November 20th, Tuesday.
Last weekend, Pei Qian had stayed home for two days watching competitions.
Watching GOG and IOI matches back-to-back truly got him quite absorbed.
After finishing the matches and browsing through forums, it was double the joy.
So far, the IOI World Finals could be said to be going quite well, completely meeting Pei Qian’s expectations.
Although GOG had seized a huge advantage from the start, with streaming platforms giving it maximum recommendation resources and pushing IOI to various marginal positions, and offline viewing events being held with great fanfare, IOI hadn’t come unprepared.
Judging from the atmosphere at the competition venue this time, Dayark Group and Finger Company had spared no expense to save face, even more so than last time, so there wasn’t an obvious gap with GOG’s Global Invitational.
For IOI players, watching competitions was a necessity, so even though there were certain gaps between the streaming platforms and venue viewing experiences compared to GOG, they would watch anyway.
At most, casual viewers who watched both games would be more significantly affected.
Pei Qian didn’t expect IOI to rise very high either; it was enough for them to withstand GOG’s sharp offensive in the early stages.
As the finals entered the later stages, IOI should have opportunities to gain momentum.
Yesterday, Monday, Pei Qian had made a tour of the company but nothing particularly noteworthy had happened.
The work in each department was progressing steadily, and he didn’t see anything unusual in the work reports.
He had noticed the promotional video released by Home Group but hadn’t paid much attention to it.
Although he didn’t have a good impression of Home Group, they were just releasing a promotional video, which wasn’t illegal and wouldn’t create any substantial connection with Sloth Apartments or Tenda’s businesses, so let them release it.
Pei Qian now had some more urgent matters to consider, such as the arrangements for the second phase of the Suffering Journey.
After the first batch of participants returned, the Suffering Journey was temporarily in a reorganization phase. Zhu Xiaocai had already booked his return ticket and would be back within this week.
Pei Qian was satisfied. It seemed that his twelve golden orders for recall were quite effective, and he still maintained perfect control over Tenda.
Except for occasional unfavorable circumstances and misunderstandings, overall, Tenda’s heads of departments were still firmly in his grasp.
Once Zhu Xiaocai returned, all the department heads on the second batch list of the Suffering Journey would be present, with three vacancies remaining.
Once everyone was gathered, special training would begin immediately, without wasting any time.
After all, each day the current phase of the Suffering Journey was delayed meant the next phase would start a day later—time had to be squeezed out!
Now Pei Qian was considering how to fill these three vacancies, and among the list of additions, he wanted Qiao Liang and Ruan Guangjian.
Originally, Pei Qian had planned to personally speak to Qiao Liang, using his great powers of persuasion.
But on second thought, the success rate of this approach would be extremely low.
After all, the Suffering Journey had already released one promotional video, so everyone basically knew what it was about and what it entailed.
What kind of person was Qiao Liang? A veteran gaming homebody!
In terms of staying at home, he was perhaps only slightly less devoted than Bao Xu, but not by much.
For such a person, trying to persuade him to join the Suffering Journey through sheer deception would be too difficult.
There was also another unfavorable factor: the VR game “Real Estate Agent Simulator” was about to officially launch.
Other players might not know this news yet, but Qiao Liang had close relations with Slow Walker Studio, so he couldn’t possibly be unaware.
Qiao Liang would definitely want to play this game as soon as it was released and maybe make a video about it.
At this critical juncture, being offline for two months, suffering outside—Qiao Liang would 100% refuse, no matter how eloquent Pei Qian was, the possibility of persuading him would be very low.
The situation with Ruan Guangjian was relatively easier to handle, but whether the Suffering Journey could actually make Ruan Guangjian suffer was still an unknown.
So for Pei Qian, tricking Qiao Liang into coming was essential.
First, to make Qiao Liang suffer, and second, to prevent him from making videos about “Real Estate Agent Simulator,” greatly reducing the game’s chances of becoming popular.
“How can I make Qiao Liang either voluntarily join the Suffering Journey or be forced to join out of necessity?”
“Ideally, I should achieve two points: on one hand, make him feel like he would miss out if he didn’t come, and on the other hand, use his surroundings, including his fans and friends, to pressure him into coming.”
“Under what circumstances would he feel like he’d miss out if he didn’t come? The Suffering Journey itself probably wouldn’t work, so I can only give the Suffering Journey a unique label and meaning, giving those who participate in this journey a unique identity…”
“Got it!”
After many days of hard thinking, Pei Qian finally came up with an effective method.
He immediately called Yu Fei over.
“Set up a lucky draw activity right away.”
“The scope of the lucky draw will be all Tenda game players. Anyone who has registered a Tenda account and logged into a Tenda game recently will have a chance to participate.”
“For Tenda accounts with verified status, set different weights based on their contributions to Tenda games; for those without verified status, set different weights based on playing time, contribution level, and other factors.”
