Lin Wan was stunned: “Huh?”
Pei Qian explained: “At Tenda, each employee consumes an average of 3.2 snack packages daily, not counting coffee and beverages. Basically, they eat continuously from clocking in to clocking out. And that’s with many employees trying to lose weight and showing some restraint.”
“But Slow Walker Studio is clearly far from reaching that number. You need to keep working at it.”
“The amount of snacks consumed can indicate how invested employees are in their work. If they eat a lot of snacks, it means they’re working diligently and thinking hard, consuming more energy, so they need many snacks as supplements.”
“So you need to work on this!”
Lin Wan’s expression showed slight surprise.
Eating too few snacks?
Was this really an issue that needed improvement?
Or was there… a deeper message to be uncovered behind this?
Lin Wan frowned slightly, thought for a moment, and then suddenly had a flash of insight: “I understand, Mr. Pei!”
“You mean these employees have only just joined, and by not eating snacks, it reflects that their work attitude is still quite rigid and not relaxed enough?”
“Game creation is an industry that requires inspiration, and only by being fully relaxed can one produce good designs. Only in a relaxed atmosphere can communication between colleagues be more harmonious and smooth?”
“So, eating few snacks reflects insufficient team cohesion and a less active atmosphere, which actually affects daily work status and the quality of the final game product!”
“Seeing the big picture from small details—only when everyone can comfortably eat lots of snacks without worry will the entire team get on track more quickly?”
“I’ll send out a notice to everyone right away, encouraging them to eat more snacks! Targeting a quota of 2 packages per person per day!”
Pei Qian was shocked.
He had just made a casual remark, hoping that Slow Walker Studio employees would eat more snacks and work less, but unexpectedly, Lin Wan had conjured up so many interpretations in less than a second…
So this is what a Tenda veteran is like?
Pei Qian couldn’t help but want to hold his head in his hands, wondering what the situation was, how on earth he had managed to cultivate so many bizarre employees…
But there was no way to explain now. Pei Qian could only go along with Lin Wan’s interpretation and quickly change the subject: “Let’s talk about the VR headset.”
Lin Wan nodded: “Let’s go to the meeting room. My brother happens to be there as well.”
As soon as they entered the meeting room, Pei Qian saw Lin Chang, who was looking down at his phone.
Lin Chang looked up, saw Pei Qian, and immediately smiled: “Oh, Mr. Pei, you’re here! Has Tenda’s funding situation been resolved?”
Pei Qian’s mouth twitched slightly.
Isn’t this obviously a rhetorical question?
Don’t think I don’t know you were behind all this mischief!
Although Pei Qian hadn’t given it much thought initially, the more he pondered over the past two days, the more things didn’t add up.
Logically, that Sloth Apartments building should have been very popular. Why was nobody interested?
Saying that all companies didn’t want to “take advantage of the situation” was actually a bit far-fetched, because it’s impossible that all interested companies would respect Tenda so much that they’d give up such a prime opportunity.
So, most likely, someone had been tipping them off behind the scenes!
As for who this person was, it was actually easy to guess—it had to be either Li Shi or Lin Chang.
And Li Shi didn’t have that much influence; his reach was limited to Jingzhou and couldn’t really sway major national real estate companies.
With this elimination, the answer became obvious.
In this incident of obstructing the building sale, Lin Chang had definitely exerted enormous influence!
Pei Qian chuckled: “I must really ‘thank’ Mr. Lin for the ‘help’.”
Although Pei Qian had tried his best to use a sarcastic tone, Lin Chang remained oblivious and instead looked somewhat embarrassed as he waved his hand: “Oh, Mr. Pei, you’re being too kind. We’re practically family; no need for thanks!”
“It was really just a small effort on my part, just making a few phone calls.”
“Mr. Pei has contributed so much to Slow Walker Studio, even willing to sell a building to provide funds. That kind of friendship can’t be measured with money! This little favor hardly counts as help; Mr. Pei, please don’t take it to heart!”
Pei Qian: “…”
Why can’t he tell good words from bad? Am I really thanking him?
If the system wasn’t controlling my mouth, I would have cursed him out by now!
