Ryan Carter finished packing up and turned to walk toward another mountain peak.

　　Once again, there was a campfire and six brothers. But before Ryan Carter could see clearly whether these six were exactly the same as the previous six, the system issued a prompt: Dear player, the game will disconnect in ten seconds, please prepare to log off. 10, 9, 8...

　　After the countdown, the game disconnected, and all the simulated scenes before his eyes disappeared. Ryan Carter returned to reality.

　　“What’s going on!” Ryan Carter muttered to himself as he connected to the official website.

　　At this moment, the developers and operators of “Parallel World” were sitting together, holding an emergency meeting overnight to discuss the many issues that had been exposed on the very first day of the public beta.

　　As the first ever fully immersive holographic game, “Parallel World” had been developed in secret to maintain its mystique, and only began heavy promotion during the closed beta phase. The closed beta was conducted entirely by internal staff, who focused mainly on the usual key aspects of online games: characters, quests, skills, equipment, and so on. However, the pile of problems exposed on the first day of the public beta were almost all due to the use of holographic technology, making them hard for people to accept.

　　First of all, data collected from the player complaint channel showed that the low-level training area monsters were excessively cute, which was the most frequently complained-about issue. Female players were collectively outraged, while male players, afraid of being despised by female players for killing the cute creatures, were even more dissatisfied with this setting than the female players.

　　In addition, the uniform and repetitive appearance of NPCs, buildings, trees, and so on in the game could also be forcibly resolved through technical means. What was truly tricky, however, were the problems caused by human behavior.

　　In just half a day of public beta, frequent violent incidents in the game had left the officials at a loss. The simulation of the human sensory system was the core of the entire holographic game, and the violent incidents occurred precisely within this most fundamental framework, making it impossible to resolve them through technical modifications. After repeated research, it was decided to classify such fighting as PK (player killing), and to raise the PK protection level to level 10. As for whether, in the future, players would wield in-game weapons with their right hand to use skills while using their left hand to perform the self-developed “Monkey Steals the Peach” sneak attack, they could only wait and see.

　　“Well, that’s fine! It’s realistic! Ha, what we want in a holographic game is realism, that’s exactly our original intention.” A senior executive at the meeting tried to reassure everyone.

　　But the next issue was so bad that even the excuse of realism couldn’t cover it up: female players being sexually assaulted by male players.

　　The game staff truly hadn’t expected that holographic technology would so thoroughly expose the dark side of players. But since sensory simulation was an integrated system, simply removing the relevant sexual content was not something the game company’s technology could handle. Moreover, this was actually a hidden selling point of the game, and the higher-ups were reluctant to ban it completely.

　　The final solution could only be to design a system that respected the wishes of both parties. But this stumped the technical staff. Imagine, in a warm and gentle environment, a pair of lovers are swept up in passion and want to take things further, when suddenly—“bang”—a prompt box pops up: XX invitation from so-and-so, do you accept? Even if you select YES, the previously harmonious atmosphere instantly turns into a NO.

　　Furthermore, how should the degree of this XX be defined? Is only that act considered XX? What about a kiss? What about a touch? So-and-so is about to touch you, do you accept? When someone at the meeting hypothetically proposed such a prompt box, everyone felt nauseated.

　　“No matter what, let’s implement it first. We can observe player reactions and feedback, then make adjustments.” In the end, The Boss made the decision.

　　After discussing a few more issues, the meeting adjourned, and all departments immediately threw themselves into intense work. To have to overhaul the game after just half a day of public beta was truly a miracle in the history of online games. Fortunately, this time they could use “first use of holographic technology, so lack of experience” as an excuse, but everyone was undoubtedly under a lot of pressure.

　　The Boss watched the busy figures leaving one after another and nodded in satisfaction. Then, he noticed that one person was still sitting in his seat, grinning at him.

　　After everyone else had left, The Boss finally spoke: “Little Jack, do you have something to say?”

　　“Boss, you know me so well!” The person called Little Jack stood up, walked over to the boss, and casually pulled up a chair to sit down.

　　“Go ahead!” The boss looked at him. This Jack Evans was a member of the game planning department and one of the core members of the entire development team.

　　“Uh! What I saw today made me think our game might have a bit of a problem,” said Little Jack.

　　“Oh?”

　　“Because it’s a holographic simulation, some people will bring real-life skills into the game, which gives them an innate advantage over other players. This is quite detrimental to the game balance we’ve always pursued!” said Little Jack.

　　“What kind of skills would affect the game?” the boss asked.

　　“For example, kung fu!”

　　“Kung fu?”