Of course, the boss of this new company had to be one of his own. On one hand, this boss could not be someone who made cheap shots and evaded taxes. These people were his seniors, but they were strangers after all. Pei Qian could not trust them. On the other hand, immediately placing them in management positions would not make any sense. People would get suspicious.
Pei Qian began to look for a lucky man from his own company. He would make this man the boss of the new company and put people under him to be in charge of finance, administrative work, and the like. Then, he would recruit this new batch of employees into that company. That would make much more sense.
After that, the company would start running and incurring losses. Everything sounded perfect.
Pei Qian pondered over this for two more minutes and suddenly thought of another idea.
Don’t I still have hidden danger to deal with? That’s just as well. I’ll settle it once and for all!
Ma Yiqun is still writing plots and plans for Tengda Games. Pei Qian had hired him initially to act as a lucky charm so that he could neutralize his own luck. However, he could not come up with any more reasons to allow Ma Yiqun to continue idling. That was why he reluctantly arranged for him to be in charge of plots for the games.
In the end, Ma Yiqun beautified the synopses and added a bunch of points to the game narratives of several games.
Pei Qian had to think of a way to send someone like that away!
This time, he had a chance to. As for how he should do it… Pei Qian had thought about this a long time ago.
He would create a website for webnovels!
First, this was Ma Yiqun’s dream. Helping employees achieve their dreams was Boss Pei’s mission.
Second, Ma Yiqun failed consecutively each time he tried to write novels. This proved that he did not have what it took to make it in this line. If Pei Qian put him in charge of this company, he could relax.
Last, it would be relatively easy for Pei Qian to incur losses in the online novel industry.
There was already a very developed and established website for online literature in this world, and it was called Limitless Chinese Language Network. It was now a large-scale website with a huge scope. Other people had tried entering the market, but very few of them succeeded. Most of them failed.
Pei Qian could enter the market and act as if he were completely fooling around. He would invest a sum of money into nurturing a group of editors and authors. Under Ma Yiqun’s leadership, the company would incur losses for sure!
Actually, on second thought, he should have started a website for online literature long ago. The range of money one could invest in a business like this was huge. There were ways to invest a million yuan, and there were ways to invest a hundred billion yuan.
He could buy over the goods of various websites with high prices, pour huge sums of money into establishing marketing channels and dealing with copyrights, and so on. This would result in extremely high expenses.
However, if he just wanted to create an ordinary website, he only needed to hire a group of editors and buy lousy manuscripts at low prices. He could pay token sums as remuneration and spend a little money to rent a cloud server and domain name online. In fact, a million yuan would probably be enough to set up a website like that.
Pei Qian pondered for a while and decided that he could give Ma Yiqun a million or so yuan to play around with. If he could really incur losses, he would pour more money into the venture.
At that thought, Pei Qian’s mood improved vastly.
Pei Qian arrived at the office in the afternoon.
The first thing he had to do was assign the work in the games department. After updating the downloadable content, the games department was allowed to skive off for a while. Now, since the new cycle had begun, Pei Qian had to start giving them work to do.
After all, the system mandated that employees could not remain passive and slack at work. They had to release new products every once in a while. Everyone was waiting hopefully for the research plan for the next game to be announced.
However, Pei Qian did not ask everyone to gather for a meeting this time. There were too many people in the office now. The conference room could no longer accommodate everyone.
He only asked Lu Mingliang, Bao Xu, and the other core members of the various departments to attend the meeting
This time, Pei Qian planned to explain the general concept he had in his head to all of them. He would set a rigid template for the direction of the game and allow them to think about the details on their own.
The main problem was that Pei Qian could not set the details even if he wanted to. He just did not have the necessary skills to think about them…
Soon, everyone arrived in the conference room.
Lin Wan was present as well. She held onto her small notebook, ready to take notes. Ma Yiqun was in the conference room, too. He did not have a notebook in hand, but he looked especially serious.
Silently, Pei Qian thought about them. I’ll deal with the two of you once the meeting ends!
Pei Qian pondered for a long time about the concept of the new game. By now, he roughly knew what had to be done. He had to learn from his experience and not commit the same mistakes that he made before.
Pei Qian could not create a lousy game and sell it at a high price to con others because of the system’s rules. Although he had the freedom to set the price within a fixed range, he still had to make sure the price he set largely corresponded to the amount of money and effort he invested into the game.
At the same time, thanks to the first few wildly popular games, many gamers now had their eyes on new games produced by Tengda.
This new game would probably be popular even before its release. Pei Qian could not hope for the same circumstances as The Lonely Desert Road and Ghost General. He could not just plan not to market the game and hope that nobody would find out about it.