Pei Qian was speechless. He found a random chair at the conference table and sat down: “Let’s get to the point. I heard the R&D funds for the VR headset are insufficient?”
Lin Wan nodded: “Yes, that’s right.”
“Previously, we had allocated 20 million yuan each for game development and VR headset development. The game budget is absolutely fine, definitely sufficient, but for the VR headset… we’ve encountered some issues.”
“Actually, according to our original design, this amount of money was about right, but after specific design work and communication with the factory, we’ve revised the plan several times. Old Song’s team also wants to adopt some new technologies, so one thing led to another, and the costs increased…”
Old Song was the product manager from Shenhua Group responsible for the VR headset project.
For this kind of hardware development, investment can vary greatly, with significant fluctuations depending on the level of quality desired.
Not just for a single device—even for developing a small controller, Microsoft invested hundreds of millions of dollars.
But this level of investment is due to extreme attention to detail, such as ergonomic design, durability, feel, and unique appearance of the controller, all of which require repeated modifications and testing.
However, many domestic manufacturers also make controllers with much lower R&D costs.
Of course, there would be differences in feel and actual user experience between good and mediocre controllers, but the gap wouldn’t be that significant.
In other words, cheaper controllers are “still usable.”
After all, you get what you pay for—sometimes paying ten times more only gets you twice the quality. For these haptic devices, the cost of improving the feel by just a little bit is enormous.
As for VR devices, even the groundbreaking first-generation Oculus Rift only crowdfunded $2.5 million, which included some production and inventory costs.
Many domestic companies also develop VR headsets through crowdfunding. For instance, a certain domestic VR headset that marketed itself as “8K” crowdfunded $3 million and developed what is currently the highest-resolution VR headset in the world. Although the base stations and controllers used existing technology, it still demonstrates that VR headset development doesn’t necessarily cost that much.
Current VR headsets don’t actually involve highly sophisticated technology—the difference from traditional displays is merely in the display method.
The two lenses in VR headsets create a virtual reality visual field in the user’s brain based on different visual perspectives and depth perception in local space, producing a display effect distinct from traditional screens.
In other words, the information is the same information, just presented to players in a different form.
With Slow Walker Studio investing 20 million yuan, equivalent to about $3 million, it was already considered a relatively large investment. Most companies wouldn’t dare spend this much money on VR for fear of suffering huge losses.
Moreover, VR headsets share commonalities with smartphones—they both need chips and a basic AI Zhuo operating system, which are undoubtedly Shenhua Group’s strengths, saving a significant amount of money in these areas.
Originally, this budget was sufficient, but Old Song, being a product manager with a geeky personality, had some new ideas during the design process. Additionally, the controller development was indeed more challenging than initially anticipated, so after several design revisions, they found the funding somewhat tight, which is why they reported to Lin Wan for guidance.
Old Song had even ingeniously proposed a haptic glove solution, but quickly rejected it himself.
This was because making gloves would present several problems that would be difficult to solve with current technology, such as:
Players’ hands vary greatly in size, meaning gloves would have to come in many sizes, and even then might not perfectly fit every player’s hand. And with gloves, being slightly too big or too small would be very uncomfortable. Controllers, on the other hand, could be made in a standard size that all players could use comfortably.
Moreover, to fulfill their functions, controllers must have batteries, sensors, joysticks, and buttons—adding these components to gloves would make them too bulky and heavy, also inconvenient to operate.
So the glove solution was impractical with current technology. Even if forcibly produced, the user experience wouldn’t be good, so they reverted to the controller solution.
But even with the controller solution, because it differed from existing VR controllers, the development costs were higher than initially anticipated.
Hearing this, Pei Qian perked up, his eyes instantly lighting up: “I said at the time that the money wouldn’t be enough!”
“You all said 15 million would be sufficient, but I was worried and increased it to 20 million. Now it seems even 20 million isn’t enough!”
“We must increase it further!”
Hearing this, Lin Chang hurriedly said: “No problem! Whatever amount you add, Mr. Pei, Shenhua will match it!”
Pei Qian glanced at him, somewhat speechless.
Why are you butting in?
Pei Qian originally didn’t want to include Lin Chang in this, because Pei Qian was aiming for a huge loss. If Lin Chang contributed the same amount, wouldn’t he incur the same loss?
