Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 415: Coming to Work Early? Have You Lost Your Mind?
Ma Yiqun burst out laughing, as if he had just heard a very amusing joke.
"What kind of person do you think President Pei is?"
"President Pei is broad-minded and farsighted. Against the Wind Logistics is still losing huge amounts of money, and has President Pei ever said a single word of complaint? On the contrary, he still trusts the leadership there completely!"
"For such a trivial matter, how could President Pei possibly hold a grudge? You're really underestimating him."
Cui Geng thought about it for a moment. It did seem to make sense.
President Pei was so magnanimous—how could he possibly hold it against him just because of a novel? That would be impossible.
"Alright, Boss Ma, I'll revise it right away!"
"Luckily I don't have too many saved chapters yet, and the overall content hasn't changed much, so I should be able to revise it quickly." Cui Geng was filled with fighting spirit.
Ma Yiqun was very satisfied with Cui Geng's attitude. It seemed that this time, Cui Geng was really serious about writing properly.
"This is what I'm thinking," Ma Yiqun said. "If you can keep up five chapter updates per day during the Spring Festival, I'll talk to Zhu Anxing and get this book placed on the recommendation list earlier!"
"If you write faster, the recommendations will move faster too. Let's try to push out a blockbuster in the urban category!"
Cui Geng was flattered. "Alright, no problem! During the holiday I won't go anywhere—I'll just stay home and write!"
. . .
After receiving Ma Yiqun's advice, Cui Geng felt even more motivated.
If the website's upper management was strongly promoting him, how could the recommendation resources possibly be bad?
Now, what Cui Geng needed to do was write as much as possible while maintaining quality, updating ten thousand words a day so that readers who usually like to wait until a novel is published before reading would start following it earlier.
At the moment, Cui Geng's creative drive was at its peak. Before the Spring Festival, he had gathered a lot of material while visiting the Tengda Group game department. With a bit of artistic processing, all of it could be used in the novel.
The only thing he needed to consider was how to present it with stronger dramatic conflict.
Holding his laptop, Cui Geng typed furiously.
"Even if my house gets demolished ten more times and I receive ten more compensation payouts, nothing will stop me from finishing this story properly!"
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, Cui Geng revised the five chapters he had already posted as well as the remaining saved drafts, smoothing everything out before continuing with the next part of the story.
To his surprise, writing according to Ma Yiqun's suggestions actually worked extremely well!
Before, when he wrote the story, he always felt as if something was missing, which made the process frustrating.
After finishing a section of the plot, he always felt that it wasn't quite perfect and wanted to go back and revise it.
But how exactly should he revise it? He couldn't quite explain.
So although he had been writing fairly quickly before, he always felt uneasy about it.
But now things are different.
After receiving Ma Yiqun's guidance, Cui Geng realized that he could insert many interesting transitional scenes involving the protagonist into the existing plot. Writing became much smoother.
And after finishing a chapter and rereading it, he felt very satisfied. That constant urge to change something had disappeared!
Suddenly, inspiration flowed like a spring. Hugging his laptop, Cui Geng entered a fully immersive state, forgetting everything around him.
As Cui Geng continued updating more chapters, the comments under the novel also began to change.
"Hmm? Did the beginning get revised?"
"The original opening was already good, but this version seems even more interesting!"
"I told myself I'd never read this pigeon's books again, but somehow I've already caught up to the latest chapter… damn it!"
"Sigh, complain as we might, we have to admit this pigeon still writes good stories. This opening is already interesting enough—I'm probably falling into another pit again."
"Just answer me this: can you write two million words this time?? Forget it, I'm not expecting much. Just write as much as you can…"
"I suddenly realized that urban novels can actually be this interesting!"
"Strange. I originally thought switching from fantasy to an urban setting would cause a lot of readers to drop the book, but it seems those familiar old usernames are still here? You all shouted that you'd never read this pigeon's books again, but now you're still saying 'it smells good' after all…"
"This book is actually really interesting—witty and humorous. And the writing style is very clever: using a small coincidence to change the world. There's also a faint warmth to it. It's great!"
"I'm tired of those fantasy and cultivation novels where someone wipes out an entire family the moment there's a disagreement. It's nice to change the flavor once in a while. I've given you my vote—if you dare abandon the story again, I'll mail knives to your house!"
"You're really going to update five chapters every day during the new-book period? Aren't you afraid you won't have recommendations?"
"Worried about recommendations? The recommendations for this new book are already ridiculously good. It feels like the site is deliberately promoting this book!"
"It's really quite interesting. I'm going to share it with my friends right now!"
…
…
February 4th, the second day of the Lunar New Year.
Afternoon.
The cold wind howled past as Pei Qian stood at the entrance of an internet café not far from his home, jacket open and fanning himself, trying to disperse the smell of smoke from his clothes as quickly as possible.
"Sigh… I should've opened a Moyu Internet Café near my house earlier…"
Shivering in the cold wind, Pei Qian couldn't help but think this somewhat melancholic thought.
During the Spring Festival, there really weren't many good entertainment options.
Today was the second day of the Lunar New Year. Pei Qian had met up with a few childhood friends and classmates, and they had spent the whole day hanging out together.
