Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

April 6th, Wednesday…

Pei Qian was finally done with the general plot of 'Struggle' after two days of struggle. The plot of the game could be roughly divided into several major stages: birth, school, exams, work, love, marriage, home purchase, childbirth, and middle-age crisis.

That was the overall process. The poor and the rich versions would have the same stages, but they experienced completely different things.

For example, the children of the rich would have a nanny to take care of them from birth to when they were schooling. When they grow up, they would play happily in the mansion. The toys they had would be very expensive. They would also hire very high-end tutors to get good preschool education.

Children from poor families would not have these facilities at all. They could only watch TV and picture books at home. After their parents go to work, they could only play alone.

The other major stages were the same. Anyway, one could roughly imagine the plot if one were to imagine it. Everything would go wrong for the poor while everything would be unimpeded for the rich.

Pei Qian also considered adding some quantifiable data to the game, to let players feel the gap between the two more clearly. For example, the players' current knowledge (professional knowledge, financial awareness, etc.), emotional intelligence (handling people, making friends, etc.), mental health, specific material wealth, etc….

These data would ostensibly affect the player's options. For example, wealth management consciousness of a rich person could speed up his accumulation of material wealth; emotional intelligence could give him more opportunities to make friends with nobles; and his mental health could make it easier for him to adjust his mood at work. There would be problems due to excessive pressure…

However, everything was just on the surface. In fact, they would only affect some trivial branches and would not affect the final outcome.

The reason Pei Qian did this was very simple. If the gameplay could allow the player to visualize the final outcome, then how could he make the player feel disgusted?

If the poor could counterattack and the rich could avoid the fate of being killed, wouldn't it be a great ending?

They must not let that happen!

Moreover, the setting of 'you have a choice on the surface, but everything was predestined' was regarded as a failure in the game industry. Most games would be criticized for doing so.

The game would last until middle-age, which was around 50 years old. As the saying went, be established at 30, have clarity at 40, and know the bidding of the heavens at 50.

To Pei Qian, 50 was the best age to kill off a rich man player. Too early and there would not be enough content; too late and it would not make people feel disgusted.

Fifty-year-old wealthy people were in their prime with their careers taking off. They had already obtained a very good standard of living. Most of them would have good marriages and promising children. Death at this time should be the most unacceptable time for players.

As for the poor… life is basically fixated by the age of 50. The resemblance to their parents had also emerged, and this cycle of poverty has begun to take shape. In short, it was the best age to end this game.

Of course, in addition to these fixed life processes, some unexpected events would also be added during the game. For example: car accidents, sickness, school bullying, pitfalls when buying a house, natural disasters, etc.

These emergencies would also slightly change the flow of the game and, at the same time, clearly show the gap between the poor and the rich in their ability to resist risks when facing these emergencies.

Pei Qian did not intend to do any voice-over this time after learning from the mistakes in Game Designer.

All the content in the game would not contain any emotions or color. All dialogues and behaviors would be as objective as possible so that it would never induce players to have reverse psychology.

Other than that, to prevent people with 'ulterior motives' from forcibly deepening their thinking, Pei Qian set the rich and poor as the two individuals whose paths do not cross at all.

The homeless guy who would kill the rich man in the end would have no link to the poor.

This homeless man would not be the simple, kind-hearted poor man that most people imagined. He had good hands and feet, but he was idle and lazy. He wanted to kill the rich because he was jealous. It was not because of some noble reasons that he resisted the oppression.

The poor could reach the rich; for example, his boss would be completely unrelated to the protagonist in the rich version. They never had any idea of resisting. He did not want to generate any misunderstanding such as 'the rich oppress the poor'.

In addition to this, there was another important question: how to prevent the pesky Teacher Qiao from over-interpreting this game?

Pei Qian had been thinking very hard about this point, and he finally had an answer.

Force him to his grave with an official response!

Who would listen to you if I were to explain it from the start? How could you backstab me if no one listened to you?

Pei Qian could roughly guess the angles that Teacher Qiao could interpret from. It was nothing more than the rich-poor gap, the Matthew effect. The distribution of social wealth was unreasonable and the classes solidified.

If his brain circuit was more peculiar, then it may be possible to analyze the poor's lack of financial awareness and short-sightedness, why the rich could not understand the vicious cycle of life after falling to the bottom…

In any case, the topic of the gap between the rich and poor was discussed all over the world. If one was divergent in one's thinking, one could talk about many topics.

Pei Qian decided to expose these problems as soon as the game was released.

He would walk Teacher Qiao's road so that Teacher Qiao had nowhere to go! Of course, Pei Qian was not so stupid as to stab himself in the back. He wanted to expose these problems officially, but he would definitely not do it in the same way as Teacher Qiao.

The key was how to say it with the same reasoning. Quoting classics, forcing value and depth would definitely appear to be particularly alluring and would be easy for them to resonate with him.

However, Pei Qian planned to use simple language and a straightforward way to point all these out. His goal would be to make it as boring as possible.

It could even induce players to have some wrong views in the game such as the producer holding a view that 'the caste system could never be crossed', 'fatalism', etc.

That reasoning was like telling a joke.

Teacher Qiao told jokes, danced, screamed, and shouted. First, he created suspense, making the audience burst with anticipation before giving the answers. The effects were excellent.

