Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Boss Pei left, leaving the confused Cui Geng behind. He could only read Hurricane Comics Company's comics aimlessly.

To Pei Qian, the current situation of the entire "inspiration class" was completely in line with his expectations and was following the script. He also specially took care of Cui Geng, the author who was most likely to give problems to write a theme with the lowest success rate. It could be said to be multiple insurance.

Pei Qian could consider letting more authors join the "inspiration class" and take drastic measures for Zhongdian Chinese Network's development as long as Cui Geng verified that this approach was feasible.

Cui Geng was now deeply confused.

If Cui Geng were to choose it himself, he would definitely not choose this theme because he was neither good at it nor was he interested in it.

As an author whose understanding of European and American superheroes was limited to the few super IPs, Cui Geng could not think of any reason why he could write the theme of superheroes well.

However, Boss Pei said that not understanding superheroes was an advantage. What's more, it would definitely not be a problem for him to read more information and train more.

Cui Geng thought about it. He had to take Boss Pei's opinion seriously.

That was because Boss Pei was the true master of creation!

Boss Pei had personally planned and grasped the general direction no matter whether it was Tengda's games or movies. These had already been verified and were very successful works.

Boss Pei's position in creative writing was much higher than online authors like them. Since Boss Pei said that there was no problem with Cui Geng, there might really be no problem.

"Could it be that I have some potential that I don't even know about?"

Cui Geng decided to follow Boss Pei's instructions and try out Hurricane Comics' superhero IP.

The 'inspiration class' had naturally prepared a large number of Hurricane Comics Company's comics as an important part of Tengda Corporation's IP.

Cui Geng picked a few of the more popular ones and returned to his seat. He switched on his reading lamp and earphones to play light music. Then, he sat on his one-person sofa and flipped through them seriously.

…

In the afternoon…

Cui Geng placed the last comic aside and rubbed his temples with a headache.

He had been reading it from morning until afternoon, he had even been thinking about the plot of these superheroes during lunch. However, the more he read, the more hopeless he felt.

The more he understood, the more he could feel how difficult this mission was!

There was little written information since they were all comics, so he managed to flip through them very quickly. Cui Geng read through a few of the more popular comics and understood the general plot outline. His mind became even more confused.

"This Hurricane Comics Company only occupies 5% of the market share in the United States. It is indeed not without reason that the top two comic companies are rubbing it against the ground."

"Be it the character profile of a superhero or the story plot, there is a huge gap between the standards of the top two comic companies and the rest."

"I can tell with one look that these stories are not good enough!"

"What's more, these characters and plots are not very suitable for local readers. It can be said that they had not learnt the merits of the top two comic companies but the flaws have been retained."

"Isn't writing about such an IP character suicidal…"

Cui Geng fell into deep melancholy.

Multifaceted Men, Purgatory Duke, Mutants, Robocop, and so on were the most famous IPs of Hurricane Comics Company. While these IPs left a certain impression, they were already outdated.

What's more, from Cui Geng's point of view, these IPs were difficult to write a short story either because it could not be expanded or because the settings did not meet the current standards of aesthetics.

It would not be a problem for these IPs to be taken into GOG as a game's image. However, it would be extremely difficult to write an attractive story with them as protagonists.

Needless to say, the other IPs were all useless.

There were even many inspired superheroes from the top two comic companies. For example, a hero named 'Captain World' where one could see signs of piracy at a glance. This was even more useless.

He would probably be laughed at if he really wrote about it.

That caused Cui Geng to have a headache.

"How should I deal with it?"

"Should I write fanfiction on an IP like the Multifaceted Man or the Robocop?"

"This type of IP might be very old and outdated, but at least the local readers still have some impression of it. Making do with it shouldn't be considered cheating for royalties, right?"

Cui Geng subconsciously wanted to choose an easy way after thinking hard for a few hours without any results.

However, Boss Pei's face suddenly appeared in his mind, and he immediately dismissed that thought.

"No, absolutely not!"

"How can I have such thoughts?"

"Boss Pei is taking special care of me. Obviously, he values the content that I am going to write and has high expectations of me!"

"How can I think of such fooling things? Boss Pei would be so sad!"

