Chapter 1: A game with no recharge page?_1

Midsummer, with a scorching high of 40 degrees, it happened to be noon.

The asphalt was mercilessly baked by the sun until it couldn't take it anymore and began to secrete sticky tar.

At this heatwave junction that everyone eagerly tried to avoid,

Ke Jin was running in his sharp suit with a briefcase in hand, his face drenched with sweat and a joy he couldn't hide.

To the unknowing, it might seem as though he had been hired by a Fortune 500 company.

In reality, this was Ke Jin's 100th interview failure.

Within three months of graduating from college, as a game design major, he had frantically interviewed with 100 game companies, only to be uniformly rejected every time.

Rather than getting discouraged by his repeated defeats, Ke Jin grew even more elated and increasingly energetic.

The number of interviews went from two a day to five, and even seven!

His behavior made his family, including his parents and younger sister, wonder if he had been driven mad by all the rejections, and they even discreetly discussed taking him to see a psychologist.

Nearly running out of breath, Ke Jin skilfully took out his keys and unlocked the door to his home.

Upon entering, he could immediately see a young girl dressed in cool clothes, wearing only a tank top, lying comfortably on the living room couch, her delicate and fair little feet raised high, swinging back and forth resting on her other knee.

Ke Jin quickly glanced at the TV in the living room, which was showing content that perfectly matched his stereotype of high school girls – an ancient costume idol drama starring several young male actors whose names he couldn't recall.

It was simple: they acted, and the high school girls swooned.

After walking past the couch, Ke Jin took out a bottle of soda from the refrigerator, gulped down several mouthfuls, and let out a relieved burp.

"Mr. Ke, did the interview go well?" came a childish, languid voice from the couch, mixed with the sound of the television commercials.

Ke Yu listlessly got up, her arms lazily hooked over the back of the couch, and kneed on the sofa, gazing at her brother's beaming face.

"No."

"I really can't understand why a man who has been rejected by companies 100 times straight out of college can smile like this after yet another interview failure." Ke Yu, although failing to snap her fingers, still clamored, "Get me one too."

"I only have half a bottle left."

"Ew, that's all your saliva…" Ke Yu said with a look of disgust.

"Nonsense, I licked it clean."

Ke Yu: "..."

Ke Jin casually pulled over a chair and sat down, speaking earnestly, "Here's the thing, I just realized that working for others is a dead end!"

"So?"

"I plan to start my own business."

"Good idea, do you have any money?"

"You've got some pocket money saved up, right? It could be our startup capital."

"Do you have any human resources?"

"You just finished your high school exams, it's summer vacation; you could work as my temp."

"Oh," Ke Yu nodded, half-understandingly, "So, what you're saying is I fund your venture, then I work for you, and in the end, you pay me a salary with my own money?"

"Bright and insightful, quick on the uptake," Ke Jin nodded in approval, a look of recognition in his eyes.

"Even a slave driver would cry and bow to you as a great master," Ke Yu, squeezing a pillow in her hands, was about to throw it when she heard Ke Jin say.

"Talking is useless, bring a flashlight to my room. After hearing my grand business plan, I guarantee it'll enlighten you!"

"So the flashlight's what's going to be doing the enlightening, huh?"

"It might also be my grand plan!" The main reason Ke Jin was so confident about starting a business was this.

He was a transmigrator.

Three months ago, he had crossed over from Earth to the parallel world he was currently in, Blue Star.

Here, the development in other aspects was more or less the same as in his previous life on Earth.

However, the development of the gaming industry seemed to go off on a tangent, and it was becoming more and more skewed.

As of today, every single game on the market falls into the heavy-microtransaction category without exception.

Every time you open any game, a dazzling array of microtransaction pages pop up like concubines vying for favor, ranging from a 1-yuan first-time purchase to a 64,800-yuan double deal, offering every denomination you could think of.

What they all lack, however, is gameplay.

Even if the gameplay of all the hottest games in this world can't be described as game-changing, they could still be considered brain teasers.

The mainstream gameplay one glance reveals is all very simple: turn-based combat, puzzle matching, box pushing, Minesweeper, and the like.

Combine that with gorgeous character drawings and character designs and voice-overs that precisely capture the players' sweet spots, and you'll ignite the players' desire to spend.

After deeply immersing himself for a while, Ke Jin came to only one conclusion—they could just as easily rob us, yet they've gone to the trouble of making games for us to play.

Delving into the reasons, Ke Jin had given it some careful thought.

He realized that people on Blue Star lead lives at a pace that is too fast, with pressures even greater than those of people in his previous life.

With such immense pressure, of course, one naturally seeks indulgence and stress relief.

Besides the physical form of stress relief, there is a parallel need for cooling down the mind.

Therefore, the games on Blue Star, whether it's spending money to buy a virtual wife character.

Or the numerical strengths that come immediately with microtransactions.

Both have become the top choices for everyone seeking to unwind.

The consumer philosophy of "either don't play at all or pay up if you do play" is also deeply ingrained in every Blue Star native's mind.

It's as natural as eating when you're hungry.

As a native Earthling who had experienced numerous games acclaimed as masterpieces of the "Ninth Art," Ke Jin naturally couldn't accept such a poor gaming environment on Blue Star.

Fortunately, according to the "mandatory system theory" for transmigrators.

Ke Jin also had his own unique system.

Free Game Production System

The usage of the system was very simple.

As long as the games he produced passed the system's evaluation and a time limit was given, with not a single player spending any money within that period.

Then Ke Jin would receive an ultimate gift package—Earth Game Collection Schemes Compendium

This package contained the perfect design plans for all games from the original world and included a series of perfect optimization codes.

When the time came, Ke Jin could develop whatever game he wanted, set whatever price he wished, no longer restricted by the system.

And what he experienced would be the optimized, flawless version.

As someone who was both a game enthusiast and a money enthusiast in his previous life, the lure of future wealth rivaling nations, or the perfect gaming experience, was like a pair of seventeen or eighteen-year-old twin sisters, beautiful beyond measure, insisting on being your girlfriends—it was irresistible.

However, there was an initial unlocking condition for this system.

It required Ke Jin to accumulate 100 pieces of work experience in the gaming industry.

As the saying goes, a master's reputation is not unfounded; just being good at playing games definitely won't cut it, you have to at least know a thing or two, right?

Ke Jin wasn't shy about it; with a quick thought, he directly exploited a bug in the system.

He discovered that every interview, whether successful or not, counted as one work experience.

He simply went ahead and, in a short two months, acted deaf and mute in front of a bunch of HRs, successfully speed-ran the process, and unlocked the system.

And he was rewarded with a newcomer's gift package, which opened up to reveal a niche single-player game from his previous life with a rather unique playstyle.

Once he had the game in hand, the first thing Ke Jin did was rush back home at lightning speed, ready to start his own small game studio!

The water should not flow into outsiders' fields, the game resources he held in his hands, any one of which, if released, would be a blockbuster, would not be given away easily.

Ke Jin had also arranged the studio situation.

Economically strapped in the early stages, he would first act as the game producer, the planner, the promoter, and be the paid posters. His own younger sister, Ke Yu, was particularly talented in art, and right after the college entrance exams, she was preemptively recruited by a top domestic art college. Her voice was also good, soft without being shrill, sweet without being piercing.

She could just help him out part-time with art and voice work.

All set!

"As long as the players don't spend any money, I can get the ultimate reward? Ha, that's easy, I just won't make a recharge page," Ke Jin strategized excitedly in his heart.