April 20th, Wednesday.

Tenda Games Department.

Hu Xianbin was at his workstation, gulping down coffee while struggling with the storyline of “Struggle.”

The development work for “Struggle” was being carried out simultaneously. Ruan Guangjian’s Halo Studio was still producing character concept art, which after Hu Xianbin’s approval would be handed over to the outsourced art team for detailed modeling, and then actors would go to the motion capture studio for motion capture…

Meanwhile, Hu Xianbin needed to finalize the entire game script as soon as possible.

This didn’t seem like a particularly complex task, given that Mr. Pei had already provided a clear story outline, but once Hu Xianbin started working on it, he found it much more difficult than he had imagined.

Although the main content involved universally relatable themes like schooling, exams, job applications, marriage, having children, and other aspects of everyday life, it was precisely because these experiences were so common that they inevitably varied from person to person.

Billions of people worldwide live completely different lives. Poor people suffered in their distinct ways, and rich people flaunted their wealth differently. So, which examples should be chosen to best represent the “poor” and “rich” classes?

Social stratification was complex. Even among the poor, some lived in remote mountain villages, others in urban slums; some couldn’t clothe or feed themselves properly, while others had enough to eat but lived frugally.

There were significant differences between poor people and other poor people, rich people and other rich people. Even among the poor, mutual understanding was difficult.

So in this game, using individuals to represent the whole, particularly tested the designer’s abilities.

If they went off track, people would certainly say “poor people aren’t really like that,” and the game would fundamentally collapse.

How to ensure examples were broadly representative while maintaining authenticity, capable of resonating with various social classes…

Hu Xianbin felt he had been given an unprecedented and challenging task.

Now, without Li Yada paving the way for him, everything depended on himself, creating tremendous pressure.

As he was tugging at his hair in thought, Min Jingchao came over and gently knocked on his desk.

“The GOG event proposal is ready. Want to take a look?”

Hu Xianbin shook his head: “I can’t handle that right now. You take care of it. Anyway…”

He instinctively glanced at Li Yada’s desk: “As long as Sister Li and Brother Bao haven’t raised any objections, it should be fine.”

Min Jingchao nodded: “Yeah, I’ve already posted the proposal in the group, and they haven’t commented.”

Hu Xianbin: “Then it’s fine.”

Min Jingchao felt more reassured and returned to his workstation.

On his computer screen was a proposal titled: GOG Creative Community.

GOG’s official website already had an official forum, mainly for players to provide feedback and report issues, which was also part of the TPDb website.

This time, Min Jingchao planned to launch a new section in the forum called “Creative Community,” specifically for collecting players’ ideas for new heroes.

Of course, while designing this section, Min Jingchao always kept Mr. Pei’s teachings in mind.

“The creativity of the majority can be either a treasure trove or a cage.”

While fully respecting player creativity, they also needed to be vigilant against potential “cage” effects, avoiding the game from becoming a hodgepodge or chimera.

As a numerical designer, Min Jingchao was responsible for ensuring the game’s numerical balance, while Zhang Nan was responsible for maintaining the game’s artistic style.

But even so, with such a massive volume of creative input, just screening and reviewing would be troublesome.

So, the designer’s job was to anticipate these problems and resolve them through mechanisms.

Min Jingchao divided the creative community into several simple sections and designed a player-led preliminary screening mechanism similar to “likes,” minimizing designers’ workload on basic tasks.

In Min Jingchao’s vision, GOG heroes could roughly be divided into three categories:

First, heroes from purchased IPs, which could be directly recreated based on their original images, with skills designed according to the original character’s backstory;

Second, heroes are designed based on internal employees or individuals with special contributions, like Modister;

Third, heroes are designed by players themselves.

Heroes designed by players were further divided into two categories: those focused on mechanics and gameplay, and those focused on appearance.

Different specialties had different focuses. Most players would find it difficult to simultaneously address a hero’s background, appearance, specific skill mechanics, not to mention numerical balance.

So these needed to be separated.

The creative community was divided into four sections: IP Hero Collection Area, Special Contribution Collection Area, Original Mechanism Collection Area, and Original Appearance Collection Area.

In the IP Hero Collection Area, official pinned posts would regularly announce newly acquired IP characters, and players could then design skills based on existing images and backstories.

In the Special Contribution Collection Area, the achievements of outstanding employees, partners, or excellent players would be written up, and players would be designed based on these individuals’ characteristics.

In the Original Mechanism Collection Area, players would only focus on designing hero proposals that benefited game mechanics. For example, if the current hero roster lacked a global support, players would only need to propose good hero mechanics, leaving others or officials to complete the hero’s concept art and backstory.

The Original Appearance Collection Area was the opposite—players would only need to post their hero concept art or written backstories, leaving others or officials to design the skills.

All these sections had rich filtering and sorting functions.

For instance, players could sort and browse current suggestion posts based on different data such as popularity, posting time, number of likes, and could perform actions like liking, strongly recommending, finding humorous, or downvoting designs they were satisfied with.

This way, players could conduct preliminary screening, and designs with higher player support could be prioritized for production.

Since they were already crowdsourcing and letting players handle design work, they might as well go a step further and have them take care of screening ideas too.

