Losing Money to Be a Tycoon c1-883

by Inebriation-seeking Blue Shirt, 青衫取醉

  Even the only in-game purchasable item was a membership card that cost a mere 30 yuan!

  That was equivalent to a single refill card for Fantasy World and what’s more, it was permanent!

  Chen Qi was shocked.

  He could not believe it!

  As a famous game concept artist domestically, he was working for a top domestic game company and was a professional operating within the field.

  While he was in charge of the aesthetics aspect, he had some knowledge about game design as well.

  In-game purchasable items were the main source of profit for card games where many whales would top up in the ball park of hundreds or even thousands. A single whale would be equivalent to a couple hundreds of normal players.

  That paywall model had originated from Qute Three Kingdoms and indeed, the in-game purchases of that game was the envy of many game companies.

  Naturally, there were many gamers who would accuse that game of being corrupted.

  But, which game company would pit themselves against money?

  Chen Qi had not expected that there would be a company this righteous that not only would they spend all their money on developing the game such that they had nothing left for advertising, they would even cut their own source of income just to provide an equal gameplay experience for all gamers!

  What sort of a spirit was this?

  Childish… but noble at the same time!

  Chen Qi’s eyes brimmed with tears. He recalled that he had joined the industry back when standalone games were prospering. Gamers like him had always remembered their core values and were striving to create standalone games that people could deem had a heart…

  But now, there truly wasn’t much of these companies with souls left.

  “No problem, I’ll help you share it on Weibo right away. A good game like this must not be buried away!” Chen Qi was the first to reply.

  The others naturally agreed with vigor.

  “Indeed, it’s a game with a heart! I’m off to advertise it too!”

  “I don’t have much followers on Weibo. How about this, I’ll go share it to my other group chats.”

  “Those posting it on Weibo, don’t forget to include the original arts! They are the backbone of the game!”

  Of course, there were those who had doubts about it.

  Could this person have come just to make use of the veterans for free advertising?

  However, that did not seem to be the case on second thought.

  The main point was that Ruan Guangjian’s original arts were truly amazing and convinced everyone on its own. Otherwise, none of these famous veterans would want to help him advertise for free.

  Furthermore, the game truly had heart such that all in-game paywall options were cut off completely.

  This was a company with so much heart that they had not even spent on advertising nor increased the game’s price. What was there to suspect about actions that were this righteous?

  Based on the current situation, the game was most likely going to make a huge loss. Casually helping to advertise would only be to delay its death.

  Before long, the veterans in the group had already shared Ruan Guangjian’s Weibo and original arts.

  Chen Qi had shared it as well, including a statement of his own.

  “This is the work of a friend in my group. I really like his style of original art that reinterprets the traditional characters of the three kingdoms. With a rich imagination, his style is definitely one of its own.”

  “P.S. He seemed to have produced this for a game called Ghost General.”

  Chen Qi did not introduce it overly. It was partly because he had a direct nature and truly wasn’t someone who was good at being superfluous and at the same time, he did not want others to feel that it was purely a commercial advertisement.

  If he bragged too much about it, it would come across negatively instead.

  The statement that he had shared on Weibo gave off the feeling of a casual mention just to share his friend’s work.

  Of course, even though these artists were veterans of the industry, they honestly did not have that much followers.

  Take Chen Qi for example. While he was in charge of art and concept design for large scale domestic games and had quite a number of widely accepted original arts works, his Weibo followers was only around the range of hundreds of thousands.

  For a similar post, the comments would mostly only be a couple of hundreds at best.

  However, not all of Chen Qi’s Weibo friends were artists that were specialized in original arts for games.

  Amongst his friends, there were veterans of the animation industry, famous creators of game companies or even some small-time actors and novelists et cetera.

  There was still some clout he had by advertising to these people.

  Before long, the comments on his Weibo increased rapidly.

  “This is a modification of characters from the three kingdoms? Looks great!”

  “Is this the work of an overseas artist?”

  “It’s a domestic artist!”

  “To think that even our domestic artists could create original arts with such an original style?!”

  “Shocking! It feels so epic just looking at it!”

  “The game’s called Ghost General? How come I’ve never heard of it?”

  “All of those mobile games are cartoonish in design. I’m so sick of them! This style is extremely refreshing!”

  “Let’s check it out!”

  The reception was unusually warm!

  Actually, this was normal as well. After all, Qute Three Kingdoms had already been popular for an entire year!

  Through the year, Qute Three Kingdoms had caused the number of players for mobile card games to increase. As such, most mobile gamers would be able to pick up mobile card games with ease.

  But on the other hand, they were starting to get tired of Qute Three Kingdoms’s style as well.

  This was especially the case for its cartoonish design. After many creators hopped onto the bandwagon and mass produced similar games, majority of the gamers were sick of the repeated cartoonish designs!

