“Some might think that the root cause is moral decay, a lack of integrity, agents pursuing personal interests at the expense of tenants’ interests—just like the choices many players make in the game: I only care about renting out the property; how the tenant actually lives there is none of my concern.”
“But that’s not actually the case. The game has already provided the answer, though most people haven’t discovered it yet.”
“Have you noticed that there are some fundamental differences between game agents and real-life agents?”
“The game agent is actually both the boss and the employee, responsible for their own profits and losses, accountable only to themselves; while real-life agents are simply employees, replaceable workers with almost no bargaining power, who can only implement the will of those above them.”
“This distinction is the key point that this game aims to express.”
Ding Xiyao couldn’t help but pause in surprise.
She instantly recalled the agency office scene she saw when first entering the game: the office was completely different from reality, only able to accommodate one person, with no other colleagues.
As the game progressed, the agency office would continuously expand, becoming more spacious with increasingly elegant decorations, but still no other colleagues were visible.
Previously, Ding Xiyao thought this was simply a game mechanism issue, but after hearing Young Master Tian’s explanation, it seemed there was deeper meaning behind it.
“In the game, players take on the dual identity of boss and employee: when deciding how to serve customers and how to earn profits, they act as the boss; when implementing this service method and personally answering customers’ questions, they act as the employee.”
“In reality, agents have only one identity—employees who follow their boss’s instructions and interact with customers on the front line.”
“Therefore, the various chaotic phenomena in the real estate agency industry, while partly due to agents’ personal quality issues or moral problems, are largely attributable to the companies and bosses behind them.”
“Because the bosses don’t care about tenants’ actual living experiences, focusing only on performance and profits, agents under performance pressure can only ‘display their individual talents,’ and tricks of deception happen to be most helpful for boosting performance and earning profits during periods of disorderly expansion.”
“High-performing agents become sales champions, naturally receiving high bonuses and public recognition from their bosses, while low-performing ones, even if they’re sincere with customers, can only get the most basic commission, barely enough to maintain their livelihood.”
“Over time, those who can’t adapt to this environment are forced to leave, while most agents who remain know what choices they must make.”
Ding Xiyao read this section twice, desperately wanting to give this Young Master Tian a thumbs up.
He was absolutely right!
Many people simply blamed the agents, believing that the chaos stemmed from agents’ overall low quality and moral decay.
But in reality, the root cause wasn’t with the agents at all.
Even if some individual agents were genuinely of questionable quality, that was mostly not inherent but forced out of them in this environment, cultivated and nurtured by it.
The real decision-makers were the bosses who demanded volume and performance. As for conscience and reputation, if they could increase profits, the bosses might hypocritically emphasize them; if not, what use were they?
Regarding the various chaotic phenomena in the agency industry, bosses actually turned a blind eye, even tacitly approving and tolerating them.
They talked about rectification, but even when complaints came in, they would raise the issue high only to set it down gently.
If they truly rectified things and profits declined, who would be responsible?
The interesting aspect of “Real Estate Agent Simulator” was that it didn’t separate boss and employee, but rather created an image similar to a “sole proprietor,” letting players be responsible for their own profits and losses while playing the dual roles of boss and employee.
If the two identities were separated, the game would be much less enjoyable on one hand, and on the other, it would have too strong a didactic tone that players simply wouldn’t accept.
The current approach not only gave players enjoyment in the game, making it impossible to stop playing, but also allowed them to reflect after calming down, understanding the root cause of this chaos.
But this clearly wasn’t yet the core part of the video.
Young Master Tian didn’t merely keep the topic on the game’s gameplay and its connection to social reality but continued to elaborate, digging out more content.
“If you delve deeper, you’ll discover a hidden mechanism in the game.”
“After the rental agreement is reached, tenants still have a satisfaction level with the house, and if the satisfaction is lower than expected, then when these tenants return, they will find more faults, demand greater rent reductions, or may not return at all.”
