After listening to Pei Qian’s brief, Zhang Yuan completely admitted defeat.
Indeed, it would be extremely difficult for anyone to predict what Boss Pei was thinking!
From the looks of the situation, this was going to be quite a long-term plan. Although Pei Qian did not make things clear, Zhang Yuan could roughly guess his intentions behind going in this direction.
If he settled the problem of the ‘last kilometer’, he would slowly be able to develop people’s reliance on Headwind Logistics.
In the short-term, this would mean incurring losses. Yet, how about the long-term? Once people became used to using Headwind Logistics for their delivery services, they would choose Headwind Logistics for their deliveries whenever they needed it.
In the future, Headwind Logistics would be able to move into inter-city and inter-state deliveries.
However, the plan seemed to be too long-term. It was so long-term that most people would undoubtedly expect little of it!
Perhaps many years later, Headwind Logistics would still be incurring losses. However, once it succeeded, it would deeply influence many aspects of people’s lives.
Zhang Yuan could not help but respect Pei Qian.
See, this was what a true set-up looked like!
Chapter 197 - This Game is Really Unbelievably Lousy…
“What game did I just play…?”
Lin Wan closed her laptop and fell into deep thought.
This game was called Bloody Battle Song. It had completely changed what she thought had been the bottom line of games.
Did such a trashy game really exist in the world?!
Although it had already been updated, these changes were mainly made to the gameplay and design.
No matter what changes were made, Bloody Battle Song was still going to be a web-based game. From the moment she entered the game, she found countless reasons to stop playing
The graphics were lousy. They were still filled with the arts and style that belonged to the last century. The characters in the game were all dressed in bits and pieces of decorative patterns, and armors that completely lacked style. The golden special effects wrapping their bodies all looked exaggerated and vulgar. Each of them also had multi-colored wings on their backs.
The background was a mess as well. This was especially true for the main city where most players gathered together. Each person was dressed in multi-colored equipment. A lot of information could be found above the characters’ heads, including their IDs, their guilds, their nicknames, and the like. The entire scene looked extremely messy and unnecessarily complicated.
The game very considerately allowed players to screen others. Once the player entered the game, they could also very easily locate themselves on the map.
However, by allowing this, the game was exposing the ugly truth. It looked cold and deserted. The less beautiful locations were also made very clear to the players.
The vibes of the game’s music made one feel like they had been transported back to ten years before. It did not sound bad, but it was hindering players from being immersed in the game.
The most important thing was that it was a web-based game. That meant that most of its art resources had to be downloaded online.
Each time they entered a new map with a new background, a little progress bar would appear on the screen because the art resources had not been fully downloaded. This progress bar would say ‘downloading resources’.
All the players would also become black, silent figures. The map’s background only appeared after a while.
In places where the background would frequently change, players would experience a meltdown each time it did.
The gameplay was even tackier and simpler. All players had to do was kill beasts, level up, and complete missions. ‘Tired and old’ would be an overstatement for the game.
Lin Wan’s nose was practically scrunched up throughout the entire five minutes that she played the game. During this time, she only felt one thing.
Low-class!
Even if someone paid her to, she would never play this game.
Lin Wan was beginning to regret it. She had too much trust in Boss Pei. That was why she accepted the task without considering too much. She vaguely knew about Shang Yang Games’ situation. She also knew that this company had produced a game that was quite a failure.
However, she never expected that the game would be this bad!
In Lin Wan’s mind, this failure was probably several tiers worse than Sun Strike Studios’ Bullet Hole.
After trying Bloody Battle Song, she finally realized that this was not a matter of several tiers. It was practically years off! This game made her feel like she had been transported back in time by ten years.
After playing the game for a while, Lin Wan not only felt uncomfortable, but she also developed suspicion and confusion towards Pei Qian’s decision.
Why… did Boss Pei buy this game company over?
No matter what angle she looked at this from, there seemed to be only one outcome that this game company deserved: being eliminated from the market.
This company should have gone insolvent. The designer who created this game should have looked for another company to work at. If no company wanted to accept him, he should have changed industries altogether.
From this game’s situation alone, Lin Wan could tell that its designer should not remain in the game industry!
Yet, Boss Pei bought the company over. What’s more, it was said that he personally groomed a newbie and made several suggestions to revamp the company.
The game that Lin Wan had just played was the result of the changes Boss Pei implemented. However, it was obvious that it was far from being a profitable game.
Lin Wan was beginning to shrink back. She did not want to go over anymore. How good would it be if she could research and develop Repent and be Saved in Tengda Games?
Boss Pei was there, overlooking the entire company. That meant that the game would likely be well-praised. Sales would go through the roof. Then, as a member of the production team, Lin Wan could feel proud of herself.