  On the contrary, Ghost General was entirely different. Just the set of original arts alone was enough to let the gamers know that this was an entirely different game from Qute Three Kingdoms and would be intrigued as well!

  Chapter 25

  Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

  Ma Yang was troubled.

  “Brother Qian… is our game really that trashy? There’s absolutely no hype around it…”

  “When a new game’s published, it would normally get a few tens of thousands of downloads on just the first day. Why is ours only getting a couple of dozens…”

  Ma Yang was thoroughly affected.

  Ever since the game was published, he was refreshing the figures for Ghost General on the official games platform every other minute to check for number of downloads and reviews by players.

  Yet, one hour had passed…

  Three hours…

  Five hours…

  The figures had hardly changed at all!

  That was because Ghost General had only taken on a small spot on the recommendation list and that title by itself wasn’t anything particularly attractive nor were there any beautiful advertising images – who would even notice it?

  The Lonely Desert Road was discovered by Teacher Qiao because he was an UP Master who specialized in dissing standalone games and would seek out new games on the regular.

  That could be said to be an exception amongst exceptions.

  Most mobile gamers would not go around looking for new mobile games on the regular unless they were exceptionally popular or poised to be at least.

  For a new mobile game such as Ghost General, the chances of it being buried into oblivion was almost 100% without any marketing measures planned.

  “It’s fine, this is always the case for new games. We just have to wait and see,” Pei Qian conso
led.

  Wait and see?

  Yeah, right!

  Even though Pei Qian looked to be as worried as Ma Yang on the surface, he was long gloating internally.

  It was normal that there would be no downloads – after all, where would the players come from since this game had not seen the light of day just yet?

  A couple of days aside, this game would most likely end up into stagnation even after a week or a month had passed!

  Pei Qian was just waiting for the week to pass by as quickly as possible. Eventually, Ghost General would drop from the games platform’s recommendation spot and so would its popularity. With that, the system’s settlement would convert all 300,000 of System Funds to his Personal Wealth.

  Amazing!

  Pei Qian’s consolation did not bring about much results as Ma Yang still looked despondent as ever.

  “Sigh, let me check the figures again. Perhaps there might be some changes now that three hours’ passed,” Ma Yang said as he opened up ESRO’s official games platform and searched for Ghost General.

  When he got to the information page of the game, Ma Yang was stunned.

  He rubbed his eyes, thinking that he might have been hallucinating.

  When he had checked it multiple times previously, the downloads were always in the tens. However, it had suddenly increased to more than 2,000!

  Ma Yang thought that he was seeing things. But, when he checked out the ratings and reviews by players, he knew that it was true.

  A group of gamers had indeed discovered this game!

  The first thing Ma Yang checked was the rating of the game – it was at an exaggerating 9.7!

  Initially, Ghost General’s review section was absolutely empty. However, there were already hundreds of reviews by now!

  “Why is this game sold at 10 yuan? It’s more expensive than Qute Three Kingdoms, what the hell?!”

  “The previous commenter, you must not have played the game yet, right? You’re complaining that 10 yuan is expensive? It’s too cheap!”

  “I’ve played it seriously for a little and found that it’s a mobile card game filled with sincerity! The key is that there’s only a single permanent membership card that the game sells to you. If you were to lump it together with the cost of the game, everything costs a mere 40 yuan!”

  “40 yuan to play as much as you want while everyone’s equal without any top up values or paywalls. I’m appalled! Is this even a mobile card game?”

  “This game’s quality is rather decent. As a loyal fan of mobile card games, I’ve finally found one that is unique!”

  “What’s memorable are the characters inside! I’ve never seen anyone interpret characters of the three kingdoms using such a unique manner! It’s absolutely unbelievable! Yet, within its ridiculousness, there’s a refreshing feeling to it!”

  “The original art’s awesome! I’ll even be willing to pay money in-game just because of the original arts! What? I can’t pay money in-game? Seems like I can only give a 5-star review then!”

  Ma Yang’s hands were shivering in excitement. After going through the reviews page by page, he couldn’t even find a single negative review!

  It wasn’t entirely because the original arts were amazing and the game charged a reasonable price that there was no negative reviews. The most important reason was that the first batch of players were here just for the original arts!

  After the artists from Chen Qi’s group shared the images on their Weibo, there was an extremely warm reception and those people got here by searching for the game’s title.

  While the majority of the people were somewhat disappointed at how Ghost General wasn’t a standalone or large scale online game, they could not bear to give it a poor review after they started on the game.

  That’s because, the game truly had too much of a heart!

  It was of a decent quality be it in terms of art or music resources. Cost was not an issue to Pei Qian and the first impression it gave off was amazing.

  Coupled with the fact that there was no paywall, more players were even more sold on the game!

  As such, Ghost General exploded with amazing reviews after the first batch of gamers started it with great word of mouth advertising!

