Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 353: President Ma Isn't Bad, He's Just Being Targeted by the Game Mechanics
At the Moyu Internet Café, Handong University branch.
Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong sat in the café area, silently drinking their coffee, staring at each other without a word.
Both of them looked completely dumbfounded.
Their experiences were pretty similar.
On Tuesday, they were still working seriously at the company, respectively in charge of GOG and BE QUIET, diligently revising design plans.
Today, they had already been "kicked out" of the company and were sitting face to face in a Moyu Internet Café, speechless.
When they first heard about the transfer, both of them were equally shocked and equally confused.
Did they mess something up?
It didn't seem like it. This was clearly a promotion—both their rank and salary had gone up.
But if it was supposed to be good news…
Neither of them could feel happy about it.
Because President Pei had only said one thing: he wanted to build a haunted house in the old industrial district of Jingzhou City and would casually invest ten million yuan.
But beyond that, there was absolutely no information!
How much land to rent, which factory buildings to renovate, what kind of design plan to use, how many employees to hire…
All of that progress was at zero.
In other words, although President Pei said he would invest ten million yuan into a haunted house, at this point there was nothing except the ten million yuan—and Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong themselves.
This… was extremely confusing.
After learning that the two of them were currently the only colleagues on this project, they decided to meet up at the Moyu Internet Café to at least discuss what to do next.
Each of them thought the other might know more than they did, maybe having received some special instructions from President Pei.
But once they met, they realized they were equally lost.
President Pei hadn't said anything at all!
So all they could do was silently drink their coffee.
After a long silence, Chen Kangtuo decided to break the awkwardness.
After all, President Pei clearly valued this project, entrusting a ten-million-yuan investment directly to him. No matter what, he couldn't let President Pei down.
After thinking for a moment, Chen Kangtuo said, "Starting tomorrow, I'll post recruitment ads online to hire people with relevant industry experience. I'll also get in touch with some construction teams, at the very least, we need to get a design plan together."
Hao Qiong nodded. "Yeah. On the BE QUIET side, we already have some ready-made art assets, plus materials we collected from playing horror games before. We could consider using them in the haunted house design."
The two of them continued drinking coffee while discussing, constantly talking through various details of the project.
And honestly, through their discussion, a rough framework for the haunted house project started to take shape.
But even though they had thought through all kinds of issues from every angle, both of them still felt like something was missing.
It just didn't feel solid enough.
Chen Kangtuo frowned and thought hard. "What exactly are we missing?"
After pondering for a long time, Hao Qiong suddenly slapped his forehead. "I've got it!"
"We're missing President Pei's guidance!"
"Everything else can be missing, but President Pei's guidance absolutely cannot!"
"Do you remember? The success of most Tengda Group projects has always been within President Pei's plans."
"Many times, President Pei only points out a few simple directions. But as long as we keep reasoning and expanding along those directions, we can always find the correct path!"
"But for the haunted house project, President Pei hasn't given a single piece of guidance yet."
"First, we need to figure out President Pei's attitude toward this project before we can decide on a concrete plan!"
Chen Kangtuo suddenly realized. "So that's it!"
He had never served as a project lead before. When President Pei assigned tasks, he usually went directly to Li Yada, so Chen Kangtuo hadn't considered this angle at all.
Fortunately, Hao Qiong had already heard Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin talk about the standardized process for understanding President Pei's intentions, which allowed her to keenly spot this blind spot.
"In short, we should first do the preliminary preparations—hire more people, or even ask President Pei for some additional manpower."
"Then, we find an opportunity to consult President Pei about his views on this project."
"Only by fully grasping President Pei's intentions can we greatly increase the project's chances of success!"
What had originally seemed like a confusing and elusive project now appeared to have a vague overall direction after their discussion.
That direction was President Pei's guidance.
Both of them firmly believed that as long as they could obtain President Pei's guidance, all of these problems would surely be resolved with ease!
…
…
Friday, December 10.
Tengda Group Network Technology Co., Ltd.
"Brother Bao, GOG has a new build out. Take another look when you have time."
Looking at the message sent by Li Yada, Bao Xu silently let out a sigh.
Sigh… this is rough.
By this point in development, GOG finally had a rough shape. Although the game was still a complete mess in almost every aspect, at the very least, it could run.
After all, with Divine Revelation as a highly polished, ready-made reference, it wasn't that difficult for GOG to quickly put together a basic framework.
But judging by its current state, it was still miles away from being acceptable.
Taking advantage of a moment when no one was paying attention, Bao Xu secretly played GOG and immediately found a long list of problems.
Too many bugs.
Terrible balance.
Uninspired gameplay.
Too few heroes…
In short, it was nowhere near Divine Revelation—not even close.