For this kind of thing, it would be better for Mr. Pei to bear it alone.
But thinking about what Lin Chang had done over the past few days, Pei Qian instantly lost sympathy for him.
He deserved to lose money!
Pei Qian chuckled: “Well then, Tenda will invest an additional 10 million.”
Lin Chang was taken aback: “Huh? Is that much necessary?”
Pei Qian coughed lightly and said: “If it’s inconvenient for Mr. Lin, Tenda can cover the entire amount…”
Lin Chang quickly waved his hand: “No problem! How could there be any problem?”
“Shenhua will also invest an additional 10 million. Absolutely!”
“40 million yuan, which is about $6 million—that’s already twice as much funding as that groundbreaking foreign VR headset…”
“There shouldn’t be any issues now, right?”
While supporting his sister, Lin Chang instinctively felt a bit uncertain.
10 million wasn’t a significant sum for Shenhua Group, but he was concerned that if the project failed after such an investment, it might be a huge blow to Lin Wan.
But since Mr. Pei had decided to increase the funding, so be it!
Lin Wan nodded: “This is definitely enough! But, Mr. Pei, is Tenda’s funding really not a problem? Why don’t you keep your money, and let my brother cover the entire 20 million…”
Pei Qian’s face immediately darkened: “Tenda’s funding is fine, very good! You don’t need to worry about that!”
“Rather than worrying about this, it would be better to focus all your energy on device development and game design, striving to launch the product as soon as possible!”
After all, the day this product launches won’t be far from massive losses.
Lin Wan nodded: “Alright, I’ll tell Old Song right away. With this, he can implement his previous designs. He’ll definitely be very happy!”
“By the way, Mr. Pei, since you’ve made the trip, would you like to see the concept art for ‘Animal Island’?”
Pei Qian thought for a moment: “Sure.”
After all, it would still be quite some time before the game demo would be ready. Looking at the concept art would give him a general idea of the game’s style and help him visualize the game scenes.
Lin Wan grabbed a laptop from nearby, found several game concept images, and showed them to Pei Qian and Lin Chang.
Pei Qian glanced at them and was somewhat surprised.
The chibi-style concept art was… perfect!
The background of the concept art was a small island at sea, lush with vegetation and picturesque. The main subjects of the images were various anthropomorphic small animals, such as cats, dogs, lions, bears, rabbits, and so on. Some held fishing rods, some carried axes for chopping wood, and others had hoes for farming.
There was also a strange steampunk-style robot assisting these small animals in managing the farm, with a full steampunk-style irrigation system—also in chibi style, of course.
For artists, compared to realistic styles, chibi style is relatively easier to master, because unless you’re particularly untalented, chibi art won’t look too ugly.
But mastering chibi style is difficult because the key lies in extracting and recreating the prominent features of the original image. It’s quite challenging to make chibi characters adorable and distinctive while preserving their core essence.
These images were clearly masterpieces.
Pei Qian was pleased.
A masterpiece means expensive!
Being able to spend more money is definitely a good thing.
“These images are clearly the work of a master. Must have cost quite a bit?” Pei Qian asked casually.
Lin Wan smiled: “Why talk about money with Master Ruan? We have a long-term cooperation price, don’t we?”
Pei Qian was taken aback, a question mark instantly appearing above his head.
?
“This was drawn by Ruan Guangjian?”
Pei Qian felt somewhat confused, as he remembered that Ruan Guangjian seemed to primarily draw in a realistic style.
Lin Wan nodded: “Yes, what can I say? A master is a master. His chibi art is also this good!”
Pei Qian was speechless.
He suddenly remembered that just because Ruan Guangjian drew a lot in realistic style didn’t mean he couldn’t draw chibi style.
Back when Pei Qian was looking for an artist for “Ghost General” online, it was precisely because he saw that Ruan Guangjian’s representative works were all uniformly chibi style that he doubted whether Ruan could draw in a realistic style, which is why he hired him in the first place…
“Mission and Choice” had just been released, and Ruan Guangjian was already busy with “Animal Island”?
Pei Qian’s mouth twitched slightly as he commented: “You guys coordinate so well…”