Since that was the case, he had to create a niche, public game. He had to invest huge amounts of money into it. He had to create a game that people would not buy and play even if they knew about it!
Pei Qian knew many games like that. Souls-like games and difficult 2D platform games were examples of such games.
Pei Qian had no plans to create a 2D platform game because it did not require much investment. This meant that he could not incur much loss. If he wanted to create a game, he had to make it complex. He needed to spend more money on art resources.
Of course, Pei Qian also knew that Miyazaki Hidetaka’s Souls-like games were extremely successful. Their sales were high, and they were not loss-incurring products.
However, when considering a problem, one had to think about multiple factors. For any type of game genre, there were unpopular and popular games. The key was in the details.
Many game producers wanted to produce Souls-like games as well, but how many of them actually succeeded? In the end, they all failed, one by one. This proved that only Miyazaki Hidetaka had relevant expertise.
Pei Qian did not think that he would be as skillful as Miyazaki Hidetaka.
What’s more, even if he wanted to persist and create perfect Souls-like games, he would not be able to do so. He did not have that much money. Considering the eight million yuan that the system had and the income from various games and other areas and then deducting the various expenses…
Pei Qian guessed that the most he would be able to spend on this game was about twenty million yuan or so.
This sum would not be enough for him to create a true AAA game.
He probably had enough researchers and developers. After all, it took thirty people to create a game like Metro 2033. Pei Qian had about sixty to seventy researchers and developers on hand. He was even going to recruit more after this.
However, considering that they only had four months to research and develop a new game, the employees would probably still have a lot on their plate. They would still have to find ways to compress the game’s content.
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br /> In other words, he would only be able to create a compressed version of the game. The contents of the game would be greatly reduced.
This would further increase the chances of the game failing!
Chapter 190 - Repent and be Saved
Apart from these, there was the problem with the environment. Souls-like games were not successful from the beginning. They had gone through a period of having very low sales.
From the earliest-released Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls 3… all the way to Sekiro; the difficulty level decreased progressively. While maintaining Souls-like games’ essence, the game creators lowered their difficulty to cause an increase in sales volume.
This proved that the more difficult games were, the lower their sales volume would be.
What’s more, the success of Souls-like games depended on the region.
Demon’s Souls went in a direction completely opposite from what was set by the publisher. While researching and developing the game, Miyazaki Hidetaka played some tricks and created the game against the requirements set out to him. Instead, he created a game that fully reflected his own style.
By the time the management realized this problem, Demon’s Souls was already more or less complete. They were furious, but they could not do anything about it except to make a Hail Mary effort with it.
In the beginning, even the publishers did not think the game would succeed. If the leader of the project-Takeshi Kajii—had not persisted, the game might not have been published at all.
In the early period when the game was published, the renowned video game magazine -Famitsu-gave the game a low 29 points out of 40.
The game was more or less a failure locally. Miyazaki Hidetaka tried his best to make use of his network and contacted publishers in the United States and in Europe. In the end, the game unexpectedly became popular!
The key reason for this was that Souls-like games perfectly suited the taste of hardcore Western gamers who loved standalone games. Within China, Souls-like games only really became popular fifteen years later.
At that moment, the environment in the game industry matched what Pei Qian remembered. Difficult games were only enjoyed by the minority and were thus not very popular. Since that was the case, Pei Qian could solve the problem by creating an extremely difficult Souls-like game to be released only in China.
What’s more, in order to prevent this game from being discovered by people in the West, he had to create Chinese-style backgrounds. He also had to widen the cultural gap to ensure that people in the West would not be able to understand the game even if they tried!
Pei Qian could not help but feel overjoyed. Indeed, there was no limit to one’s creativity. If he had not been trying so hard to incur losses, he would not have realized that he was such a creative person!
Pei Qian succinctly explained the direction of the game to everyone. In sum, he had five requirements.
First, the game had to have Chinese scenery as its background theme. It had to contain huge amounts of riddles, puzzles, and Chinese content. It also had to be written in the ancient Chinese language. This was mainly to ensure that the game would not be discovered by Westerners and become famous as a result. In order to solve the riddles, one would need an excellent understanding of ancient Chinese. This would make the Westerners completely uninterested in playing the game!
What’s more, the game would primarily be sold domestically. Not translating the game into other languages would not constitute a violation of the system’s rules.
Second, the game had to be extremely difficult. Pei Qian requested for Bao Xu and Lu Mingliang to use all of their brain juice to think of ways to make players fail at the game. Their top priority should be to persuade players to admit defeat.
Third, this had to be a grand action game. There had to be huge amounts of models, movements, and scenery. They had to use up all the budget allocated for art resources!
They had to think of as many ways to spend money as possible!