Bao Xu found himself stuck in a dilemma.
If he ignored it, Li Yada probably wouldn't be able to solve these problems alone.
But if he stepped in, it felt like the African savanna and the Sahara Desert were waving at him.
After weighing his options again and again, Bao Xu sighed, reopened the editor, and secretly started making changes.
'Forget it, I really can't just stand by and watch.'
'Help one last time?'
'But this can't go on forever. I can't be the one fixing every similar gameplay issue, right?'
Bao Xu felt a bit helpless. Although the other designers in the design team were constantly playing games and enriching their experience, "game sense" wasn't something that could be cultivated overnight.
As a hardcore veteran gamer, Bao Xu's sensitivity to games was something others simply couldn't match.
That was why some very high-level tasks—like adjusting game balance—could only be handled by Bao Xu himself.
Of course, the numerical designers could also do this kind of work, but Bao Xu usually had to do the final review.
For single-player games that didn't rely heavily on balance, this was manageable. But GOG was a multiplayer competitive game, where balance was absolutely critical.
Thinking about it, Bao Xu felt that if things continued like this…
It was too dangerous!
He had to find a way to offload this work early and let someone else share the burden.
If such people couldn't be found within the company, then where should he look?
Suddenly, inspiration struck him and he thought of a solution.
Moyu Internet Café was a business owned by Tengda Group itself, couldn't he make a bit of use of it?
They decided to put the test version of GOG into Moyu Internet Café. That way, the café's customers could serve as test players. After experiencing the game, they could leave their opinions and suggestions.
Of course, this would bring certain risks—for example, information about the game might leak early and cause spoilers.
But for a game like GOG, this wasn't a big problem.
In simple terms, it meant setting up a special test server for GOG at Moyu Internet Café, used to collect player data and then modify the game based on that data.
Bao Xu immediately sent a message to Li Yada.
By getting the Moyu Internet Café players involved as well, Bao Xu felt that even if he couldn't be completely freed from the workload, he could at least reduce it by eighty percent!
…
…
Dream Fulfillment Ventures.
Ma Yang didn't come in today—he had classes.
Moreover, ever since Ma Yang had unhesitatingly poured all of his money into Fingertip Games last time, Dream Fulfillment Ventures no longer had any funds left to invest in other projects.
Everyone's daily work had been reduced to just one thing: playing games with President Ma.
Although President Ma carried every match like crazy, constantly going godlike and slaughtering enemies, even this kind of "high-level play" got boring after a while.
Recently, Ma Yang had started feeling bored, so he didn't come to Dream Fulfillment Ventures very often.
At the moment, He Desheng and the other high-ranked experts were gathered together, discussing matters with serious expressions.
"President Ma's happiness threshold is getting higher and higher."
"In another period of time, he'll probably lose interest in our 'nine-protect-one' strategy."
"What should we do?"
He Desheng raised a very sharp question.
One of the most important jobs of these high-ranked experts was to play games with President Ma, keeping him relaxed and happy so he could maintain the best possible working condition.
At the beginning, President Ma could rack up over a dozen kills against these top-tier players every game, carrying solo—of course he was extremely happy.
But gradually, his happiness threshold kept rising.
Simply getting kills was no longer enough to satisfy President Ma.
Frequent victories also started to feel bland and tasteless.
After all, in Ma Yang's eyes, the experience of each match was becoming more and more similar.
Even if the other nine players in the match had their roles scripted in advance, trying their best to act according to the script and make each game feel as different as possible for President Ma…
After a long time, it would still get boring.
So now, everyone was gathered together to discuss how to solve this problem.
"I think this isn't because we lack imagination, nor is it because President Ma's skill is lacking," one of them said.
"If we have to blame something, it can only be the game mechanics!"
"The current game mechanics are a bit too complex and extremely unfriendly to mechanically unskilled players."
"President Ma is being targeted by the game. It's hard for him to bring out even 100% of his true strength."
"To cooperate with President Ma, we can only suppress our own skill level down to his level. Naturally, the acting looks fake."
"If this keeps going, President Ma will figure it out sooner or later—it's only a matter of time."
Someone next to him nodded. "That's right, I agree! I also think President Ma is being targeted by the game."
"As long as the game mechanics are tweaked a bit, President Ma's abilities will definitely be better expressed!"
"But what can we do? We're not designers, we can't change the game mechanics," someone else said.
Another person raised his hand and suggested, "We can't change Divine Revelation, but… maybe we can change ioi?"
He Desheng thought for a moment. "Hard to say. We only bought shares in Fingertip Games, we can't interfere with their R&D or operations."
"We can offer some suggestions to them as shareholders and as the domestic publisher, but whether they'll listen…"
"Let's just give it a try."
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