Of course, Tenda, being such a principled company, wouldn’t exploit players’ creativity without compensation.

To better stimulate players’ enthusiasm, Min Jingchao designed very generous reward mechanisms.

For all players:

When a new hero designed with player input went live, the first skin would be 90% off, the second skin 50% off, and the third skin 20% off, available to all players for a limited time of one month (from the day the skin went on sale).

For active forum players (determined by comprehensive data including logins, likes, comments, etc.):

When a new hero designed with player input went live, active forum players could enjoy the above discounts regardless of time limits.

Even if someone wasn’t currently an active player, they could regain these benefits by logging into the forum and participating to restore their active player status.

For excellent content producers (those who provided numerous well-received creative ideas, whether adopted or not):

Regardless of whether their ideas were adopted, they could purchase all skins at 70% off (the two discounts wouldn’t stack; the lower discount would apply).

If their idea was adopted, they would receive 5% of the profit from that hero’s skin sales as a reward, and their name or game ID would be permanently noted on the hero’s details page as the source of the initial idea. Players could choose titles when entering the game, similar to [Designer of Modister].

Of course, players would need to agree to certain terms before uploading their creative content to prevent potential copyright disputes.

Otherwise, it would be very awkward if Tenda adopted a design and then got extorted.

Overall, the level of compensation could be considered very generous.

Especially once a creative idea was adopted, the player would receive 5% of all skin profits. The more popular the hero and the more skins sold, the more money they would make.

Ideally, if players could design a sufficiently entertaining hero that was loved by most players, they could live off this 5% commission for a lifetime.

Of course, this was only an ideal scenario.

Even several years later, when there might be over a hundred heroes, there would only be a few dozen such lucky players.

But such generous rewards would attract talented players to rack their brains and participate in hero design.

Exchanging 5% commission for a hero character widely loved by players, while also securing players’ enthusiastic participation—this was a win.

Now, Min Jingchao just wanted to say one thing to Finger Company: “Bring it on! You may have iron livers, but the wisdom of players is endless!”

After confirming the proposal again, Min Jingchao sent it to Ma Yiqun.

Currently, Terminal Chinese Network, TPDb website, the game’s official website, forums, etc., were all managed by the same team. Since they were all websites that would eventually be integrated into the TPDb website, unified development was best.

Once the forum was prepared and revamped, this news would cause a huge stir among the player community!

Mr. Pei should also be pleased that they had come up with such a good solution, right?

…

Meanwhile.

Pei Qian was worried in his office.

He still had no clue about the special task called “Learning Never Ends” for this cycle.

At most, he could invest 8% of 20 million, which was 1.6 million, in himself to learn some knowledge. If at settlement the system judged that he had “learned something,” it would allow him to reduce or increase the system funds by 12.8 million.

But the prerequisite was that he had to spend 1.6 million.

If he spent less, the final reduction would also be less.

Pei Qian had been struggling for three weeks without making a decision, mainly because of two points:

What course would cost 1.6 million in tuition within a few months?

If such a course existed, could he achieve sufficient improvement to be judged by the system as having “learned something”?

If the system judged that he “learned nothing,” it would just be equivalent to a rushed expenditure of 1.6 million, with no effect on reducing system funds, which wouldn’t be very meaningful.

Pei Qian had considered many options, such as studying management, economics, foreign languages, painting…

But after much thought, he still felt uncertain.

First, he was so busy now that while he might have time for classes, he might not have time to thoroughly learn the knowledge.

Second, even if he had time, his brain might not keep up.

Finally, courses he had time for and could learn might not cost 1.6 million; methods that could spend 1.6 million might not necessarily provide sufficiently useful knowledge.

The system was also tricky. If Pei Qian tried to pull some stunt like “spent 1.6 million to learn a lesson” and play with semantics, he would only receive the system’s disdain.

This was too difficult.

Watching the days pass, Pei Qian felt he couldn’t delay any longer. The more he delayed, the less time he would have for learning.

If he couldn’t come up with a solution himself, he would have to seek help from others.

Who should he ask?

After some thought, Pei Qian decided he could ask Little Tang.

Among all the employees who had been influenced by him, Tang Yishu’s level of influence should be the shallowest. At the same time, she was very discreet, not saying a word she shouldn’t—she was a good choice.

With this in mind, Pei Qian sent Tang Yishu a message asking her to come to his office.

Soon, there was a knock on the door.

After entering the office, Tang Yishu spoke first: “Senior, we still haven’t found all the management trainees…”

Pei Qian waved his hand: “We agreed by Saturday, no need to rush. I mainly wanted to ask you about something else, to get your advice.”

“What do you think I most need to learn, if I were to study something?”

Tang Yishu was stunned, her eyes blinking in confusion, then said: “I-I don’t know.”

Pei Qian felt saddened.

He was a little disappointed by this answer.

Did everyone see him as a perfect person? Was there no room for learning and improvement?

Ah, the misunderstandings between people were truly terrifying!

Tang Yishu thought for a moment, then said: “Senior, I don’t know what you most need to learn, but I do know what you least need to learn…”

Pei Qian: “Oh? What do I least need to learn?”

Tang Yishu: “Games, game design.”