Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 458: President Pei's Midas Touch
After watching the video, Pei Qian fell silent.
A series of philosophical questions kept circling through his mind.
Who am I?
Where am I?
What am I doing?
Qiao Liang's words from the video still echoed in his ears.
"The painstaking effort and pride of a top-tier game producer?"
"A blessing for Chinese gamers?"
"A thrill that shakes the soul?"
"Another breathtaking world?"
Enough already!
This was a misunderstanding—a complete and utter misunderstanding!
Dear viewers, please don't listen to this fat guy's nonsense! Buy fewer copies of the game, I'm begging you!
Yet the reactions from players in the comments and bullet chat mercilessly shattered Pei Qian's fantasies.
"That actually makes a lot of sense!"
"Yeah, developers wouldn't go through all that trouble just to scare players away for no reason. Thinking about it now, it really does help filter and improve the player base."
"I still can't fully accept it, but I understand now."
"It sounds pretty interesting actually. I kinda want to try it!"
"I've been playing this game for several days already. When a few skilled players who understand the mechanics get together, it's seriously amazing! Hope Old Qiao releases strategy guides and gameplay videos soon so more people can experience the charm of high-level matches in this game!"
"I'm going to finish the prerequisite tasks and buy the game right now!"
Pei Qian sighed helplessly and silently closed the video.
…
Shangyang Games.
At this moment, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin were also watching Qiao Liang's video.
After finishing it, the two of them nodded in satisfaction.
"There are truly hidden experts among the people. Qiao Liang really is President Pei's kindred spirit, he actually understood President Pei's true intentions," Wang Xiaobin said emotionally.
Ye Zhizhou smiled. "He really is impressive. Even we, the creators of this game, only realized this after President Pei made the ARG game. We weren't much faster than he was."
"And for Qiao Liang, just a player, to interpret President Pei's intentions to this extent—that's truly rare."
"We originally thought that as long as the game was finished, bug-free, and delivered a strong horror experience, then our job was done. But actually, it was far from complete."
"Because for a game with such complicated gameplay mechanics, a temporary burst of popularity means nothing. The truly important thing is how to keep it running successfully over the long term!"
"BE QUIET requires players to remain patient while also being willing to study and understand the game's mechanics. Only when everyone in a match fully understands the gameplay can everyone obtain the best possible experience."
"When the game first launched, we all understood this clearly. But perhaps because we didn't realize how important it was, or perhaps because we thought it was an unsolvable issue, we ended up doing nothing about it."
"Fortunately, President Pei saw through this problem and fixed it before it was too late!"
Wang Xiaobin nodded. "Right. Using a creative ARG game and eye-tracking game as prerequisites before purchasing the game really did a great job of filtering and training players."
"But what worries me is whether this kind of filtering might also create hidden dangers?"
"No matter what, this kind of filtering will inevitably weed out a large percentage of potential new players. And since this is an online multiplayer game, if this continues long-term, the game might gradually lose its influx of fresh blood and eventually become a dead game…"
Ye Zhizhou smiled and shook his head. "No!"
"Do you really think President Pei wouldn't have considered a problem you could think of?"
"In reality, President Pei's actions were never about filtering players in the first place. Your thinking has already fallen into a misunderstanding!"
"After all, Qiao Liang is only a content creator, not a professional game producer. He only saw the short-term filtering effect on players, but failed to see the more distant future!"
Wang Xiaobin froze for a moment. "Oh? What do you mean by that?"
Ye Zhizhou smiled confidently and said, "According to my understanding, President Pei's entire strategy can be divided into at least three stages!"
"In the first stage, by carrying out an initial screening of players, he ensures that the first batch of players entering BE QUIET are all elite players with patience to study the mechanics and relatively high gaming intelligence."
"Of course, this will sacrifice a huge amount of game sales in the early phase. But keeping BE QUIET in this sort of 'small but refined' state is actually more beneficial for maintaining the player experience of its niche community and improving the game's reputation."
"Then comes the second stage. As the game's reputation continues to grow, a steady stream of new players will begin pouring in."
"And before these new players enter, they'll also go through this simple 'training' process. Since the number of newcomers entering at any one time is relatively small, they'll quickly learn the game's mechanics under the guidance of veteran players and rapidly integrate into the community."
"During this process, new players quickly become veteran players themselves. Then, by the third stage, the game will be able to attract a large number of players while still maintaining its reputation and healthy game environment!"
"On the other hand, if a huge number of players had been allowed to flood in freely from the very beginning, the game environment would instead become chaotic. Casual newbies wouldn't get the traditional instant gratification they expect and would quickly quit, while skilled players would get frustrated by inexperienced teammates. The entire game would descend into disorder, and its popularity would rapidly decline!"
"In other words, President Pei isn't merely sacrificing game sales to preserve the game environment—he's actually managing to achieve both at the same time! He's simply delayed the explosive growth of early sales and spread it out across the following months instead!"
Wang Xiaobin suddenly understood. "I see now! Sacrificing this month's revenue so future revenue can keep growing continuously—what an incredible example of 'delayed gratification'!"
