Cannon Fodder Genius Game Producer - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: The 13th Day of a Blockbuster (Part 2)

In a girls’ dormitory at Beijing University of Science and Technology, Lin Xiaotong was sitting cross-legged at her desk, hugging a plush doll and tapping open the game she had just downloaded.

“The name of this game is so strange, but it has a certain vibe. I just don’t know what genre it is…” Lin Xiaotong said while sipping milk tea and chatting with her roommate.

“Probably a horror game? The description is only one sentence—’What if one day, your life was stolen…'”

The two of them clicked into the game page but immediately frowned.

“Why does it look a bit crude?” Lin Xiaotong sipped her milk tea, feeling somewhat dissatisfied.

“Maybe it’s just the style of horror games. I’ve seen many horror games that look very rough but end up being really terrifying…” the roommate analyzed.

Then, the game began. The screen switched to a shaky camera shot: a disheveled boy was curled up in a dormitory, with various insults ringing in his ears—thief, plagiarist, disgusting, trash…

In the narration box, a segment of text introduced the game’s background.

Not long ago, a game called “Crazy Graduation Season” swept across the campus, and you discovered to your horror that this game, from its concept to its content, was identical to the game you were currently making. Unfortunately, before your game could be released, you, the original creator, were already branded with the title of plagiarist…

You cannot explain why you, as the original creator, failed to release the game first.

Faced with the surging infamy, you need to seize every opportunity to clear your name—first, you must find enough evidence!

When the first narration pop-up appeared, Lin Xiaotong turned her head in surprise to look at her roommate.

“Feifei, this game!”

The girl named Jiang Feifei also had a look of astonishment on her face.

Both of them were heavy users of the campus network and naturally knew what this game’s background was alluding to. As modern students who had been educated on the concepts of originality and copyright, they were both staunch anti-plagiarism supporters.

Previously, when Jiang Ziye’s plagiarism scandal broke out, both of them had spoken up for Senior Lin Cheng online and had fiercely despised Jiang Ziye’s actions.

There was no doubt that in “The Stolen Life,” the protagonist’s identity pointed directly at Jiang Ziye.

But looking at this game’s narration and the title itself, it was clearly claiming that Jiang Ziye was the innocent victim…

How could that be possible?!

Just as the game said, Jiang Ziye’s so-called game proposal and conceptual art for various scene settings were identical to Lin Cheng’s already completed game. With this kind of nearly pixel-level plagiarism—between a half-finished product and a released final product—who could possibly believe that Lin Cheng was the plagiarist?

“This game…” Lin Xiaotong turned hesitantly toward Jiang Feifei. “This is probably something Jiang Ziye made himself to try and clear his name. Should we stop playing?”

Jiang Feifei stopped her, her eyebrows arched in anger as she said, “No! Keep playing! I want to see exactly how he tries to whitewash himself!”

Lin Xiaotong hesitated for a moment, then nodded vigorously. “Yeah! I want to see too!”

As they spoke, the two received their first game mission—collect evidence.

Upon reaching this point, Lin Xiaotong and Jiang Feifei realized the game was indeed very simple; it was clearly a plot fitted into an existing game template.

Even the mission was extremely straightforward: a mini-game to find similarities.

Lin Xiaotong froze for a moment when she saw it.

Two comparison images appeared. One was the loading screen of “Crazy Graduation Season,” and the other was clearly a color comic converted from a photograph. However, this color comic bore a sixty to seventy percent resemblance to the “Crazy Graduation Season” loading screen.

Lin Xiaotong quickly remembered—oh, right, classmates had analyzed before that Senior Lin Cheng’s “Crazy Graduation Season” was a commemoration of his four years of university life at Beijing University of Science and Technology. Many life details came from the university, including the desk in the loading screen, which was the standard setup for the school’s male dormitories.

Lin Xiaotong frowned. “Is this Jiang Ziye really trying to use Senior Lin Cheng’s commemorative loading screen to claim it looks like his own desk? That’s so wicked!”

“I want to see what other excuses he can find besides this!”

As she spoke, Lin Xiaotong began to circle the identical items in the two pictures.

The desk, the two-tier shelf, the silver laptop, the red-and-blue handheld console, Jiang Ziye’s specialized textbooks on the shelf… and that book, “Game Design and Development: Where the Dream Begins.”

Initially, Lin Xiaotong was circling these items with an air of indifference. She knew that it was normal for dormitory desks in ordinary universities to have similar contents. Using this as evidence seemed far too forced.

But as she continued circling, Lin Xiaotong began to feel that something wasn’t right.

It was just a loading screen, yet the similarity to Jiang Ziye’s desk was actually this high?!

Lin Xiaotong quickly looked up at her roommate, Jiang Feifei. “Feifei, this…”

Jiang Feifei’s expression had also become serious, though she was still skeptical. “Maybe Jiang Ziye deliberately arranged his desk according to the loading screen and then took a photo?”

As she spoke, Jiang Feifei finished circling all the items first and successfully cleared the level. She then received five pieces of evidence—the original photo of Jiang Ziye’s dormitory desk, the original photo of Lin Cheng’s dormitory desk (from an on-campus interview with Lin Cheng), a screenshot of Jiang Ziye’s livestream from 2019, a screenshot and order number of Jiang Ziye’s purchase of “Where the Dream Begins” from Taobao, and a conversation between Jiang Ziye and an unknown user (I’ve decided! I’ll use my desk for one of the loading screens, haha, all four years of my university youth are concentrated here!).

Even those who most firmly believed in Lin Cheng couldn’t help but freeze for a second upon seeing these five pieces of evidence.

