Morning.
“Achoo!”
In the office, Pei Qian, sitting in the air-conditioned room, sneezed unexpectedly.
“Strange, is the air conditioning too cold?”
Pei Qian wrapped his small blanket a bit tighter around himself, turned off the TV drama, and planned to take a nap in his executive chair.
A knock came from outside the door. It was Lü Mingliang.
“Mr. Pei, I have a few matters to report to you.”
Pei Qian nodded: “Go ahead.”
Seeing Pei Qian wrapped in a blanket, looking like he was about to sleep, Lü Mingliang couldn’t help but feel moved.
Mr. Pei seemed unwell and could have gone home to rest, yet he still insisted on staying at his post to work with them!
Indeed, no matter how successful one becomes, one must maintain the spirit of perseverance!
Afraid of delaying Mr. Pei’s rest, Lü Mingliang hurriedly reported.
“First, about the new version.”
Currently, the new version development is proceeding smoothly. However, somehow the news about ‘Sea Fortress’ limiting the new epic weapons has spread, and players are strongly protesting.”
“Mr. Pei, what do you think? Should we relax the weapon quantity limit a bit? For example… five thousand?”
Pei Qian shook his head resolutely: “No.”
Five thousand?
You must be joking!
Do you know how much 5,000 × 888 is? Can you do math?
Pei Qian said with a serious face: “Limited means limited. If they become as common as cabbage, how can we call it a limited sale?”
“Regardless of how they protest, 500 is 500. If we sell one more, count me as defeated.”
Seeing Mr. Pei’s firm attitude, Lü Mingliang had no choice but to nod: “Yes, Mr. Pei.”
“Secondly, about Ma Yiqun’s work situation.”
“He has approached me several times, strongly hoping to participate in the new version’s development.”
“I thought about it, and the text content for the new versions of ‘Ghost General’ and ‘Game Producer’ does require a professional like him.”
“How about letting him try to practice his skills?”
Pei Qian didn’t answer immediately.
He couldn’t find a good reason to refuse.
But if he didn’t refuse, Pei Qian was extremely unwilling to let Ma Yiqun work on these texts.
Ma Yiqun had excellent writing skills. The previous packaging copy he did for Shang Yang Games was all very impressive. If he were to enhance ‘Ghost General’ and ‘Game Producer,’ the consequences would be extremely serious!
But how to refuse?
Ma Yiqun joined the company in March, and it has been two months already. Making him continue learning seemed somewhat unreasonable.
If Ma Yiqun wasn’t assigned to write game content, he still needed to be given other tasks.
Send him to Huang Sibo for short video production? That wouldn’t work; his writing skills might also be effective in short videos.
Send him to the Slacking Internet Café? That would be good, but without a proper reason, it would seem inappropriate.
After thinking for a moment, Pei Qian couldn’t come up with a good solution, so he reluctantly nodded: “Fine, he should have learned enough by now. Let him take on some basic responsibilities.”
Pei Qian spoke with obvious reluctance.
Lü Mingliang quickly nodded: “Yes, Mr. Pei. Please continue resting, I’ll go take care of things.”
Pei Qian leaned back in his chair and wrapped the small blanket tighter around himself, feeling restless, unable to sleep despite wanting to.
“Strange, where is this sense of crisis coming from?”
“Could it be Shang Yang Games?”
Pei Qian quickly ran through the various projects in his mind.
On Tenda’s side, the new version would likely be profitable, but it should still be within controllable limits, nothing major.
At Fei Huang Studio, they said they were filming a documentary, but there was no sign of it yet.
Slacking Internet Café was a traditional advantageous project—two new stores had just completed renovation and were preparing to open, while he had visited the flagship store over a week ago and hadn’t detected any hidden risks.
After thinking about it, Shang Yang Games carried the highest risk!
Pei Qian had asked them to remove all but one monetization point from the two games, which was indeed a risky move.
Cutting monetization points would improve game reputation—that was certain.
But reputation and revenue were two different matters.
Games like “Hot-Blooded Battle Song” had terrible graphics and mediocre gameplay. Its only advantage was that wealthy players could kill others after spending money. In other words, the game’s core advantage was “selling hatred.”
If you killed me, and I had money, I would immediately recharge to kill you back—this was the core advantage of similar games.
It was precisely because this game “sold hatred” and provoked negative emotions in players that people still played it despite its terrible graphics and poor gameplay.
If Pei Qian hadn’t changed anything, the game might still have experienced a revival, and the possibility wasn’t small.
As long as Ye Zhizhou managed some promotions or a plan to bring back old players, restoring the game to its original profitability level, Pei Qian’s loss-making plan would fail.
Therefore, Pei Qian directly cut the game’s monetization points.
