Pei Qian’s brain quickly processed the information, drawing on his previously learned professional knowledge about game design.

The secret to profitable freemium games was simple: first lure players in with a free base game, let them develop an attachment to it, then gradually pressure them to grind or spend money. Let those with money contribute financially, those without contribute their presence, and ultimately transform the game into a money printer.

All freemium games essentially followed this core formula: for players to obtain the complete, optimal gaming experience, they must invest either time, money, or both.

Therefore, for freemium games, one couldn’t broadly categorize all players into a single type.

Those who pay have their play style, those who don’t have theirs. The wealthy players who readily spend tens of thousands to reach the game’s ceiling, the mid-tier players who carefully budget and only spend a few hundred, and those free players who refuse to spend a single cent regardless of temptation—they were never the same gaming demographic.

So for game developers, they needed to view them as three distinct groups and develop different strategies for each.

The secret to profitable freemium games lay in: letting free players tag along relatively comfortably, enticing mid-tier players to spend as much as possible, and making paying players feel accomplished with their spending.

Games would include many features requiring time investment. To some extent, this allowed free players to earn some in-game currency or even relatively generous rewards if they invested enough time, letting them persist through sheer determination even without spending money.

Of course, what free players earned through grinding would never be as valuable as what the whales purchased, otherwise the game would be overrun by professional farming operations.

When these free players could achieve results through grinding, they’d feel the game was reasonably fair and continue playing, whether they became friends with the whales or merely served as punching bags for them. Either way, they became part of the wealthy players’ gaming experience.

As for mid-tier players, gaming companies knew these people had disposable income, but not much, and they spent relatively rationally. These players often combined grinding and spending—they’d grind for rewards when efficient, and spend when that was more advantageous.

Therefore, game companies would regularly offer discounts and promotions. Items that whales had purchased at full price would be bundled into discounted packages or added to lotteries, all to encourage continued spending from these mid-tier players.

Though called mid-tier, if each such player spent a few dozen or hundred extra yuan monthly, that represented significant income for game companies.

Finally, there were the whales. Though they constituted less than 1% of the player base, they accounted for the majority of a game company’s revenue. Serving whales well was the mission of most game companies.

To satisfy whales, a game’s monetization depth needed to be sufficient. If whales could max everything out with just tens of thousands of yuan, they’d quickly lose interest.

Game companies would constantly release better characters, weapons, and equipment, continuously upgrading the items available for purchase.

And the outdated equipment could then be discounted and sold to mid-tier players.

If whales wanted to maintain their top position, they’d need to spend continuously.

Fortunately, whales were wealthy and often didn’t mind the expense. Those willing to spend tens of thousands on a game typically wouldn’t object to spending tens of thousands more.

Thus, the entire game formed a perfect cycle, with free players, mid-tier players, and whales all having their own playstyles and deriving their own enjoyment from the game.

Game companies could continuously extract money from everyone, creating a win-win situation.

Those incredibly profitable freemium games all basically followed this formula.

To reduce profits, one needed to break out of this pattern.

Of course, “Ghost General” had broken this pattern, but it had perhaps overcorrected and gone down an alternative path.

“Ghost General” only had an initial purchase threshold and a lifetime pass, essentially turning a gacha mobile game into a buy-once model.

Buy-once models weren’t remarkable in themselves, but among a crowd of grind-heavy, pay-heavy mobile games, it stood out as particularly unique, which was why it had risen above the competition.

The reason was that “Ghost General” hadn’t effectively differentiated these three player types but had instead offered a solution particularly friendly to most player groups, making it too good a deal, thus achieving a “low margin, high volume” effect.

Of course, the key factor was the system’s restrictions.

Pei Qian couldn’t directly set the game as “completely free”; it needed theoretical profit potential. Without in-app purchases, the buy-once threshold would need to be higher; to have no threshold and free entry, the in-app purchase trap would need to be deeper.

This undoubtedly increased the difficulty of losing money.

Pei Qian felt that to avoid repeating the “Ghost General” tragedy, he needed to focus on two points.

First, no buy-once threshold—if it’s free, it should be truly free, allowing ordinary players to access all content without spending a penny. This way, everyone who could get it for free would do so, eliminating any “low margin, high volume” effect.

