The Rise of Otaku

Chapter 21 Movie

Although it was much better than the tier-one game, Zhou Yu still didn’t want to treat the game “Luhua village” as a good. Instead, he uploaded it to a website and left it just like what he did to the last game.

I’m Crazy Over Otaku is a game web portal. There was a section on the site where the members of the site could upload the games they made themselves. It didn’t matter if it was an online game or an offline game, the site allowed any games to be uploaded there, as long as the game was made by the uploaders themselves.

There were many experts on the site, even some professional game developers from big game companies, often lurked on the site as well. The site could be considered as one of the biggest gaming community in China.

After the site member uploaded the new game, the staff member of the site would test the game first. If they were interested in the game, they would send a contract to the game developer. Then the site would advertise the game and eventually charge people who downloaded the game.

If they were not interested, the game developer still could choose not to release the game, release the game for free or release the trial version of the game. If the number of people who played the game and the number of recommendations of the game reached a certain level, the site would reconsider whether to send the developer a contract or not.

The company behind the site implemented an easy entry but strict release policy. The site allowed any kinds of indie games to be uploaded, however, to get a contract was extremely difficult.

Those games that didn’t meet the standard, but still had huge potentials would often receive some special advertising positions on the site. By allowing those developers to gather their loyal supporters slowly, they would probably release better games through the site in the future.

After Zhou Yu uploaded “Luhua village farming simulation”, he didn’t get any responses. Perhaps the requirements to get a contract was too high or maybe the site staff member had not actually tested the game yet, but the game he had uploaded was quickly buried by the games that uploaded by other people.

Zhou Yu, who originally did not have much hope about the tier-one game, decided not to wait for the response. He just directly released the game for free.

However, so many days had passed, his game only had two or three downloads a day, it could be said that the tier-one game completely failed.

Without any recommendations or advertisements, this was basically the fate of all indie games.

The myth of Luhua village was also uploaded onto the site. The same as the tier-one game, he waited for two days, and then after getting nothing from the site, he released the game for free without any hesitation.

After all, those two games were just experiments, if he wanted to make money, he wanted to wait until he could make the tier-three games.

After catching so many small beasts, from the number of the beasts that Zhou Yu had encountered, he could easily tell that the programming ape was definitely the elite beast. It was very rare for him to encounter one. It would be lucky for him if he could meet one out of ten encounters. Plus there were so many sports that he was not good at, therefore, he almost couldn’t catch one in several days.

In terms of The Filming Lion, which was also the elite breast, he only had less than 10 of them. From its name, Zhou Yu suspected that it might have something to do with animations. So far, he had not encountered any elite beasts that could be used on manga, or maybe, manga didn’t need any elite beasts?

Just when he wanted to go outside to catch some more small beasts, he bumped into Zhou Shuyu and He Yuanyuan those two girls. After he gave them the game, it finally made them quiet down for several days, but why they came to look for him again? Zhou Yu wondered.

“Brother Yu, I’m looking for you. The game you made is awesome, I really admire you!”

Knowing Zhou Shuyu for so many days, Zhou Yu knew what type of person she was. If she wanted something from him, she would definitely sweet-talk to him as if her lips were covered with honey.

So hearing what she said, Zhou Yu was immediately alerted. Looking at the animated girls in front of him dubiously, he didn’t know what she wanted from him this time.

“I didn’t make that game. But I’ll let them know.”

He must stop them from thinking something else, otherwise, he would have many troubles in the future.

An ambitious girl, who was always thinking about making money, and a skillful young man, who was always thinking about not doing anything, whenever they met each other, there would always be some funny dramas.

He Yuanyuan was already used to this type of situations. Normally, she would just stand on the side, enjoying the drama.

However, today was different. Because it also mattered to her as well. So she also joined the “fight”.

Having one person versus two people, Zhou Yu lost the battle very quickly. After all, it was just a movie script, it was already included in the digital document that the game company had given to him, so it didn’t require him to do anything. Besides, the myth of Luhua village had already been released on the internet for free, there was no need to keep the script as a secret.

