Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

The group leaders who had the same experience as Chen Sha were no longer in the minority.

After Lin Wan approached them and asked them to test the game, most of them immediately objected.

Are you thinking of making us test the game without paying us?

Are you trying to get it for free?

However, because of their own pride, many people still decided to download the game and play it.

Once they started, they could not stop!

Ocean Stronghold had simplified operations. To newbies, this made the game much more satisfying to play. However, for experts—especially elite gamers in Counter Strike; these simplified operations invoked feelings of contempt and discomfort.

Still, the story mode in Ocean Stronghold resolved these issues!

Once this group of people entered the game, most of them became absorbed by the story mode of the game. After playing for just a few hours, they slowly got used to the unique hand sensitivity and achieved perfect transitions.

What's more—once they got used to the hand sensitivity, many people became uncomfortable going back to playing Counter Strike!

Why did it take so long to fire?

Why was it so difficult to resist the recoil?

The reaction was so slow!

Suddenly, it felt so painful to play the game!

Counter Strike was an excellent, competitive game. There were bound to be many restrictions on the mechanisms.

For example, allowing such a high firing speed would probably allow experts to become too strong. On a certain level, this would ruin the balance in the game. That was probably why the creators of the game reduced the firing speed.

However, Ocean Stronghold did not need to pay attention to these things. All it was concerned with was allowing the gamers to have as much fun as possible!

Balance?

I've already made the Red Kilin; are you really still talking to me about balance?

These elite gamers of Counter Strike seemed to have been let loose all of a sudden. The gaming experience was extremely smooth so playing the game felt incredibly simple and relaxing!

In the end—when they went back to playing Counter Strike, they could not get used to it.

It was easy to go from frugality to extravagance. Once one got used to playing games with simplified operations, going back to games with complex ones would feel incredibly difficult!

What's more, Ocean Stronghold did not only have a story mode. There were also all kinds of PVP modes!

Compared to Bullet Hole and Counter Strike, Ocean Stronghold's apparition mode and biochemical mode were all new methods of playing. This made most of the players feel a sense of novelty!

Of course, these new modes were thought of by Bao Xu and Huang Sibo while they were creating the story mode. The original intention was for them to make good use of the leftovers from the story mode, such as the zombie models and various other art resources. From the perspective of gameplay, these modes were not considered mature. Their balance was still quite bad, and there was much to be improved.

Still, the most important thing was that there was no other game in the market that had similar modes as theirs; there was no competition to speak of!

Thus, many players preferred the apparition mode and biochemical mode to the actual PVP mode, even though they were less fair. Although the balance was horrible, they were purely for the sake of fun. Nobody cared too much. Instead, it made everything much more exciting!

In just a few days, news of Ocean Stronghold spread as quickly as a pandemic in many FPS gaming groups.

…

…

Friday.

After completing her last professional course, Pei Qian finally had time to relax.

He had already decided to go into the office and accept painful news that Ocean Stronghold had failed rapidly.

In the few days since Ocean Stronghold was published, Pei Qian had been focusing very hard on the exams for his professional course. He seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

He was afraid that Huang Sibo would rush him to do proper marketing for the game once he saw how badly received it was. Thus, he quickly instructed Assistant Xin to turn down anyone who came looking for him by telling them that he was not free!

He went on a full week without looking at the figures on the back end.

Ocean Stronghold should have settled down in the market by now, right?

Pei Qian was in charge of all the money in the company's account. Basically, he had more or less been completely defeated. There was no way he was going to spend a single cent on marketing.

Even if others wanted to market Ocean Stronghold, there was no way they would be able to!

It was just pure bad luck on Pei Qian's part, dealing with Ruan Guangjian for Ghost General back then. How could it be so easy to meet such a talented artist who just happened to be in the artist circle as well?

This time, there was no such artist for Ocean Stronghold!

What's more, the game had vastly different hand sensitivities compared to Counter Strike and the 888-yuan paywall equipment.

There were multiple layers of assurance that it would fail completely!

Pei Qian specially waited for so long before showing his face in the company again, mainly because he did not want to laugh uncontrollably while people were still coming to terms with their failure.

Now, Ocean Stronghold's fall should have been more or less complete. As the boss of the company, Pei Qian needed to make a trip down to comfort his employees. He had to express his deepest regrets for Ocean Stronghold and tell them not to feel discouraged or to give up. They had to quickly collect themselves and prepare to meet the next target.

The income that Ghost General was still raking in could maintain the company's business for some time. Then, Pei Qian would be able to get five hundred thousand yuan and spend more System Funds provided for the next phase.

Perfect! Too perfect!

He arrived at the bottom of Shenhua View.

Pei Qian rubbed his cheeks and then forced the corners of his mouth—which subconsciously curled upwards—down. He looked up at a 45-degree angle to the sky and tried to invoke sadness that time was passing so quickly. Then, he forced this expression to remain on his face.

He took his phone out and saw himself in the mirror. His acting skills were passable.

Pei Qian walked into the lift and arrived at the office.

…

The moment he arrived in the office, Pei Qian distinctly felt that something was amiss in the atmosphere!

Huang Sibo was staring at his computer screen, refreshing every second. He was practically seated at the edge of his chair.

Xiao Lu also looked quite restless. He kept shaking his leg and scratching his head as if he had contracted ADHD.

Bao Xu was not playing games. Instead, he was looking at the plants next to the window and the view outside the window. Pei Qian had no clue what he was thinking about.

At this point, Pei Qian suddenly felt guilty.

He felt like he had let all of them down!

They were a group of slackers who could not come up with any good games. What's more, they had been spending a lot of time eating and traveling during this period so they didn't have much time to develop new games.

However, everyone still invested some of their emotions into the games they developed together.

Now, seeing that nobody cared about their game and that it was failing so thoroughly, it was only normal that they would feel terrible.

Huang Sibo must have been stumped by the terrible figures he was seeing on his screen.

Xiao Lu must have been at a loss as to what to do next.

How about Bao Xu? He must have been doubting his existence.

Pei Qian sighed softly.

At that moment, they needed him to comfort and counsel them as their boss. After all, he had to take ninety percent of the blame now that the game had failed so badly.

Pei Qian quickly pondered about what he should say.

However, at that moment, the two twin girls at the front desk noticed Pei Qian.

"Boss Pei is here!"

The two girls suddenly began to clap their hands!

The entire office immediately burst into action. There were rounds of applause and cheers, which scared Pei Qian half to death.

What the hell was happening?

Pei Qian noticed that everyone's faces had lit up with bright smiles. They were not even faking it; these smiles were genuine and from the heart!

This immediately gave Pei Qian a horrible feeling!

Huang Sibo stood up and walked briskly towards Pei Qian before bowing down low.

"Boss Pei, I have learned my lesson! Before this, I did not know why you did not market Ocean Stronghold. I even began to suspect your actions. However, now, I finally understand!

"In fact, you were telling me that good games did not need to be marketed! Based on the word-of-mouth of the players alone, the competition in the market would be squeezed out!

"Boss Pei, I greatly admire your self-confidence!"

Pei Qian's heart immediately turned cold.

He nearly cried out loud. He tried so hard to control his facial muscles as he put on a serious expression.

"My game… became popular?" Pei Qian asked, feeling like he had just fallen into a deep pit.

Huang Sibo nodded profusely. "It's very popular!"

"I kept refreshing the platform because I could not believe my own eyes! Even though we have not done any marketing for the game—in terms of popularity, number of active players, or profits; this game completely trashed Bullet Hole!"