Game Making: Start By Healing the Player

A restaurant in the Capital City.

Chen Xu was having a hot pot with Ruan Ningxue and Yang Xin.

Beef, tripe, beef louver, beef buns ……

If your hot pot doesn’t have beef, can it still be called hot pot?

“Great God, you’re incredible! The industry is having a meltdown, and the players are absolutely in love!” Yang Xin, who was introduced to Chen Xu, wasted no time in trying to cozy up to him. 

She was excitedly checking her phone for news about the game.

“Please Sister Xin, you are too kind. I can’t be considered that great right now, just call me by name.” Chen Xu waved his hand with a smile.

While she spoke highly of the game, Chen Xu thought it was a bit exaggerated. He remained down-to-earth, understanding that the success of ‘Mirror’ was mostly centered around small, close-knit communities of perverted gamers. 

As for the rest of the industry?

At most, it has made a splash in the indie scene, the kind of splash that doesn’t make many waves.

Chen Xu is very clear on this point.

“I feel like I shouldn’t have said 50,000.” Next to her, Ruan Ningxue spoke up, but with a smile on her face.

Hearing this, Chen Xu put down his chopsticks and smiled, “This can’t be helped, you can’t take it back now.”

“Ugh… I thought I would be able to invite you to my company. But now, it seems like it just isn’t meant to be.” Yang Xin let out a disappointed sigh. 

“Save it, don’t drag my schoolmate down with you, those three games of yours got worse with each release!” Ruan Ningxue casually sank a knife into her friend’s back.

“Now hold on just a second there. While those games failed, there were legitimate reasons, ok? I was only responsible for the plot structure and storylines, everything else was out of my hands.

The plot was always one of the few things my reviewers liked!” Yang Xin said, trying to salvage what was left of her pride. 

“By the way, Chen Xu. I was hoping to ask you. What do you think about my company’s past games, what do you think went wrong?”

Chen Xu took a moment to look up her games and watch some videos of their gameplay. He understood almost immediately, “Two problems, genre and system bloat.”

“Hmm ……?” Yang Xin was a bit confused.

“Sister Xin, your company keeps trying to cram every genre into a single game, but you are also making a low-cost indie game.

So while it has everything, it’s also bad at everything, because none of the systems have much depth, they can only be side dishes, but never the main course.” 

Hearing Chen Xu’s words, Yang Xin nodded hesitantly, not quite understanding. She was confused, but too embarrassed to ask any further so as not to change the cheerful atmosphere.

“Thanks for the insight, so what are your plans?”

“I guess I’m going to start my own little gaming company.” Chen Xu smiled, not keeping it a secret. 

“Start your own company?” Yang Xin was a bit surprised.

Chen Xu nodded as he poured more tea for everyone.

After a moment of silence, Yang Xin made up her mind and said, “Chen Xu, what do you think of me? Can I join?”

Her heart still burned passionately for making games, but the string of failures was discouraging.

But now she understood.

Is it a problem that you can’t be a game designer and make a successful game on your own?

No, not really!

It’s just that she hasn’t found a way to succeed yet. Finding a solid thigh to cling onto, that’s a recipe for success too, right?

Before meeting Chen Xu, she took the time to study ‘Mirror’. 

She came to the conclusion that this game was not a fluke. 

And after she heard what Chen Xu had to say about her three games, she gained some understanding, but not a lot, not enough to satisfy her. 

But there was one thing she could be sure of, and that was that this first-time game designer, her best friend’s schoolmate, was something special. He had the potential to become someone great!

In the past, there have been game designers who had a moment of brilliant inspiration, created a game of excellent quality, and then faded into obscurity after failing to repeat the success.

But there also exist game designers who have a clear vision of what they want to create, and what they want to achieve.

Yang Xu felt certain that Chen Xu was such a person.

After her past failures, she understood her own limits as well. She needed help to get past them. 

Listening to Yang Xin’s words, Chen Xu fell into thought.

He did some more searching, looking up more information about these three games.

And what she said was true, even the negative reviews highlighted the plot of these games as a bright spot, tarnished by poor gameplay decisions and directions. 

He had big plans for the future, and he knew he couldn’t rely on himself for everything. Sure, he could control the direction of the plot and the major beats of the story. 

But what about the minute details? The assembling and connecting of smaller side stories and threads? It would not be realistic to do it alone, even with the help of the system. 

In his previous world, Red Dead Redemption 2 was considered a masterpiece, and he obviously hopes to make games of that caliber in the future. 

But the final script for RDR2 was around 2000 pages long, and if you add in the script for side content and additional dialogue, you could pile it all up and it would be 8 feet tall.

For a small game like Mirror, he could do it all by himself. But if he wanted to go big, he would need the help of talented people. And this Yang Xin girl might be one of those people.

“Of course there is no problem, Sister Xin, if you are serious about this, we can talk about it after I finish setting up the company”.

“No problem, then I will wait for the good news, Chen Xu!” Yang Xin said.

“Alright, alright, if you don’t eat, I’ll finish all the beef.” Next to him, Ruan Ningxue spoke up.

“Ningxue, why not join up too? With our combined skills, we can definitely make it big! This time for real!” Yang Xi looked at Ningxue with expectant eyes. 

Ruan Ningxue sipped absentmindedly from a small carton of milk without answering.

“By the way, how long do you expect ‘Mirror’ to trend? Do you think it can hit a million sales by the end of the month?” Yang Xin turned to her future boss and started to speculate. 

“Half of that, maybe. But it’s not likely to surpass that number.” Chen Xu said with a smile. 

He understands that the limitations of an 18R game are simply too great.

The three of them ate and drank inside the shop, and around nine o’clock Chen Xu sent the two ladies back to their respective neighborhoods before taking a taxi home.