You said you were going to make games, how did you become the richest man without doing anything?

At three o'clock in the morning, the well-known Chinese director He Zhilin wrote a short line on Weibo:

"Stargate is the work I've been most jealous of in the past decade."

Less than fifteen minutes after the post was published, the line of text became a trending topic. The comments section quickly became abuzz, with some assuming he was planning a film adaptation of the same name, while others joked that he had "started playing games too." However, those who knew him well knew that Director He never commented on others lightly, especially not on games.

But this time, he was serious.

His next Weibo post was a screenshot of the game.

The screenshot shows the protagonist, Alzarian, standing on the ruins of the nameless city at the "end of the galaxy," with the collapsed astral barrier behind him and the slowly closing Rift Gate in front of him. There are no special effects, no subtitles, only a single system prompt:
"You are about to leave the astral realm. Are you sure?"

He Zhilin wrote:
"I don't want to leave, but I know the story must continue."

This Weibo post has been forwarded nearly 100,000 times, and the comments are full of "I don't want to leave either", "You've come this far too", and "We all cried here."

A fan left a message asking: "Director He, would you shoot a work like this?"

He replied:
"I want to, but I probably can't film it. Because this is not the work of one person, it is a miracle created by the entire Star Boundary team and the players."

Not only He Zhilin, another heavyweight in the cultural world also spoke out to speak for the game.

Shen Zhiqiu, a contemporary writer and winner of the Lu Xun Literary Award, published an article in his column in Harvest magazine titled:

The World Slash and the Unfinished Fate of Our Generation

In the article, she wrote:

"There are very few works that can make me cry like a baby after I turn fifty. That night, I finished a game in front of my computer and turned off the screen at five in the morning. Just as the sun was rising, I sat at my desk and wrote this article."

"I'm not a gamer. I'm someone who has been dealing with words, reality, and the times for a long time. But this game made me realize that the loneliness and struggles my generation has experienced are not ununderstood."

“‘You’re not a loser, you just haven’t carved out the shape of your destiny yet.’ This is what an NPC in the game said to the protagonist. It reminded me of that winter when I was young and standing at the train station, penniless.”

“This is not a game, it’s a reply letter that’s thirty years late.”

At the end of the article, she wrote:

"If I still have the energy, I want to write a novel called 'After the Rift'."

Also shocked was Chu Nanlin, a director known for his "cold sarcasm" in the film industry.

During a lecture by a film master, a student asked him, "What do you think of Stargate?"

Chu Nanlin was silent for a few seconds and said:
"I originally opened it with a critical mindset. I thought it was just a commercial masterpiece disguised as art."

"But I was wrong."

He paused, his voice a little hoarse:

"I see a kind of 'quiet heroism' in the game. Not the kind of hero who shouts for justice, but the kind who is willing to light a torch even if no one remembers."

“That’s real art.”

He also added:
“If I ever make a movie about it, I’ll just film Traveler Camp.”

“Because there, everyone is like us.”

The music industry is not silent either.

Li Anran, a film score master and Golden Horse Award winner for Best Original Music, uploaded a homemade video on Station B titled:
I Wrote a Requiem for the Rupture

In the video, he played a newly adapted theme melody from "Astral Gate" on piano and guqin. The slow piano sound carried a little bit of compassion and hope, flowing like a whisper in the deep night.

He ends the video by saying:
"I've been making music for 30 years, and I never thought that one day I would write a requiem for a game character."

"But Alsarian is worth it."

This video has been played over 10 million times, and the comment section is full of gratitude and resonance.

Someone wrote:

"I've never played games, but when I heard this piano music, it suddenly reminded me of the nights when I was a kid and watched the stars alone."

"I think I want to go to that star realm, too."

At a Shanghai International Art Forum, modern artist Bai Yi exhibited her new work "Split Projection".

It was a mirrored installation with a tiny crack in the center. When the audience stood in front of it, a sentence in the cosmic language would be projected into the crack: "Are you willing to face your true self?"

She said it was inspired by the "Mirror Trial" in the dreamless land of the game.

