God's Imitator

Seeing this data, Lin Sizhi fell into brief contemplation.

”In other words, the God’s Imitator who designed this game believes that even in situations where there are more intelligent people in the game, there would still be a baseline death rate of 40%.

”And in cases where the participating players aren’t very intelligent, the death rate would be as high as 70%.

”Was it designed according to these values from the very beginning?”

Depending on the type of game, the Gallery would provide planning document formats with subtle differences.

For instance, allocation-type games like ”Blood Poker,” or general judgment-type games, would not require God’s Imitators to fill in the [Estimated Death Rate].

But this game was a new type: ”Screening Type.” Based on the Gallery’s previous descriptions, in simpler terms, this meant elimination.

Moreover, the elimination targets included both God’s Imitators and players simultaneously.

In screening-type game planning documents, there was a rather prominent feature: the [Estimated Death Rate] field appeared on the first page, with an additional note stating that designers needed to write what they believed could be the upper and lower limits of possible death rates.

However, there was no requirement stating ”the death rate must reach a certain percentage” or similar demands.In other words, even with the purpose of ”eliminating players,” how many to eliminate specifically was still decided by the God’s Imitator designing the game.

Forty players, if 70% were eliminated, that would mean 28 people would die.

Lin Sizhi couldn’t help but frown slightly.

”This death rate is far too high. Is this really ’selection,’ or is it ’mowing grass’?”

He continued reading.

The planning document was densely filled with numerous rules according to the established format, and all the required props were clearly written out.

Lin Sizhi carefully reviewed the incomplete planning document from beginning to end and roughly determined the game’s content.

The ”Blind Date Game” would select 40 players from 6 communities to participate, 20 males and 20 females.

The three players with the least visa time from each community would be forced to participate.

Additionally, participation was possible through voluntary registration, with each community limited to a total of 4-8 people, and the male-to-female ratio must be maintained at 1:1.

The game would continue for 8 hours.

Male and female players had different benefit rules:

Male players would receive 30,000 minutes of visa time as a reward indiscriminately when leaving the game.

Female players would have small amounts of visa time randomly deducted every hour during the game (within 5 minutes), and would not receive the 30,000-minute visa time reward when the game ended.

After the game officially began, it would alternate between ”10-minute rest - 10-minute meeting” modes, meaning each player would conduct 24 meetings within the 8 hours.

Throughout the entire 8-hour game, players could only move within their own rest rooms when not in meeting rooms with other players, and could not communicate with other players through any means.

During meetings, players from different communities would be randomly matched, with a 75% probability of being matched with opposite-sex players.

Players would receive 1 ”like” and 1 ”dislike” per hour, which could be given to the other party during meetings to express their attitude.

The final meeting of the game would conduct a ”final selection vote.” If the meeting pair were of opposite sexes and mutually gave each other likes, both would receive an additional 30,000 minutes of visa time when leaving the game.

Starting from the second hour, the game would also update ”talent show” rules, randomly selecting two players for talent show PK battles.

Other players could vote ”interesting” or ”boring” for them, where 10 ”interesting” votes could be exchanged for 1 ”like,” and receiving 20 ”boring” votes would forcibly cut off the performance.

In the rest rooms, there were vending machines and data query machines.

The vending machines sold expensive food, beverages, and visa time exchange coupons.

The data query machines could check the number of ”likes” and ”dislikes” one had received, could also query data related to ”proportions” within the game, and broadcast to all players.

However, they could not query any data related to individual ”like” and ”dislike” changes.

After 4 hours, the game would enter the second phase and add completely new rules.

But what exactly these rules were was not specified in the remaining pages of the planning document.

There were only three fragments of incomplete information:

[After entering the second phase, players who receive 20 ”boring” votes in talent show performances will suffer instant death punishment.]

[After killing other players through any rule within the game, one will receive 1/10 of that player’s remaining visa time as a personal reward.]

[When multiple people are involved in a player’s death, the above reward will be equally divided.]

Besides the planning document, there was also a blank document with space reserved for five new rules, which was for Lin Sizhi to fill out.

...

”Can such a game really cause a 40%-70% death rate?

”Obviously, in the latter four hours of the game, the second phase, there must be even more cruel killing rules, and there’s likely more than one.”

Lin Sizhi quickly realized this.

From the rules he had seen so far, there was only one killing rule: ”receiving 20 ’boring’ votes in talent shows would result in death.” But relying on this single killing rule to create such a high death rate would be nearly impossible.

Moreover, the rule stating ”killing other players through any rule within the game can earn 1/10 of the deceased’s visa time” emphasized ”any rule.”

This meant there must be more than one way to kill within the game.

But these killing methods were completely absent from the first phase of the game.

In other words, this God’s Imitator deliberately cut the ”Blind Date Game” in half: the first 4 hours contained no killing rules and appeared to be a low-difficulty game where everyone could harmoniously work together to gain benefits.

But in the latter 4 hours, several killing rules would suddenly be updated, and through some means, players would be incited to slaughter each other to gain maximum benefits.

The God’s Imitator used 1/10 of the deceased’s visa time as bait, while actually keeping the remaining 9/10 for themselves.

From the invitation content the Gallery gave Lin Sizhi, it seemed the Gallery wasn’t entirely satisfied with this game’s design either.

But the Gallery didn’t directly reject the game.

Within the ambiguous range, the Gallery chose to let a God’s Imitator judge another God’s Imitator.

If Lin Sizhi did nothing, this game might still proceed normally and harvest many players’ lives.

What particularly concerned Lin Sizhi was the Gallery’s final statement.

[Just as players can slowly change communities, God’s Imitators will also slowly change the Gallery.]

”This might be hinting that the Gallery’s review standards and rules are not strictly unchanging, but are influenced by the majority of God’s Imitators.

”Just like players to communities: if players are all harmonious and loving, then the community will also be harmonious and loving. If players are all selfish, then the community will likely fall apart.

”If all God’s Imitators take pleasure in harvesting players’ visa time and continuously push the boundaries of Gallery rules in game after game, then the New World might become a pure player slaughterhouse.”

Lin Sizhi picked up the planning document again, tapped it on the desk to align it.

”I don’t like slaughterhouses.”

Then, he took out the blank page for adding rules and began writing.

Once he accepted the Gallery’s matched game, it meant both he and the God’s Imitator who designed this game would enter the game.

Therefore, the rules Lin Sizhi added had only two purposes:

First, to ensure his own safety as much as possible, creating or expanding usable backdoors for himself.

Second, to compress the opponent’s survival space as much as possible, ideally quickly locating the opponent’s identity and killing them.

But the problem was that these rules could only be added to the game after the opponent agreed to them.

In other words, the rules Lin Sizhi added had to deceive the opponent on the surface, even making them mistakenly believe these rules were beneficial for ”harvesting players.”

He absolutely could not expose his intention to kill the opponent.

After consideration, Lin Sizhi wrote down four rules.

[1. Once visa time exchange coupons are purchased, the purchaser can no longer convert them back to visa time and can only give them to other players through meeting rooms.]

[2. Each entry to a meeting room requires payment of room usage fees: 200 minutes of visa time. Players each have three buttons: ”I’ll pay,” ”Split,” and ”You pay.” When both parties reach agreement, deduction follows the agreed method. When parties disagree or exceed the time limit without pressing buttons, each will be deducted 200 minutes of visa time.]

[3. Any killing method requires system notification to the target 10 seconds before taking effect.]

[4. After accumulating 5 broadcasts, one can forcibly cut in line for talent shows and personally select a player for talent show PK.]

After writing the rules, Lin Sizhi checked them for errors, signed, and submitted.