Chapter 10 Beyond the Game
The first day of the National Day holiday, one o'clock in the afternoon.
The first batch of 300 (actually only 299) closed beta test qualifications posted on the official website have all been claimed.
Yang Qiu, who was busy writing the task text, took a look at the 290 helmets that had been ordered, and then looked at the "game world" where only three players were having fun... After thinking for a while, he used the real-time conductivity provided by the mental imprint matrix to issue an announcement to the three "online" players as an online GM:
After picking up the lost clothes, the three players who were groping around in Exile Town to complete the task saw two rows of yellow words appear in front of them at the same time:
"Today's closed beta test will end in ten minutes of game time. Online players are requested to return to the safe area of the resurrection point and log off in time."
"If you do not choose to log off in a safe area, your player data (equipment, items, etc.) may be lost."
The three players cursed in unison: "What the hell?!"
"How come the server is shut down after only playing for such a short time... What the hell?! We've been playing for almost six hours?" Qin Guan, a heavy player, cursed loudly. He was shocked when he looked at the game time. "We've been online for so long? Is this true? Why do I feel like we've only been playing for a short time?"
"Yeah, it feels like I've only played for three or four hours, and I haven't had enough fun yet." Fellow heavy gamer was also dissatisfied with the medicine I was given.
"Well... we did play for quite a while." The casual player said in a fair manner, "After we died and logged in, it took us more than half an hour to avoid the rat and retrieve the clothes. Then we ran around everywhere in the novice town and completed four tasks given by the zombie NPCs. Now we have completed the fifth task."
"Yeah, that's right." He said suddenly after giving me the medicine, "My potential has increased a little, to 43."
"Yeah, mine has also increased a little, to 49." Miaobishenghua was very happy when he mentioned this special advantage of his. "When we died, the numerical description was updated online. When the potential reaches 50, it can be upgraded to level 1. I am just a little bit short."
"Both of you have improved your potential but mine hasn't! I'm still 37! Damn it, I won't accept this!" Qin Guan was so angry that he jumped to his feet.
"It's okay, it's okay. You will definitely increase your rank if you do more quests given by the NPCs." The two of them hurriedly comforted the unlucky old man and walked towards the resurrection point with the quest props given by the NPCs. "When the server is launched later, let's make an appointment to go online together and do quests together. Even if we have only reached level one, we will accompany you until you reach the next level."
Qin Guanhe, needless to say, has played a lot of games on the market like Miao Bi Sheng Hua for non-enthusiastic gamers. If it were ordinary games, they would be very impatient to do tasks - it is really boring to control the little man on the screen to run around and fight monsters repeatedly. No matter how good the plot is, they will get bored after two hours.
But "Another World" is different. This kind of high-tech game that immerses you completely is very novel when it comes to scenery you have never seen or things you have never done before. If they hadn't been scared by the big rat, Sanbao would have probably run out of the Exile Town and had fun around the world.
Returning to the earthen platform that served as the birth point, resurrection point, and offline point, the three people who had already exchanged real-life contact information said goodbye to each other and logged off one after another.
The skeleton characters of Yang Qiu and the other three players sank into the underground tomb under the earth platform... uh, space. They immediately closed the mental imprint matrix and the space-time rift that physically connected the servers on both sides. They hurried out and distributed helmets to the players who had paid.
"The mental imprint matrix is fine, as it can be opened anywhere. The physical connection between the two servers is more troublesome...but if it is not connected, the screenshots and videos recorded by players during the game cannot be downloaded from the earth at any time." In the intervals between shipping, Yang Qiu was thinking about the problems that would arise after the game was normally launched.
The server he bought did not need to provide computing power for the game. It was purely used as a transit station for uploading and downloading screenshots and videos. In order for this transit station to be able to transfer files instantly, the space-time rift must be kept open.
The space-time rift must not be exposed or known to anyone else. During the time when the space-time rift is open, he must stay nearby...
Then the question comes back again, he only disguised the magical world as a game, but he couldn't really turn the world into a game; to increase the game content and expand the space that players can explore, he must personally lay the groundwork and do the disguise work. Where does he find the time to stay in the computer room all the time?