"Boss Pei has already said that there is no need for word count. Wouldn't I be letting Boss Pei down if I were to give up so quickly and start writing hastily?"

"No, I have to think about it seriously!"

"I have to take out the motivation to analyze the Tengda spirit together with Wu Bin. I have to figure out the deeper meaning behind Boss Pei and find the only correct answer!"

"I should follow Tengda's internal interpretation and interpret Boss Pei's true intentions properly!"

The Tengda spirit encouraged him once again just as Cui Geng was about to give up.

Cui Geng had gained a deeper understanding of "Boss Pei's intention to answer the standard train of thought" when he was analyzing the Tengda spirit and compiling the Tengda spirit manual with Wu Bin.

This was a set of methodology that Bao Xu, Huang Sibo, Lin Wan, and the other senior executives of the company had been perfecting to figure out Boss Pei's true intentions.

He could deduce Boss Pei's true intentions through the content of the mission that Boss Pei had assigned. This move was effective in the games department, the film department, and the physical department. It created many miracles.

Now, Cui Geng decided to adapt and use it on his own creation!

"What was the first step? Oh, right, find the most unreasonable point in Boss Pei's words and start analyzing…"

Cui Geng tried hard to recall the conversation he had with Boss Pei in the morning.

In fact, Boss Pei did not say much. He only said, "Superheroes can also be written for domestic readers", "We don't have to make domestic readers like these superheroes", "We can write these superheroes to death or half-dead".

"It sounds like Boss Pei is hinting to me not to use the traditional Western story structure to write a superhero story. Instead, I should try my best to tell it in a way that domestic readers would accept…"

Cui Geng began to look up related information online.

Superhero movies were a part of cultural output and had a huge market in the country. Cui Geng might not have paid special attention to them, but he knew some basic concepts.

Superheroes might have different abilities, personalities, and identities, but most of them had similar characteristics:

Possessing extraordinary strength, technical ability, or proficiency in related equipment in a certain area could be considered in this category, they did not include strength, wisdom, special abilities or money.

They wanted to uphold justice and be responsible. They would choose to stand up for others in times of danger without wanting anything in return.

To a certain extent, they represented the morals of the Westerners. They did not kill people but handed them over to the police and the law.

They usually had a secret identity to protect their friends and family. At the same time, they often had another identity apart from superheroes in real life, such as reporters, students, rich second-generation heirs, and so on.

They usually had an iconic costume or prop.

Generally speaking, Superheroes' stories were basically stories where justice finally defeated evil: Supervillains wanted to do bad things and were discovered by Superheroes. After a series of twists and turns, Superheroes defeated Supervillains and maintained world's peace.

Of course, with the development of the Superhero theme, there were more variations to the story. There were even some righteous and evil "anti-hero" characters.

However, very few superheroes' stories would deviate from the core of 'justice defeats evil' because the audience might not be convinced if they deviated from this core.

In a sense, superheroes' comics and movies were similar to online literature. They were both mass-produced creative models. There would be many innovations in the details even though basic patterns were constantly repeated. What's more, readers would fall for it no matter how many times the material was reused.

That was also why Cui Geng did not know where to start. It was precisely because this was a mass-produced model that was deeply rooted in the culture of the West. As a countryman, there was a natural cultural gap between them. Thus, according to this standard process, it would never surpass the superhero stories written by Westerners.

This was not belittling himself, but a clear understanding of reality.

It was just like asking a native Westerner to write a traditional Chinese martial arts story. No matter how much preparation he made, what he wrote would definitely be "tasteless".

Cui Geng frowned. "In other words, it would be impossible for me to sell my story to foreigners. I can only sell it to the locals."

"Boss Pei did say that."

"But how exactly can I sell it to our countrymen?"

"Boss Pei seems to have done a lot of Western content before. They seem to be very popular among the Chinese. How did Boss Pei do it?"

Cui Geng could not help but think about the game Struggle.

In fact, Struggle also had a Western background story. The characters and stories were all based on Western backgrounds, but domestic players liked it very much.

Cui Geng recalled the details of Struggle and his eyes lit up.

"I understand now!"

"The secret of Boss Pei's creation is to observe the Western story from the perspective of Chinese culture. Then, he would deconstruct it, tear apart the exquisite outerwear of Western art works, and completely expose its inner nature!"