would proceed as usual, step by step and at full speed—

Lu Yu took the lead and lay down.

"The theme of the game is 'Enjoy Life', and as developers, we must of course practice this concept ourselves."

Lu Yu said as a matter of course, while moving himself from the office chair to the lazy sofa in the leisure area, making himself a cup of hot tea and opening a travel magazine.

"Don't rush the pace of development. Take your time and don't let the work affect everyone's quality of life."

"Everyone should go out more often and feel the joy of life. Only by truly experiencing a good life can you design games that resonate with players."

Everyone in the conference room fell into a brief silence.

Then, I don’t know who started applauding.

Then everyone nodded in agreement.

"As expected of Mr. Lu!"

"Remaining calm in the face of danger and always adhering to the game concept, this is the true industry leader!"

"We have always emphasized the 'sense of immersion', but only Mr. Lu can truly experience life in an 'immersive' way!"

"Boss Lu's realm is indeed one level higher than ours. We should learn from him!"

that's it--

The entire Taoyuanxiang studio has entered a strange "slow-paced" development mode.

Although the pace of development has slowed down, the innovation of game mechanics has not stopped. Instead, under the guidance of the core concept of "enjoying life", it has become more and more outrageous.

Planning Department:
"Instead of letting players fight monsters to level up, why not let them grow vegetables, fish, and bask in the sun in the game?"

"We could add a 'meditation system' to allow players to improve their character's spiritual attributes by emptying themselves."

"Add a 'daze simulation'. If the player does not control the character for a long time, the NPC will automatically hand him a cup of tea and start chatting with him about philosophy."

Art Department:
“All scenes should have soft colors, so that players can feel the atmosphere of ‘peaceful times’ as soon as they enter the game.”

“The character’s action design should be as lazy as possible, without too much tension. You can even let the character suddenly sit down and rest in the middle of a battle.”

Program Department:
"We can make the game's time flow automatically adapt to the player's sleep and rest schedule. During the night, the game world will enter 'rest mode' and all NPCs will go home to sleep."

"If the player doesn't log in for a long time, the character in the game will go on vacation by themselves, and when the player returns, they will share their 'travel diary'."

Everyone is immersed in the pursuit of "ultimate relaxation". Although the development progress is slow, the game creativity is increasing, and even triggered an "anti-involution game design trend" in the industry.

however--

Just when everyone was immersed in the "slow life philosophy", real problems emerged.

Because of the "lying down development", everyone's work pace slowed down, resulting in a serious lack of time for game testing and optimization.

As a result, a lot of unexpected bugs appeared in the game.

When the player's character is meditating, he will suddenly fly into the sky and never come down again.

The "philosophical dialogue system" of a certain NPC was set too intelligently, resulting in the player having to talk to him and him giving a two-hour "existential speech" that could not be skipped.

There was a bug in the fishing system in the game, causing all the fish to turn into sharks. As soon as the player hooked a fish, he would be dragged into the water by the shark, and the game would end immediately.

There was a problem with a certain "self-relaxation detection system", which caused the player's character to enter "forced nap mode" and fall asleep directly on the ground if the player was too active in the game.

Even more outrageous is that some people have discovered that the game's "automatic travel system" will randomly select destinations and may even send the player's character to an "undeveloped area" on the game map, causing the character to be trapped directly in a "void area" that the programmer forgot to fill.

For a time, bugs occurred frequently and the player forum was laughing like crazy.

"Is this game about letting me enjoy life, or about letting me experience the frustrations of being a social slave in real life?"

"I was chatting about philosophy with an NPC, and I started to lose sleep."

"What kind of a setup is it to catch a shark while fishing?!"

"My character went on vacation by himself and never came back..."

So, the development team of Taoyuan Township finally realized——

They still need to be a little more serious and fix the bugs.

However, when everyone handed the BUG reports to Lu Yu with helplessness on their faces, he just took a look at it, then slowly put down the documents and picked up the teacup.

"It seems that everyone's development philosophy has been thoroughly implemented into the game."

He took a sip of tea, his eyes calm and deep, as if everything was under his control.

"However, things like bugs aren't necessarily bad things."

He put down his teacup, the corners of his mouth raised slightly: "Some bugs may be unexpected surprises, and may even become the characteristics of the game."

Everyone in the conference room looked at Lu Yu's calm expression and couldn't help but feel deep admiration in their hearts again.

"As expected of Mr. Lu... Even with so many problems with the game, he remained calm, as if everything was under control!"

“Is this the pattern of a top manager?!”

"We must not let Mr. Lu down. We must fix the bugs as soon as possible and make the game perfect!"

Therefore, under Lu Yu's "forced lying down" mode, the entire team worked even harder to fix the problems and make the game more perfect.

Planning Director Liu Mengyuan rubbed his temples, his face showing an expression of fatigue and helplessness.

"So... our current situation is that the game is flooded with ridiculous bugs and the player forums are about to explode?"

Her voice was low, with a hint of suppressed anger.

Art Director Yang Cheng nodded slowly and sighed, "Yes, the forum has been flooded with BUG-related posts."

Marketing Director Zhang Qiqi opened her phone and casually scrolled through it. The screen was filled with players' complaints.

"Isn't this game's 'life experience' a bit too real? The NPC and I chatted about philosophy for three hours, and my character went straight into a 'life meaning collapse state' and froze."