In fact, the script was professionally written, it was not something that Zhou Yu, this amateur writer could write, however, those two girls, who probably would be “great directors” in the future, firmly believed that it was written by Zhou Yu. They even insisted on putting Zhou Yu as the film writer of the movie.

‘Uhhh... whatever makes them happy...’

After getting the confirmation from Zhou Yu, the two girls, who were already bored to death by the boring village life quickly began their ‘big filming plan’ in a hurry.

At first, they had to edit the script. And surprisingly, they were able to abridge the long and thick original script into a one hour and a half movie script in just three days. After that, they began to recruit any people they could find. At least, they needed to gather enough actors.

The film crew of “the myth of Luhua village”

Director: Zhou Shuyu, He Yuanyuan;

Film writer: Zhou Yu;

Actors: a group of naughty kids;

Equipment: two handheld cameras, various handmade film props...

All the movie scenes would be shot near the village. Hence, the filming of a low-budget movie was begun.

Dreams were beautiful, but the realities were very cruel. Just a group of naughty kids was already enough to make those two big directors headaches. They were kids, not adults. They would often chase each other around from time to time. Just a simple assembly already took them half a day.

Choosing Zhou Hao to be the main lead, was a complete mistake. He who normally looked very smart, couldn’t even remember his lines. In the end, he could only rely on a piece of board to help him to barely keep the filming process going.

Many scenes were shot in the night time, after all, it was a horror movie. But kids couldn’t stay up very late, it greatly reduced available filming time. Plus all kinds of unexpected chasings and playings, they might not even get a small and proper segment of the movie in one night.

Zhou Yu didn’t participate throughout the entire filming process. Although his character also played an important role in the movie. However, since he insisted not to participate, they could only remove his scene and asked other people to play his role.

The only thing that Zhou Yu could help was that when there weren’t enough people in the crowd, he sometimes would join the crowd to make up the number.

But regardlessly how difficult the filming process was, the movie was eventually able to compete before the summer holiday ended.

Having finished their first movie, Zhou Shuyu and He Yuanyuan both were very happy. They bought many snacks for those naughty kids as their rewards and most importantly their “pays”.

It was truly easy to satisfy those kids, just some snacks would make them happy. To those kids, not only were they able to play in the movie, which was the adult’s game, but they also had snacks to eat. So they all thought that they had a great summer holiday.

However, the last few days of the summer holiday were usually the apocalypse for those kids. Especially, Zhou Hao this kid, who only thought about having fun during the summer holiday. The unfinished homework piled up like a mountain, giving people a sense of despair.

The myth of Luhua village was uploaded to the internet. Because of the aircraft carrier documentary they uploaded, they had quite a few subscribers. So quite a few people saw the movie.

The opening of the movie shocked all the viewers. Because the opening of the movie was the CG animation of the game.

Creepy bloody scenes, coupled with the right amount of spine-chilling sound effects, it completed all the necessary elements of a horror movie. It was more than enough to make viewer’s hairs stand on the end.

Clearly, this was not the garbage special effects for a low-budget movie. It could almost compete with the CG animation in big Hollywood movies.

Those who was shocked by the CG animation and didn’t think much of the movie at the beginning, decided to watch the movie to the end. However, after the CG animation finished, what appeared in front of them was a group of kids and their terrible acting skills. What made everyone even more speechless was that the main kid was clearly reading something behind the camera. It made the entire horror movie become a comedy.

This was the amateur movie that all the viewers had expected.

But it wasn’t totally unenjoyable. The main story was decent. With many twists and turns, it didn’t look like a story that was written by amateurs. Plus there were some other CG clips acted as cut scenes, the movie still amazed the viewers. Many people didn’t even expect that they would watch the entire movie.

As a movie that was completely made by amateurs, this type of quality was already good enough. Plus that almost perfect CG animation, it was not surprising that the movie would receive many positive comments.

Fortunately, when the movie caught the media’s attention, Zhou Shuyu and He Yuanyuan already went back to the university. So there were no reporters coming to the village.