“Moreover, the satisfaction of numerous tenants will affect the reputation of the player’s store. The effect might not be immediately apparent, but as it accumulates, this influence becomes increasingly evident.”
“In other words, choosing profit by deceiving tenants can indeed accumulate huge profits in the short term, but the cost is declining reputation, with fewer and fewer quality tenants, making it increasingly difficult to earn money. On the other hand, treating people honestly might sacrifice initial profits, but over time, as the store’s reputation gradually accumulates, more quality tenants will appear, and transactions will become easier.”
“This clearly aligns with real-life patterns: most tenants are easily deceived when renting for the first time, but after being cheated once, they’ll naturally be more cautious and are unlikely to rent from the same agency that cheated them before.”
“But this might raise a new question: why do many real estate agencies continue to thrive and expand despite consistently deceiving people, seemingly without any punishment?”
“Why is it that in the game, players who deceive tenants end up with fewer visitors and slower development, while in reality, those agencies that have cheated tenants continue to do just fine?”
“Is this merely because the game beautifies reality, offering a reasonable setting that doesn’t actually match reality?”
Ding Xiyao was taken aback; she hadn’t actually considered this question before.
But after Young Master Tian raised it, she thought deeply and realized it was indeed a legitimate question.
Logically, if an agency cheated tenants, there should be no more tenants coming in afterward. Yet companies like Zhujia Group, despite repeatedly deceiving people and even incidents like the formaldehyde housing scandal, still maintained a dominant position in the agency market, showing little sign of weakening.
Although the formaldehyde housing incident caused Zhujia Group’s stock to fall and led to rectifications and fines, they seemed to recover quickly. Their market share remained high, with no fundamental changes.
Did this mean that people in reality were not as smart as NPCs in the game?
Young Master Tian soon provided the answer.
“This question still goes back to the player’s identity in the game.”
“In the game, the player is both the boss and the agent, responsible for their own profits and losses, bearing the consequences themselves.”
“Therefore, in the game, players can only manage properties in a small area and must compete with other agencies. In this situation, tenants actually have many choices. After being deceived by the player, they naturally seek other agencies, reducing the number of clients the player receives.”
“Under these circumstances, the regulatory mechanism still functions.”
“Let’s extend this thought. Suppose the game added a ‘merge and expand’ gameplay mode. The player is no longer the boss of a small agency but of a large group company or controls substantial capital.”
“Would you still need to follow the existing game rules? Of course not.”
“At that point, the optimal solution for players would be to merge all surrounding stores or find ways to squeeze out other agencies, then open their own branches throughout the city, even across the country.”
“Simultaneously, using these branches as leverage, they would have their agents continuously harass property owners with phone calls, monopolizing all available properties in the area.”
“This way, tenants have no other choices because all properties are in the hands of this company. If you don’t rent from them, where else can you go?”
“Thus, the regulatory mechanism seen in the game wouldn’t work at all, because tenants have no choice. Even if they’re cheated, they can only switch to another branch. No matter how they struggle, they cannot escape the control of this group company and this industry atmosphere.”
“Therefore, the identity setting for players in the game has clearly been carefully considered, not just for gameplay purposes.”
“More importantly, it constructs a special contrast.”
“In the game, players themselves serve as both boss and employee, but in reality, the bosses and employees of similar agencies are completely separate.”
“In the game, the ‘agency’ industry that players engage in represents the original face of this industry, with full competition where improving service quality leads to success; but in reality, the true ‘agency’ industry is in an altered state, an industry with a certain degree of monopoly, an abnormal state where group companies and large capital can completely disregard tenants’ actual living experiences for the sake of profit.”
“In other words, the agency identity in the game doesn’t seem offensive; players can even choose whether to maintain their conscience. However, the agency identity in reality often causes resentment, and agents often have no choice. Fundamentally, this is because changes at the source have led to changes in the ‘agency’ identity: from service providers who connect people, to middlemen who extort.”
“Through the comparison between game and reality, we can more clearly see the differences between the two, thereby more precisely locating the root problem in the real-life agency industry!”