I am a Big Player
Chapter 187 - 185, Everything for the sake of friends_1

Chapter 187: 185, Everything for the sake of friends_1

As far as Duan Xiaolou knew, Ren He’s talent had reached a level that left her feeling unable to catch up, and that’s when she realized that being excellent is all relative.

Going to Australia wasn’t her choice either; it was arranged by her family. Talking about breaking away from one’s family is practically idle chatter for a middle school student, unrealistic. She didn’t necessarily think that abroad was better than domestic, but it seemed that there was a slightly bigger stage waiting for her than Luo City.

The two of them didn’t continue chatting much, and the distance between them seemed to grow further and further apart, torn asunder by life.

Everyone would rush towards their own futures, perhaps never to meet again, but who can say for sure?

When they returned to the private room, everyone exchanged knowing smiles, but the two parties involved had calmed down, and no further ripples disturbed their tranquility.

For Duan Xiaolou, Ren He was like an accidental encounter in her middle school life. She wasn’t a bird, and Ren He wasn’t a fish swimming in the depths of the sea—they just each had their own direction.

For Ren He, he had once harbored a secret crush on someone else, and Duan Xiaolou seemed like the reflection of a girl from a past life in the water. But in the end, a reflection is just a reflection.

His only task was to strive, to gather his strength in tranquility, and then set off for the Capital to meet Yang Xi. With his own power, to fiercely break free from all the restrictions that the rules of the world imposed.

When everyone saw the two come back as if nothing had happened, they were all unsure what had transpired and stopped making jokes.

Talking about the amusing incidents over the three years of middle school felt like it all happened just yesterday, and everyone laughed heartily when they recalled them. This time, the vice class monitor, Liu Yinghai, wasn’t in attendance, so they also brought up the times when Liu Yinghai had thrown up.

Little Fatty Xu Nuo mimicked Li Luobo’s tone and said, "You actually dared to attack a People’s Educator! Hahaha!"

It must be said that in this last year, Ren He indeed left many unique memories of student life for everyone...

Then, everyone went their separate ways.

On the way back, Ren He suddenly mentioned to Xu Nuo, "I might be going to the Capital for school."

"Damn," Xu Nuo felt as if he had heard terrible news, "What are you going to do in the Capital?"

Ren He hadn’t mentioned transferring schools to him since he came back, so Xu Nuo knew nothing about it. He still thought that Ren He would continue their studies together at their current school, and now they even had a new project: making games together.

But now Ren He was telling him he was going to school in the Capital!

Then wouldn’t he, Xu Nuo, be left behind alone in Luo City? Sudden sorrow overwhelmed him, unstoppable...

"Yang Xi is transferring, and I need to go with her," Ren He said with a smile, his heart filled with joy at the thought of meeting Yang Xi again in the Capital after some time.

"Is school transfer something you just decide on a whim?" Xu Nuo’s face was a picture of confusion. Why did so many things that seemed extremely difficult to him seem so easy when Ren He talked about them? "Do you have a misunderstanding about transferring, or about Auntie? Will she let you transfer?"

"Haha, don’t worry about it, I’ve got it under control," Ren He chuckled. He had talked to Zhou Wumeng several times over the past few days, and she had assured him that there were no issues with the residential registration for moving to the Capital. Only the admission procedures for No.4 Middle School were left to wait for, but it was almost a certainty.

This meant that Ren He’s transfer to the Capital was all but nailed down.

He would tell Ren and Mrs. Ren that No.4 Middle School had invited him due to his status as the top scorer on the middle school entrance exams, believing they would agree, as who wouldn’t want a better learning environment for their child?

And the reason was quite rational: as the top scorer, No.4 Middle School recognized his unique potential and invited him to study there...

The dinner today went smoothly, with no unhappiness. It was only Ren He, and even Xu Nuo, whose gazes were set on the distant future, Middle school was only the beginning of the journey, after all.

So when your vision is high enough, you will understand that no matter what happens, you will cross the river of time, and nothing will be able to stop you.

After the two returned to the studio, they resumed work: Ren He continued to handle all the issues, while Xu Nuo was fully involved in programming, collecting the codes written by the programmers and slowly turning them into the cornerstone of Qinghe Games.

Everyone was striving in this neither large nor small studio, writing lines of code, building models, with each small step contributing to their sense of achievement.

Moreover, Ren He had even stopped setting up any isolation procedures among the programmers to prevent code leaks.

The problem that Dota faced now was that, being a free and competitive game, it actually wasn’t afraid of private servers. Its only threat came from knockoff games with finer graphics but simpler gameplay.

Weren’t there many games that tried to imitate Dota before? Why was it only League of Legends that succeeded?

Because, while it retained competitiveness, it also reduced the entry difficulty—that was key.

At this time, several girls in the art department suggested: could Dota’s maps become more harmonious and the heroes cuter? The current models were somewhat oppressive.

Ren He smacked his forehead—he had almost forgotten about this!

When he had been hand-drawing the original prototypes, he focused on keeping them true to the original, but he missed an important point: to broaden Dota’s visual appeal to a wider audience.

Was Dota 2’s graphics exquisite? Yes, exquisite! Were the effects dazzling? Dazzling!

But there was a significant problem: it leaned too much towards Western mythology, with heroes looking fierce and monstrous. Those who play LoL think Kog’Maw might be the ugliest, but that’s surely because they haven’t played Dota 2...

It’s not that Dota 2 was bad in this respect, but rather it was a matter of choice, and Ren He was merely choosing to make it cuter and the map colors less gloomy.

One should remember that one of the reasons why League of Legends was so popular in the previous life was because many girls played it! Where there were girls, there would be boys—that was common sense, no need to explain it, even a fool could understand!

So Ren He wasn’t denying Dota 2’s original art, but wanted to design a style more acceptable to a female audience because that’s where the money was.

Some girls could be utterly unreasonable when shopping for skins and accessories; liking it was reason enough to buy.

And was Dota being too difficult the reason girls didn’t play it? No, it wasn’t.

Some people always spouted nonsense such as girls couldn’t last-hit and claimed it affected their Dota gameplay. Did it mean they had no trouble last-hitting in League of Legends then?

Fate Last-Hitting: last-hitting by fate. This was precisely because of the girls.

In many girls’ eyes, whether they last-hit or not didn’t matter; as long as the game was fun and looked good...

Therefore, just as the Dota models were nearing completion, Ren He decided to redesign many of the heroes for this objective, getting the art department girls involved as well, with everyone working hard on the cuter version of Dota...

Why not do it if it could preserve Dota’s competitiveness while attracting girls to the game through its visuals?

...

Enjoy the bonus Chapter as a reward.