However, Pei Qian did not need to lay the groundwork at all. He would just throw out whatever it was. This way, the audience would know what this burden was. No matter how Teacher Qiao created an atmosphere or suspense, this burden would not be able to surprise!

Pei Qian felt that his actions were like announcing 'this person is the murderer' on the first page of a <anno data-annotation-id="8dc5e0fa-bb9a-4c4f-aa0e-00c7e06936b7">manga</anno>. He would not allow Teacher Qiao's Products of the Gods to have any new take on it!

The more Pei Qian thought about it, the more he felt he was a genius satisfied with his own talents!

Pei Qian sent the plot summary to Hu Xianbin after everything was completed, for him to expand. At the same time, different characters in the games would need to use different motion capture actors. All of whom must be foreigners so they had to be done in advance.

Pei Qian could not be bothered with these as he left them to Hu Xianbin. Anyway, things would be better if they went wrong.

It would be alright too if they did it well. As long as they firmly grasp the game plot and don't run off the track!

…

…

April 7th, Thursday…

Pei Qian came to the office on time after eating lunch. He had already sent Hu Xianbin the plot summary of 'Struggle' yesterday afternoon. He also sent a message to Lin Wan about IOI's domestic server and asked her to connect with He Desheng.

He still had no idea on how to best handle the IOI domestic server.

The possibility of making changes to the game was almost non-existent. It was difficult to push the price of the heroes and skins down. Dream Realization Ventures did not have a loud voice in the company since it only held 20% of Finger Games after all.

IOI and GOG were not on friendly terms if one were to look purely from the eyes of the game's charging model. GOG heroes were all free, and the price of their skin was several times lower than that of IOI.

However, Pei Qian felt that this was not important. Some people were playing IOI locally; they had a good player base. To them, the biggest problem was not the price but the internet.

The game was too laggy after using an accelerator to connect to its international server. It was impossible to communicate with foreign teammates in the game as well.

These people would definitely switch to the domestic server once it was out, so there was no need to worry about the start of the IOI domestic server. It would be able to take off without much maneuver with the ability of Shang Yang Games.

Pei Qian felt that the burden lifted from his body after temporarily settling two gaming departments. Nonetheless, he should not let his guard down. There were still many things waiting for him to settle.

Knock, knock! A knock came from outside the office. It was Assistant Xin. "Boss Pei, this is the survey report on the fitness industry in Jingzhou City that you wanted. If you don't want to see the data, you can just turn to the last page and look at the conclusion."

Pei Qian nodded and took the investigation report from Assistant Xin.

He flipped it casually. As expected, everything in front was big data and technical terms. He did not understand them. Pei Qian turned to the last page very calmly and asked while reading the survey conclusions: "So, are gyms in Jingzhou making money or not?"

Assistant Xin considered for a moment. "The key is how you operate it."

Pei Qian, "Hm? Tell me in detail."

Assistant Xin apparently had an understanding of the status of the fitness industry. She had conducted an in-depth investigation of the fitness industry in Jingzhou after receiving the mission from Boss Pei. She was extremely familiar with the contents.

"Simply put, it is limited by the current level of economic development in our country. Most people do not have the habit of going to the gym regularly. Even those with fitness habits often cannot afford the expenses of those high-end gyms.

"It is better in first-tier cities with more white-collar workers. This problem is especially obvious in a second-tier city like Jingzhou.

"The low-cost membership strategy adopted by many gyms to attract customers is difficult to support daily operations like rent, equipment, labor, water, electricity, cooling and heating, fire protection, and other aspects of opening a gym; let alone create enough profit.

"From this point of view, gyms are not profitable. Many closed gyms have closed down because they cannot make ends meet. The greater the investment, the greater the marketing pressure.

"However, there were also gyms that really make a lot of money. The main way is to find high-net-worth clients to sell private training sessions. The more you sell, the more you earn.

"The primary task of personal training in most gyms is not to teach students well, but to sell more classes. The internal group of personal training is similar to the marketing group. Whoever sells more classes will be sought after.

"In short, the current model of making money in the gym is through membership cards, especially for newcomers applying for annual cards. Newcomers have no fitness habit at all, and it is difficult to stick to it. The gym will only make money if they join the membership without attending the gym.

"At the same time, low-cost fitness cards attract as many customers as possible. Then, the personal trainers start to show their magic, find the high-net-worth customers to fool them into taking private lessons, and make most of the profits from here.

"There are also some other tricks. For example, go for a free test. Modern people usually have some health problems, and these private trainers would deliberately exaggerate these health problems and take the opportunity to sell classes.

"In short, I don't deny that there are more conscientious gyms in this industry, but generally, they are chaotic and not very standardized.

"Many consumers who go to the gym are also extremely disgusted with this chaos, but the reasons for this situation are more complicated and cannot be changed in a short time.

"Boss Pei, it is a good thing for the industry itself if you want to enter it. However, these objective problems must definitely be considered. It will not be so easy to create a high-end and conscientious gym brand from scratch even for you…"

<annotations style="display: none;"><ol class="tinymce-annotation-container"><li data-annotation-id="8dc5e0fa-bb9a-4c4f-aa0e-00c7e06936b7">This refers to comics drawn in the Japanese style.</li></ol></annotations>",