A writer has arrived in the Chinese entertainment industry.

While Su Liu was pushing forward the filming schedule amidst the chaos, "Vampire Survivors," produced by Qiezi and developed by a small team of four, was finally completed.

It took fourteen days, which is ridiculously fast.

Upon hearing this news, Yao Men and Chen Kai from Youxing quickly found Qiezi, and the group sat together to prepare to try out the first game produced after the company's establishment.

Eggplant gave a mysterious look and said, "Be careful, this game is very powerful."

"Really?" Yao Men joked as he took the controller. "Let me try it out first."

To cater to the overseas market, all character names were naturally taken from the original, adopting English names such as Antonio, Imedal, Pascalina, etc.

Yao Ming chose Antonio, whose weapon was a whip, which manifested as a crescent-shaped white light that slashed horizontally once per second.

Upon entering the game, the rudimentary map made all three of them burst out laughing. It couldn't even be described as rudimentary; it was practically a green pixelated map. The monsters that appeared only had very basic animation effects and didn't even have any attack animations.

Yao Men controls his character to constantly dodge monsters while controlling the direction to kill them with crescent-shaped slashes, and then picks up the dropped gems.

"What's so great about this?" Yao Men even felt a little bored. "There's no skill involved at all. You just need to control the character and aim the attack at the monster."

Eggplant smiled confidently, "Just keep playing."

At this point, Yao's character had already leveled up three times. Each time he leveled up, he would be presented with a choice of three options. He chose "Divine Whip: Weapon quantity +1", "Energy Staff: Fires energy projectiles to attack enemies", and "Laurel: Immune to damage when activated".

Every minute, the number and stats of the monsters would increase. Before long, Yao Men was struggling to survive amidst the gaps between the monsters filling the screen. Most importantly, the dropped experience gems wouldn't disappear, creating a strong visual incentive that constantly tempted him to risk his life to collect experience gems even while maneuvering.

Holy crap!

With a frustrated curse, Yao Men's character was completely devoured by a screen full of monsters.

"I should have just stacked attack power directly; damage reduction is completely useless!"

"Let me try." Chen Kai snatched the controller.

"How was it?" Eggplant asked with a smug look. "Not bad, I guess."

"You know what, it's actually quite addictive." Yao Men began to look at the game from a producer's perspective. "This game has achieved extreme simplification, focusing entirely on psychological manipulation and numerical structure, and the negative feedback is extremely low."

At this moment, Chen Kai controlled his character to open a treasure chest on the map. Instantly, the screen was filled with neon lights and cheerful, fast-paced sound effects, giving people the feeling of anticipation before winning a slot machine.

"We put a lot of effort into the game's visual and sound effects. Whether it's the sense of impact, picking up gems, or opening treasure chests, we aim to provide maximum visual and auditory feedback."

"Furthermore, a character's value doesn't completely reset after death; the coins earned in-game can be used to improve attributes outside of the game."

Yao Men looked at the game screen on the computer, his excitement rising. "This design ensures that even players with poor skills can improve through gameplay and ultimately crush the opponent with sheer numbers."

At the same time, this design makes it very easy for the game to break out of its niche and reach a wider audience, not just hardcore gamers.

"That's right!"

Yao Men immediately made a phone call, asking the company's newly recruited publicity director to come over.

This man named Zhang Heli is a senior editor whom Yao Men poached from 17173.

"Quickly, Director Zhang, come and take a look at this game."

Zhang Heli has a square face, wears black-rimmed glasses, and a gray down jacket. Being a game editor by training, he's naturally a seasoned gamer who's played games since childhood.

The PR director had known all along that the company was developing a game primarily for overseas markets, but he only saw it today.

He listened to Eggplant's explanation while watching Chen Kai's gameplay.

"Mr. Yao, our game is going to be released on Steam, mainly targeting the overseas market, right?"

"Yes," Yao Men nodded, "Don't you, Director Zhang, need to come up with a publicity strategy for this?"

Zhang Heli frowned slightly. "Getting listed on Steam isn't easy."

In this era, getting a low-budget game listed on Steam was far more difficult than it would be in later years.

In 2013, Steam had a Greenlight program, where games had to be voted on by players in a public voting pool to be listed on Steam. Players had three options: "yes", "no", and "ask me later".

To be selected by Valve, you need enough votes to break into the top 100 on the list.

Of course, it wasn't without its advantages. Unlike later generations, any game that gets greenlit becomes known across all platforms, essentially generating its own traffic.

How to garner enough votes is the test of overseas distribution capabilities.

After listening to him, Yao Men did not show any sign of being troubled.

Then I saw him chuckle, "Brother Zhang, you still don't know the specifics of our big boss, do you?"

Zhang Heli was taken aback. "Isn't it President An?"

Because of the development issues of "Genshin Impact" (a 2D action mobile game), several core managers had to hold meetings every morning and evening to report on the progress. Zhang Heli was very impressed with this sophisticated, capable, and charismatic CEO, Mr. An.

"President An," Yao Men said cryptically, "is of course a big boss. But we have another big boss, Brother Zhang, whom you haven't met yet."

"Who?"

Yao Men gave Su Liu's name and told him to search for it himself.

With a sense of doubt, Zhang Heli casually typed the name into the search bar on his phone. The moment the webpage loaded, a series of astonishing titles and news articles appeared before his eyes.

"A mystery writer with a huge overseas readership and over three million Twitter followers. Help us garner votes; getting through this 'green light' should be a piece of cake, right?" Yao Men said calmly.

Eggplant, however, was slightly worried. "President Su is a writer, and his fan base consists entirely of readers. There might be a significant audience gap between him and the gaming community."

"Not necessarily." Zhang Heli recovered from his shock. "The situation in Europe and America is different from ours, especially in detective novels. There is a lot of overlap between the two."

He thought for a moment and then said, "However, we must have a second plan. I suggest that we send a free demo to some small and medium-sized game bloggers on YouTube, ask them to try it out, and put our Greenlight link under their videos."

"Why not invite some of the top bloggers?" Yao asked.

"It's simple, hiring them costs money!"

"I'm fucking invincible!" Chen Kai cheered!

The group looked at the computer screen and saw a scene where thousands of monsters were instantly wiped out.