My game, you have no right to award

Chapter 136: A Step Ahead
April 4th, the release date.

At four o'clock in the morning, when the surrounding offices were all dark, the two floors where Kuangshi Games was located were the only ones brightly lit.

The employees had tense expressions on their faces, but they were all doing their respective jobs in an orderly manner, making final preparations for the game's release.

"Netherworld Mountains and Seas" is scheduled to be unlocked on time at 10:00 am local time in China, and the release time in other parts of the world will also be aligned with the time in China.

The game was available for pre-download as early as 8pm the night before yesterday.

Although there were some technical setbacks during the preloading process, they were quickly resolved by Wu Qianhe, and it was basically smooth sailing.

In the past two days, the download traffic used in the Asian region of Steam has surged, and most of it has been used by domestic players to download "Nether Mountain and Sea".

The storage capacity of the game itself is 67.3GB, but the official recommendation is to use a hard disk with a redundant capacity of 80GB.

Even compared to many 3A stand-alone games, this size is definitely not small. Many players even shouted "stable" when they saw this number!
I am not sure about the quality of the game itself, and I will have to wait until the game is officially released to know, but at least it is large in quantity and full of sincerity!

Zhou Kuang temporarily divided the team of Kuangshi Games into three echelons and established a rotation mechanism.

During the game's release phase, many unexpected problems will surely arise. Naturally, they cannot go to work and go home as usual, but need someone to be here 24 hours a day.

But people are not animals and cannot be turned around in circles to grind millstones, so he must ensure that his employees get enough rest.

The first team is naturally responsible for the most critical game release period, working from four in the morning to eight in the evening, a full sixteen hours.

The second team is responsible for ten hours after the game is released, from 6 pm to 8 am.

The third echelon has the lightest tasks and is responsible from 6 am to 6 pm.

After getting through the most difficult first three days, if there are no major problems, this rotation mechanism can be basically abandoned and return to more regular working hours.

However, these rotations only refer to ordinary employees, and the core members do not receive such good treatment!
If one employee is missing, a colleague can be asked to take over temporarily so that the position will not suddenly become completely disabled.

However, if any of the core members is missing, Megvii Games' decision-making ability in certain areas will be immediately impaired.

Therefore, Zhou Kuang’s requirement is that core members must be forced to rest for at least four hours every day for the first three days to ensure their ability to deal with subsequent problems.

From the fourth day onwards, rest periods return to the normal six to eight hours.

At the same time, to deal with emergencies, they established three levels of decision-making authority.

From low to high, they are routine issues, issues requiring capital investment, and even issues involving legal risks.

For the first two, Zhou Kuang directly delegated power to Feng Qi. As long as he thought there was no problem, he could execute the decision first and report to the emperor later.

The latter is something Zhou Kuang must intervene in.

But basically, Zhou Kuang will stay in the "Youming Shanhai" team, and he even brought spare clothes and bedding.

In the seven days since the release date, he had no plans to go back, and relied on the gym near the office building for washing and brushing teeth.

Don’t worry about dirty clothes, just go to the nearest dry cleaner to pick them up.

There is no need to worry about meals. You can simply open the "Have You Eaten" and "Meiyuan" takeaway apps on your mobile phone and dine in the "Shaxuan Snacks" downstairs.

It's quite a life.

So Feng Qi could basically find Zhou Kuang within ten minutes, and the two of them would discuss and then make a decision.

Normally, Zhou Kuangda can just be the boss and let things go. After all, Feng Qi is here to watch over him, so he feels very relieved.

But if he doesn't even want to give a try to such an important project as "The Netherworld", then he should just go home and go to bed as soon as possible.

The sales of three million copies from this pre-sale alone is enough for him to rest easy for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, his aspirations were much higher than this.

Moreover, it is not to say that Zhou Kuang's decision-making ability is better than Feng Qi or others, but some decisions must be made by him.

