10: The Gold Mine in 987 Negative Reviews

The phone vibrated.

Cheng Mo opened his eyes. It was already light out, but the convenience store lights were still on. He hadn't moved from the bench all night; his back was a bit stiff, and his finger was still resting on the refresh key. The screen lit up, and the store page returned.

"leap platform nightmare" was back online.

It wasn't a 404 error or "under review"; it was actually sitting right below the recommendation slot on the Steam homepage, in an inconspicuous but high-traffic box labeled "New Releases."

He didn't click in to read the player reviews yet, switching to the backend first.

Downloads: 12,743.

Active Users: 896.

Negative Reviews: 987.

All from the past six hours.

His lip twitched. He turned the phone around, screen facing outward, and held it up in front of Chen Hao, who had just pushed open the door and walked out.

Chen Hao was carrying two cups of soy milk and a bag of jianbing guozi. His gold-rimmed glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose. He froze for a second upon seeing the screen, then let out a "pfft" and sprayed his soy milk everywhere.

"Holy shit!" he laughed while wiping his lenses. "Nine hundred and eighty-seven? The first-day negative review rate is off the charts! Brother, we're viral!"

He snatched the phone, opened the review section, and scrolled down line by line.

"'The designer should be hung from a lamppost.'" He read the first one aloud, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "This one's a classic. I suggest we carve it on a tombstone."

"And this one—'This is an insult to the gaming industry; the developers should be collectively admitted to a psychiatric hospital.'" He took a screenshot and projected it onto the second-hand projector on the wall. "The overseas servers blew up too. Players in the German region are saying we ruined their weekend morning run mood."

Cheng Mo didn't say anything. He leaned against the wall and took a sip of the cold soy milk. It was sweet, cloyingly so. He frowned and set the cup down on a box piled high with empty cola cans.

Chen Hao was still scrolling.

"Hey, this one's interesting: 'My son played for three minutes and smashed his keyboard; now I'm getting a divorce.'" He enlarged the screenshot and pointed at the signature. "The ID is 'Calm Lake Surface,' and the IP address is in Dongguan. The authenticity is maxed out."

Another one popped up: "This game reminds me of the days I was physically punished by my math teacher in childhood. Thank you for making my psychological trauma relapse."

"Hahaha!" Chen Hao slapped the table. "Fantastic! It's all genuine, heartfelt breakdowns! This is what high-quality user feedback looks like!"

Cheng Mo finally moved. He pulled a pen out of his backpack and started spinning it. The metal barrel spun rapidly between his fingers like some sort of habitual ritual. After a few rotations, there was a "snap"—the pen tip broke.

He stopped and watched the broken tip fall into the gaps of the keyboard.

"Categorize these negative reviews," he said.

Chen Hao's laughter stopped abruptly, and he looked up at him.

"Technical flaws, difficulty design, art style, plot comprehension..." Cheng Mo's tone was as flat as if he were reading a manual. "Starting tomorrow, we optimize category by category."

Chen Hao stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly grinned. "Are you crazy? They're saying we should go to prison, and you're still thinking about updating the game?"

"The harsher they curse, the deeper they remember," Cheng Mo took out the broken pen and replaced it with a new one. He didn't spin it this time, just placed it gently on the desk. "Negative reviews are a mine, not a bomb. We need to dig."

"So you really plan to survive on insults?" Chen Hao straightened his glasses, his voice dropping low. "Do you know what the forums are like right now? The term 'Psychological Pollution Game' is trending. A blogger posted a thousand-word essay saying we're suspected of inducing self-harm in teenagers. Someone on Tieba is organizing a joint report, demanding Steam take us down and permanently ban the developer account."

"Let them organize," Cheng Mo popped a lemon-flavored lollipop into his mouth, crunching it loudly. "The more reports there are, the more the platform won't dare to move against us easily. One move, and the public sentiment will explode a second time."

"You're using negative reviews as a moat?"

"They always were." He glanced at the rating curve on the projection. "Look at this."