Ye Zhizhou turned to look out the window and sighed emotionally. "Even though President Pei doesn't personally participate in game development, he only needed a few days to casually create a small ARG game, yet it produced a miraculous effect like turning stone into gold. This level of skill is truly impossible for us to match…"
"We still have to keep working hard while following behind President Pei!"
…
…
Thursday, March 17.
Pei Qian slept until noon before finally getting up.
Because his OTTO E1 phone had arrived last night.
To be fair, Chang You really understood priorities—as soon as the new batch of devices arrived, he immediately had someone rush one over to President Pei.
As a result, Pei Qian ended up playing GOG nonstop until after 2 a.m. before finally going to sleep.
When he woke up in the morning, Pei Qian had only one thought:
Games really are bad for your health!
Especially for your liver!
And MOBA games are even worse.
Still, using a phone he helped create to play a game he helped create, while using a hero modeled after himself and equipping his own exclusive skin… the feeling was strangely addictive…
Pei Qian could now understand why a certain designer nerfed Irelia countless times within a single month, and also why a certain producer was so obsessed with Reinhardt. When designers themselves actively play a specific class or hero in their own game, it's very difficult for them to design things completely without personal bias…
Of course, Pei Qian had no plans to buff Zadkiel.
Because once the hero became stronger, his four teammates would probably all fight over picking him, or he'd just get instantly banned in ranked matches anyway—making him impossible to play at all…
So the current balance state was actually pretty good.
It had to be said that throwing around huge amounts of money was extremely effective. Pei Qian could even directly feel that the player population was growing.
Yesterday, matchmaking often required waiting four or five minutes in queue. But today, queue times had already shortened to one or two minutes, and sometimes matches popped in only twenty or thirty seconds.
Of course, that was only for normal matchmaking. If he wanted to play high-ranked games, he'd probably still have to patiently wait for enough players.
Pei Qian himself was even tempted by the 100,000 yuan prize money.
But he knew very well that it was impossible.
On one hand, President Pei knew his own limits and didn't think he could climb to the Master tier. On the other hand, if he spent all his time grinding ranked matches, with nobody managing the company, it would probably end up making an uncontrollable amount of money.
So after weighing everything carefully, Pei Qian decided that losing money was still more important!
After all, gaming could only be considered a hobby, while losing money was his true profession.
Speaking of losing money…
Pei Qian opened the backend dashboard and checked the data for BE QUIET. He discovered that after Qiao Liang's video was released, the game's sales had indeed risen, but the increase was still within an acceptable range and not especially outrageous.
On the other hand, the game's rating on the TPDb website kept climbing and was already approaching a score of 9…
Pei Qian had originally been considering whether he needed to implement some damage-control measures, but seeing that sales hadn't exploded dramatically, it seemed unnecessary.
As for the game's reputation, well, let it rise if it wanted to. It wouldn't create any additional burden anyway.
Pei Qian wandered over to the Handong University branch of Moyu Internet Café. While eating lunch, he began calculating that it was probably time to hold some celebratory banquets again.
Or rather… some extravagant eating-and-drinking sessions.
After counting on his fingers for a moment, he realized that with so many successful projects under the company, those employees could probably eat at President Li's Mingfu Family Banquet every single day for at least a week without repeating the same dishes once.
Because there were simply too many successful projects, they could always find a new excuse for another dinner gathering every day…
And on the 20th of this month—Sunday—they could also have another huge feast at Mingyun Private Kitchen.
Just thinking about this made Pei Qian feel depressed.
Although his employees were excellent at eating, they were even better at making money!
If he expected them to eat away all the profits their projects had earned, who knew how many years that would take…
It was truly despair-inducing.
After finishing his meal, the waiter came over and cleared away all the dishes. Pei Qian sipped his coffee while gloomily staring up at the sky.
More and more, he felt that his shallow mathematics knowledge could no longer satisfy his ever-growing need for calculating losses.
Suddenly, someone sat down across from him.
It was President Li.
The two of them often ran into each other at this café, so Pei Qian wasn't surprised.
However, because things had been going poorly for him lately, his mood was rather down. He merely nodded casually without saying anything.
Yet President Li's very first sentence instantly stunned him.
"President Pei, Dream Fulfillment Ventures' combination strategy this time was truly brilliant. All the other investors and I who invested in the Top Student, Come Quickly project are completely convinced and ashamed of our own inferiority!"
"So I've made my decision. Even though I still can't see any possibility for Fright Hostel to become profitable, I've decided to invest a sum of money around the area surrounding Fright Hostel! If nothing unexpected happens, the others will probably follow suit as well."
"President Pei, you wouldn't mind, would you?"
The hand holding Pei Qian's coffee froze in midair. His entire brain instantly entered a state of total confusion.
"Huh?"
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Tn: I updated the story once a day, but if you want to see more chapter of this story ahead of time, please go to my Patreon.
Latest Chapter: Chapter 536: Still Going with the "Bare Walls" Style[1]
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[1] https://www.patreon.com/HannibalNotBarca/posts/losing-money-to-164800513?collection=1399284
[2] https://www.patreon.com/HannibalNotBarca/posts/losing-money-to-164800513?collection=1399284