"… Let's use the plan we've considered. The screenshots and videos that players take in the game will be stored in the 'Personal Log' panel disguised as the 'Spiritual Imprint'. When the player returns to the resurrection point and logs off, the contents of the 'Personal Log' will be uploaded to the server there at the same time."
"If you don't return to the resurrection point and log off, then we won't care... Well, this can be counted as 'abnormal log off leading to data loss', which is a personal problem of the player."
"If I want to download it from Earth... I have to wait one day in real time before I can finish downloading. In this way, I can open the space-time rift once a day and transfer the information stored on the server over there through physical connection to the server here. Opening space-time rifts less often can also reduce the risk of exposure."
Players will definitely be dissatisfied if they cannot download the pictures and videos they uploaded on Earth at any time... But it's not a big problem. There is no game in the world with 100% user satisfaction!
All 290 helmets were sent out via SF Express. More than half of the first day of the National Day holiday had passed, and it was dark when Yang Qiu returned to the rented suburban computer room.
Thinking about the problems exposed in today's first test, such as thin game content, imperfect task system, and lack of functional NPCs, Yang Qiu thought about it and decided to end this closed internal test and postpone the next internal test to two days later.
After posting the announcement of the postponement of the internal test on the official website, Yang Qiu put some daily necessities into the space ring, which opened the space-time rift and headed for the magic plane.
On the other hand, the three first test players who had been eagerly refreshing the official website since they went offline, as well as the other six players who missed the closed beta test, waited until 8 pm to receive the announcement of the delayed launch, and they all cursed in unison...
Qin Guan didn't even have the energy to edit the second video, and went to bed early in a huff.
Maybe it was because he played games for more than seven hours (game time) and waited anxiously for an entire afternoon, but Qin Guan’s sleep quality was very good that night and he slept until the morning of the 2nd.
Qin Guan was lying on the bed with sleepy eyes playing with his mobile phone. As soon as he turned it on, he found that the messages on all the social software apps installed on his phone had turned into 99.
Qin Guan clicked on them one by one in bewilderment...
A few minutes later, Qin Guan, who played with his phone for at least half an hour every day before getting out of bed, sat up suddenly and cursed loudly: "Fuck it!!"
One day later, the VR new game recommendation video released by Qin Guan was spread by enthusiastic netizens in various game groups, game forums, and discussion areas, and it has caused a sensation among domestic players.
Before, when Yang Qiu used his own small account to post promotional articles everywhere, he also promoted the three real-life promotional videos on the official website. However, the scenes in the videos were too "movie-like" and did not look like game scenes that could be made with the technological level of the 21st century. Naturally, the majority of domestic players labeled it as a "scam game that can only be presented with promotional CG" and did not give him a good face at all.
Of course, we can't blame the players for being suspicious, but there are just too many such things - the product is not what was advertised, the CG and the game are completely different worlds, movie screenshots and CG animations are used as promotions, and players are deceived into downloading, but when they log in, they end up seeing either the XX version of Legend or twin versions of web games. The unscrupulous domestic game companies have done this a lot.
Some games that are made more conscientiously will even be used as material libraries by these unscrupulous peers. Not to mention stealing your CG, I will just use your character modeling, your scenes, and your designed costumes. Even if the production is not as conscientious as yours and the modeling is a thousand times rougher than yours, as long as I can trick players into paying, then I have the ability.
It was not until Qin Guan and his group of faithful players paid to play the game and released the actual in-game video that the players who had once angrily criticized Yang Qiu's alt-account suddenly realized what was going on and hurriedly set up an official website... But it was too late, as all 300 internal test qualifications had been taken.
Some players are willing to wait patiently for the production team to release new accounts, while other impatient players are not so calm and start posting messages on the official website message board, offering to buy back the internal test accounts at high prices...
From this perspective, it seems to be a good thing. "Another World", which had only three pitiful people online during the first closed beta test, seems to be going to be popular. And Qin Guan, the first UP host to release the real-life video of "Another World", is also on the rise. Not only has his fans exceeded 100,000 overnight, but he is heading straight for 200,000.
But things on the Internet... there is never just one voice. As Qin Guan's video spread wildly among the player community and his ID Vanilla Pudding was remembered by more and more players, discordant voices also emerged...