Of course, ‘spending more money’ was relative to the investment Tengda Games made earlier. In fact, the limit Pei Qian set in his heart was twenty million yuan. He would want to spend more than that, but the System would not allow for it.
That amount was nothing compared to overseas research and development budgets for massive projects, which could easily go up to tens of millions or even a hundred billion yuan. However, compared to the investments that domestic producers made, it could still be referred to as a big project.
Fourth, this game had to maximize the period that players would be allowed to ask for a refund. According to the requirements of official games platforms, games bought on the official games platform could be refunded up to three hours after purchase. This limit could only be adjusted upwards, not downwards.
In fact, most games merchants wished that the limit could be adjusted downwards or gotten rid of altogether. None of them would voluntarily adjust the limit upwards.
However, Pei Qian decided to use the maximum limit that the official games platform would allow-five hours! For many small games, the total game duration was about three or four hours. To allow refunds up to five hours after purchase of the game would be insane. It would be as good as free.
To Pei Qian, three hours was not long at all. Some players of Dark Souls 3 would kill three hours fighting Champion Gundyr without even realizing it. The refund allowance period would be over by then.
Pei Qian decided to allow refunds up to five hours after purchase of the game and even offer a reminder to players ten minutes before the end of this five-hour-period. This reminder will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the game.
This would ensure that every player did not let the allowance period expire without realizing
it.
Fifth, the game’s name…
To avoid influencing the players with its name and accidentally misleading people, Pei Qian decided to make the name absolutely clear. The game would be called Repent and be Saved. This would serve as an honest warning from Pei Qian to the players.
After hearing Pei Qian’s five requests, Bao Xu was confused.
As Pei Qian remembered, Demon’s Souls was released in 2009. The world that he was in did not have Demon’s Souls yet. Thus, even an experienced and well-exposed gamer like Bao Xu had not heard of such a sadistic game.
Of course, there were a few hardcore games that became famous for their high difficulty. However, he had never seen a game that made defeating players its aim like Pei Qian was suggesting.
The other requirements were understandable. The difficulty level itself was what really stumped Lu Mingliang and Bao Xu.
“Boss Pei, can you tell us more about this difficulty level? For example, what percentage of players do you want to be defeated by the boss in the final level?” Bao Xu asked.
Pei Qian instinctively wanted to say, “99.9999% of them!”
Yet, in his vision, a line of words appeared.
(Warning! It is a violation to create a game that most players cannot win. The maximum difficulty allowed for the game must be determined by the owner’s ability to win it.]
Pei Qian’s smile disappeared from his face.
System, I f*cking almost blurted it out!
I must be able to win at the game? My hand is f*cking disabled!
I can be tortured even in Ocean Stronghold. You need me to be able to win at this game. You might as well tell me that I’m not allowed to create a game like that altogether!
However, Pei Qian did not panic. After all, he was well-exposed and knowledgeable. A small problem like that would not stump him.
I have to be able to win the game?
That would be easy. I would secretly hide something in the game…
I’ll hide an especially strong weapon in the game. Players would only be able to obtain such a weapon after unlocking a highly-complex, hidden plot. They would have to progress in the game in a completely illogical manner in order to get it
.
e
After that, with this strong weapon, his understanding of Souls-like games, as well as a prior understanding of the various levels and maps; Pei Qian would spend two or three weeks trying to win at the game. That would resolve the problem.
For the sake of incurring losses, I will work hard!
Once this thought appeared, the System stopped showing warnings. This meant that it was allowed.
Pei Qian smiled slightly and answered Bao Xu, “We will not cut off any players based on design. However, theoretically, most players should be able to win at the game. They would just need a bit of technique.”
The subtext of his response was that if they decided to give up on the game, they could not blame Pei Qian.
“Design the game to be as difficult as you can possibly imagine. I will personally make the final edits.”
When the time came, he would add the special weapon into the game. He would make the game as difficult as it could be with the special, powerful weapon on hand. Then, he would not get another warning from the System.
If players could not find this weapon, it would be like they were in hell. If they were allowed to return the game unconditionally within five hours of making the purchase, most people would refund it for sure!
Lu Mingliang asked, “Boss Pei, the game would be called Repent and be Saved, and it would have mostly Chinese backgrounds. What theme would its world take on then?”
Pei Qian smiled and said, “You can decide on minor things like that.”
Chapter 191 - Terminal Chinese Language Network
It was not that Pei Qian was acting humble. The main problem was that he could not come up with things like themes for worlds. He could not even lay down hard and fast requirements for the design details for the game. He would wait for the design manuscript to be handed to him. Then, he would make some edits to ensure that there would be no problem.
Losing Money to Be a Tycoon c1-883 Page 103