Losing Money to Be a Tycoon c1-883

by Inebriation-seeking Blue Shirt, 青衫取醉

  “While plots are treated as mere decorations in foreign games, Tengda has professionally designed and produced such a rich worldview and plot for their game. What’s more, they left clues for players to locate a hidden weapon and used only a small part of the novel’s content. They’re so good-hearted!”

  “I’m going to read the novel now!”

  “I feel like there are still a lot of holes in the game’s plot. I also noticed some details that Old Qiao did not talk about. I’ll produce a video later on to share them with everyone!”

  After reading the most popular comments, Pei Qian felt his eyes begin to well up.

  You’ve all been brainwashed by him! The video is far from the truth! I wanted all of you to reach the ‘repent and be saved ending’. Will you just give up once and for all?

  Who told you to imagine the game’s protagonist suffering in the sea of bitterness forever? It’s just a freaking game. It’s not real! Don’t take it so seriously, alright?

  The only comment among all of these that brought some comfort to Pei Qian was the one who talked about Cloud Clearance.

  How good would it be if everyone just happily watched others play?!

  Yet, this was obviously wishful thinking on Boss Pei’s part.

  Many gamers, who had initially given up on the game because they were too lousy, became determined to purchase the game after watching the video. Those who had already refunded the game wanted to re-purchase it. Those who were on the verge of giving up were motivated to keep trying. Critically, the difficulty of the game had been completely explained away!

  The haters and fake reviewers had been upset primarily because of the game’s difficulty. They emphasized that point to demonize the game and persuade other lousy players, who were still considering whether to try the game or not, not to play it.

  However, Teacher Qiao’s video introduced a more high-level way of looking at the game that brought the focus away from the game’s difficulty.

  Indeed, the game was difficult. However, the game’s difficulty contributed to its immersiveness. In fact, it was an important part of the plot.

  It was precisely because it was difficult that the game was complete. It was precisely because it was difficult that gamers could fully experience the game and achieve emotional Nirvana!

  What used to be the game’s primary flaw had now become its selling point!

  After introducing this view, Teacher Qiao established a stronghold so that he could not be defeated.

  Once the detailed walkthroughs were released, lousy gamers—who had been worried about not being able to complete the game-would cast aside all doubts at once. If all else failed, they could at least depend on the walkthroughs and progress bit by bit.

  This would lead to more players buying the game!

  Pei Qian felt depressed.

  Things were getting very bad!

  He had completely underestimated the amount of damage Teacher Qiao could cause!

  It was now Thursday. He would receive Repent and be Saved’s revenue by Monday. In these three days, the game’s reputation would probably greatly improve; and sales would balloon.

  This was a massive problem! At that thought, Pei Qian quickly called Lu Mingliang. He wanted Lu Mingliang to work as hard as he could to open tens more Upwind Courier stations. He had to keep opening new stations until the next settlement. All the additional money that Pei Qian would earn had to be spent as soon as possible!

  Even after ending the call, Pei Qian could not relax.

  No way, I have to personally go down! I have to supervise the progress myself!

  Pei Qian was afraid because Lu Mingliang did not understand the gravity of the problem. He wanted to go down to Upwind Logistics’s office and personally push all the employees there to work harder!

  Now, Pei Qian did not want to wait a single minute more. He arranged for the chauffeur to pick him up and quickly rushed out of the office.

  Before he left, he said to Li Yada, “I’m going to deal with some things at Upwind Logistics. If there’s nothing else to do, all of you can call it a day.”

  The employees in the office observed Boss Pei who looked like he was in a rush. They could not help but feel sorrow.

  Eh, didn’t our game just become unexpectedly popular?

  Boss Pei isn’t even giving himself a break to celebrate? Instead, he’s going to deal with Upwind Logistics’s problems?

  He’s so hardworking!

  The leader was working overtime while his employees were allowed to knock off early. What kind of spirit was this?!

  Upstairs from Tengda, in Zhongdian Chinese Network…

  Ma Yiqun had been kept busy with TPDb. Now, the website was finally almost complete, and there was nothing much left to do.

  Of course, although Ma Yiqun was in charge of both Zhongdian Chinese Network and TPDb at the same time, he still had a lot of free time on his hands.

  This was because ever since Zhongdian Chinese Network was set up, Ma Yiqun did not have to do much for the site. He could allow it to run on its own.

  After training his subordinates for such a long period, Ma Yiqun could finally trust them to do their work independently. The editors, led by Zhu Xingan, could now responsibly vet manuscripts, distribute recommendation spots, and make suggestions to various authors on their own.

  In their free time, Zhu Xingan and the other editors even worked on Repent and be Saved’s official novel.

  Although the novel had been heavily criticized by many readers, nobody really minded. They only wrote to entertain themselves.

  Ma Yiqun felt moved from time to time as he observed them. They were talents from Handong University indeed. Although they all showed hints of sociopathic or autistic behavior, they picked things up quite quickly

  After Ma Yiqun explained to them rules and ways of online novels, everyone seemed to develop a good understanding of it.