All five pieces of evidence could be clicked to view the full-sized images. Jiang Ziye’s desk was visibly almost identical to the loading screen to the naked eye. As for Lin Cheng’s dormitory desk… if one had to say they were the same, one could only say they both used the standard-issue desks of the university’s male dormitories.

“Feifei, this… this is a coincidence, right?” Lin Xiaotong felt a bit lost, but aside from this evidence, it was difficult to find anything else to prove Jiang Ziye’s innocence.

Jiang Feifei’s previously firm expression also became hesitant.

After a pause, she gritted her teeth and said, “Keep playing!”

On the campus network forum of Beijing University of Science and Technology, the game “The Stolen Life” hadn’t attracted much attention initially because its description was too simple.

However, some people interested in horror games or those intrigued by the original poster’s vague description clicked in.

Then, impulsive people came to flame the original poster after reading the introduction.

10L: Crap, OP, are you Jiang Ziye? How does a rat like you dare to come here and try to whitewash yourself???

13L: Too funny. “The Stolen Life”? What do you have that was stolen?? That plagiarized half-finished game of yours? Please stop trying to deceive yourself, okay???

A string of comments followed, all of them hurling insults. But some people expressed that they would play Jiang Ziye’s game just to see from what angle he could possibly try to clear his name.

In Dormitory 716 of the male dorms, Jiang Ziye didn’t turn on the lights. He sat alone in front of his computer, quietly refreshing the forum page, watching the IDs hurling insults at him one after another with a calm face.

Finally, after more than twenty comments, the first person with a different attitude appeared.

27L: Holy crap, for real?! You guys in the front, stop swearing for a second and go play this game!!! I’m freaking stunned!

A short while later, someone else left a message.

33L: …Currently verifying. I just checked a few pieces of evidence in the game, but… they are all real.

One after another, new messages began to emerge, each carrying utter shock.

In the girls’ dormitory, Lin Xiaotong and Jiang Feifei had already played through most of the game’s levels—it was indeed a game assembled in a very short amount of time, but every level felt incredibly soul-stirring to them.

Soul-stirring in a different way.

It was a complex process, as if their previously firm trust was being demolished, their former anger was dissolving, and guilt was creeping back into their hearts.

It felt as if a raging torrent was rushing through their hearts, the thunderous sound making their heads spin.

After the first level of evidence collection, they had grasped the Preliminary Evidence, followed by the second level, the third level, the fourth level…

All the reference images came from screenshots of “Crazy Graduation Season,” while all the evidence originated from the actions or personal relationships of Jiang Ziye or Lin Cheng themselves.

In the second level—the angry professor, the demon-like counselor, the “Big Brother,” “Second Brother,” and “Fourth Brother” in the dormitory… all the character traits could be woven into a massive web centered around Jiang Ziye.

The angry professor was the professional course professor who had blown a fuse on the spot because the attendance recorded on Jiang Ziye’s social media one day was too low—and this professional course had nothing to do with the department Lin Cheng was in.

Jiang Ziye’s counselor once went down to every dormitory to have “heart-to-heart talks” with each student to ensure their mental health. His gentle and amiable attitude was so intense it was considered a “hell-level” social death, and his reputation as the “Demon Psychologist Counselor” spread throughout the university.

And this counselor likewise had nothing to do with Lin Cheng.

In “Crazy Graduation Season,” regardless of gender, the protagonist defaults to being the “Third Brother” of the dormitory—this was Jiang Ziye’s rank in his own dorm. If the game started with a male character, the images of the other three members in the dorm were more or less similar to Jiang Ziye’s three roommates.

Furthermore, when a certain exam’s results were announced in “Crazy Graduation Season,” Jiang Ziye’s own score for that same course flashed by in the corner. All the graduation thesis topics submitted by the protagonist were also exactly the same topics Jiang Ziye had once submitted to his advisor…

If all of this wasn’t enough to make people feel shaken, then in the final level, there were two search results: one for Jiang Ziye’s campus forum account and one for Lin Cheng’s.

Setting the time to before Lin Cheng released “Crazy Graduation Season”:

Jiang Ziye’s forum content regarding game reviews and related discussions: 1,762 posts.

Lin Cheng’s forum content regarding game reviews and related discussions: 12 posts.

Among them, one post read as follows:

Friend: Yo, Brother Cheng, I’ve got a game disc here, but it’s single-player. Interested?

Lin Cheng: What’s the fun in single-player games? I’m only interested in games where I can carry girls.

Those two short lines of dialogue were like heavy artillery fire that destroyed everyone’s final psychological line of defense.

After the two clues appeared, a dialogue box popped up. You have completed all the mission collections. Have you seen the protagonist’s stolen life? If so, are you willing to forward this to help him find his life again?

Lin Xiaotong and Jiang Feifei, who had been filled with righteous indignation when the game first started, involuntarily clicked to share the game to their social circles before they could even process what was happening.

After sharing it, Lin Xiaotong seemed a bit nervous and regretful. She looked up at Jiang Feifei, only to see that Jiang Feifei’s eyes were somewhat red.

“Xiaotong… he said thank you to us.”

After saying that, for some reason, Jiang Feifei began to cry.

Lin Xiaotong looked down at her own phone.

After sharing the game, a very gentle cartoon avatar appeared on the pop-up page. A name tag for Jiang Ziye was pinned to its head, and it said to her with a very happy smile: “Thank you for being willing to help me find my life back—Jiang Ziye.”

Seeing this, Lin Xiaotong felt a chill on her cheek; unknowingly, two lines of tears had also flowed from her eyes.

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