"I was just about to go fishing, but what I caught wasn't a carp or a golden salmon, but a 'bug shark.' The system then determined that the shark had dragged me into the sea, and my character drowned on the spot." "My character went on vacation by himself and never came back... Did he quit?"

"What's even more outrageous is that my character entered 'auto nap mode', and then the system prompted 'entering deep meditation, expected wake-up time: three days'???"

There was silence in the conference room.

Everyone felt an atmosphere of impending disaster.

But at this moment, a lazy voice sounded.

"It's okay, the AI ​​will fix it."

Everyone turned their heads and looked at Chu Xiong, the technical director, who was sitting on the other side of the conference table.

Chu Xiong pushed his glasses up, his expression frighteningly calm, even with a hint of a **"everything is under control"** smile on the corner of his mouth.

Liu Mengyuan frowned: "What do you mean?"

Chu Xiong slowly opened his laptop and tapped a few times on the keyboard. Immediately, a complex stream of data appeared on the screen.

He said calmly, "You may not know this yet, but our 'Taoyuan Kaiwu Engine' actually has an 'AI Adaptive Repair System' built into it."

"To put it simply... the AI ​​will analyze the game's bugs and fix them on its own."

There was an uproar in the conference room.

"real or fake?!"

"AI can fix bugs? This is the ultimate dream in the game development industry!"

"Wait, is this thing actually reliable? I'm not going to end up crashing the entire game while I'm fixing it, am I?"

Chu Xiong tapped the keyboard slowly a few times, and a line of test log immediately popped up on the screen -

[AI repair progress: 35%]

[Analysis in progress... BUG shark detected, species data corrected...]

[Analysis in progress... Detected an anomaly in the 'Automatic Nap Mode' logic, currently being optimized...]

[Analysis in progress... Detected NPC philosophy speech is too long, adjusting dialogue logic...]

Everyone stared at the data stream on the screen in amazement. After a few seconds, Chu Xiong gently closed his notebook and smiled.

"Don't worry, the AI ​​has already started working."

Everyone was silent for a second, and then—

"As expected of President Chu!!"

"He remained calm in the face of danger and directly took out the black technology!"

"If this AI system can really run stably, then we won't have to worry about fixing bugs anymore!"

However, just when everyone began to rejoice, a cold voice sounded faintly.

"I suggest... not to repair it."

The conference room fell silent again.

Everyone turned to look at the woman sitting in the corner who had been silent the whole time—Melissa, Taoyuan Township's AI expert and also the core architect of the game's worldview.

She has long silver hair, delicate features, and cold eyes, like a character from a science fiction movie.

Liu Mengyuan frowned: "What do you mean?"

Melissa glanced at Chu Xiong calmly, then raised her finger and tapped the table: "Have you ever thought that these bugs may not be bugs in essence?"

In the conference room, everyone looked at each other.

Melissa's voice remained calm. "Look at it from another perspective. These so-called 'bugs' actually revolve around one core theme: 'uncontrolled life experiences.'"

"For example, the 'BUG Shark' makes the game's fishing system unpredictable and adds randomness."

"For example, 'auto-nap mode' allows the character to truly 'have its own will' rather than simply being controlled by the player."

"Another example is the 'NPC Philosophical Speech', whose essence is to make players truly think about life, rather than just blindly following the game's instructions."

Her eyes swept over everyone present, her tone calm and firm, "If we turn these 'bugs' into game features, or even build new gameplay around them, then 'Don't Play This Game' will be a complete reversal of its genre."

Everyone was stunned.

Then, Liu Mengyuan slammed the table and his eyes lit up.

"Yes! Why should we repair it?"

"The core concept of this game is 'relaxation' and 'uncertainty'! The existence of these bugs actually makes it closer to this concept!"

"We can just turn them into features in the game!"

Five minutes later, Taoyuan Township officials issued an announcement:

Regarding recent player feedback on "Don't Play This Game"

Dear players, we have noticed that everyone has recently encountered some 'unique' experiences in the game's closure, such as 'BUG Shark', 'Automatic Nap Mode', 'NPC Philosophical Frenzy', etc.

Here, we solemnly declare that these are not BUGs, but the 'hidden mechanisms' of the game!
Our core design concept is to 'simulate real life experience', and real life is full of unexpected random events.

Therefore, we decided to retain these 'features' and will develop more new gameplay around them in future versions!

Please enjoy this 'unpredictable world'!

As soon as the announcement came out, the entire player community was completely shocked.

"??? So this isn't a bug, it's an official deliberate design?!"

"I told you, this game is really different from ordinary games!"

"So... my experience of being dragged into the sea by a shark was actually a 'random incident'? This is too real, isn't it?"

"As expected of a paradise, even bugs can be turned into game features..."

That night, Lu Yu watched the various discussions among the players on the forum, gently put down the teacup in his hand, and a slight smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

"These guys are really good at taking advantage of the situation."

He stretched himself and sighed lazily—

"BUGs are features. This industry has finally realized this."

……

After the closed beta test of the game ended, the day of its launch finally arrived.

On this day, B-war UP host Wang Laoju opened the live broadcast room on time.

"Everyone, today we're going to play a game we've been looking forward to for a long time, produced by Taoyuan Township!" (End of this chapter)