First, a well-known anchor in the gaming circle questioned during a live broadcast that the 20-minute video released by Qin Guan was suspected of being fake, a gimmick, and false marketing - who knows if the UP host Vanilla Pudding colluded with the gaming company, stole the footage from some foreign blockbuster, and used dubbing, editing, and post-production to create such a fake video to deceive people?
The reasons for the doubts are also very valid: everyone who has played VR games knows how the game has developed globally; to construct a small scene that is not too conspicuous and fake, the R&D department of a large company has to work overtime and painstakingly.
You are a completely unknown fake production team both internationally and domestically. The fake games you produced don't even have a batch number, and you have to rely on the banner of independent games to fool players. Yet you dare to say that your games have the black technology that can beat the world's top game publishers. If this is not the scam of the century, then what is the scam of the century?
With such a serious anchor standing up and confronting the issue head-on, others will naturally follow suit... Qin Guan opened the Live Broadcast Station APP and saw several videos mocking him on the homepage...
"What the hell is going on!" Qin Guan angrily closed the app and opened Weibo instead.
Not to mention the comments and private messages, there are thousands of @messages about him.
Qin Guan trembled as he clicked on the @his message...and found that many of the @his messages pointed to a long Weibo post.
Qin Guan swallowed his saliva and clicked on the long Weibo post.
After only two minutes of watching, he fell back onto the bed with a bang, his head bouncing on the pillow.
This long Weibo post is very well written. The blogger used a very novel angle to analyze the inference of the "Alien" game using Luckin Coffee's routine, and his words were very logical:
First, they used a low-cost fraudulent method to hype up a large-scale, epoch-making VR game in China that attracted a lot of attention before it was officially launched.
Secondly, the company or enterprise that owns the game and the black-tech VR technology represented by the game should be listed in a large city with a thriving international financial industry, such as London, New York, or Singapore.
Then, they just keep the popularity of the game "Alien World" and the black technology VR technology represented by the game in China, the world's second largest economy, while at the same time, they make big promises and tell big stories to fool investors in the capital world and cut leeks from the Western world...
At the end of the long Weibo post, the blogger also seemed to be reasonable and expressed his disagreement with the doubters' attack on the UP host Vanilla Pudding. He believed that Vanilla Pudding was just an insignificant little figure in this big game. Everyone should just despise Vanilla Pudding's behavior of being an accomplice to the evil and taking any lousy money. What everyone should do is to boycott the game production team of "Alien World" that treats Chinese players like monkeys, and stop giving heat to this fraudulent game...
This long Weibo post was posted at 10 o'clock last night. When Qin Guan saw it 11 hours later, it had been forwarded tens of thousands of times and received thousands of comments.
There are thousands of private messages and comments cursing Qin Guan on his Weibo.
Qin Guan had never suffered such injustice in his life. He was so angry that he felt weak all over and shivered with tears: "What the hell is this? If the game is real or fake , you can go and take a look. You can't wait two days and rush to criticize me?!"
Before he could recover from being scolded by a stranger, a friend who used to play a game with him called him.
"Brother Qin, I saw your message in the group yesterday and I took out this month's living expenses to buy helmets for the brothers in the studio. You know that my life is very difficult. Now in the studio, only those who use hacking and scripting can make money. People like us who honestly make money manually can barely make ends meet... You won't lie to me, right?"
Qin Guan endured the grievance and advised: "Xiao Zhou, others don't know who I am, but you don't know? Those people outside are just making up nonsense, saying that I am the same as the production team of "Alien World". That's not the case at all... This game is really of high quality and will definitely be popular in the future. It's not easy for us to make money. Even if I cheat others, I won't cheat you, right?"
After comforting his good friend, Qin Guan was still feeling aggrieved when he received a call from another studio.
"Fuck, you are so mean. You hooked up with a big boss who has the ability to cut foreign leeks, why don't you lend a hand to your brothers? You eat the meat and your brothers drink the soup. It's ok. Introduce someone to me—"
"There's really no need to buy that helmet! You'd better apply for a refund as soon as possible!" Qin Guan roared and hung up the phone.
On the other side, the studio boss who wanted to "do big things" made a sound of "Puh", and cursed and told his subordinates to contact the players who were looking for the internal test qualification , and sell the helmet as soon as possible while there were still fools to take it...
