Evan Carter first learned that Richard Langford had recruited a serious industry heavyweight while he was shoveling down a plastic container of lukewarm takeout chow mein.
The chow mein wasn't great—barely seasoned, a little dry—but when you'd missed normal meal times because you were scrambling to finish work, you took what you could get.
He slurped down a final sticky mouthful, set the container aside, patted his stomach, and said with a casual grin,"Sounds messy, but my project has a pretty huge secret weapon. You guys will see it during the competition."
A week passed in a blink.
This year's graduation design competition was being treated more seriously than usual. The auditorium was already filled: university administrators up front, and representatives from four major Harborview tech and game companies seated beside them.
Down in the audience, Richard Langford adjusted his posture and tried to hide his nerves. His fingers brushed the hard drive in his pocket, and his father's voice replayed in his head:
"Richard, winning this competition is vital. We need it to open doors in Harborview City, and we must show Harborview University that we mean business with this collaboration agreement."
That was why Richard's father had assembled an elite "support team" without caring about cost.
The production proposal, core code architecture, and technical backbone?All created by Shawn Quinlan.And Shawn, formerly from East Horizon Games, had serious chops. The guy knew his stuff.
As for the "softer" components—character writing, illustrations, art direction—those had been handled by professional freelancers hired at premium rates.
With all that behind him… how could Richard possibly lose?
Evan, meanwhile, was completely calm. He was a guy who had grown up devouring games from his old world. Now, with tech far beyond anything available here? He simply couldn't imagine a reality where he came in second.
After the standard opening remarks from the university leadership, the competition finally kicked off. Evan, who had been half-asleep in his seat, immediately sat upright.
It was time.
The host looked at the card in his hand and lifted the microphone.
"Our first presenter is Richard Langford. Please display your work."
Richard stood, nodded politely, and walked up to the stage. He connected his hard drive to the main display, and the opening screen loaded.
The first thing to appear was a digital painting styled like an old ink-brush scroll. It slowly unfurled across the screen, characters drifting into view before fading away, leaving only the title:
Legend of the Famous Blades
The story opened with a very familiar setup: the protagonist's parents are hunted down and killed, and the hero miraculously survives. Evan and his friends could practically predict the rest—grow stronger, seek revenge, discover conspiracies, repeat.
From the audience, Gavin Wells scoffed,"I thought the Langford kid was supposed to be impressive. This is the same recycled story everyone uses."
Evan didn't join the laughing. He frowned thoughtfully.
"You can't look at it that way. In game development, low-budget projects usually try to highlight one strong feature—combat feel, puzzles, music, story—like a student who's amazing in one subject even if the rest are average. Bigger-budget games try to have no weaknesses: mediocre theme, mediocre script, mediocre gameplay, but every detail is polished. More like a straight-A student who may not get perfect scores but has no weak spots.
"And Richard's… well, really Shawn Quinlan's game… wouldn't count as excellent if this were the real commercial market. But in a student competition—where almost nobody has a professional team? Shawn knows exactly where his advantages are. The more features you add, the more room you have to fail. The fewer things you attempt, the fewer ways you can mess up. For him, mediocrity is the safest bet."
Mark blinked."So you're saying Shawn's guaranteed to win?"
Evan smirked."Normally, yeah. Shawn has the Langford money behind him, so he has a complete team. Look at what they have—background music, illustrations, animation, scripted dialogue, cinematic opening, polished combat animations. It's probably the most complete package here. Its polished mediocrity is its biggest strength."
He paused.
"But also its weakness."
Zach Turner gave Evan a sideways glance, as if he'd just guessed something.
The presentation continued on stage. The RPG drew wide admiration from the audience. Cutscenes, full voice acting—those were rare in a student event like this. As Evan had predicted, the gameplay was basic and familiar, nothing innovative, but intuitive enough that anyone with gaming experience could immediately understand how it worked.
Per the rules, each participant had no more than thirty minutes to present. Afterward, their work would be evaluated by a panel of four university leaders and four professionals from the gaming industry. Technical quality plus commercial potential would be combined into a final score.
Whoever topped that list would be the single official winner.
After the host gave him the time warning, Richard wrapped up the demonstration, submitted the game's core code to the judges, and stepped offstage with polite confidence.
The competition continued—but after Richard's "opening nuke," nothing that followed could match the impact.
Just as Evan had said, this was a student-level competition. Richard had shown up with what was essentially a small professional team. In gaming terms, he had basically A.O.E.'d the entire battlefield in the first ten minutes.
Most of the other entries were solo-coded projects like Evan's. They suffered predictable weaknesses:
One game had great creativity but lacked music and had a rushed script.Another was a text-based story game—no matter how strong the writing was, it looked painfully plain compared to the polished commercial-style projects.
The audience grew bored. Presenters lost confidence. After several rounds of low-energy presentations, the atmosphere grew heavier and heavier. A couple of contestants even dropped out mid-event, despite the host warning them that withdrawing would cost them course credits.
Richard, sitting in the audience, watched everything unfold with quiet satisfaction.This was exactly what he had expected.
He remembered last night's conversation with Shawn Quinlan clearly. Shawn had pointed out that almost no one else in a university competition would have professional support. Showing up with a commercial-grade production would devastate morale immediately.
And from the looks of things, Shawn's strategy was working flawlessly.