To ascend, I had no choice but to create games

Many small indie games took this as an opportunity to promote their games, further boosting the popularity of the site and steering its growth towards becoming a comprehensive forum.

Logically, as the forum grew in scale, it would inevitably face issues like hacking attacks, flame wars, verbal combats, or orchestrated controversies, but the site’s managers seemed very experienced. They patrolled the forum around the clock, and whenever they spotted something amiss, they immediately intervened, nipping potential troubles in the bud.

As a result, the atmosphere of discussion on the site was quite pleasant. Moreover, Game Inn had no plans to bring in advertisements or capital investment, which made the forum very pure and comfortable, and Liuzi’s favorite forum to browse recently.

While browsing through the “I Am The Director” sub-forum, he noticed discussions on “I Am The Director” were flourishing, with some users starting to compile the game’s random events and others steadily improving various combinations.

Some even collected different combination animations; while most were conventional, the quirky ones were quite entertaining.

Others had noticed loopholes in the salary system and proposed their ideas. However, their theories were just speculation for now, not yet put into practice like Liuzi had done.

Their understanding of the game was not as deep as his, nor did they recognize the important aspects of capital operation in simulation management when playing.

Thus, although they figured out a solution, because they couldn’t manage it properly, the outcomes were actually worse than playing the game normally.

Just as Liuzi was aimlessly browsing the forum, a post suddenly caught his eye.

“‘I Am The Director,’ the great reveal of Evildoer tactics!”

The author was a player named Xiemen Waidao.

Seeing who the author was, Liuzi frowned, wondering what kind of mischief the other party had concocted this time.

Some people naturally get along well together, while others just don’t.

Liuzi felt that he and Xiemen Waidao must have been sworn enemies in a past life, and he still couldn’t stand the sight of the other party in this life.

They had never met, but they had exchanged verbal blows on the forum.

He disapproved of the other’s habit of searching for bugs for amusement and disrupting the game’s environment, while the other disdained him for being old-fashioned and rigid, content with playing by the book.

This, perhaps, was the difference between hardcore gamers and those who played for fun.

However, despite his dislike for Xiemen Waidao, Liuzi had to admit that the guy thought fast and had a sharp gaming sense, often discovering peculiar things and managing to win through inexplicable means.

Of course, sometimes he was so unorthodox that it made one wonder whether he was actually playing the game or playing around with the game.

In the recent game of “The Supreme One,” he had achieved the extremely difficult title of “Number One Evil Person Under The Heavens” through various outrageous methods.

And through a comprehensive post he wrote later, other players discovered that although the title was notorious, this fellow managed to play in a way that others quite enjoyed.

Committing acts of infamy yet earning a good reputation, true to the name Xiemen Waidao.

With curiosity, Liuzi clicked on the post and his heart skipped a beat.

Inside, Xiemen Waidao posted a screenshot of his endgame.

From the data in the screenshot, he had obtained the right to direct the Spring Festival Gala by the 18th year, three years later than Liuzi, but still an impressive achievement.

What surprised him most wasn’t this but the list of employees at the end.

His employees were all from the early stage of the game, meaning he only hired those initial staff members and didn’t hire anyone else afterwards.

Low-star employees tended to have poor quality and growth potential. Bringing them up required a lot of resources, not possible with a normal playthrough.

Moreover, these employees seemed to have aged somewhat, but because their stamina attributes were well-developed, they looked quite spirited, each with a cheerful smile on their face.

Compared to the lifeless, zombie-like state of his own employees by the end, Liuzi grew even more puzzled.

How did he manage that?

Could it be that he found a cheat?

However, upon reading the main text, Liuzi discovered that the method used by the other party was exceptionally simple.

It was the save/load tactic that every player would use.

“I Am The Director” is a rare game by Fang Cheng Studio that allows saving progress.

The game would present random events at intervals, some of which could be a kind of gambling minigame. Guess wrong and you lose everything, guess right and your principal doubles.

Some had researched and found that the game had a high probability of a random event occurring once a month, so all one needed to do was save at the beginning of the month, then wait for the random event to occur.

Quietly calculating the funds needed to train these employees, Liuzi realized that the other party might have reloaded saves thousands of times.

By repeatedly loading and gambling, then loading and gambling again, Xiemen Waidao could start with a massive amount of money and then play however he wanted.

All that could be said was that it was truly befitting of a player like Xiemen Waidao, who belonged to the most unorthodox category, spending tens of hours loading saves—he was the only kind of person who could do such a thing.

This approach was a classic shortcut and one of Liuzi’s least favorite gaming methods.

However, seeing the happy smiles of his employees, Liuzi felt a pang of envy out of the blue.

Perhaps, it wouldn’t hurt to load from a save a few times in the early stage to increase the funds a bit…

Dispelling this dangerous thought, Liuzi pondered for a moment and then decided to write out his own guide.

It had nothing to do with spreading his own gaming philosophy; he just wanted to smack Xiemen Waidao in the face.

Not long after his post went up, it attracted a bunch of players to watch and leave comments. The sudden boost in popularity was automatically detected by the forum and consequently topped and featured in the hot section.

Whether intentional or accidental, his post was placed right next to Xiemen Waidao’s, allowing players to see both posts as soon as they entered and make comparisons.

One required manual loading, the other had no conscience. Soon, two factions of players began to amicably discuss in each other’s threads, occasionally resulting in heated expletives and being thrown into the “little black room.”

Just when everyone thought that these were the only two ways to play the game, a third post appeared representing a third school of thought.

“Some package tactics summary for ‘I Am The Director.’ You all can have a look. Personally tested it, leading the Spring Festival Gala by the 20th year is no problem.”

The poster was Pingping, a moderately popular YouTuber at the moment and the beloved mascot (in a positive sense) of the “Botanic Garden” player community.

This sister was beautiful and kind-hearted. Despite being disabled in both legs, she was optimistic, cheerful, talented, and watching her for a while would greatly uplift one’s mood.

However, she often spoke of horror stories, causing many players to want to watch yet not dare to.

Package tactics had been summarized by quite a few players already, but for this post to be pushed up, it definitely had its appealing features.

Upon opening the post, Liuzi gasped in shock.

He already considered himself a hardcore player, having gone as far as summarizing game data into an Excel spreadsheet, just to calculate the return on every choice. This alone was already hardcore to a somewhat romantic degree.

But seeing the data provided by Pingping, he felt he was still a bit too conservative.

Beyond the combinations the game allowed, there was another less commonly used feature: detail adjustment.

This feature was somewhat superfluous, allowing players to tweak every detail of their combinations.

For example, with “sketch + anti-fraud,” players could customize the number of actors, the key points in the actors’ lines, where to cut costs in the process, and how to price things.

But with so many details, it was hard to find the key points, and the effects were not very evident, so Liuzi gave up after trying for a while.

Unexpectedly, someone had actually used this feature to finetune the details of mainstream combinations!

As Liuzi stared dumbfounded, he saw a comment from an anonymous player below.

[This is what a hardcore player looks like, the gameplay is so hardcore. Some guy who claims to be a hardcore player, what do you feel now, huh? Tell me.]

Liuzi: “…Xiemen Waidao, damn it!”