We Agreed to Create Casual Games, What the Hell is this World War Nonsense?
Ch. 1 - I'm a Filmmaker, and You Want Me to Make Games?

Great Xia Federation.

Donghai City.

From the top floor of a city center skyscraper, Zhao Ming stared out the window in shock at the various transport drones flying outside and the several-hundred-meter-tall energy tower dominating the city center. Anti-war slogans hung everywhere alongside game advertisements.

A cool breeze swept in from the window as the shock in Zhao Ming's eyes gradually faded. Coming back to his senses, he couldn't help but take a sharp breath.

Hiss—

"Holy shit... there really are parallel worlds?"

Zhao Ming turned his head to look at his reflection in the window glass. The person in the reflection not only looked exactly like him, but even had the same name. What was even more ridiculous was... this guy had also almost jumped off a building.

Why "also"?

Because this parallel world’s version of himself had hesitated for a moment when jumping off the building, while the version of himself on Earth would have already hit the ground by then.

Early death, early transmigration materialized...

Zhao Ming recalled the memories in this parallel world version's mind and couldn't help but feel a toothache.

Unlike his original self, who had staked everything on making a movie only to lose it all completely, this world's version of himself had staked everything on making a game, wanting to participate in the [Anti-War Competition] jointly held by the Six Major Federations.

According to the memories Zhao Ming found in his mind, this world was called Blue Star. Besides the Great Xia Federation, there were also the Free Star Cluster Federation, Golden Moon Federation, Antarctic Star Federation, Slavic Energy Federation, and East Asian United Federation—a world that had never experienced world wars.

Four hundred years ago, a meteor shower struck Blue Star, leaving it scarred and devastated. But after the meteor shower, Blue Star's humans seemed to become enlightened, constantly creating and inventing while rapidly advancing from the agricultural era to the industrial era at an extremely fast pace.

Then they discovered countless new energy sources buried beneath Blue Star's surface and leaped into the technological era. To this day, things like magnetic levitation and drones were commonplace, while virtual helmets and haptic pods—things that weren't widespread or hadn’t yet been perfected on Earth—had long been prevalent in this world.

This world's technology was extremely advanced.

Just Donghai City's photon supercomputing cluster alone, with single-rack computing power reaching 380 ZFLOPS, had already achieved 300 times the total computing power of Earth's entire year in 2024.

This was enough to support most people in independently designing and rendering movies, games, and so on—and this was just a municipal-level photon supercomputing cluster.

The original owner had staked all the assets left by his parents, liquidating them to obtain about thirty million Federation coins, and had also brought in a business partner, getting another thirty million from her. He had invested all sixty million into the game he designed to participate in the federation's [Anti-War Competition].

[The Anti-War Competition] was actually a project launched by the Six Major Federations to appease the populace. Due to this world's rapid technological advancement, the transition from agriculture to industry, and from industry to discovering new energy sources and entering the technological era, hadn't taken many years. So the major federations at that time were all rushing to research new technologies and had no time for war. Moreover, with nearly unlimited new energy sources, what was there to fight over? They needed to hurry up and develop new technologies.

By the time the explosive momentum of technological development had passed, several decades had already gone by. Although life had become prosperous by then, with new energy sources providing photosynthetic factories that solved the problem of basic sustenance, people suddenly found themselves idle with nothing to do. Crime rates in all federations skyrocketed, and some people even clamored for war and unifying the world.

For a time, the citizens of the Six Major Federations were stirred up with fervent war consciousness, demonstrating and demanding that their federations wage war. That period certainly caused quite a commotion. Later, to appease the populace, after a period of research, the Six Major Federations jointly launched the [Anti-War Competition].

The competition was divided into over a dozen categories of entry types, including film, games, novels, theater, short dramas, and so on. As long as you had exceptional creativity and genius ideas, you could use the federation's affordable photon supercomputing clusters to create the works needed for competition, either individually or collectively.

The ranking of competition entries was determined by public voting. As long as you won the championship, you would receive unlimited honor and support.

The [Anti-War Competition] had been held for over three hundred years. Every year there were individuals or companies that gained unlimited honor, whether rising to prominence overnight or growing even stronger. By now this had become an indispensable annual project on Blue Star, with participants aiming for the federation's fixed support and prize money.

Major categories like film, games, and novels had fixed prize money in the amount of one billion Federation coins plus one year of federal promotion, while smaller categories like short dramas and theater had much less prize money, only tens of millions.

The original owner had entered the games category, aiming for the championship's prize money and one year of federal promotion. The reason he had so confidently invested sixty million Federation coins was because he felt his creativity was excellent—otherwise, if it wasn't good, he wouldn't have been able to secure investment from another business partner. The original owner had established a company.

He used part of the funds to purchase servers, and spent the rest entirely on computing power from photon supercomputing clusters. He recruited some personnel and spent eight months creating the game "Cyber Blue Star: 2077," which told the story of future Blue Star encountering a long-premeditated terrorist attack that destroyed the Six Major Federations' fragile rule in one stroke.

Society became chaotic and extremely turbulent, with various forces seizing the opportunity to rise, leading to continuous warfare.

The social wealth gap began to widen unprecedentedly from this point.

Players needed to play the role of a wanderer, roaming the wasteland, scavenging scrap materials to exchange for supplies, letting players experience how difficult life after war would be, thereby reducing people's clamoring for war consciousness.

The idea was quite good, and the game was made quite well too. But it was plagiarized. The news came yesterday, and he intended to jump today.

Why did he want to jump? Because even suing wouldn't help—a small workshop had been plagiarized by a Fortune 500 federal enterprise.

Whether it was investment or game content, everything had been expanded more than tenfold based on his foundation. In other words, if you threw these two games to the market for comparison, a hundred people would say the original owner's "Cyber Blue Star: 2077" was an inferior counterfeit, and having copyright wouldn't help.

On Earth, there might be works that made comebacks due to special effects or details. But on Blue Star, in this era of computing power overflow, as long as you invested enough money, there was nothing that couldn't be created in terms of effects. Having his game plagiarized by someone with ten times the funding, once his original version was released, it would definitely be completely doomed.

Wouldn't you jump off a building...

Zhao Ming walked back to his office desk, sat down on the executive chair and leaned back, looking at the time on his computer. There were still nine days until the [Anti-War Competition] opening.

Switching to the [Film] track was impossible—registration had long since closed, and moreover, the company employees were all game developers, so making films wasn't realistic either.

To turn the tables, he would have to create a new game within nine days to replace "Cyber Blue Star: 2077." But "Cyber Blue Star: 2077" was something the original owner had led a group of people to create over eight months, spending nearly all sixty million Federation coins to build a massive worldview and multiplayer online servers. The purchased photon supercomputing cluster’s computing power was also almost depleted.

Creating another new game for competition was almost impossible. Moreover, he was a filmmaker who didn't understand anything about games.

In his previous life, he had heard his roommates discuss games like "Battlefield," "Black Myth," and "One Strike 999" in university, but he never actually played them—it was all just hearsay.

He didn't even know what types of games they were.

How the hell was he supposed to handle this? How was a filmmaker supposed to make games with his head?

Zhao Ming sighed and leaned back in the boss chair, speechlessly looking at the ceiling.

Anti-war... anti-war... He actually knew quite a few anti-war themed films. If he wanted to make people feel the cruelty of war and eliminate war consciousness, the first choice would definitely be Earth's films on World War II series.

But he couldn't possibly turn those World War II films into games, right?

...

Hmm? Turn World War II films into games?! Holy shit?! This might actually work?!