For example, if a game encounters a major technical failure and requires technical personnel to spend a long time troubleshooting, should you choose to wait for an unknown period of time for the repair, or choose to directly roll back the version?

For such a major decision, Zhou Kuang is the only one in the company who is qualified to take responsibility.

They also prepared two rollback versions, one is v1.0 and the other is v1.0.1.

Version v1.0 is the most stable version, and even many modifications made by the "Youming Shanhai" production team in the last month have not been added.

If there is a major technical failure that cannot be resolved in a short period of time, Zhou Kuang will immediately have people roll back to this version and let players use this version after the update.

After all, this version is not unplayable.

If it is just a minor problem, you can also roll to v1.0.1 version first, which is very close to the final release version, but a little more stable.

The official version they released was directly the v1.0.2 version of the game. If there are no major problems, they will continue to move forward according to this version number.

As time slowly passed, the sun slowly rose from the east, and the morning sunlight shone on the tall buildings in the city, while the employees of Megvii Games were still busy making final preparations.

At this time, Feng Qi was busy in the office, and Zhou Kuang walked over.

He tapped lightly on the other person's desk to attract Feng Qi's attention.

"Old Feng, how's it going? Any issues with the pre-download feedback?"

Feng Qi raised his head and subconsciously pushed his glasses. His eyes behind the frames were slightly red, which seemed to be caused by overuse.

"There seems to be no problem at the moment. The pre-load volume has been steadily increasing, and we expect even more people to download it once players wake up."

Zhou Kuang nodded after hearing this. The release date of "Nether Mountain and Sea" - April 4th, they deliberately chose a Saturday so that players can freely manage their time and play games.

Office workers who go home tired on Friday night may not have the energy to preload the game, so it is entirely possible that they will download it temporarily after getting up this morning.

"What about public opinion in the player community?"

"No problem, basically they're just urging us to unlock the game quickly, there's nothing negative about it."

After listening to this, Zhou Kuang nodded and walked to the window. The sun had risen and people were gradually coming out of their homes.

Some elderly people living in nearby residential areas get up early and take walks nearby for exercise.

The roads on the office building side are wide. When it is not working hours or on weekends, there are few pedestrians and traffic on the street, so there will be elderly people walking from the residential area into the park for a walk.

The security guard at the door never stopped us, as if there was some special tacit understanding between the two sides.

Zhou Kuang looked at the gradually bustling streets nearby and thoughtfully warned, "We can't be careless. The public opinion before and after the release is completely different. This is just the last calm before the storm."

"Players' expectations for our game are too high. Even though we haven't done anything to raise the temperature, as soon as we open our mouths, players' expectations will automatically rise."

Fortunately, the score of 68 on M site and the acceptable review of points given by IGN have greatly cooled down the popularity of their game.

Zhou Kuang sighed.

In this case, he should thank these media!
After all, if Zhou Kuang himself, or the official Kuangshi Games, said this, it would be pure depressing talk. "We must not make any mistakes, otherwise I can't imagine what the players will say about Netherworld Mountain and Sea."

Feng Qi listened attentively and obviously agreed very much.

"I understand. Lao Wu and Lao Xu are watching over the technical and programming teams. The phones of the other programmers at home are also turned on 24 hours a day, so they can log in remotely at any time."

Zhou Kuang nodded, gave Feng Qi a few more instructions, and then came to the programming team.

He saw the programmers staring at the screen, concentrating on their work, and he felt very emotional.

In the next 72 hours, they will probably be the most tired.

As ten o'clock in the morning gradually approached, the entire office area of ​​​​Meishi Games was surrounded by a tense and expectant atmosphere, and the air seemed to be filled with the smell of gunpowder of an impending war.

As employees began to watch the clock on the wall more and more frequently, the moment that would determine the fate of Netherworld was approaching.

It will embark on a thorny road full of difficulties and obstacles, and face the most rigorous tests from players around the world.

Will it be glorious or eclipsed in the end?
The outcome will soon become clear.