Considering there weren't many activities to choose from in a small county town, they first went to the cinema to watch a movie. After lunch, they went to an internet café to play games together.
After watching the movie, Pei Qian's feelings were a bit complicated.
Of course, the main feeling was relief.
Previously, he had originally planned to release A Better Tomorrow during the Spring Festival movie season. Since the holiday was a time for family reunions, he thought that releasing a film like that would definitely get heavily criticized and flop at the box office.
Moreover, the Spring Festival period was usually packed with blockbuster films, which would surely squeeze A Better Tomorrow out of the market.
But after watching the most highly anticipated movie of this year's Spring Festival lineup, Pei Qian only had one thought:
What the hell was that supposed to be?
He had already completely forgotten what films were released during the 2011 Spring Festival season, but judging from the few movies he had seen today, not a single one of them was impressive.
After leaving the cinema, he checked his phone and looked up the box office information. Only then did Pei Qian realize that the "Spring Festival season" at this time wasn't actually a particularly strong release window at all.
None of the currently released movies had a rating above 7 on ticketing websites, and their predicted box office totals were not even expected to reach 200 million yuan. This shocked Pei Qian greatly.
After thinking about it more carefully, he suddenly remembered: the Spring Festival season becoming extremely popular actually happened after 2013, when Stephen Chow's Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons came out.
This world had experienced some changes, and movies were completely different from what Pei Qian remembered. So although the concept of the "Spring Festival season" existed, there really weren't any particularly good films yet.
Thinking about it, Pei Qian suddenly felt a bit scared.
Maybe if A Better Tomorrow had actually been released during the Spring Festival season, it might not have lost money after all?
It wasn't that Pei Qian lacked confidence in his own film. The main issue was that the movies currently in the Spring Festival lineup were simply too terrible that they made others look good by comparison.
Pei Qian felt that missing the Spring Festival release window might actually be a good thing.
Hopefully when his movie is released, there will be one or two major blockbusters to suppress it…
As for the gaming session in the afternoon—
There weren't many good internet cafés in the county town. He chose the best one he could find, but it still allowed smoking. The smoke nearly suffocated Pei Qian.
He could only say that he hadn't thought things through before. Back then, he only opened a Against the Wind Logistics station near his parents' house to make it convenient for them to pick up packages. As for Moyu Internet Café, he had never considered it at all.
"Later I'll give Zhang Yuan a call and have him open a Moyu Internet Café somewhere nearby. Whether it makes money or loses money doesn't matter, at least next year during Spring Festival I'll have somewhere to go online…"
"Wait, that's not right—Zhang Yuan has already been eliminated."
"Then I'll talk to the new person in charge of Moyu Internet Café after the holiday…"
Pei Qian stood outside for a while to air out the smell of smoke. Only then did he say goodbye to his childhood friends and high school classmates and start walking home.
While walking, Pei Qian thought about his gaming experience at the internet café earlier that day.
When deciding what game to play, his friends had hesitated between IOI and GOG.
Obviously, as two recently released competitive games, both IOI and GOG had considerable influence among players.
But after some discussion, everyone ultimately chose IOI, which made Pei Qian feel very pleased.
Sure enough, the masses have sharp eyes—IOI was clearly superior!
However, after actually playing it more seriously, Pei Qian realized that IOI was still quite different from LOL. The heroes had almost nothing in common, and the controls were relatively more complicated.
Moreover, at the moment, players in China had to use an accelerator to connect to overseas servers to play IOI, so latency was quite serious.
Of course, that didn't stop the game from being extremely popular right now.
Not only Moyu Internet Café, but many other internet cafés also kept both IOI and GOG installed in their game lists.
Internet café owners were very good at observing trends. Whichever games were popular among players would immediately be added to the café's game list.
And today, IOI had just released another update, after all, the United States didn't celebrate the Spring Festival.
Just as Pei Qian was about to reach home, his phone rang.
At first he thought it was his mother calling him back for dinner, but when he took out his phone in the cold wind and looked at the screen, it turned out to be Li Yada.
"Huh? Why is she calling me now?"
"To wish me a Happy New Year?"
"No, that can't be it. Didn't she already send a text message on New Year's Eve?"
With some confusion, Pei Qian answered the call.
Li Yada's slightly anxious voice came from the other end of the line:
"President Pei! I noticed that IOI seems to have released another update. Did you see it?"
Pei Qian replied, "Oh, yeah, I know. What about it?"
Li Yada paused for a moment, as if she hadn't expected President Pei to sound so calm—in fact, there even seemed to be a hint of… happiness in his tone?
"President Pei, after this update, GOG's competitiveness compared to IOI has dropped significantly! Fingertip Games doesn't celebrate the Spring Festival after all!"
"Although the ten-day Spring Festival holiday may seem insignificant, our game was already quite far behind IOI. If this continues, the situation will only get worse. We might not even be able to catch up!"
"Can I apply to return to work early? I know overtime isn't good, but this situation is urgent…"
Pei Qian frowned.
Return to work early???
Have you lost your mind?!
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Tn: I updated the story daily, but if you want to see more chapter of this story ahead of time, please go to my Patreon.
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[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/157991757?collection=1399284
[2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/157991757?collection=1399284
[3] https://www.patreon.com/collection/1399284?view=expanded