Inside a hot pot restaurant in Magic City's MixC Mall.
Lucas was having hot pot with Rachel and Anna.
Beef, tripe, omasum, beef rolls…
You can't call it hot pot if there's no beef.
"You're amazing! The ga community is going crazy, and the players are loving it too!" Anna, who now knew Lucas pretty well, looked excited as she stared at the news on her phone.
"Anna, don't call amazing. I'm not anyone special. Just call Lucas," he waved it off.
She was hyping it up, but Lucas knew clearly: the so-called buzz was really just within the niche circle of gentleman ga developers.
As for the overall ga industry?
At most, it made a small splash in the indie ga space—and not even a big one.
Lucas was very clear about that.
"I feel like I shouldn't have said 50,000 sales at the start." Rachel spoke up, but she was smiling.
Hearing that, Lucas put down his chopsticks and smiled back. "Well, that's on you. You set the goal yourself, didn't you?"
"Ugh, I even wanted to invite you to join my company… but now it feels like I was dreaming," Anna said with a bit of frustration.
"Please, leave my junior out of your ss. Your three gas tanked worse and worse each ti," Rachel stabbed right into the wound.
"Okay, sure, those three gas flopped, but I had my reasons, alright? I only handled the story and writing. The rest was outsourced. And to be fair, players did say the story parts were solid!" Anna protested.
"By the way, Lucas, can you help figure out what went wrong with those three gas?" Anna asked hopefully.
"Poor focus and bloated systems," Lucas said, glancing at his phone. After watching a few short videos online, he already had a good idea.
"Huh...?" Anna looked confused.
"Put simply, Anna, your gas tried to include a little bit of everything. But you're making small-budget indie gas, not AAA titles. Even big gas mostly add features to support the main idea—not to be the main dish," Lucas explained.
Anna nodded with a look of sudden realization. She kind of understood… maybe not fully.
Still, even if she didn't totally get it, she felt too awkward to keep pressing the issue at the dinner table. So she switched topics.
"So, what are your plans next, Lucas?"
"I'm thinking of starting a small ga studio," Lucas said with a smile. It wasn't a secret—it had been in his plans for a while.
"You're starting your own company?" Anna was a little surprised.
"Yeah." Lucas nodded.
Anna sat there thinking for a while, then made up her mind. "Lucas, what do you think of ? Could I join you and help make gas together?"
She still really loved ga developnt.
It's just that after three failed projects, she was feeling a bit discouraged.
But now she realized sothing.
Just because she hadn't made a hit ga yet—did that an she wasn't cut out for this?
No, not at all.
It just ant she hadn't found the right way to succeed yet. And finding soone strong to team up with? That might be the key.
She had looked deeply into Mirror before coming here.
And from that, she ca to a conclusion: this ga's success definitely wasn't just luck.
After hearing Lucas's thoughts on her three gas, she understood a bit—though not completely.
But there was one thing she was sure of: this underclassman her best friend ntioned, making a ga for the first ti, definitely had the potential to beco a top-level developer!
So ga designers might make one great ga thanks to a flash of inspiration, then fade into obscurity.
But others have a clear vision of what kind of ga they want to create.
Lucas was clearly one of those people.
Failing three gas in a row made Anna face reality about her own skills.
Listening to her talk, Lucas—still sitting across from her—fell into thought.
He briefly looked at the three gas she ntioned.
Just like Anna said, the story was the main highlight.
Most of the negative reviews were about the gaplay design, while most of the praise was about the story.
And it wasn't just one ga—all three followed the sa pattern.
That clearly pointed to good writing and story planning.
If Lucas wanted to make more gas in the future, he knew he couldn't do it all by himself. Things like the main story and overall structure—those he could handle.
But writing out a full script?
Even with a system to help him, doing it all alone wasn't realistic.
In his past life, gas like Red Dead Redemption 2 had over 2,000 pages of main story text. If you stacked all the written content for the full ga into A4-sized pages, it would be 2.4 centiters tall.
For sothing like Mirror, he could handle it solo. But for larger gas with way more text, there was no way he could cover everything.
"Of course, no problem. If you're serious, Anna, once I get the company stuff sorted out, we can definitely talk more," Lucas said to her.
"Alright then, I'll wait for your ssage, Lucas!" Anna replied.
"Okay, okay, if you two don't eat, I'm finishing all the beef," Rachel chid in from the side.
"Hey Ningxue, how about you join us too? With our skills, we could build sothing big together!" Anna said with a cheerful smile, glancing at Rachel.
Rachel took a sip of her milk and gave Anna a quick glance but didn't respond.
"I wonder how popular Mirror can get in the end… Maybe break a million copies in the first month?" Anna guessed.
"Cut that in half and it might be possible. Anything more than that is probably out of reach," Lucas said with a smile.
He had a pretty clear idea of what to expect—after all, it was an 18 ga, which ca with a lot of restrictions.
The group continued chatting and eating until around 9 PM. Lucas then saw both girls off at their apartnt complexes before catching a ride ho.
(End of Chapter)
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