“Draw according to these weights until Qiao Liang and Ruan Guangjian are drawn, and round up the total number drawn.”
“Then rank these accounts according to their contribution to Tenda games, with those ranking higher getting priority to participate in the Suffering Journey.”
“Then tell Bao Xu to announce the next stage of the Suffering Journey’s plan.”
“Starting from the third phase, the Suffering Journey will accept free registration from outside personnel, with fee standards to be determined by Bao Xu.”
“After incorporating outside personnel, the maximum capacity for the Suffering Journey will increase to 20 people, configured as: 5 Tenda internal employees, 5 lucky players from the draw, and 10 outside registrants.”
“Among them, Tenda internal employees and lucky players will be completely free of charge.”
“Outside registrants will pay their own expenses and must go through screening. Those who don’t meet the conditions will be rejected.”
“Internal employees, lucky players, and outside registrants will be in three different queues, lined up separately. When it’s your turn, you can participate. Add a schedule function that can be checked at any time, allowing everyone to roughly know which specific phase they’ll be in, facilitating schedule planning and arrangements.”
This was the method Pei Qian had come up with to arrange for Qiao Laoshi.
If he approached him directly, Qiao Liang would definitely see it as a trap and refuse on the spot.
The key was that the Suffering Journey itself had no appeal whatsoever. How could it possibly make Qiao Liang give up the opportunity to play “Real Estate Agent Simulator” at launch and instead go eat dirt in the mountains?
So, set up a lucky draw, package it nicely.
Although theoretically the scope of the lucky draw included all Tenda players, making the probability of drawing Qiao Laoshi very low, the rules could be slightly modified.
Tenda accounts with verified status—both Qiao Liang and Ruan Guangjian had verified status, and given their identities, they had both made huge contributions to Tenda games, so their weights would surely be sky-high.
Because of these weights, it would be very easy to draw them during the lucky draw process.
The number of Tenda players, not counting overseas players, just GOG alone had already broken ten million users domestically, and this didn’t include other single-player games with sales often in the hundreds of thousands.
And drawing from this group of people, even if 10,000 people were drawn, that would still be one in a thousand or even one in ten thousand.
So, this gave the people drawn in this lucky draw two labels simultaneously.
Ultimate veteran Tenda players, and also destined lucky individuals!
At that time, those who were drawn would either be the luckiest of the lucky, or those who had made great contributions to the development of Tenda games. Either way, this kind of rarity after being drawn would be enough to brag about in one’s social circle for a year.
For Qiao Liang, who had always valued his hardcore player identity, if he were drawn, he would definitely be thrilled.
Moreover, the results of this lucky draw would be publicly announced, so all of Qiao Liang’s fans would see that he had been selected.
At that point, even if Qiao Liang didn’t want to go, his fans absolutely wouldn’t agree. They would tie him up and drag him there if necessary.
Who wouldn’t want to see Qiao Laoshi suffer?
Having done this much, was there still any need to worry about Qiao Liang not coming?
This was an open stratagem. Although Qiao Liang might sense something was off, he would have no choice!
The same logic applied to Ruan Guangjian.
The only regret was that tricking Li Shi into coming would be nearly impossible, because Mr. Li didn’t play Tenda games much, so drawing him in the lucky draw was completely unrealistic.
If they manipulated the draw, it would be too obvious, so they could only reluctantly give up.
The third spot would be left for a fortunate lucky player!
After all, whoever could be drawn and ranked so high in the sorting would definitely be worthy of being noted in Pei Qian’s little book.
The meaning of rounding up the drawn number was that if Qiao Liang and Ruan Guangjian were drawn on the 1,500th draw, then round up to 2,000 and draw 2,000 spots.
This would make it more natural and wouldn’t make Qiao Liang suspect that it was actually targeting him.
These lucky players would of course also be free of charge. The system hadn’t warned against this because it could be seen as a way of giving back to Tenda game players.
After all, those who were drawn had either contributed a lot of buzz to Tenda games or contributed a lot of money, and the probability of being drawn was so low, giving them this small benefit as a reward was reasonable.
The remaining 10 outside registrants would need to pay, and the fee wouldn’t be low. This would ensure that the Suffering Journey had a profitable channel, meeting the system’s requirements.
With the official announcement of this lucky draw activity, the Suffering Journey would inevitably have to open for outside registration, and the price would definitely have to be determined.
Once the high price was announced, most likely no one would register.
Who would pay money to suffer for no reason?
But there might be some people who had a momentary lapse in judgment and registered, which should be enough to gather a few dozen people.
So Pei Qian had already instructed Bao Xu to clearly write the relevant rules on the website, and to make the schedule always available for inquiry. Even if the Suffering Journey was meant to lose money, these necessary steps couldn’t be skipped.