No Men, No Play

When everything is progressing smoothly and on track, time can slip away unnoticed, disappearing at a speed that leaves one feeling a sense of dread upon realizing it.

This day was one where Lu Qing decided to reward his three good roommates from Room 5012 for their strong support of his "endeavors."

"Northern Courtyard" is a relatively authentic northeastern Chinese restaurant located in a prime spot on the commercial street of a university town in Tianhai City. It was opened by a young couple from Harbin and spans three floors, making it quite sizable. While the dishes may not be absolutely authentic, they are passable under the supervision of the head chef.

The reason for choosing this place today was primarily to show gratitude to Li Mingshi for his significant contributions during recent live streams.

At around 3 PM, the group skipped their classes and gathered in a private room at the restaurant.

At the moment, Lu Qing was downstairs ordering food, so the spacious room was left with only the three of them chatting idly.

"Wait, Brother Li, how many classes did you fail attendance for this semester?"

"None. I’m a model student with excellent values and a healthy, upward mindset. How could I fail?"

"But I haven’t seen you attend many classes…"

"Well, my clones went to sign in for me. It’s normal you didn’t notice."

"..."

Old Li truly lived up to his reputation, exuding an air of authority with his words.

Zhang Yang, feeling a bit deflated, turned his attention to Wen Le, who was sitting at the large round table playing a mobile game.

"Brother Wen, what are you doing?"

"Can’t you see? Playing a game."

"What game?"

"A gacha game."

"What’s a gacha game?"

"Anime-style, girls, mobile, character-building, game," Wen Le replied impatiently.

"Oh… but Brother Wen, why do you look like you’re in pain? Doesn’t seem like you’re having much fun."

Zhang Yang grinned cheekily, completely unfazed by Wen Le’s bad attitude. After all, he was the lowest in the dorm hierarchy and had always been easygoing.

"Because I pulled a trash character. It’s frustrating. I wasted a lot of summoning tickets. So, no, I’m not happy."

"Huh? What character? Let me see."

Zhang Yang leaned over.

Seeing this, Wen Le tilted his phone screen and pointed to a character in the list:

"See this? This girl. I just spent 70 pulls to get her. If you calculate it at 16 yuan per pull, that’s pretty expensive, right?"

"Yeah, Brother Wen, but you got what you wanted, didn’t you? Why aren’t you happy?"

Zhang Yang was confused.

Wen Le rubbed his temples, took off his black-framed glasses, and cursed through gritted teeth:

"Because after pulling her, I found out that in the game’s story, this girl made a bet with an orc, lost, and became his pet. She has to obey him without question. I thought no sane writer would actually make her lose, but… the game’s lead writer decided to pour poison down the players’ throats! They actually wrote her losing. Can you believe it? So, I pulled her, and now I feel like a clown. Am I not just a Thunderclap Hill berserker?"

"!"

Although Zhang Yang wasn’t familiar with gacha game terminology, even from a real-world perspective, he could sense something deeply wrong—no, even a malicious intent from the developers, as if they were feeding the players a massive pile of toxicity.

"That’s pretty disgusting," Li Mingshi chimed in, looking up from his phone, clearly annoyed by the writing.

"Sigh."

Wen Le sighed and slammed his phone shut:

"I’m used to it. We gacha game refugees are like this. When a company feeds us trash, we just blacklist them and move on to another developer’s new game. But you can never guard against these sudden, awful plot twists. Even if they try to fix it later, it’s hard to overlook."

"Think about it. I spend 648 yuan at a time, and the character I paid for was someone else’s pet. How does something like that get approved? How does it pass through layers of review, from the lead writer to the setting team leader to the department head, and end up being fed to the players? Who can tolerate that?

And let’s not even talk about those storylines where side characters have office romances, teammates flirt with each other, siblings openly show affection, gacha banners feature married couples, the main heroine gets physically close to male side characters, or the heroine gets captured by the male antagonist for days… These kinds of plots would make even the legendary Shennong die from toxicity."

Wen Le ranted, clearly harboring deep resentment toward these toxic storylines.

"Wait, Brother Wen, isn’t that just random pairing? That’s way too much. If we’re immersed in the story, watching all these men and women messing around, aren’t we just the third wheel? Like we’re part of their play, just a camera in the room?"

Zhang Yang was also starting to feel uneasy.

"Exactly. So, I’ve decided: from now on, I’m going UNumberOne!"

"What does that mean, Brother Wen?"

"No males, no play."

"??"

"If a gacha banner has male characters, I won’t pull. I’ll just walk away. That way, I can avoid being stabbed in the back by the writers and fed trash.

If you’re making a male-oriented game, delete all the male characters and go all-female. If you’re making a female-oriented game, make it an otome game, no problem. But now, you’re trying to cater to both sides, making money from both, and in so-called 'general audience' games, you’re including cuckolding plots. Not only is it greedy, but you’re also constantly betraying the players. Games like that—I’ll trace them back to the producers and the company, and I’ll never spend another penny on them."

He sighed, "You know, in the gacha game community, truly 'general audience' games are rare. After all, the quality of the development team varies, and the logical thinking of male and female writers is often incompatible. It’s like male-oriented and female-oriented novels—they can’t be merged, or it’ll cause conflicts.

So, this balancing act is impossible. You can never predict what kind of landmine they’ll drop.

I’ve been out of the gacha scene for a while, bought a lot of console games, thinking that playing AAA titles and non-NTR adult games would be safe. But recently, I picked up my phone, remembered the hundreds of thousands of yuan I’ve spent on a few gacha games, and couldn’t help but want to log back in…"

Zhang Yang: "?"

Old Li: "Not you, Wen."

"A hundred thousand yuan?"

The two exchanged glances and fell silent.

They quickly reached a consensus—

"You, my friend, have too much money to spare."

…

Creak—

The conversation stopped abruptly as the door opened.

Lu Qing, having ordered a dozen signature dishes, walked into the room. Seeing his three brothers deep in conversation, he couldn’t help but ask:

"Did I miss something?"

"Not much, Brother Lu. Brother Wen was just criticizing some game companies. By the way, Brother Lu, do you play games?" Zhang Yang asked.

"Me? I stopped a long time ago. Back in the day, I only played maid games. Other than that… not much interest."

"What about gacha games?"

"I got burned by the storylines, so I don’t play them much."

"! Then let me ask you something."

Suddenly, Wen Le’s gaze sharpened, and his tone turned piercing: "Aren’t you writing a book?"

"Yeah."

"Then I want to know—if you were the lead writer for a game company, would you adhere to certain principles when writing storylines involving female characters?"

"Principles?"

Lu Qing pulled out a chair and sat down, not answering immediately.

Instead, he thought about his creative methodology,

then, with a very serious expression,

said gravely: "Yes."

He continued:

"There are three things I won’t write—giving away female characters, killing female characters, and NTR.

I only write male-oriented stories, so I always consider the reader’s experience from their perspective."

……

……