The Rise of Otaku

Edited by Esperanza

Gao Shu’s face indeed didn’t look pretty. The sale of Fun Recipes was lower than the lowest estimate, which meant that the management of the Otaku Gaming portal had also thought that the game might fail, but they didn’t expect it to be this bad. Originally, there were also plans for a series of promotions for the ‘education’ games, but the first shot failed to catch on fire, and it became a matter of concern for the management whether to continue with the plan.

There were even some people, who put forward the suggestion of reevaluating “the Brothel Taoist”.

Regarding this, Gao Shu was strongly against it.

Regardless of the success or the failure of “Fun Recipes”, they mustn’t give up the Taoist. Because his team’s production level was top-notch in China, it was just that they had not found the most suitable direction. What was more was that the mysterious team behind Zhou Yu was still far from showing all its strength, especially the voice actors in the animated movies, they never appeared in the game before.

He didn’t know why all the games that the Taoist’s team made were mostly without character voices, they obviously had excellent dub actors such as little Muli, however, she never once appeared in any games. This made Gao Shu very confused.

Could it be that Zhou Yu’s animation team and the game development team were not in the same place?

Just when Gao Shu was spinning his pen, having this severe headache, a colleague came over, patted his shoulder and said “Gao Shu, Boss wants to see you. Were you loafing around, and got caught by him?”

“You don’t say, he probably noticed that I was late for two hours yesterday. Alas, This month’s bonus is gone.”

Although Gao Shu was joking, he knew that it was clearly about the Taoist. He just hoped that the management’s decision would not be too outrageous.

Arriving at the boss’ office with heavy footsteps, Gao Shu noticed that the face of his boss was also very gloomy, “xiao Gao, the new plan is temporarily canceled, you can inform Zhou Yu to temporarily stop producing this type of game. But the collaboration will still continue. How’s the dragon’s treasure web game going?”

Follow-up plans were indeed stranded, after all, they were hit very hard this time, the boss also didn’t know how to explain it to the shareholders. But fortunately, they didn’t plan to stop cooperating with Zhou Yu. It was a relief.

“The dragon’s treasure web game has been completed by our platinum development team Zou Si Fang studio and it is expected to be available in a week.”

After hearing what Gao Shu said, the boss was getting slightly angry again.

This Zhou Yu, what on earth was he thinking? As the popularity of the movie “The Dragon’s treasure” was increasing rapidly, they specifically went to ask him if he could make a relevant game, he even showed him how much they were going to pay him. However, he refused immediately without any hesitation. What was wrong with him. It was fine that he did not want to do it, maybe he was busy developing other games, but why did he not even want to lend his voice actors to them?

Did Muli and other voice actors not need any money? Were these people all willing to hide behind the scenes all their lives?

“Before, you said that ‘Fun recipes’ was made by Zhou Yu to practice his cooking skills, and he never thought of selling it, I did not believe it at that time. But now, it seemed like it was real. He was such a self-willed person. Well, we can’t blame other people, it was us who made a bad decision since he had already told us at the beginning.”

The boss let out a sigh while looking at the disc of “Fun Recipes” on the table. He really wanted to throw it directly out the window.

Otaku gaming portal gave up “Fun Recipes”, and Zhou Yu and didn’t care about “Fun Recipes”, it could be said that the game that had caused a heated discussion in the public for almost two months, gradually faded out on the market. It seemed like there was no way that it would be able to become popular again.

However, this world was full of surprises sometimes.

A video that was released on Facebook by a relatively indoorsy Hollywood star suddenly became a hot topic. In the video, the star actually made a ‘shredded pork with green pepper’ dish by following the preparing process of a game, and he thought that it was very ‘authentic’ after he tried it.

This star took the video of the dish he cooked and said proudly, “Hey, believe it or not, I can now go to a Chinese restaurant and apply for a job as a chef!”

This game was the English version of Fun Recipes.

Otaku Gaming portal also had a website outside the Great Firewall, and the English version of Fun Recipes was released at the same time as the Chinese version. Its sale was also very disappointing.

However, some foreigners, who bought this game out of curiosity, were surprised to find that the game had unique extraordinary charm. Everyone loves delicious food, but the complicated cooking process of Chinese food, and the annoying amount of ambiguous adjectives such as a few, not too much, etc, made foreigners completely confused, so to master the cooking skills of Chinese food was extremely difficult.

However, now, “Fun Recipes” actually simplified the cooking process and it was visually presented in a simple game. It was very easy to understand. As long as someone could master the cooking process in the game, it would not be difficult for them to prepare an “authentic” Chinese dish!

Of course, the authentic here was from the foreigner’s point of view.

But after the star posted the video, it accidentally caused a new popular craze for showing the “Chinese food” people cooked.

Dishes like green pepper shredded pork, mapo tofu, and other classic Chinese food, as long as the dish was in the game, some people would make it in real life. Those, who had better cooking skills, would definitely be able to make the dish taste better than their local Chinese restaurant, and those, who were completely new to cooking, were definitely going to make a mess in their kitchens. There was one video showing one guy almost burn his entire kitchen.

It was a popular trend to cook a Chinese meal and then share it with a few good friends or neighbors.

The English version of “Fun Recipes” has been hailed as a “magical game” by foreigners, and this popularity also reflected on the sales of the game. Its sale was increasing rapidly, as if it was riding a rocket, flying into the sky. It was almost unstoppable.

Generally speaking, any game would sell the most of its copies in the first week of launch, and the sale would gradually decrease over time. However, the sale of this Fun Recipes behaved completely opposite. It hit the game weekly top sales chart after two months of poor sales.

This bizarre phenomenon made the countless gaming magazine editors gasp in shock. Then they all began to study the game, hoping to find out why it suddenly became popular online.

While the daily visitor number of the Otaku Gaming portal’s English site was rapidly increasing, more and more people began to leave comments, praising the game or demanding the game to add more Recipes, on the homepage of Fun Recipes.

“I’m an Otaku, but I can proudly announce today that I can finally cook Chinese food!”

“Thank god, I learned how to cook Chinese food from this game, it gave me confidence and helped me get a job! I love you!”

“Perfect game! But I want more. Can you imagine the feeling of accomplishment when you put out a table full of Chinese food? That’s art!”

“With all due respect, Otaku Gaming portal, this game is great, but if you can add some western recipes, I will buy at least ten copies!”

All sorts of comments flooded the comment section, it seemed to be announcing the revival of Fun Recipes.