“So, what is the content that the game developer truly wants to express?”

“This is actually easy to distinguish.”

“The real-world issues mirrored in the game, which are the content being collected in the official Weibo activity, represent the ‘mirror’ function of ‘Struggle.’ It uses recreated real elements to allow everyone to see reality through this game.”

“But if it were merely reflecting reality, documentaries or realistic films would be better vehicles, able to present all content more objectively before everyone.”

“‘Struggle’ is a game, and the reason for using a game as the medium is that the creator can combine what they want to express with game mechanics!”

“Therefore, the parts combined with game mechanics are what the creator is truly hinting at through this ‘mirror’!”

Next are a series of questions and answers. These questions are all unreasonable elements left in the game by the creator, and precisely because they are unreasonable, they become puzzles.”

“Everyone can think carefully about the meanings hidden behind them.”

“[1] Why is the game divided into a Poor Version and a Wealthy Version, priced separately, with no discount for purchasing both together?”

“On one hand, the pricing itself is a form of performance art, emphasizing that ‘life offers no second chances’—we can choose a game, but we can’t choose our own lives. On the other hand, it encourages the poor to buy the Wealthy Version and the wealthy to buy the Poor Version, allowing each to not be confined to their worlds but to truly immerse themselves in the other’s living environment.”

“In the game, the living environments of the poor and the wealthy have huge differences, to the extent that they can no longer understand each other.”

“The wealthy protagonist asks why poor people can’t make time to accompany their children—could they possibly be busier than the CEO of a large company?”

“This is because the wealthy protagonist has never truly put himself in the poor person’s situation, so he cannot understand why the bottom-tier poor cannot control their own time.”

“The poor protagonist believes that struggling can lead to a better life, that one should learn from excellent people, change the poor person’s mindset, and thus change one’s life.”

“This is because the poor only see the effort that the wealthy promote, but often ignore the massive resources behind the wealthy that provide support. Many wealthy people promote that ‘wealth beyond effort is zero,’ promote that they are self-made, and the poor believe it. Why? Because the poor have no way of knowing how much benefit the wealthy derive from their connections, thinking patterns, educational backgrounds, and so on.”

“Including the murderer who believed the wealthy person was a fraud, it was because he originally believed the wealthy person, only to later discover that the wealthy person had only told part of the truth.”

“So, this pricing strategy itself encourages the poor and the wealthy to experience each other’s lives in the game, step out of their cognitive blind spots, and view these issues from a more comprehensive perspective.”

“This approach breaks the fourth wall, using decisions in reality to determine your experience in the game, and only the artistic medium of games can achieve this.”

“[2] Why use STRUGGLE as the English name of the game?”

“This is precisely the brilliance of language. If the intention was purely to express the meaning of ‘struggle’ in the sense of striving hard, then ‘fight’ or ‘strive’ would be better, as these words are more positive and better match the original meaning of striving.”

“But the word ‘struggle’ not only has the meaning of striving but also of fighting and wrestling. Combined with the all-English story background, it’s easy to see this is a double entendre: for the wealthy, it’s striving; for the poor, it’s struggling.”

“Understanding this layer of meaning and looking back at the Chinese title ‘Struggle,’ adds a layer of irony. You’ll realize that although both are called struggle, the wealthy’s struggle and the poor’s struggle are completely different things.”

“The wealthy’s struggle takes place in ethereal clouds—they can fly up when they want to struggle, or lie down and roll around when they don’t want to, but no matter how they move about, they remain in the clouds.”

“While the poor’s struggle is in a constantly sinking quagmire—struggling hard only prevents them from sinking further, and once they stop, they’ll immediately be swallowed by the quagmire.”

“[3] Why are the characters in the game so stereotypical?”

“While playing the game, you’ll notice that the wealthy are all handsome, brilliant, and glamorous, while the different poor people all conform to our stereotypes about such people.”

“The game’s art style even exaggerates the appearance, demeanor, and expressions of each character, making them no longer like living people but rather turning them into a series of masks.”

“This doesn’t match the game’s theme, because realistic themes aiming to highlight realism should be made as authentic as possible, and stereotypical characters with exaggerated artistic presentations would weaken this authenticity.”

“On one hand, this reduces the player’s discomfort; on the other hand, it also prevents players from being too immersed in the perspective of the characters themselves, allowing them to view these issues from a higher dimension and with a more detached mindset.”

