Pei Qian nodded slightly.
This brainstorming session had been quite enlightening for him.
To avoid repeating the mistakes of “Sea Fortress,” the operation threshold definitely couldn’t be lowered—on the contrary, it needed to be raised higher and higher, ensuring this game would be difficult and niche.
But he also needed to be careful about another issue: avoiding any connection to high-difficulty real-world competitions.
Topics like Formula 1 or rally racing were best left untouched.
Racing was an extremely expensive sport, yet popular worldwide. Players who couldn’t afford to race on real tracks would naturally choose to experience it in games.
It would be best to choose content that ordinary people experienced regularly.
What kind of content?
Driving in the city, of course!
Currently, the most popular racing games fell into two categories. One type faithfully recreated high-end racing events—hardcore, but offering a comprehensive simulation of the racing experience. The other type lowered the gameplay threshold, turned off vehicle damage, and let players freely drive through cities, crashing into things as they pleased.
After all, most people were already stressed enough having to follow traffic rules during their daily commutes—constantly worrying about not speeding, not running red lights, not getting tickets, and knowing that even a small scratch might cost hundreds of yuan to repaint. It was nerve-wracking.
So after work, when playing a driving game, players naturally wanted to speed freely and crash into things!
Driving in the wrong lane, rear-ending other cars, running red lights—these were all commonplace in games.
Pei Qian pondered that if he could combine these two game types, taking the worst elements of each and integrating the content players disliked most, wouldn’t that be perfect?
With this thought, Pei Qian cleared his throat and said, “I’ve come up with two directions you can reference.”
Everyone paused their brainstorming and looked over, expressions of extreme admiration appearing on their faces.
Indeed, the gap between their level and Mr. Pei’s was too great!
How long had this brainstorming session been going on? Everyone was still just discussing things haphazardly without any concrete ideas, yet Mr. Pei had already chosen a direction for the new game?
Good ideas coming effortlessly—was this what a genius game developer looked like?
Everyone listened attentively.
Pei Qian cleared his throat twice, organized his thoughts a bit, and then said, “First, we want to make a completely realistic racing game, or rather, a driving simulation game.”
“We need to invest heavily in creating an extremely realistic physics engine for the game.”
“Each car must be modeled individually. Different vehicles’ chassis, A and B pillars, body materials, etc. will have different data based on real-world conditions, ensuring that the collision results for each car are different, and completely consistent with the collision results of the same model in reality.”
“Other aspects such as the car’s horsepower, driving feel, tire grip, and so on must also match data from the real world.”
“When players experience the game with a steering wheel, it should be infinitely close to driving in reality.”
This approach would, on one hand, use up more research funds, and on the other hand, further discourage players.
Breaking down cars into many different parts, with each car having unique data, would create an enormous workload—much more troublesome than having all cars share a single physics collision system.
And having different damage situations depending on the type of collision could increase players’ losses.
For example, in many games, vehicles could still be driven after colliding at speeds over 100 km/h, even with a dented front end.
But in the game Pei Qian envisioned, a collision at such speed would render the car completely unusable.
“Second, the game will have a damage system that cannot be turned off. When players crash or have minor scratches in the game, they must be handled according to real-world situations.”
“Crashed cars need repairs, scratches need repainting, hitting someone else’s car requires determining liability and paying full compensation.”
“Plus, drivers inside the car will be injured after crashes, requiring hospitalization and medical expenses.”
“Finally… we can consider developing a steering wheel specifically for this game, which can be made by Outu Technology.”
After finishing, even Pei Qian thought he might have gone too far.
How was this a racing game? It was completely a driving simulator!
And it was a driving simulator that replicated all the annoying aspects of real driving.
The game had many inconveniences, identical to reality, requiring extremely careful and cautious driving.
But where was the fun factor? It couldn’t compare at all to driving in reality.
After all, real driving lets you feel the car’s vibrations and G-forces, with a much wider field of vision—a multi-dimensional experience.
But driving in this game meant staring at a screen, with most players limited to keyboard and controller inputs, resulting in a vastly inferior sense of immersion.
As troublesome as real driving but with a worse experience all around—who would play this?
Moreover, driving in reality wasn’t particularly high-threshold anymore; most families with decent economic conditions owned cars.
Many office workers were already tired enough from commuting by car. After getting home, who would continue driving in a game while following traffic rules?
What kind of mentality would it take to do such a thing? How addicted would someone have to be?
