Infinite World was released.
It launched ten days after the end of the Gamestar Carnival.
Just as Takayuki had originally predicted, this year's Gamestar Carnival did indeed see a decline in player attendance.
Although the drop was only about three percent, it was enough to prove that Mikfo's Infinite World had produced an unexpected impact.
Many players wanted to get their hands on this hyped, "generation-defining" game the moment it launched.
At the same time, however, all kinds of rumors and public opinions about the game were circulating everywhere.
Some people claiming to be insiders revealed that Infinite World was, in fact, only a half-finished product—an empty concept with many of the promised gameplay features unlikely to ever materialize.
But those voices were quickly suppressed and failed to make much of a splash online.
Takayuki also bought the game himself, planning to go home and properly experience this so-called next-generation title.
He wanted to see whether it would actually be better than No Man's Sky had been in his previous life.
"What are you playing, Takayuki?"
At home, Takayuki was in his study, ready to seriously try Infinite World.
Aya walked in carrying a plate of cut fruit and curiously looked at the computer screen in front of him.
"A game Mikfo just released. It's called Infinite World."
"You're playing it too?" Aya said in surprise. "I saw a lot of people online today saying they were playing Infinite World."
Takayuki nodded. "Yeah, the hype is huge right now. It'd be a waste not to try it."
"But didn't you say in meetings before that this game would have a lot of problems and wouldn't be very good? And lately there's been a lot of negative news online too—it kind of confirms what you said."
"You don't really know until you play it yourself. Oh, where's the kid?"
"Xiaomeng is being looked after—no need to worry. I'll watch you play first. If it's fun, I might try it too. Didn't this game say it would have multiplayer? We could play together."
Takayuki shook his head and pointed at the screen. "There's no multiplayer anymore. Looks like this team has very little development experience—they ran into a lot of problems and had no one to help them solve them."
"Huh? It's just multiplayer. How hard could that be?" Aya didn't quite understand.
"For Gamestar Electronic Entertainment, it's not hard at all. But for ordinary developers, it really isn't that easy."
Aya thought for a moment. In her head, she could already come up with at least three ways to implement multiplayer.
But that was based on her more than twenty years of game development experience.
On top of that, she had Takayuki, Gamestar Electronic Entertainment, and their internally customized Unreal Engine.
With all those advantages combined, multiplayer felt trivial to her.
But for some people, it really was a serious challenge.
"Alright, I'm going in. Just watch for now. If you want to play, tell me—I can let you have a turn."
Takayuki pulled over a chair and gestured for Youcai to sit beside him.
Aya sat down next to him, gently leaning against his side, patiently watching him play.
Takayuki adjusted his posture slightly, then settled down and entered the world of Infinite World.
The young man with the afro ultimately failed to solve the multiplayer issue before release.
They had become entangled in chaotic logic and tangled code.
At first, their team had only a dozen or so people, and collaboration was relatively smooth.
Later, Mikfo sent over a hundred developers to provide technical support, which helped solve some of the more complex coding problems.
But new issues soon emerged—the newly added programmers didn't fully understand their development approach.
He constantly had to communicate with them, trying his best to ensure their code could integrate stably with the core game.
Just that alone was already exhausting.
In the end, they didn't even manage to finish a multiplayer mode.
Just as Takayuki had said, the young developer was too inexperienced.
And Mikfo didn't provide sufficient support either.
Mikfo's own game development capabilities weren't particularly strong to begin with, so they couldn't offer much high-level technical assistance.
Being able to ease manpower shortages was already the best they could do.
In truth, given another six months, the problems could definitely have been solved—but Myron Case refused.
He insisted the game be released on schedule.
According to him:
"Gamestar Electronic Entertainment's games always release on time—sometimes even early. Why can't you do the same? Why do you always run into so many problems?"
The developers could only suffer in silence.
Gamestar Electronic Entertainment didn't delay games because they only announced release dates when the game was basically finished.
If it wasn't ready, they simply wouldn't announce a date.
That way, even if something unexpected happened, they had room to polish the game further.
And players were very forgiving toward Gamestar Electronic Entertainment.
If another company refused to announce a release date after a game reveal, they'd probably be torn apart by players.
But Gamestar Electronic Entertainment could afford to be "willful."
Because players knew they would deliver the best games.
"Sigh… let fate decide, I guess…"
The young man with the afro looked at the released game and could only shake his head helplessly.
But he had no intention of giving up.
No matter how the sales turned out, that wouldn't be his reason to quit.
He had already arranged things with his team—their upcoming work would be anything but easy. They would need to quickly make up for the game's early shortcomings.
This was a game they had poured their hearts into. They didn't want it to remain a permanently unfinished regret.
So he intended to give it everything he had to fix it.
As for player reputation, he no longer had much hope.
On day one, Infinite World exploded in sales.
First-day sales exceeded one million copies—what should have been a mid-scale title unexpectedly showed the potential to rival major releases.