“The stereotypical presentation is a highly condensed version of each character image, and at the same time, it symbolizes that the story of ‘Struggle’ is a highly condensed version of many stories.”

“The game uses a series of stereotypes to represent certain types of people, and the game also uses the lives of one poor person and one wealthy person to reflect the lives of all poor people and all wealthy people.”

“And like the promotional method, this is also a symbolic, implied expression.”

“[4] Why does the game have only one ending that cannot be changed?”

“No matter what choices the wealthy make, they’ll still be killed, and no matter what choices the poor make, they’ll still be trapped in the cycle of poverty.”

“At first, I thought this was a fatalistic idea, suggesting that no matter how hard a person tries, they cannot change their fate.”

“But I quickly realized this was wrong.”

“The reason is simple, because the creator of this game, Mr. Pei, couldn’t possibly be someone who believes in fatalism!”

“Although I have never met Mr. Pei, anyone with even a slight understanding of the situation knows that Mr. Pei, unlike the wealthy protagonist in the game, is truly self-made!”

“From ‘The Lonely Desert Highway’ to one successful game after another, to one industry after another, we have witnessed Tenda’s rise over the past two years. No matter how hard we try, we cannot find any trace of capital involvement. All indications show that Mr. Pei was born into an ordinary salaried class and is completely self-made, step by step.”

“Mr. Pei himself is someone who completely changed his life through his efforts, so how could he possibly promote a fatalistic ideology?”

“It’s like a top student who studies diligently and scores 100 in every subject, yet constantly tells you that studying is useless. Would you believe it?”

“If you just think about it a little, you’d know this view is completely untenable!”

“So, why does the game have only one ending that cannot be changed?”

“As I said earlier, the game uses the life of one poor person and one wealthy person to reflect the lives of all poor people and all wealthy people.”

“Everyone’s life is different. The differences between one poor person and another, one wealthy person and another, are also enormous. So once multiple endings are allowed, it would dilute the ideas the game wants to express.”

“The game’s forced determination of the only endings for the poor and the wealthy has two considerations.”

“First, like most stories and movies, a single ending can ensure the completeness of the entire story, allowing the creator’s thoughts to be expressed.”

“Without limiting the ending, it would be impossible to make the beginning and end of the game echo each other.”

“The kind-hearted wealthy person ends in tragedy, and the kind-hearted poor person also ends in tragedy. The story becomes more powerful. If a happy ending were used, the tension of the entire story would be diluted, and the creator’s intended expression would deviate.”

“Second, this is a higher-level ‘fatalism.’ It’s not emphasizing that individuals cannot change their fate, but rather emphasizing that in this social environment, an individual’s choice cannot change an entire class.”

“The wealthy might die violently, or might enjoy their later years, and indeed most wealthy people will enjoy their later years. But the hatred between classes has already been established, the poor’s hatred toward the wealthy has become irreversible, so ‘killing the wealthy’ becomes an inevitable event. The only differences are ‘who kills the wealthy’ and ‘which wealthy person gets killed.'”

“Poor people might rise to become wealthy, or might go bankrupt and become beggars, but the relationship between the poor and the wealthy remains unchanged. As in the game, if the poor are forever being exploited by the wealthy in various ways, then the poor remaining poor becomes an inevitable event. Even if there are individual exceptions, when viewed from the entire group, it will increasingly approach an unsolvable situation.”

“So, the game deliberately locks the ending, making us repeatedly play through various branches in the game, making different choices, looking for hidden plots between the two versions… but in the end, nothing changes.”

“Why can’t we change the ending? Because the game mechanics constrain us.”

“And extending this, the poor in the game cannot change their lives through struggle because the entire society’s game mechanics constrain them.”

“Here, the game’s fourth wall is broken again: in a certain specific set of game rules, no matter how hard you try, you will never become a true winner.”

“[5] Only one clothing brand appears repeatedly in the game. What does this represent?”

“Many people should have seen the luxury brand, the golden ‘LL’ logo. This is the only brand that appears in the game, the luxury brand managed by the wealthy protagonist’s father and inherited by the wealthy protagonist, which has appeared on many characters.”

“From a gaming perspective, players’ memory is very limited. Having two brands might confuse, so the best approach is to have just one brand representing luxury goods, with untagged items being ordinary products. This is a basic concept of game design: Occam’s Razor, expressing a concept most simply.”

“But this expression is miraculously integrated into every aspect of the game; it’s not just a prop.”