……

……

……

I am not the game master A, referred to as "master A", I am an up-host on Bilibili who specializes in action games.

He really likes an old game, an action hack-and-slash game called Bloody Dungeon.

There is basically no plot in the game. The protagonist goes to a dark and damp dungeon and kills all kinds of weird and ugly monsters.

Goblins, skeletons, bat monsters, countless of them.

This game is at least ten years old, and the graphics are so outdated that they can't be more outdated.

This game has an extremely small circle in China, and the total number of players across the country who have played this game may not exceed a few thousand.

Expert A basically only makes speedrun guides for "Bloody Dungeon". It can be said that no one in the world understands this game better than him.

There used to be someone abroad who could compete with him in speedrunning records, but ever since Master A improved the world speedrunning record by more than 20 seconds at a time, the other person gave up.

From then on, he became Dugu Qiubai.

Master A's obsession with "Bloody Dungeon" stems from its unique sense of attack and exquisite level design, which is a kind of charm that is missing in many new-generation fast-food games.

Coupled with the game's art style and monster design that suits his aesthetic, and perhaps some childhood memories, he became addicted to "Bloody Dungeon" for a long time.

He is not the kind of nostalgic player who only plays old games. It can even be said that he has played as many modern games as anyone else, but no game can really capture his heart.

After playing these games, even after completing them, he would only feel a sense of boredom.

Was it fun? It was alright, but he felt like he was in love with a soulless body.

This kind of thing is generally not used to describe playing games, but is used in other places.

But that’s what Master A thinks.

Therefore, he would eventually return to his daily routine of live streaming Bloody Dungeon every time.

Although the audience is pitifully small, there are always regular fans who come to support every live broadcast.

Someone asked him if he could make money by live streaming like this?

His answer was: Make a fool of yourself!

If his family didn't have two houses and he didn't plan to find a partner, he would have starved to death long ago given his lack of work.

But when he first saw the actual gameplay trailer of "Netherworld Mountain and Sea", he felt inexplicably familiar.

That day, Master A stopped recording the tutorial guide for "Bloody Dungeon" for the first time.

Yes, he is still trying to attract people to this circle and making strategies, but unfortunately, the number of people in the circle is getting smaller and smaller.

He typed a line of words on the B station dynamics.

"Brothers, do you know "Netherworld Mountains and Seas"?"

Soon, several old fans saw the post and replied.

"Hey! Old A, you saw that game too."

"Play, play hard, I think it's fun"

"I don't have time to play anymore. I have to earn money for milk powder, and now I basically have no interest in playing games..."

These three are all the comments in his comment section.

Apart from a middle-aged man's miserable confession, the remaining two people hoped that he could live broadcast the game.

So, expert A followed the official account of the "Youming Shanhai" production team on Bilibili, bought the deluxe edition of the game, and even left a message under the speed pass event.

Today, he finally waited for the game to be released.

At half past nine, he sent a notification and started the live broadcast, but there were only a dozen old acquaintances in the live broadcast room, and it was almost unpopular.

As soon as the game unlocking time arrived at ten o'clock, he opened "Netherworld Mountain and Sea" from the Steam platform on time.

As soon as the game was opened, the logo of Megvii Games and the logo of Unreal Engine appeared on the screen.

Although it was just a beginning, the expectations of Master A were raised again.

After being rendered by the engine, the three-dimensional logo of Megvii Games has a metallic luster, which looks very textured.

"Fun..."

Expert A muttered to himself, not even realizing that he was repeating the "must" in the first half of the sentence in his mind.

"Is Old A stupid? What's so funny? Didn't a logo just flash by?"

"Shut up, Old A finally likes other games, so please say less (funny)"

"I understand. Old A is casting a spell. Don't you know where he's from? He's casting a spell to make the game more fun."

"People in this state are offended."

After expert A came to the start menu, he habitually clicked on the settings page.

(End of this chapter)