“When I got to that scene, I actually stopped for a long time.”

"I've never been forced to confront a fear in a game before."

"It's not pleasing you, it's questioning you."

"And I am willing to answer."

At the end of the exhibition, someone quietly wrote on her message board:
"I am willing."

"I am also a star walker."

Even Li She, a cultural critic who has always been dismissive of games, wrote rare heartwarming words in his column for the Beijing News.

He has publicly criticized "games as the opium of consumerism" many times and is called "the most stubborn old critic" by players.

But this time, he wrote:
"I used to laugh at games and reject them, but Stargate taught me that the medium isn't important, it's the emotion that matters."

"I can't deny that I shed tears during the World Sundering scene."

"That wasn't an emotion brought on by the game. That was the first time that the emotions I'd suppressed and hadn't expressed for years had found an outlet."

“I’m willing to retract all my prejudices for this work.”

The publishing world also began to pay attention to this game.

Writers Publishing House announced that it will cooperate with the game team to publish the "Star Gate Official Script Collection", which not only includes the complete main storyline, but also includes NPC dialogues and Star Language poetry that players call "literary level".

The editor-in-chief of the publishing house said at the press conference:
"We've been involved in literary publishing for decades, and this is the first time we've felt that a game script might be included in future Chinese language textbooks."

“It’s not only well-written, but more importantly, it’s willing to take human emotions seriously.”

"In this fast-paced era, this kind of seriousness is itself a kind of scarcity."

In a CCTV youth culture interview program, the host interviewed three guests from different fields: a young poet, a documentary director, and a psychologist.

The host asked, "What do you think of Stargate?"

The poet said:
“It’s the only text I want to read when I can’t write poetry this year.”

The director said:
"I've been shooting humanistic documentaries for ten years, but this game taught me that sometimes fictional worlds can also capture the real human heart."

The psychiatrist said:
"I have six young patients who started talking to me because they found someone to talk to in the game."

"They said, 'Alsarian wouldn't laugh at me.'"

After countless interviews and positive reviews, a playwright in his seventies wrote in People's Literature Magazine:

"I've lived most of my life, writing everything from stage plays to radio dramas, from paper scripts to film and television scripts, and I never thought that the thing that would make me want to write a play again would be a game."

"I want to write a play called 'After the Rift'."

"Because I believe this rift will never end."

"It will continue to crack, cracking our prejudices, misunderstandings, indifference, and insensitivity, until we finally face our truest selves."

As the craze for StarGate spread from the gaming world to the cultural, educational, and psychotherapy communities, society as a whole seemed to be pulled by a gentle yet resolute force, moving toward a long-lost direction. It wasn't a hit, it wasn't a trend, it was a sense of belonging.

These two words appeared in the comment section of an official live broadcast.

That night was the development team's first livestream appearance before a nationwide audience. There were no fancy stages or marketing gimmicks, just a table with three developers sitting before the camera, their eyes still a bit reserved.

"We... weren't really prepared," lead planner Cheng Mo said with a smile. "We just wanted to make an RPG that everyone would like, but we didn't expect it to get this far."

The host asked: "What do you think of the positive reviews from so many celebrities, media, and players?"

He was silent for a moment, then said softly:
“We don’t feel like this is something we made ourselves.”

“This is a world we all built together.”

"We just—left the door open."

The comment section exploded instantly, with comments like "You are the gatekeepers of the star realm," "You give us a place to go back to," and "Thank you for not giving up."

The other developer, Lin Yu, was in charge of the plot. He wore black-framed glasses and spoke softly, but every word was clear.

"You know what? When we were designing the Traveler's Camp, we wrote a line in the setting: 'This is a transit station for all weary souls.' When I wrote this line, I didn't really have any special feelings about it; I just felt it was very fitting."

"But after the game was launched, I read the comments and found that too many people said that they couldn't find a sense of belonging in reality, but found it in the camp."

He took a breath, choking a little. "I just realized that what we were writing about wasn't the camp, but the gap in reality."

There was total silence.

Until he looked up, smiled and said, "So, thank you for being willing to stay in the tent we set up."