“Have you noticed the biggest difference between the Wealthy Version and the Poor Version? In the Wealthy Version, no matter what you choose, you’ll only go from one type of success to another. But in the Poor Version, if you make just one wrong choice, you’ll immediately slide down, prematurely reaching the ending of the poverty cycle.”

“What’s the difference? The game has already given a hint: numbers.”

“For the poor, life is just a long string of numbers, because they must be extremely frugal to keep the chain of life continuously operating. Once a number goes wrong, it triggers a chain reaction, causing the entire chain to collapse instantly, zeroing out all previous efforts.”

“In contrast, for the wealthy, no matter what they choose, no matter how much money they spend, more funds will immediately replenish it.”

“Therefore, the game mechanics constantly control the game’s monetary figures, continuously ‘resetting’ the struggling poor, working hard to zero out the money figures, ultimately leading to the only ending.”

“Why do the poor person’s expenses constantly increase with their income? Some think it’s because many poor people lack financial awareness and are brainwashed by consumerism. But we should note that for many expenditures in the game, we have no choice at all.”

“For example, why must the poor person spend a month’s salary on a luxury suit, a belt, and a briefcase? Does he need these things? Couldn’t cheaper items suffice?”

“Yes, he needs them.”

“Because in the game’s environment, if he wears cheap clothes, he’ll be rejected and isolated by colleagues and those around him, and he’ll never be able to integrate into that circle.”

“This is why many people maintain ‘dignity.’ Dignity isn’t just about face; it’s also a matter of tangible, practical benefits.”

“Yes, this is the consumerism we all know.”

“And the luxury brand is the crystallization of consumerism, a tangible symbol.”

“In the game, both the poor and the wealthy wear this brand. The only ones who completely don’t wear it are the homeless and the destitute.”

“Once the poor protagonist finds a better job, he must put on luxury attire, live in a better house, and drive a better car. Because if you don’t do this, the people around you will constantly remind you, either maliciously or kindly.”

“Malicious people will avoid you, reject you, and not let you enter certain circles; kind people will remind you and tell you why you need these things.”

“So, neither the poor protagonist nor the player has any choice—this is another fourth-wall-breaking design.”

“You’re angry because even though you made the right choices, you still can’t save money. Yes, the poor protagonist in the game feels the same way.”

“What’s even more ironic is that the wealthy protagonist never wears luxury. Is it because he’s more disciplined? No.”

“It’s because he’s the son of the luxury brand’s CEO. He has a private equestrian center. Why should he care whether he wears luxury or not? No one doubts whether he can afford it. If he wears it, it’s very normal—supporting his family’s brand; if he doesn’t wear it, it’s possessing the virtue of simplicity.”

“The constraints that apply to the poor simply don’t exist for the wealthy, because no matter what choices the wealthy make, under a certain halo, they all become a kind of virtue.”

Thinking even deeper, the wealthy don’t wear luxury, yet they use this brand’s high profits to endlessly exploit the poor. The wealthy vigorously promote consumerism and the sense of luxury goods, making you feel as if using luxury would give you a life like the wealthy. They even make the entire group form a consensus that spontaneously rejects poor people who can’t afford luxury. This itself weaves a cage for the poor, establishing game rules that the poor cannot break. No matter what they choose, the wealthy will win.”

“It’s like playing dice. The poor are gambling on luck, while for the wealthy, no matter how they throw, every face shows six dots.”

“[6] Are there only two classes in the game?”

“Obviously not.”

“I believe many people have been racking their brains trying to find a connection between the wealthy protagonist and the poor protagonist, even thinking that the wealthy protagonist was killed by the poor protagonist or the poor person’s son.”

“But the game vehemently denies this; you can’t find any connection between the poor and the wealthy.”

“Why? Because this isn’t a completely closed loop.”

“There’s a third class in the game: ‘the homeless.’ You’ll find that it’s the connecting link for the entire closed loop, actually running through the game from beginning to end, omnipresent.”

“At the beginning and end of the Wealthy Version, those who kidnapped the protagonist’s mother and killed the protagonist were both homeless people.”

“At the beginning and end of the Poor Version, the protagonist’s father worked hard to prevent the protagonist from becoming homeless, so the protagonist was grateful to his father; and the protagonist struggled throughout his life, deceiving his son to continue struggling, all to prevent himself and his child from becoming homeless.”

