"Fresh news, simple report!"

"Welcome to this week’s internet hot news roundup, I’m your host, Jie!"

In the video, a young host holding cue cards and wearing a white shirt is enthusiastically saying in front of the camera: "Let’s take a look at the first trending word of the week: growth games!"

"Video games, whether on mobile phones or computers, I’m sure most of you have played them to some extent."

"But I wonder if you’ve ever played a game that can automatically grow, generating new levels without any updates or maintenance from developers?"

"That’s right, just a few days ago, Tianba Studio from Jiangning officially released its latest game, ’Ancestor Tree’!"

"Once released, the game quickly became a viral hit online, as a classic adventure game, it is highly loved and sought after by players..."

"Do you think that a game like this might not last long before you game over? Wrong, wrong!"

"Just yesterday, Tianba Studio announced that they have applied a technology they’ve been researching for many years into ’Ancestor Tree’. This technology enables the game to autonomously generate new levels without any network or signal interference..."

A netizen from Zhonghai expressed: "Wow! It’s an incredible technology. I never thought there could be a single-player game that you can never fully complete..."

Never being able to complete it sounds ridiculous.

Although being praised by others makes Chen Ba very happy, he can’t help but feel a bit embarrassed when it’s overblown.

For example, the description "never be able to complete it" makes it hard for him to hold a straight face.

’Ancestor Tree’ has been tested and indeed possesses some level of automatic generation and evolution ability.

But the speed is very slow...

Generating new levels requires a large accumulation of Ancestor Trees. If the number of Ancestor Trees is too small, new levels cannot be generated.

In other words!

The game ’Ancestor Tree’, the more you die, the more levels are generated. And this count of deaths must be the number of deaths under AI management.

Why?

Because during the game, AI management essentially collects data and information of each level, storing it in the Ancestor Tree that sprouts after death in data form.

Then, once the game is completed, the underlying code of the Ancestor Tree derives new levels based on the information gathered...

This really is a self-produced self-sold complete process!

The studio’s computer kept in AI management mode for 12 hours continuously.

After 12 hours, the game had an additional three entirely new levels, which were levels never seen before, more hidden than the hidden levels!

"AI management needs to play for about 4 hours to gather enough data to store in the Ancestor Tree, generating new levels," Lu explained.

The newly appeared level might not even take the player ten minutes to pass easily.

"That’s how it is...," Chen Ba nodded, agreeing that what Lu said was indeed the case.

But when it comes down to it.

Even at such a slow generation speed, this game’s feature indeed allows it to be claimed as a game that never gets boring.

After all, as long as you spend some time, the levels in this game are endless...

’Ancestor Tree’ has a total of 50 preset levels!

So far, players have already used this Bug mechanism to derive the game to 60 levels, an additional 10 levels!

But this is far from over.

This unique mechanism has clearly become a competitive goal for everyone, with everyone eager to become number one in the world, deriving and generating more game levels.

This is only 60 levels, way too basic.

Imagine if this game had 600 levels, 6000 levels, or even 60000 levels, how cool would that be?

Wow!

Just thinking about it makes everyone excited, each person could create their own unique ’Ancestor Tree’ client, with each person’s number of game levels being different.

Not just domestic players.

When foreign players heard about a game that can automatically grow new levels, they were also filled with curiosity and joined in on this "world record" competition.

As they kept trying and failing, more and more hidden mechanisms about the Ancestor Tree were discovered and exposed.

First of all!

Every Ancestor Tree stores a ton of game information and data, first ensuring a sufficient number of Ancestor Trees, and then ensuring that AI management can complete the levels.

The faster the completion, the better!

Because the faster the AI management completes the levels, the quicker the game generates new levels, reaching a speed of a level every 2 hours at its fastest.

But this is far from the limit!

Someone found out through cheat codes that by mass-generating a series of Ancestor Trees, the generation speed greatly accelerated and was even shortened to less than half an hour.

Further uses of cheat codes were developed by a foreign player, successfully pushing the speed of generating new levels to under 10 minutes.

As a result, this Big Beard player increased the number of game levels to 2147 in just half a month, far ahead of global players, and took the lead in applying for Guinness World Records certification.

The certification was approved!

Big Beard became the Guinness certified: ’Ancestor Tree’ world record holder for levels!

What?

Why would the Guinness organization include such a boring world record?

