Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Monday, afternoon.

The cohesion on Friday had everyone feeling extremely high. Coupled with the rest of the weekend, they were completely relaxed.

Other than Bao Xu who continued heading to the office, none of the rest turned up and enjoyed their weekend thoroughly.

After all, there was no reason to do overtime now that the game was already completed!

Even though there would be overtime pay, the allure of a lazy weekend was much more enticing comparatively.

Come Monday, most people were still busking in the same happiness.

Huang Sibo on the other hand looked somewhat stern.

"You've noticed the figures for Ocean Stronghold too, right?" Huang Sibo came to Bao Xu's desk and saw that he was also looking at Ocean Stronghold's backend figures.

Simply put, it was terrible!

The game was sent to vet on Friday and it passed the process on Saturday. However, they merely had a couple hundreds of downloads even after Sunday had passed.

That was far too little!

FPS games were unlike other games. One could view it as a competitive online game which could only be played if there was a sufficient player base.

The core of a FPS game was to allow gamers to go against one another. But, what sort of a competitive environment would there be with just a couple hundreds of downloads and a few dozens of active players? Notwithstanding the fact that they might get uneven matchmaking of players with different skill levels, there might not even be enough players to match against!

It wouldn't make sense to have all these gamers play against bots, right? That would be ridiculous!

But of course, unlike Bullet Hole and other FPS games, Ocean Stronghold had a story mode and could be played as a standalone game.

However, the story mode wouldn't be enough to sustain a long playtime and gamers would soon grow sick of it.

Furthermore, gamers that liked Counter Strike would prefer PvP modes and would be rather indifferent to story modes.

All in all, the situation did not look good!

Ocean Stronghold's few hundred downloads were based on the fact that it was free to download. If it was sold at the price of a standalone game, it would cost at least 30 to 50 yuan and that will cost the download figures to dip even further.

As to why Ocean Stronghold was set as a free game…

It was because Pei Qian had learnt his lesson from Ghost General.

Because of how much of a heart Ghost General had, its player base climbed rapidly and that resulted in a gain of hundreds of thousands of new active gamers monthly!

The additional 10 yuan of income provided by each of those gamers was something that Pei Qian had not accounted for…

He had initially set the price as a barrier of entry to deter those free to play gamers but yet, it worked against him and gave him profit through despite the low margins…

From that painful experience, Pei Qian decided to do away with a fixed price for Ocean Stronghold.

The game was completely free to play. That way, even if they encountered some hiccups resulting in a gain of download volumes, Pei Qian would not earn any money from those casual gamers!

On the contrary, with the high barrier of entry of 888 epic weapons, he would be able to gain bad reputation and flames from the gamers to dissuade others from playing Ocean Stronghold. At the same time, most gamers would not be able to afford those weapons.

As to why he did not make it completely free to play…

Wasn't it obvious that Pei Qian would want it to be that way?

But, the system would not allow it!

If the game was free to play and there weren't any in-game purchases or advertising earnings, it would be illogical to begin with as it would be equivalent to Pei Qian spending money to create a product to give away for free.

It would be a clear scam and that was a violation the system did not allow.

Otherwise, it would be too easy for Pei Qian to lose money. As long as he created products to sell at a cheap price, he would be able to lose as much as he wanted.

There was no way the system would provide such an obvious loophole for Pei Qian to abuse.

Therefore, he had to design a proper profit model be it through a fixed price of the product or adding in-game purchases so as to not receive a warning from the system.

In any case, as of now, Pei Qian was firmly in control of Ocean Stronghold's circumstances.

He had set three lines of defense for Ocean Stronghold.

First, there would be no marketing and that would result in a lack of interest for the game.

Second, the game's profit model was a huge failure with epic weapons priced at 888 - that would result in poor word of mouth for Ocean Stronghold.

Third, Ocean Stronghold would be competing with a superior game - Bullet Hole.

Right now, his first line of defense had already been activated.

That was exactly the reason why Huang Sibo and Bao Xu were troubled.

Both of them were watching Ocean Stronghold's progress keenly as well. After all, this was a product they had worked really hard for and they carried the responsibility of Boss Pei's trust on them.

Wouldn't they be letting Boss Pei down if the game failed?

They must not let that happen!

Huang Sibo was hesitant as to whether or not he should say what he was about to say.

However, after pondering, he decided to speak his mind.

"Brother Bao. Say, do you think Boss Pei has no intention of marketing Ocean Stronghold at all? There shouldn't be any reason why the download volume is so pathetic for Ocean Stronghold, right?"

Even though what he said may have sounded disrespectful towards Boss Pei, it did seem as though that was the case.

These days, a large factor of whether or not a domestic game could succeed lies in its marketing channels.

Many trash games made use of those brainwashing marketing campaigns to lure in a bunch of gamers.

Of course, player retention for those lured gamers was another issue entirely.

But at the very least, as long as they did the proper marketing and were willing to spend for it, even trashy games would generate some interest.

But for a game to receive only a couple of hundreds of downloads after being online for an entire day? That didn't make sense at all!

Bao Xu looked at Huang Sibo. "Brother Huang, don't question Boss Pei. Someone who could think up of using Weibo to market Ghost General is definitely a master in the field. How could he not know of the importance of marketing?"

Huang Sibo shrugged.

The logic was not wrong.

However, it was clear that there was no marketing done such that Ocean Stronghold was in such a miserable state…

Huang Sibo even searched for it intentionally. Not only was Ocean Stronghold not on any other gaming platforms, it did not have any form of advertising or marketing attempts.

Could Boss Pei be waiting to unleash a ultimate move?

As though he could read Huang Sibo's troubled mind, Bao Xu said, "I think that we just have to trust in Boss Pei. If he didn't ask us to worry about marketing, we don't have to worry about it."

"Yes, that does sound right too," Huang Sibo agreed with Bao Xu's viewpoint.

They weren't in a position where they had to worry for a genius such as Boss Pei.

With that, Huang Sibo turned around to leave.

10 minutes later, he returned.

"It's not about marketing this time round," Huang Sibo explained. "It's about the later versions."

"Huh? Do elaborate, Brother Huang," Bao Xu nodded his head.

Huang Sibo paused for a moment. "Well, now that the official version for Ocean Stronghold is done, based on normal development schedules, we should be preparing to develop the next version."

"Yes, yes. And?" Bao Xu was not really clear what was going on.

As of now, his knowledge of a game's development process was half baked at best. In any case, he would just accommodate what Huang Sibo wanted.