“As in my earlier metaphor, in this game, there are not only the wealthy in the clouds and the poor struggling in the quagmire, but also the homeless who have been completely swallowed at the bottom of the quagmire.”

“The poor tell us at the beginning that these people at the bottom of the quagmire are dropouts from the cesspool middle schools, prisoners in jails, beggars and mentally ill people in the subway, and homeless people who, once receiving welfare, experience social death and can only wander the streets for life even if physically healthy.”

“Once the poor give up, they become homeless, which is why they must struggle in the quagmire. Struggling doesn’t necessarily allow them to climb up, but not struggling leads to sinking.”

“The quicker they give up, the quicker they sink.”

“So, why does the poor protagonist say those words to his child? Doesn’t he know he’s been deceived by his father’s lies his whole life?”

“Perhaps he has a fluke mentality, thinking his child will be different, or perhaps he simply has no choice but to tell this lie.”

“Because if he tells his child that struggling is useless, then his child will sink, becoming one of those homeless people, and the protagonist knows very well what a miserable life that would be.”

“So, the poor protagonist has no choice but to tell his child to struggle. If looking at the result, this kind of struggle is meaningless because it can’t take you to the clouds; but if you look at the bottom of the quagmire, you’ll know this struggle is meaningful—it at least prevents you from sinking.”

“As for the wealthy?”

“The wealthy protagonist almost lost his life at birth, but he never believed what his father said. He made friends with poor people and worked hard to write books, wanting to help those poor people change their fate.”

“But he didn’t realize that it wasn’t the poor who kidnapped his mother, but the homeless; it wasn’t the poor who killed him, but the homeless; he could make friends with poor people in college, but couldn’t spare a glance at beggars in the subway.”

“So, he believed the wealthy could be friends with the poor, which isn’t wrong; but he didn’t realize that the true incomprehensibility, the two species that couldn’t understand each other, were the wealthy and the homeless. The poor were just the part emerging from the quagmire that he could see. There were more people slowly rotting at the bottom of the quagmire, invisible to him in the clouds.”

“The most ironic point is that what turns the poor into the homeless is precisely the game rules set by the wealthy.”

“So, the homeless person called the wealthy protagonist a fraud because, from the homeless person’s perspective, this person was promoting struggle while taking away everything from him.”

“And this is something the wealthy protagonist will never understand.”

“[7] In the game, there’s only one type of relationship between the poor and the wealthy. So, how many types of relationships between the poor and the wealthy does Mr. Pei want to express?”

“This is the last question, and after synthesizing all the above details, it’s the final content that the game creator wants to express.”

“Mr. Pei has already expressed views on this aspect before.”

“Do you remember the movie ‘Beautiful Tomorrow’? That was an even more tragic scenario than ‘Struggle.'”

“Imaginably, if the society in ‘Struggle’ develops for several more decades, it would become ‘Beautiful Tomorrow.'”

“In ‘Beautiful Tomorrow,’ there’s a final Easter egg where someone throws a gun into the protagonist’s room. The implication is clear: when social contradictions reach the level of ‘Beautiful Tomorrow,’ the poor have only one choice.”

“But in ‘Struggle,’ there’s no similar choice, because the environments they describe are different, and the focus of what they want to express is different.”

“Violent resistance isn’t a panacea; it’s not the optimal choice in any situation. In the environment of ‘Beautiful Tomorrow,’ it might be an option, but in ‘Struggle,’ there’s no soil for such a possibility. We can imagine that even if this poor person chooses to resist, they’d just become the next killer who mutters ‘fraud’ while being locked up, condemned, and criticized by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, only making their situation worse.”

“So, is there a third scenario?”

“There is—the real world we’re in.”

“In the game, the poor have no upward channels, but in reality, we do.”

“In the game, the poor cannot fight against consumerism, but in reality, we actually can.”

“In reality, most people don’t define a person by their clothing, attire, and luxury goods—except for a few people deeply influenced by consumerism.”

“So, the solution that doesn’t exist in the game does exist in reality.”

“In the game, the poor have no choice but to continuously raise their consumption level, ultimately leading to collapse and zeroing out due to some unexpected factor causing an error in some numerical link.”

“But in reality, we have choices. We can reject consumerism, continuously save money, complete initial wealth accumulation, and change our fate through struggle.”

“With hands and feet, diligent work can bring wealth and help escape the quagmire.”

“In the game, no one tells the wealthy and the poor what they should do.”