Second, while making in-app purchases relatively costly, players’ desire to spend should be discouraged as much as possible.

The reason other games loved lottery systems was that they used randomness to deceive players, making them pay far more than the actual value for rare heroes and items.

To curb players’ spending desire, the lottery system needed some tweaking.

Pei Qian quickly had an idea and said to Chang You: “For ‘Fitness Battle Royale,’ we’ll have both a shop and a lottery system for in-app purchases.”

“All items will be clearly priced in the shop, while in the lottery system, they’ll have corresponding probabilities based on rarity, letting players choose freely.”

“The lottery’s cost-effectiveness will be about 0.8, meaning if players spend 100 yuan on lottery draws, they’ll get items worth only about 80 yuan on average.”

“Of course, for some exceptionally lucky players, this won’t hold true.”

“When players recharge to get tokens for the lottery, the backend will record each transaction amount, lottery result, and the total value of prizes. From 0:00 to 24:00 each day counts as one cycle. If players are dissatisfied with their lottery results within this cycle, they can apply for a refund through the refund button. The system will automatically deduct the prizes and issue a refund, but the trade-off is that players cannot make any recharges for the next three days.”

“Additionally, all items in the game can be obtained using game tokens.”

“Players earn game tokens through daily fitness exercises, with the number of tokens equal to the number of calories burned. The more calories burned each day, the more tokens earned.”

“These tokens can be exchanged for any item in the game but cannot be used for lottery draws.”

Pei Qian’s design was all about suppressing players’ desire to spend as much as possible.

According to system requirements, the game’s monetization model had to match its investment. Simply put, Pei Qian couldn’t make the game completely free; it needed moderate in-app purchases. Without in-app purchases, he’d have to set a relatively high buy-once price.

And Pei Qian had already tasted the bitter fruit of premium pricing with “Ghost General.”

So Pei Qian wanted to discourage players while maintaining a deep enough in-app purchase pool!

Relatively speaking, the shop would definitely be more cost-effective than the lottery.

Many freemium games put rare characters and items in lotteries because lotteries were bottomless pits. When drop rates were low, whales would pay far beyond actual value to obtain specific characters.

Of course, many game companies made lotteries seem worthwhile, with items from draws exceeding the value of direct purchases, but the problem was that lotteries included many practically useless junk items, so players still lost out.

Pei Qian’s strategy was to include a lottery system to raise the game’s theoretical spending ceiling, allowing the game to be free. But this lottery system would be completely different from others—it would be an absolutely unprofitable lottery system.

This lottery system would have low cost-effectiveness and would display to players the items obtained and their value. Crucially, if players were dissatisfied, they could change their minds and get refunds, followed by a cooling-off period where they couldn’t recharge for three days.

With this approach, nobody would be interested in the lottery. Whales would only spend a few hundred yuan to directly buy items of interest; mid-tier players who did draw the lottery would only keep prizes if satisfied, otherwise refunding immediately, so they wouldn’t spend much either; and free players would definitely just grind, using burned calories to purchase items, absolutely not spending a penny.

None of the three player groups would spend much money—perfect!

Pei Qian couldn’t help but admire himself; it was a truly brilliant plan!

Chang You nodded repeatedly while taking careful notes.

He didn’t particularly understand these intricacies of freemium games, but seeing Mr. Pei’s commanding demeanor and confidence, he clearly had unconditional faith in him.

After all, no matter how complex a system Mr. Pei designed, it would definitely succeed. All he needed to do was cheer from the sidelines!

Having established the game’s monetization model, Pei Qian looked at Meng Chang, who was still exercising: “How’s the promotion plan coming along? Any ideas yet?”

Meng Chang climbed down from the smart fitness clothes rack, fine beads of sweat already on his forehead: “I have some ideas!”

He dared not say he had no ideas—what if Mr. Pei made him continue exercising afterward?

He felt Mr. Pei was capable of such “coercive interrogation” tactics.

“Good, then we’ll stop here for today. That’s a wrap!” Pei Qian said, satisfied, and left with Meng Chang.