To get a better gaming experience, players would need to buy a steering wheel. But steering wheels weren’t cheap—even an entry-level one that was somewhat playable cost one or two thousand yuan, better entry models cost over three thousand, and some higher-end direct drive wheels were even more expensive.
Add in pedals, handbrakes, H-shifters, mounts, and various other accessories, and the cost increased even further.
Furthermore, steering wheels and mounts took up space and easily gathered dust. The cost wasn’t just about money, and most people had to carefully consider the purchase.
In short, Pei Qian thought this idea was excellent.
It precisely discouraged the vast majority of players!
For ordinary players, this game would require spending money on repairs after the slightest collision and following traffic rules, making it completely unfun.
For most keyboard and controller players, trying to precisely control vehicles through driving tests would be extremely difficult, with no enjoyment to speak of.
For those enthusiasts with steering wheels and other high-end equipment, the game content would be boring, no different from driving in reality—there were many professional racing games that were far more entertaining.
The only people who might be interested in this game would be those who disliked speeding but were extremely passionate about normal driving.
If such players really existed, why wouldn’t they just become ride-share drivers? They could satisfy their hobby while earning money to support their families—wouldn’t that be ideal?
Pei Qian looked around at everyone: “What do you all think?”
Everyone exchanged glances.
Obviously, most people’s first reaction was: not much!
These design principles all sounded quite contrary to common sense.
But…
Coming from Mr. Pei’s mouth, they seemed particularly convincing, as if this counter-intuitive design concealed a brilliant idea that would revolutionize traditional game design concepts.
Wang Xiaobin tentatively asked, “So… Mr. Pei, what should this game be called?”
“What name? Let me think…” Pei Qian pondered. “Let’s call it ‘Safe and Civilized Driving’!”
Wang Xiaobin: “…”
What the hell kind of name was “Safe and Civilized Driving”?!
Wasn’t that the name of the fourth subject in driver’s license exams? Was it really okay to use that as the name of a racing game?
Pei Qian was clearly very satisfied with this name.
It matched the game’s content perfectly!
This game was meant to encourage safe and civilized driving—ideally following traffic rules, driving carefully, avoiding scratches and speeding, and being a law-abiding citizen in the game.
As for the gaming experience…
Heh, the players’ experience had always been the last consideration for Pei Qian, and he always aimed to make it worse.
Seeing everyone outwardly agreeing while actually looking extremely confused and bewildered, Pei Qian knew that this brainstorming session had been a great success!
The so-called brainstorming was nothing more than gathering everyone to give him some inspiration for making money-losing games.
Pei Qian checked his watch, then stood up: “Alright, that’s it for today’s brainstorming session.”
“The results are quite significant.”
“Everyone, take some time to digest the outcomes of today’s brainstorming. As for the specific design, you can handle that yourselves.”
Pei Qian felt that he had already determined the ultimate form of this game, and there shouldn’t be any deviations.
Although he had seemingly given everyone full design autonomy, Pei Qian was very confident that everyone would follow his requirements diligently.
As long as the game was made according to his requirements, the final result should be more or less as he expected.
…
After Mr. Pei left, the people in the meeting room hadn’t fully recovered from their bewildered state.
Their confusion was mixed with a sense of admiration for Mr. Pei.
Obviously, for Mr. Pei, the brainstorming was complete because he had already conceived the final form of the game and given everyone ample hints.
But for everyone else, the brainstorming had barely begun!
Mr. Pei was truly Mr. Pei—his game design speed was simply incredible.
Taking a game from 0 to 100 in just a few dozen minutes of complete design—what other genius game developer could do that?
But for the rest of the Shangyang Games team, they still hadn’t figured out the core issues of “Safe and Civilized Driving.”
Based on the conditions Mr. Pei had provided so far, they could only reconstruct a very incomplete game.
Clearly, there were many details Mr. Pei hadn’t explicitly mentioned that would require everyone to work together to fill in.
However, for the Shangyang Games team, this wasn’t their first time doing this kind of work. After a brief period of surprise, everyone settled down, prepared to properly analyze what the complete picture of “Safe and Civilized Driving” looked like in Mr. Pei’s mind.
Ye Zhizhou very familiarly said, “Let’s follow our previous process—first identify the questionable points in Mr. Pei’s design, then analyze them slowly.”
“This is a rare opportunity, so let’s have everyone participate in identifying these questionable points.”
“Xiao Yang, let’s start with you.”