NetEase's Project Mugen Drops Lead Writer Job Requirements — Comments Section Instantly Becomes a Roast Session for the Gacha Industry's Worst Writers

NetEase's upcoming open-world gacha game 'Project Mugen' (代号：无限大) recently dropped a job listing for a lead writer — and what should've been a routine hiring post instantly blew up on NGA, China's largest gaming forum. The requirements of '5–10 years of industry experience' combined with 'deep personal experience with anime-style gacha games' had veteran players reading between the lines: is this a hiring filter, or a blacklist in disguise?

The JD's core requirements ask for someone who can 'come up with fun, wildly creative settings' and 'grasp what makes players emotionally resonate.' The top-voted reply cut straight to the bone: 'People who don't genuinely love this medium can only be a plague once they get inside the industry.' The implication is loud and clear — the wave of writing disasters in recent gacha games wasn't a skill issue, but a values issue. The wrong people got into core positions.

The spiciest part of the comments was a full-on roast of the industry's most controversial writers. One player asked directly: 'Don't Xingjie Menggan and that writer who nearly killed Snowbreak (尘白禁区) both technically meet these requirements?' Another countered that these people would fail the 'grasp player empathy' test, but a highly-upvoted reply fired back with devastating sarcasm: 'Sure, tell me their writing isn't creative and wild — it's just that the wildness happens off-screen.' The point being: the technical writing chops might check out, but the ideology and attitude are a completely different story.

One commenter nailed the 5-year experience threshold with surgical precision, noting that 'it's been less than four years since Genshin Impact went mainstream, triggered a massive gacha hiring boom with inflated salaries, and led to an influx of — shall we say — ideologically motivated writers infiltrating the scene.' In other words, the timeline conveniently cuts off exactly the wave of people who entered during the post-Genshin gold rush.

Someone else interpreted the entire job listing as 'written by doing the exact opposite of Sunborn's playbook' — a reference to the Girls' Frontline developer's well-documented writer management disasters. Others piled on with takes like 'the industry is finally cleaning house, good riddance' and even suggested NetEase should 'poach Xingjie Menggan' — though that last suggestion got immediately roasted by another player as a terrible idea.

On the bright side, some players pointed out that NetEase's financial reports mention testing for this year, and that Project Mugen appeared at NetEase's annual company gathering — meaning cancellation is extremely unlikely. So at least the project itself seems stable; the question is what kind of writing team they'll actually assemble.

All in all, the job listing itself might be unremarkable, but the comments section serves as a perfect mirror reflecting the current state of gacha game writing in China. When players can reverse-engineer a hiring JD line by line and connect it to years of writing disasters, it shows just how deep the community's PTSD runs. As for who'll ultimately land the lead writer gig at Project Mugen — grab your popcorn, this one's worth watching.