"This is not boring at all!"

Facing the interview, Chen Ba shook his head and said, "Quite the opposite, from now on, every record-breaking moment will leave its mark in game history."

The records included in Guinness may be peculiar, but they don’t accept just anything; it must have some value or significance, at least from their perspective.

Obviously, the world record for the "Ancestor Tree" level is of value and significance.

Moreover, this record can be continually hyped and updated, given that the maximum number of levels in "Ancestor Tree" is still growing, who knows what it will be like next year, the year after, or even five years from now?

From this point of view, setting a world record for "Ancestor Tree" levels is definitely a profitable venture.

Similarly, Chen Ba doesn’t lose out either.

This wave of publicity, including Big Beard’s certification of the world record, directly elevated the fame of the game "Ancestor Tree" by two levels.

How much promotional cost was saved!

Thinking about this popularity, every time a record is broken or updated in the future, it will bring another wave, making Chen Ba smile in his sleep at night.

...

"Ancestor Tree" suddenly landed on hot searches, shocking countless players.

What’s going on?

I’m still stuck on level 50, yet there’s a guy overseas who created over two thousand levels and certified a world record?

No way...

Are we really playing the same game? How can the gap be so vast?

The "Ancestor Tree" discussion board in Tianba Community was also flooded with this news.

Below were various screenshots posted by players; although they hadn’t reached over two thousand levels, hundreds or a thousand were everywhere.

That’s pretty impressive too!

Many players responded below, hoping the experts would share the client; they also want to play that version of "Ancestor Tree" with hundreds or thousands of levels.

Tending the ancestor tree on one’s own is too troublesome, I’m a student, just send me the client!

Although beggars are despised, among the players frequenting Tianba Community, there are always a few generous experts willing to share.

Thanks to these experts’ sharing, community players also stepped up to 700-800 level range, playing till their eyes were bleary.

Are you kidding!

Seven to eight hundred levels, what does that mean? Many people haven’t even passed the first 50 levels, and suddenly having so many more levels, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it takes till next year to finish.

But speaking of which.

Although the current world record is over two thousand levels, this is a record created by players; the real maximum level version of "Ancestor Tree" is actually at Tianba Studio.

That’s right!

Players have used cheat codes to create over two thousand levels, but Chen Ba has more resources to leverage, creating more levels than anyone could imagine.

As of now, Tianba Studio has secretly nurtured a version of "Ancestor Tree" with levels exceeding 10,000.

An incredibly terrifying number...

It may not seem impressive, isn’t it just ten thousand levels? Other games like Gold Miner and Snake have many levels too, don’t they?

But you can’t generalize.

Those mini-games can be run on elderly button phones; no matter how many levels, it’s not surprising.

However, a moderately sized 3D adventure game like "Ancestor Tree" having 10,000 levels is terrifying, saying it takes a lifetime to play isn’t an exaggeration.

"A lifetime might not be enough, right?"

Lu teased, "By the time you’ve completed those 10,000 levels, is there a chance the game has developed to one billion levels?"

"That’s true!"

Chen Ba thought for a moment and said despairingly, "At this rate, soon no one will be able to complete this game."

There’s already a hint of that now.

Taking the player-created levels as an example, the highest now is over two thousand; human players can still bridge that gap.

But the longer the time drags on, the bigger the gap will become; in the end, even a max-level human could be unable to catch up with the pace of level updates, and the game will be completely unconquerable.

"But it’s not a big problem."

"Humans may not be able to complete this game, but don’t forget, this game also has a man-machine hosting mode."

Chen Ba chuckled, "Just because humans can’t complete it doesn’t mean computers can’t."

In fact, each time a level is released, the computer must complete it at least once before generating a new level.

As long as this mechanism doesn’t change, barring major accidents or changes, whether the game has 10,000 or 1 billion levels, the man-machine hosting mode will always complete them.

The game’s protagonist, Tree Treasure, will forever move forward, but it’s the players behind the scenes who can’t keep up with Tree Treasure’s pace, slowly being left behind.

"What does this indicate?"

"It indicates that humans have limits. Only by not being human can they become stronger! Flesh is weak, machinery ascends!"

Lu went crazy.

He shouted about not being human anymore, then went to study how to transplant Tree Treasure into his head, leaving Chen Ba dumbfounded.

No way, is the inability to complete the game hitting him that hard?