However, now, she had been transferred to Shang Yang Games and made to research Bloody Battle Song. The plot was completely different!
She was not even thinking about whether she could successfully produce the game or not. Even if she could, the game would probably end up being dissed by mainstream gamers!
Lin Wan would be embarrassed to tell her friends and classmates that she was responsible for creating a game like that.
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However, after recalling that Boss Pei had been behind this arrangement, Lin Wan felt that there was a deeper meaning buried in it.
After all, when he had been briefing her on this task, Boss Pei seemed to have high hopes for her. Not only would she be a ‘communications button’, but she would also be the ‘carrier of Tengda Games’ spirit’.
If she gave up just like that, perhaps she would never understand Boss Pei’s true intentions. This arrangement could contain the key to her becoming stronger.
Lin Wan considered all of these for a long time. Finally, she made up her mind.
In any case, Boss Pei was going to leave her work desk in Tengda Games empty. She could go back whenever she wanted. She would take this opportunity to challenge herself in Shang Yang Games. This was quite a rare chance to do so after all.
At Shang Yang Games…
In the conference room…
Ye Zhizhou, Wang Xiaobin, and the others secretly and apprehensively sized Lin Wan up as she sat on the other side of the table. Lin Wan had just arrived at Shang Yang Games. She was holding onto a little book and playing the part of a guilty intern.
However, to everyone else, Lin Wan was stressing them about by furiously writing notes in her notebook. As for this leader that had been parachuted in from Tengda, everyone felt apprehensive and uneasy.
The main problem was that they could not guess what Boss Pei was thinking.
D
id Boss Pei trust Shang Yang Games or not?
They couldn’t say he did not. He had left it completely up to Shang Yang Games to come up with a design plan for the new game. The new chief planner was also a newbie groomed from within Shang Yang Games. The company’s framework had not been changed, too.
Yet, they also could not say he did. Why else would he have parachuted someone from Tengda in now that they were on the brink of producing the new game?
According to Boss Pei, Lin Wan was going to be the new Development Director. In essence, she was going to be like a creator. However, it did not seem like someone in a position like that would be able to manage everyday operations. She would probably be more of an overseer.
One could say that there were three key roles in Shang Yang Games now: Ye Zhizhou, who was in charge of the creation and general planning of games; Wang Xiaobin, who was in charge of systems design and administration; and Lin Wan, who had veto power over every important decision made in the company.
Before this, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin could take charge of all game planning in the company. They reported to Boss Pei directly.
Yet, now, between Ye Zhizhou and Boss Pei, there was Lin Wan—the Development Director.
Many people were even guessing whether Ye Zhizhou had lost Boss Pei’s trust because he had not managed to turn their losses into profits ever since he took over as chief planner. Was that why Boss Pei was parachuting another leader from Tengda into Shang Yang Games?
At that moment, the entire Shang Yang Games was covered in a shadow of confusion.
At first, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin wanted to hand over all their work to Lin Wan. However, Lin Wan unexpectedly shirked away from them.
She said very little in front of everyone as well. She only said several perfunctory things to pacify everybody and calm them down. Then, she stayed by the side and listened quietly.
Thus, the meeting continued as per usual. Ye Zhizhou began explaining the design of Bloody Battle Song: The Powerful Version to everyone.
As Lin Wan listened by the side, she took notes down in her book. Then, question marks began to appear in her mind. What is this? And what is this?
Chapter 198 - Increase the Budget Estimate!
It was normal for Lin Wan not to understand. This was because when she was working at Sun Strike Studios; she worked on Bullet Hole. Later, when she moved to Tengda Games, she helped to create Ocean Stronghold and Game Designer. All of these were client-side games.
Bloody Battle Song was a web-based game. One could say that it was a completely different kind of game compared to the ones she worked on before.
Web-based games made use of a set of unique design concepts and principles. The gameplay on mature systems for this type of games was rarely seen in client-side games.
Not only had Lin Wan never researched and developed web-based games, but she had never even played web-based games. She was not even interested in them.
Yet, in the meeting led by Ye Zhizhou, they employed common terms used in the development of web-based games and complicated English acronyms as well. When they were describing the gameplay, they also made use of a lot of slang words and short-forms that would only be known to people familiar with the internal processes.
Because of this—even though everyone spoke in Mandarin, Lin Wan found that she could only understand thirty to forty percent of the discussion.
Simply put, she knew every single word; but when strung into sentences, she had no idea what they were talking about.
Lin Wan had no choice but to silently take notes, without nodding or asking a single question.
She refrained from nodding because she did not understand what was going on, and she did not want to pretend that she did. She refrained from asking questions because she was worried that she would display her own ignorance and embarrass Tengda and Boss Pei.
On the other hand, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin would steal glances at Lin Wan every now and then.