  All things aside, they did seem suited for this business.

  On the whole, Zhongdian Chinese Network was developing correctly. Not many people thought well of it ever since the website started; there were not enough readers or authors. However, the situation was showing signs of improvement.

  Boss Pei had given Ma Yiqun a sum of money a while ago to pick the business up. Now, Ma Yiqun could boost the remuneration for authors who produced better-than-average online literature.

  Ma Yiqun could decide which books had elite potential and peg the distributions against the novels’ figures. This would vastly change Zhongdian Chinese Network’s reputation among the circle of writers.

  With a higher ceiling, the website would surely catch the attention of more skilled writers.

  The only problem that Ma Yiqun was finding it difficult to solve was the lack of readers.

  After all, supplementing authors’ income was not a long-term solution to this problem. Yet, Ma Yiqun was not worried. As long as they could continue supplementing authors’ income for a while, the number of good authors on the site would increase. Someday, they would produce a viral novel.

  The number of readers was bound to increase someday, right?

  Ma Yiqun accessed the platform to look at the novels’ figures.

  He was holding onto a huge sum of money, and he had to be extremely careful with choosing which author he should give the money to.

  This was because the process was not entirely transparent. Conflict could arise from his decisions. If unselected authors became envious, they could diss Zhongdian Chinese Network online and ruin its reputation forever.

  Thus, he had to be as objective as possible.

  Of course, Ma Yiqun could not possibly read every novel online. It would tire him to death. He would mainly refer to the numbers and his own judgment when deciding how much more he should pay the authors each month.

  First, he had to narrow down his options using the figures on the platform. He would look at figures like the number of saves and the number of recommendation votes. Then, Ma Yiqun would stud
y the chapters in the beginning and the middle. He would compare the number of comments to see if there was any obvious drop and look for any signs of fake reviewers.

  This way, he could roughly determine each novel’s popularity.

  Even if a book started well but deteriorated in the middle, the figures would reveal this. Ma Yiqun could adjust the income supplements accordingly.

  After all, the money belonged to Boss Pei. Ma Yiqun had to be accountable to him. He had to spend the money purposefully and not frivolously.

  He scanned the novels with the highest figures on the platform. All of a sudden, he became shocked.

  Why are the figures for these books increasing so rapidly? Repent and be Saved’s official novel was experiencing the greatest jumps. The figures were not just increasing rapidly; they were practically exploding!

  Ma Yiqun looked at the number of registered accounts on the website and found that even that was rapidly increasing! He was surprised and elated but also deeply confused.

  What’s happening? Where are all the new users coming from?

  Could Boss Pei have advertised Zhongdian Chinese Network somewhere else? Yet, Boss Pei did not tell me anything about this!

  Chapter 286 - Create a Combined Event with the Game

  Chapter 286 Create a Combined Event with the Game

  Ma Yiqun quickly scanned the comments below Repent and be Saved’s official novel. He found that many of them had visited the website after playing Repent and be Saved. Of course, Ma Yiqun knew that the game had been released. After all, he had written the game’s plot together with the other editors. He had contributed to the game as well.

  However, what Ma Yiqun did not know was that so many readers would be interested in the official novel!

  Plot planning was Ma Yiqun’s forte; that was why he knew the state of the local game industry very well. Plot planning was akin to ‘changing the skin’ of the game. At the moment, the local game industry viewed games’ plots as one of the least important parts of the game.

  This was especially true for mobile games and web-based games. Many project teams did not even have plot planners. Instead, they tended to make their administrative planners responsible for writing the plot if they were good in language.

  Most project teams would not even spend huge sums of money hiring plot planners for client-side games, which required slightly richer plots. The most they would do was hire a fresh graduate, who majored in literature, and pay him or her minimum wages to produce a plot.

  All in all, most local game merchants did not care about their games’ plots. Most gamers were also not concerned about them.

  Practically speaking, did game merchants avoid focusing on plots because gamers did not pay that much attention to it, or did gamers stop paying that much attention to plots because game merchants didn’t focus on it?

  This was a chicken-and-egg problem that would never be resolved.

  Pei Qian could only say that games’ plots were currently being neglected by local game merchants.

  The local situation aside, very few players of foreign AAA games with the best plots would purposely look for the games’ original novels to read, too. Ma Yiqun thought that Repent and be Saved’s official novel was quite well-written, but it probably was not so good as to achieve such outstanding results.

  Thus, Ma Yiqun had not expected such a development. He was completely shocked. He quickly tried to investigate what caused this to happen.

  Teacher Qiao’s fans had a prominent presence in the comments section. This was how Ma Yiqun traced his way to Teacher Qiao’s video.

  Once he finished watching it, a realization dawned on him. So this was what happened! It was not just the plot!

  Foreign AAA games’ plots were very good, but their official novels mostly overlapped with the games themselves.