Chen Hao looked over. Despite the flood of negative reviews, the overall rating was steadily climbing, settling at 6.2.

"Ridiculous," he whispered. "For a normal new game, a 5.0 on the first day is considered a total flop. Our thing is as difficult as the final question on the Gaokao math exam, the art looks like a primary schooler's doodles, and the plot is just three words: 'Jump up.' Yet the rating is actually drifting upward?"

"It's logical." Cheng Mo spat out half a lollipop stick. "Players finish cursing, find they can't get a refund, get so angry they can't sleep, and get up in the middle of the night to try again—and they die again. After dying enough times, they get a weird sense of accomplishment and happen to change it to a positive review."

"Guilt converting into positive reviews?"

"Something like that. When the pain is deep enough, people don't want to admit they suffered for nothing. They have to convince themselves: this game has value."

Chen Hao was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly laughed. "So our core users are actually just stubborn bastards who refuse to give up?"

"Exactly," Cheng Mo nodded. "They aren't afraid of difficulty, they're afraid of boredom. They aren't afraid of losing, they're afraid of having no challenge. We're not making a game; we're building a torture device, specifically to treat the late stages of modern numbness."

Chen Hao shook his head, but he was already typing code. He pulled up a simple analysis script and entered keyword filters:

"Disgusting" — appeared 217 times

"Scam" — 189 times

"Anti-human" — 303 times

"Hang from a lamppost" — 42 times (including variations)

He picked out a few of the most viral ones and generated a "Negative Review Selection" image with the title: "Global Player Joint Petition: Execute the Development Team."

"Should we post it on Twitter?" he asked.

"Don't," Cheng Mo shook his head. "The quieter we are now, the better. Let them argue; we'll listen."

"Listen for what?"

"Listen for which insult cuts the deepest."

Chen Hao paused, then immediately understood. Emotional venting is noise, but recurring specific allegations are the real problems.

For example, "The loading time fake progress bar is a lie"—indicating players noticed the psychological manipulation;

"The sudden camera flip in Level 3 causes dizziness"—likely a low-level engine bug;

"The death animation loops ten times"—pure torture, but someone mentioned it more than three times.

These were the gold nuggets hidden in the volcanic ash.

He created a new document and named it "V1.1 Optimization List." The cursor blinked, as if waiting for the first line of text.

"First item," he looked up. "Should we change the loading screen tip? The current 'Loading hard...' is too hypocritical."

Cheng Mo licked his lips. "Change it to 'Welcome to Hell.'"

"Add an emoji?"

“😈.”

Chen Hao typed: [Loading tip update: 'Welcome to Hell 😈']

The room fell quiet. The server fans hummed, and the old wall clock ticked away. The counter-clockwise hand had stopped at some point, but no one noticed.

Cheng Mo stood up, walked to that retired space agency server cabinet, and pulled open the side panel. Several solder joints on the circuit board gleamed with new light—he had patched them last night. He reached out to feel the vent; the temperature was normal.

"Tell me," he suddenly spoke, "is it possible that the hardest part isn't getting players to beat the game, but getting them not to uninstall?"

Chen Hao looked up. "You care about retention rates now?"

"No," Cheng Mo shook his head. "I'm thinking about how to make them keep grinding to the end while they curse."

"Then we have to make failure interesting."

"For example?"

"For example, unlocking a unique taunt with every death."

"Good idea."

"Or giving an achievement to someone who fails ten times in a row: 'Stubborn Bronze'."

"Level it up again and give the title 'Psychiatric Patient'."

The two looked at each other and laughed at the same time.

The laughter wasn't loud, but it bounced around the sweltering basement, as if finding some kind of absurd resonance.

Cheng Mo walked back to the desk and picked up the unopened new pen. He didn't spin it, just rubbed the barrel with his fingertip as if confirming its existence.

"Let them curse," he said. "The harsher they curse, the closer we are to being right."

Chen Hao closed the negative review screenshot page, the cursor resting on the first line of the blank document.

He typed: [1. Loading tip update: 'Welcome to Hell 😈']