All they saw was Lin Wan’s somber expression and her writing in her book non-stop. It was hard for them to read her expression. They had no clue what she was thinking.
Although she looked young, none of them belittled her. After all, the people whom Boss Pei hired had never been of the same pattern.
If Boss Pei thought so highly of her, they guessed that she had to be either genuinely talented or someone with great, hidden potential. No matter what, they could not afford to offend her.
Every now and then, Ye Zhizhou would pause mid-speech to give Lin Wan time to express her opinions.
Boss Pei had not made any edits to the design manuscript, but who knew whether the Development Director would have any valuable suggestions to offer?
However, Lin Wan remained silent as she recorded the meeting. She did not utter a single word.
Ye Zhizhou was beginning to doubt himself.
Why don’t Boss Pei and this director have any suggestions?
Was my design manuscript really perfect?
It can’t be, right?
Have I been underestimating myself?
Finally, they finished discussing the design manuscript. Ye Zhizhou briefed everybody on the schedule for the project and the art resources that they would need for the game. He also proposed a budget of about two million yuan for the various art resources that they required.
After this, Ye Zhizhou looked at Lin Wan.
This director has to give a comment or two, right?
What else are you here for?
Lin Wan felt everybody’s gaze boring into her and began to panic inside.
What should I do? Even after listening to their discussion all day, I don’t understand a single thing!
Even if I understood a small portion of it, there’s nothing to discuss. Everything that I managed to understand was basic. Wouldn’t I be making a fool of myself if I raise it up?
The good thing was that Lin Wan did not show her panic. Instead, she successfully brought up a point that she knew Boss Pei would definitely not be happy with.
“I have no big issue with other things. The only problem is the budget estimate. According to my understanding of Boss Pei, he would not allow it.”
Ye Zhizhou began to feel nervous. Indeed, they would not get approval for the budget estimate after all!
Setting two million yuan aside for a web-based game did sound ridiculous.
Expenses for research and development should only make up a small portion of the total budget for web-based games. The majority of the budget should be used for marketing, like buying pay-per-click advertising on webpages, hiring celebrities, and the like.
This would be decided based on the target audience of the web-based game.
Web-based games were mostly targeted at white-collared workers and whales. These people did not have high expectations for the games’ graphics. Most of them played these games secretly while at work. They would not want complicated operations that would take up brainpower.
Instead, these people would only be interested in topping-up and killing others with their mouse.
On top of that, these people had higher purchasing power. Thus, it would be wiser to save money on research and development and spend it on advertising instead. This would maximize revenue earned from the game.
However, when Ye Zhizhou was calculating the budget, he decided that he did not want to go down the traditional path.
It was not easy to get Boss Pei to make a decision-this game would be named ‘The Powerful Version’. He could not possibly allow the graphics to be as bad as other ordinary web-based games.
The art resources had to be made high-definition for sure. The various gameplay had to be improved to the point of perfection.
All of these little things would add up to about two million yuan. Ye Zhizhou even checked with Wang Xiaobin beforehand; he was very satisfied with the budget estimate.
Yet, was Lin Wan going to say it was too much?
Ye Zhizhou looked at Lin Wan apprehensively.
In his heart, he decided that they could reduce the estimate by three or four hundred thousand yuan at most… but not any more than that.
Lin Wan spoke again. “I think… Boss Pei would only approve of this project if you have a budget estimate of four million yuan at least.
“Forget it. You should make it five million yuan. That’ll save Boss Pei from having to check in. This way, you definitely won’t have to redo everything later on.”
Each time they re-estimated the budget, they had to edit the list of art resources and the various plans. They also had to find new artists and processes from the website for resources.
Increasing the budget estimate from two million yuan to three or four million yuan would be almost double. That meant all the plans would have to be re-done from scratch. To achieve this huge change, it would not be just a matter of engaging different artists.
Thus, Lin Wan considerately hinted for them to raise the budget estimate from the start. This would save them the trouble of working hard on the budget estimate, only to have Boss Pei call them and ask them to redo everything.
Everyone was dumbfounded.
Ye Zhizhou almost thought that he had heard wrongly.
Two million yuan was too little? They had to increase it to five million?
They had more than double the original budget estimate?
However, when he saw Lin Wan’s serious expression, he realized that she was not joking. This was a serious warning.
Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin exchanged a meaningful look. Hesitantly, Ye Zhizhou asked, “Five million? That sounds like too much…
“Actually, we don’t need that much money. Two million yuan is enough. It really is enough.”
Lin Wan shook her head. “To you, it might be enough. However, to Boss Pei, it is far from enough. You don’t know how particular Boss Pei can be about these details. Listen to me. Make it five million yuan.”
Lin Wan could not help but rejoice when she saw Ye Zhizhou lower his head in confusion and begin to edit the proposal.
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