  In fact, the original novels’ plots were sometimes incomplete; the games would expand a great deal on the plot in their original novels.

  In terms of content-if novels scored seven marks, their corresponding games would score ten marks.

  On top of all these, games were naturally more interactive, graphic, and artistic. Compared to novels—which communicated using words alone-games could express much more. That explained the huge gap between novels and games.

  Most gamers would not even think about reading the original novels of games because the former would not be as elaborate as the latter.

  Yet, the situation was different for Repent and be Saved!

  A lot of the game’s plot was hidden. If the original novel scored ten marks, the game would only score about five.

  What’s more, the game only revealed the tip of the plot’s iceberg. The props and descriptions that appeared in the game only foreshadowed the material in the novel.

  Yet, the game was well-done. It had a deep meaning to it, which allowed players to resonate strongly with the protagonist throughout the gameplay. Naturally, players would become extremely interested and invested in the game’s plot! In the face of a story that hung in the balance, players understandably rushed to read the game’s official novel in order to have their questions answered. Ma Yiqun could not help but feel moved. Amazing!

  Why didn’t I think about this when we were writing the official plot? Ma Yiqun had not worked seriously on the plot and official novel. Zhu Xingan had been the more passionate one. If not for the latter, the official novel would probably not have been updated so constantly. “How could I have neglected such a serious task? I nearly messed up Boss Pei’s plans. I really should not have…

  “It looks like Zhu Xingan is a talent worth nurturing

  “Wait a minute. Now’s not the time to think about these things. I have to grab the opportunity to retain as many readers as we

  can!”

  Ma Yiqun suddenly realized a more urgent problem: as the CEO of Zhongdian Chinese Network, he had to do his job!

  Boss Pei had worked hard to direct so many new readers and users to Zhongdian Chinese Network. Ma Yiqun had to retain them as much as possible!

  Ma Yiqun was certain that Repent and be Saved would continue to direct traffic to Zhongdian Chinese Network for some time to come. Over the next few days or even over the next few weeks, Zhongdian Chinese Network’s traffic would probably increase.

  However, these would just be superficial numbers. Most people would only visit the website to read Repent and be Saved’s official novel. It was difficult to tell how many of them would remain.

  Thus, Ma Yiqun had to think of a way to keep all of them!

  Ma Yiqun wasted no time and called Zhu Xingan into his office at once.

  “Quick, ask one of our operations staff to come up with some kind of event that would help us keep all our new readers!

  “Didn’t we come up with an event allowing new users to read books freely? Use that as a foundation and work harder on it!

  “Come up with something based on games’ seven-day login events.”

  Ma Yiqun was worried that Zhu Xingan would not be familiar with games’ seven-day login events, and so he took some time to explain it to the latter in detail.

  If a game managed to influence a new player to log in every day for seven days, a habit would be developed. The game would have successfully retained this player.

  Developers of web-based games and mobile games had wrecked their brains for a long time, thinking about how to retain their players. After extensive research, they came up with the seven-day login event system. Simply put, they planned something every day for the first seven days after a new player registered. They enticed players to develop this gaming habit using attractive rewards.

  While this method was tacky, one had to admit that it was extremely effective.

  Otherwise, it would not have become the hallmark of mobile games and web-based games.

  “Come up with a reward to give readers every day. For example, give them a few novels if they spent a set amount of time reading on our website.

  “The re
quired activity should not be that difficult. You can ask them to move their fingers around a bit or something in order to get the reward.

  “The rewards for the second and seventh days are the most important. The reward for the seventh day has to be the best, and the one for the second day has to be just slightly worse. However, they both have to be extremely attractive.

  “Do you have any good ideas?”

  Ma Yiqun looked at Zhu Xingan.

  Zhu Xingan pondered for a moment. “We can reward them with unimpeded reading for a week on the second day, and unimpeded reading for a month on the seventh day.”

  “Er… that’s quite repetitive.” Ma Yiqun shook his head. “What’s more, most readers wouldn’t see a difference between a week and a month of unimpeded reading.

  “If they like our novels, we can successfully retain them by just giving them a week. If they don’t like our novels, even giving them a month wouldn’t work.

  “We need something more exciting.”

  Zhu Xingan fell into deep thought. Finally, he said, “Let’s give them something related to the game. The people being directed to our site are gamers; they would likely be interested in rewards like that.”

  Ma Yiqun clapped his hands. “Good! That’s a good idea!

  “If we hold a combined event with the game, more gamers would be attracted! What’s more, we won’t need additional funds for this. That means we won’t have to report this to Boss Pei. I’ll just have to mention it to Li Yada in private.

  “It’s settled then. We will give them three full days of unimpeded reading on their first day. On the second day, we will give them seven full days of unimpeded reading. On the seventh day, we will give them a prop for the game.

  “We’ll give them rewards on the other days as well, such as Zhongdian coins, discounts, and the like.”

  Zhu Xingan nodded. “Alright, I’ll go and talk to the operations staff. We’ll come up with a plan as soon as possible.”