Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

In the office…

Impossible!

His intention was to ask everyone to slack more and work less. Now, people were taking his words as an encouragement to work harder! What's more, it looked like they really were going to do so!

Reading his employees' promises to 'take care of their bodies', 'be more professional' and 'fight harder for Tengda' exhausted Pei Qian.

He wanted to reply with a few sentences, and yet he had no idea what to say.

Forget it, I'll leave it…

As long as he had typed what he meant, it would be alright. At least a portion of his employees would understand the letter and relax, right?

Pei Qian retrieved his little notebook and prepared to plan for the next cycle's jobs.

Although this cycle would be quite long—about five months, he had drunk poison to quench his thirst during the last cycle. That depleted his potential to incur losses during this cycle. Pei Qian expected his various businesses to generate much more revenue this month.

He did not want to be rendered helpless just before the next settlement. Thus, Pei Qian had to make the necessary preparations now and come up with a good plan.

He had to do all that he could to get rid of all hidden danger before they germinated!

Pei Qian pondered for a moment and realized that the first thing that he had to attend to was Lin Wan and Shang Yang Games.

Pei Qian had already agreed to work with Lin Chang and Lin Yu earlier, and they had come up with a plan to send Lin Wan away. Pei Qian decided to put Lin Wan in charge of a new business while she looked after Shang Yang Games.

That way, Lin Wan would be distracted and overwhelmed. Her chances of failure would thus increase greatly.

Shang Yang Games had just moved into a new office building recently. The employees were also enjoying maximum benefits. They were being treated on par with Tengda Games' employees, and their daily expenses had greatly increased as well.

If the new game and new business incurred losses—not only would they lose all the money earned by the mobile version of Bloody Battle Song, but they would also be able to spend some of Tengda's money.

Just thinking about this exciting prospect filled Pei Qian with hope!

Lin Wan had just produced a very successful game; she was still feeling extremely proud of herself.

Men were most easily hoodwinked while they were proud.

Pei Qian quickly came up with a plan to deal with Lin Wan and Shang Yang Games. After coming up with a general direction, he called his chauffeur and arranged to be sent to Shang Yang Games' new office.

…

In the guest room…

The new administrative girl that Shang Yang Games hired served tea to both people. Lin Wan sat opposite Pei Qian, looking very content and hopeful. Obviously, she could hardly wait to start working on the next game.

After seeing how contented Lin Wan looked, Pei Qian could not help but feel sorrowful.

How did things come to this…?

At the end of the day, Lin Yu is to blame! It was my bad luck meeting these lousy teammates! I must learn from my lessons and stop producing mobile games!

Pei Qian inwardly made up his mind.

Lin Wan sipped her tea and said, "Boss Pei, the working environment in the office is not bad now. Everybody has a renewed fighting spirit.

"After a good rest, everybody can't wait to jump into the next project.

"I have to say that your internal letter was extremely well-written. You rekindled the employees' fighting spirit but allowed everyone to feel your warm care and concern for them at the same time.

"You had everything all thought out!"

The corners of Pei Qian's mouth twitched as he held onto his cup of tea.

Stop talking about the internal letter! What I wanted to say was completely different from what you understood!

He started to say something in response but stopped himself in the end.

Forget it, there's no point arguing about this.

However, from Lin Wan's state, Pei Qian could tell that the situation in Shang Yang Games was similar to what he expected.

To put it nicely, she had a high fighting spirit. However, to put it bluntly, she was inflated. Since she was inflated, Boss Pei could expect a much easier time assigning her the new task.

Pei Qian sipped his tea, maintaining a calm and nonchalant expression. "The new game? There's no rush for that. We can think about it a bit more before we get started.

"Do you have any good ideas?"

Obviously, Lin Wan had expected Boss Pei to ask her this question. She had a well-prepared answer. "Yes! I was discussing with Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin about it. We all think that we should continue producing elite mobile games following the success of Bloody Battle Song's mobile version.

"At the moment, the mobile version of Bloody Battle Song is earning four or five million yuan a month. It also has an overall rating of 8.9 on TPDb. We're hoping that the next mobile game will earn more than ten million yuan each month and achieve an overall rating above 9.5!"

The hand that Pei Qian was using to hold his teacup shook furiously.

It's a good thing to have goals, but you have to stop telling me such horrifying things!

Pei Qian remained silent for a moment.

"…I remember that Wang Xiaobin wanted to do standalone games."

Before deciding to create Bloody Battle Song: The Powerful Version, Pei Qian conducted a simple ballot. He made each of Shang Yang Games' employees come up with a plan and then randomly chose one to work on among them all.

He remembered that Wang Xiaobin had proposed a standalone game that did not desire to gain credit but merely hoped not to make any mistakes.

At the time, Pei Qian had thought that the standalone game's lower limit was not low enough. Although there was a possibility that such a game would fail, the chances of failure were not as high as Bloody Battle Song: The Powerful Version.

That was why he did not select it.