  Ma Yang stretched his head out from the upper bunk and said to Pei Qian, “Brother Qian, we did it! Our downloads are increasing and there are many amazing 5-star reviews!

  “Pfft!”

  Pei Qian was drinking water and he choked on it, coughing for a full minute thereafter.

  “What did you say?” He nearly thought that he was hearing things.

  Ma Yang repeated excitedly, “We’ve got over 2,000 downloads now! Also, everyone’s giving great reviews for the game and there are even people who are praising my character designs!”

  Pei Qian was completely dazed.

  The downloads had gone over 2,000?

  How could that be? Where did the gamers hear about the game from?

  Besides, they all gave 5-star reviews?

  That didn’t make sense! The game was completely made using universal mobile card game templates and there wasn’t any breakthroughs in gameplay – how would that render 5-star reviews?

  If this was someone else’s game, Pei Qian’s first reaction would be that the creators must have bought likes and reviews themselves!

  However, this was his own game!

  He was none the clearer that he hadn’t bought any reviews at all!

  He had already spent all his money, how would he have any bit left to purchase fake reviews?

  Besides, even if he had money, Pei Qian wouldn’t possibly do it. What he wanted more than anything else was for the game to disappear silently – how could he possibly do something that would generate this much hype?

  Could some other companies have bought fake reviews and ended up reviewing the wrong game by mistake?

  That wouldn’t seem possible as well. Who would provide such a lousy service that they could even review a wrong game by mistake?

  Could it be… that another incident similar to the previous game had happened?!

  Pei Qian logged into ESRO’s resource website and glanced at the game’s download figures.

  Ma Yang had not lied to him – they had truly exploded!

  Besides, the reviews of the players seemed exactly the same as what fake reviewers would write – all of them were praising Ghost General for having a heart!

  The download figures were still increasing rapidly along with the number of people who had purchased the in-game permanent membership card!

  Pei Qian was completely stunned as he looked at both leaping figures.

  What was up with this world?!

  What went wrong this time round?!

  His vision blackening, Pei Qian collapsed back onto his bed.

  Chapter 26

  Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

  “Brother Qian!”

  “Brother Qian!”

  Pei Qian stirred awake through Ma Yang’s repeated calls.

  “Sigh, I know that you’re naturally excited now that things are getting better since you’ve put in so much effort for this game. But, don’t get overly emotional. It’s not good for your body.”

  “Hurry and calm down! We’ve succeeded!”

  Ma Yang’s excitement was displayed entirely through his words.

  Pei Qian was exasperated and rolled his eyes in a fit.

  Do I look happy?

  Do I look excited?

  I’m despairing!!

  Pei Qian’s face was ashen as he forced a smile. “Yeaps, we did it…”

  He was perplexed – just where had things gone wrong?

  Even though he was in pain, despaired and had no choice but to acknowledge his defeat, Pei Qian had to know why he failed!

  How did this game get popular?

  Was it because some UP Master had dissed this game again?

  But the main point was that the game he created this time round had nothing to dis
s at!

  First, he searched up keywords of Ghost General on Qiandu to check if there were any hints he could rely on.

  The review section of the game did not have ‘XX’s sightseeing group’ or any other similar messages.

  “Just what was the problem?” Pei Qian was thoroughly stumped.

  There were just that many people who knew about this game!

  Pei Qian had not done any advertising of it himself.

  It was even less possible that Ma Yang was the one who did it. Even if he had wanted to, he would lack the connections to do so.

  That left Pei Qian with the people he had interacted with on ESRO’s website when he was purchasing the resources and templates.

  “Wait a minute. Most of the players who left reviews seemed to have commented on the original arts!”

  “Clearly, they were drawn in by the original arts!”

  “But, how could they have seen the original arts without seeing the game?”

  With a testing attitude, Pei Qian turned on Weibo and searched for Ghost General.

  This time round, he got results.

  Many famous artists have shared Ghost General’s original arts freely!

  All of those posts were even shared further within the gaming and animation communities; even some Big V of the tech scene had shared it too!

  The number of shares by the average Weibo was equally high as well.

  Because of that, Ghost General had popped up on Weibo’s hot searches. While it wasn’t at the top of the list, the amount of traffic it generated was rather significant too!

  Pei Qian was dumbfounded.

  Who did it?

  Who could have had such an influence to cause this many industry veterans to help promote Ghost General?

  Even any average advertising firm or provider would not have been able to do it!

  The main point was that most of these artists were famous characters in their circles respectively – these were people with such egos that they may not even accept paid sponsorship deals to advertise!

  Following the shares to the root, Pei Qian found the original poster – Ruan Guangjian!

  This was Ruan Guangjian’s personal account and he only had a couple hundreds of followers. Yet, that post had been shared for thousands of times and the popularity of it was not going down at all!