“But in reality, someone is telling us what to do. The game ‘Struggle’ is using a fourth-wall-breaking approach to tell us what to do.”

“It’s telling us that we should struggle hard in the real world because our current struggle is meaningful.”

“Many people complain that we live in hell, only because they haven’t seen true hell.”

“After seeing the world in ‘Struggle,’ we realize that we’re living in paradise.”

“Although this paradise isn’t perfect, at least we’re still full of hope.”

“Many players can’t understand the plots in the game well because these plots don’t match our real-life experiences, creating a sense of disconnect and making the choices of characters in the game seem very strange.”

“This proves that what we take for granted is a great blessing.”

“Using the game ‘Struggle’ to make us aware of the happiness in real life and encourage us to cherish the present and work hard—this is the deeper meaning behind the game creator’s creation of this game.”

“For all game developers, ‘Struggle’ is a textbook-level work because it repeatedly breaks the fourth wall in various ways, truly expressing the greatest advantage of games as the ninth art form: in other art forms, you’re just a spectator, but in games, you’re a participant.”

“And many things can only be seen clearly from the perspective of a participant.”

“This repeated breaking of the fourth wall represents that the creator’s control over the artistic nature of games has reached the peak of perfection, with every detail having its significance.”

“So, going back to the initial question.”

“How does ‘Struggle’ transcend the four basic game theories while seemingly violating them?”

“Choosing misaligned promotional methods is to break the fourth wall, making the promotional method part of the game content.”

“Choosing a realistic interactive movie game, seemingly niche, actually facilitates breaking the fourth wall, building a bridge between the game and reality.”

“The agenda embedded in the game may initially make people uncomfortable, but the deeper you dig, the more inspiration you gain, suffering in the game but gaining happiness in reality.”

“Its existence doesn’t mine demand but creates it. Most people haven’t realized that we need to understand these principles to live our lives well, so after understanding all this, we suddenly realize that we need this game.”

“Therefore, I believe that ‘Struggle’ is, so far, the pinnacle of artistic achievement in domestic single-player games, and for players, it’s a valuable spiritual wealth.”

…

After typing the final period, He An still felt there was more to say.

He seemed to have many more thoughts to share.

The game “Struggle” contained many more details, and each detail could be elaborated into several hundred or thousands of words.

But He An decided to stop here, because the Tenda official Weibo’s attitude was already very clear.

The game encompasses everything and has countless details because it inherently functions as a “mirror.” Analyzing these details is essentially analyzing reality, and reality is inexhaustible for analysis.

This should be left to all the players on Weibo to complete together.

He An believed that his mission was to analyze the game’s top-tier design concepts from a game designer’s perspective, driving the progress of the entire domestic gaming industry, while also analyzing the deeper meanings that the game creator wanted to express in the game.

This much was just right.

So, He An checked the entire long Weibo post and pressed the send button.

The content was a bit long and a bit dry.

Those who hadn’t played the game might find it meaningless preaching, but those who had played would likely resonate with it.

He An felt this was precisely the charm of games as an art form.

The sugar coating outside a pill seems useless and doesn’t cure the disease, but it can make taking medicine less painful for patients.

Just candy can’t cure diseases.

Just pills won’t be accepted by many people.

But coating pills with sugar to truly help some people—this is precisely the ultimate goal that He An, as a game developer, has pursued throughout his life.

Like “The Landlord Game” he once created, it was also to achieve this goal.

Although he experienced the catastrophic decline of domestic single-player games during this period and had to switch to making online games for the company’s survival, in his heart, he always regarded this as his mission and pursuit.

Even if his concepts were outdated, even if he could no longer create works like “The Landlord Game,” He never gave up this pursuit, and while teaching, he would try his best to pass on this pursuit.

And now, “Struggle” has surpassed “The Landlord Game” in all aspects.

This indicated that domestic single-player games truly had a leading figure, which made He An very gratified.

Although he had never met Mr. Pei, this kind of communication through games was enough to consider him a kindred spirit.

“Sharing this content with Mr. Ma will complete my teaching content perfectly.”

“The previous four basic theories were overturned and completely rebuilt, yet perfectly aligned at a higher level.”

“‘Struggle’ is also a comprehensive surpassing and in-depth interpretaton of ‘The Landlord Game,’ able to explain what a truly responsible and ambitious game developer should do.”

“After hearing this content, Mr. Ma will surely be greatly inspired, right?”