Yet, now, Pei Qian was beginning to regret his decision.

If it was possible, Pei Qian did not mind mending the pen after losing the sheep. He could retrieve the standalone game's proposal and make it Shang Yang Games's new project.

Lin Wan smiled. "That's right. Wang Xiaobin did want to do standalone games. However, I remember Boss Pei commenting that the game was too conservative and mediocre. It was not creative enough."

Pei Qian cleared his throat. "That was then, and now is now. I'm hoping to make some adjustments to his proposal in order to make it more 'special'. That proposal was not bad, to tell you the truth."

Pei Qian tried to appear genuine.

Lin Wan smiled subtly, thinking that Boss Pei was just trying to comfort his employees. "I understand what you mean, Boss Pei. Wang Xiaobin did try to edit his proposal based on your comments.

"However, while he did that, Repent and be Saved was released."

Pei Qian was confused. "?"

Lin Wan explained, "At first, Wang Xiaobin had many ideas that he thought were acceptable. However, after seeing Repent and be Saved, he felt like his concepts had been undermined. At the same time, his confidence suffered a huge blow.

"He thought that no matter how much he edited his original idea, he would never be able to reach Repent and be Saved's standard. Comparatively, he thought his game was a piece of trash. That was why he decided to throw his proposal away and come up with an entirely new one.

"After that… he ended up with nothing definite.

"I asked him about it before. He said that he had only come up with about two hundred words for his new proposal, and he had not even thought about the core playstyle or how to alter the storyline."

Pei Qian was speechless. "…"

I actually had a hand in this?

Repent and be Saved's success had dealt a huge blow to Wang Xiaobin and made him feel like he had to redo his design manuscript from before?

Didn't that mean that the proposal was gone now?

Pei Qian's heart hurt.

Young people nowadays were so easily affected by others! How could they give up so easily in the face of minor setbacks?

Pei Qian had intended to make Shang Yang Games work on a new game based on Wang Xiaobin's proposal.

That way, even if the game failed to incur losses, it would probably not generate much profit due to its mediocre gameplay. That would also mean less trouble and pressure for Boss Pei.

However, that was impossible now.

Wang Xiaobin was thoroughly disappointed in his original proposal. What should Pei Qian do?

Pei Qian could not stand by and watch Shang Yang Games build on the mobile version of Bloody Battle Song's success by producing more mobile games; he had to do something to stop them!

After deliberating for a while, Pei Qian slowly said, "Working on mobile games… wouldn't be appropriate."

"Oh? Why not?" Lin Wan asked, listening closely.

She accorded much weight to whatever Boss Pei said.

Pei Qian mumbled to himself for a while and then acted genuine. "Man must work hard to venture outside their comfort zones and break boundaries.

"If you continue to work on mobile games, you will achieve financial success; but this bit of money is insignificant.

"Real success comes from creating an outstanding game and gaining fame and reputation. Only then can you say you've realized your dreams towards games!"

Lin Wan nodded, looking like she understood. However, after some consideration, she said, "But the three of us don't have any other good ideas.

"Even if we want to create outstanding games, we won't know where to begin."

Pei Qian leisurely sipped his tea and said, "Well… I can contribute a…

"General direction."

Lin Wan was surprised. "What is it?"

"A horror game," said Pei Qian, looking very serious.

Lin Wan was obviously stunned. "Huh?"

She pondered for a while and then awkwardly said, "Horror games… no one in the project team has worked on such games. Oh, horror games aside, none of us have even worked on ordinary standalone games.

"I don't think many of us have even played horror games before. We're just not interested in them…

"One might even say it's all Greek to us…"

Pei Qian grinned.

Not many of them have played such games? That's perfect!

Pei Qian chose horror games because he was inspired by Xia Jiang and the others' experience at the amusement park.

After the interview team fled Jingzhou without bidding farewell, Pei Qian asked the Tengda staff who accompanied them to the amusement park about what they did. After asking around, he discovered that many people took part in extreme activities like drop towers, roller coasters, and pendulum rides—even though they were extremely terrifying.

Perhaps it was because they were already there, and they did not have to pay a cent.

However, few people took part in one particular attraction—the haunted house!

What's more, it was not just the interview team who did not like the haunted house. The same could be said for all the customers in the amusement park.

Pei Qian looked into this phenomenon a bit more and realized that among all the attractions in this amusement park in Jingzhou City, the haunted house was indeed the least popular.

At the end of the day, there were two reasons for this:

Many tourists—females especially—would dare to take part in high-altitude attractions, but not dare to walk into a haunted house. Their boyfriends could not possibly leave them alone and enter on their own. Just like that, a huge group of tourists would be dissuaded from entering the haunted house.

At the same time, this haunted house had a limited set-up and path. Thus, even if some tourists were interested to venture inside, they would emerge feeling disappointed. Of course, they would not enter a second time.

With this as his inspiration, Pei Qian decided to recreate this experience in a game!