That night was later called "Astral Night".

—

And after that, more and more "tents" appeared on real street corners.

Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Xi'an... Players spontaneously organized "Traveler Camp Friends Night", renting cafes, homestays, and exhibition halls, and decorating them to look like camps in the game, complete with bonfire lights, star flags, NPC quote cards, and notes with messages from real players.

"I stayed up late again today to write a PowerPoint presentation, but I know the camp is waiting for me."

"I just ended a relationship, thank you for letting me sit by the fire alone."

"I'm still looking for a job. Can you give me a task? Even if it's just cleaning up the astral insect shells."

“I’m not the protagonist, but I want to go on the journey.”

These messages were compiled into booklets called "Echoes of the Astral World," printed and mailed free of charge by volunteers. Each booklet contained a card in the Astral Language, inscribed with a different destiny poem.

The most popular one is the line that has become famous:
“You don’t fight to win, you fight to keep going.”

—

A retired teacher posted on Weibo that he received a peripheral product from his students, which was a Traveler Camp scented candle.

He said: "I don't know what this game is about, but the moment I lit the candle, I remembered the smell of the classroom when I first walked into it 30 years ago."

"Wood, chalk, rain, and the unknown."

“It turns out that young people are also looking for these things.”

There is also a young man who suffers from long-term anxiety and posted on Zhihu:

“For a while I didn’t leave the house at all and felt like the world had no meaning.”

"But I met an NPC in the game, and she said: 'You can be silent, but I will always be here.'"

"At that moment, I suddenly thought, if there is someone willing to wait for me in the virtual world, maybe there is someone in reality too."

—

Behind these stories, there are countless ordinary people like "Lin Zhou" and "Su He" who are extending the trajectory of the star realm in their own way.

Lin Zhou became one of the administrators of the "Splitting Gate Surrounding Mutual Aid Station." Every day, he answered players' questions online, helped people find lost cloaks, coordinated queues for pop-up stores, and even organized an "NPC Voice Card Relay" event.

He laughed and said, "I used to think I was just socially anxious, but now I know I just haven't met anyone who's willing to take risks with me."

Su He finally mustered up the courage to submit her illustrations for Star Realm. Soon after, she received a confirmation letter—her paintings would be selected for the next edition of the deluxe art collection.

She stood at the door of the express delivery company, tears streaming down her face.

She knew that this was not a successful submission.

This was when she finally cut through the cracks in reality.

—

At the official level, something even more exciting was quietly brewing.

**"StarGate: The Traveler's Book"** project is launched.

This is a cross-media attempt, involving screenwriters, writers, psychologists, and players, to tell those "unrecorded" stories of the astral world.

These include side quests with failed endings in the game, as well as adaptations of real-life players' own stories.

The project's editor-in-chief said: "We don't want to tell the stories of the winners, we want to tell the stories of those who didn't look back during their journey."

"They are the true walkers of the astral realm."

—

At a cultural festival, the representative team of "Stargate" sat around the table with twenty creators from different fields for a discussion.

There are directors, writers, stage actors, musicians, and Zen masters.

The host asked: "Why are you willing to cross-border creation for a game?"

The director said: "Because it is not about a world, but about the heart of each of us."

The writer said: "Because it taught me to believe in the power of narrative again."

The musician said: "Because it made me write a song called "You Are Still on the Journey."

The Zen master said, “Because it made me understand that the rift is not a break, but a passage.”

—

At the end of the day, the big screen on the stage lit up, and a star language slowly emerged:

"We met in fiction and continue to walk together in reality."

The audience was silent for a few seconds, then burst into applause.

The applause seemed to come from the depths of the rift, passing through the fog of fate and falling on everyone who was willing to move forward.

—

A few months later, a Star Realm player wrote the following:

"After playing so many games, I felt for the first time that I wasn't escaping from reality, but rather finding reality."

"I found my former self in the astral realm."

"It's not the protagonist who fights monsters and levels up, but the one who is willing to hold up the camp in the storm even if he has nothing."

"I am no longer afraid of cracks, because I know there is light in the cracks." (End of this chapter)