Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

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.

I finally understand why Boss Pei sent me here! Apart from learning about the design and knowledge relevant to this type of game, my more important responsibility is to influence them with the Tengda spirit!

The way Ye Zhizhou acted so cautiously with the budget estimate reminds me of what Lu Mingliang was like before.

Boss Pei is extremely busy. He has many things to take care of. He cannot possibly correct these bad habits himself. That was why he sent me here. On one hand, he's giving me the opportunity to hone my skills. On the other hand, he's using me to correct these people's bad habits!

That's why I should focus on correcting their mentality. I need to help them emulate Tengda. Boss Pei did not lie to me. This really is an important job!

Ye Zhizhou quickly edited the budget estimate and frowned.

"But… if we increase the budget estimate to five million yuan, we will run into a new problem.

"We're only creating a web-based game. Even if we make all our resources high definition, and hire top artists to handle the concept design, we might not be able to finish spending all the money…

"What's more, we're using the official platform's 2D game engine at the moment. It doesn't support these high-definition graphics very well. The effect might not be as obvious as we hope.

"Simply put… the quality-price ratio is going to be bad."

Lin Wan pondered for a moment and said, "Let's change the engine then. We'll use the 3D one instead."

Ye Zhizhou was speechless. "If we use the 3D game engine… we won't be able to let it remain as a web-based game. We have to transmit a huge amount of art resources. The current internet speed causes these to load too slowly."

Web-based games were meant to be played once they opened. All the art resources were supposed to be downloadable on the spot.

They were limited by internet speed. That was why they could not allow the art files to grow too big. Otherwise, the transmission would slow down. If players could not see the background even after walking around in a certain place, wouldn't it be extremely awkward?

This was the reason why Lin Wan saw the words 'downloading content' every time she went to a new place in Bloody Battle Song.

After so much discussion, the problem did not seem like it could be solved.

Lin Wan knew very well that a mere two-million-yuan budget would not satisfy Boss Pei. However, they were limited by the demands of a web-based game. Even if they wanted to increase the budget to five million yuan, there was nowhere they could spend the money.

That was unless they decided not to make the new game a web-based one but a client-side one instead. Players would then be required to download all the content into their own computers.

However, doing this… would change the entire mode of the game. Wouldn't that be akin to changing it fundamentally beyond recognition?

Wang Xiaobin cleared his throat twice. "Heh, I think that we can try to make the game a mini-client if we want to use high-definition resources and create a 3D version. This is a mini-client.

"Compared to client-side games, players would need to download far fewer resources. What's more, there would not be too many requirements on the hardware. On the other hand, compared to web-based games, the graphics would be obviously better.

"Of course, we could fail on both ends. We would be taking a huge risk."