“Hot-Blooded Battle Song” had no advantages over other games in terms of either graphics or gameplay, so attracting new players was a pipe dream.
Even if it became fair and its reputation improved, so what?
As long as it didn’t make money, that was fine.
Of course, what if the game’s booming reputation attracted a large number of new players, and with such a large player base, pushed up profitability?
This possibility couldn’t be completely ruled out, but it was very small.
After thinking it through, it seemed that only Shang Yang Games posed a risk, so Pei Qian decided to focus on monitoring it.
First, he checked the official forum of “Hot-Blooded Battle Song.”
Indeed, it seemed that activity had increased, the reputation had turned around, and some old players had returned.
However, Pei Qian didn’t panic and immediately messaged Ye Zhizhou: “Send me the backend recharge data for ‘Hot-Blooded Battle Song’.”
A few minutes later, Ye Zhizhou sent a screenshot.
This was the backend recharge data for “Hot-Blooded Battle Song.” With a glance, Pei Qian saw that the average payment rate per player had indeed increased, and by quite a bit, but the total recharge amount had decreased significantly, dropping by 70-80%!
Based on this estimate, the monthly revenue of “Hot-Blooded Battle Song” might not even reach 100,000 yuan.
No need to panic—everything was still according to plan!
For a game to survive, profitability was most important, which was why so many companies pushed recharge consumption activities despite player criticism, all to achieve the goal of profitability.
If a game constantly operated at a loss, what good was a positive reputation?
The modified “Hot-Blooded Battle Song” was indeed more player-friendly, but the key was what you compared it to!
Compared to pay-to-win games, wealthy players had no satisfaction points here, and revenue was streets behind;
Compared to other player-friendly games, like “Fantasy World,” “Hot-Blooded Battle Song” had terrible graphics and average gameplay, making it completely uncompetitive.
This was called failing on both fronts.
“Good, keep it up.”
After replying to Ye Zhizhou, Pei Qian relaxed, wrapped himself in the blanket, and went to sleep contentedly.
In a couple more days, two new stores would open, and he would need to inspect them then to be at ease.
…
Shang Yang Games.
Looking at Mr. Pei’s message, Ye Zhizhou felt an inexplicable warmth in his heart.
Despite being busy with countless affairs, Mr. Pei still paid attention to the Shang Yang Games!
Although our game’s revenue had plummeted, this was obviously within Mr. Pei’s plan, which was why Mr. Pei told us to keep it up!
This meant our direction was correct!
Ye Zhizhou instantly felt full of motivation.
Indeed, was this the qualitative change a good boss brings to a company?
…
…
May 20th.
Two branch stores of Slacking Internet Café officially opened!
Pei Qian, Ma Yang, and Zhang Yuan, the management of Slacking Internet Café, naturally had to attend the celebration.
However, the situation at the scene was slightly awkward.
It was too quiet!
Even quieter than when the flagship store of Slacking Internet Café had opened.
The key issue was that the locations of these two branch stores were worse than the flagship store, and Pei Qian had repeatedly emphasized that there should be absolutely no gimmicks during the opening—no firecrackers, no flyers, as low-profile as possible.
Opening quietly in such a remote location naturally made it very quiet.
Pei Qian was quite comfortable, drinking coffee in the empty café area, looking outside and fully enjoying the gentle sunlight.
The two store managers were a bit embarrassed, but since they had been transferred from the flagship store, they had seen such scenes many times and knew Mr. Pei wouldn’t blame them, so they weren’t worried.
In contrast, the newly recruited servers, who had never seen such a strange scene, felt awkward, not knowing what to do with themselves, feeling that this store was strange in every way.
In a corner of the internet café, Ma Yang and Zhang Yuan whispered to each other.
“Why did you stop me?” Ma Yang asked with a puzzled face.
Earlier, Ma Yang felt the atmosphere was too cold and morale was low, so he wanted to share the recent good news about Slacking Internet Café with Pei Qian.
Under Chen Lei’s energetic performances, the café’s drink sales were increasing daily, and customer flow had significantly improved!
Ma Yang thought this model could be promoted across all Slacking Internet Cafés.
But before he could speak, Zhang Yuan stopped him.
Zhang Yuan knew what he wanted to say and whispered, “Ma Bro, it’s not that I don’t want you to tell him, but the timing isn’t right. It’s too rash.”
Ma Yang was surprised: “Huh? Why?”
“Ma Bro, our drink sales have only increased slightly. Estimating roughly, we can only earn an extra twenty to thirty thousand per month, which is still a huge gap compared to the internet café’s monthly loss of three hundred thousand!”
“Such a tiny achievement doesn’t sound impressive at all!”
“If you brag about it, and Mr. Pei asks, ‘Good job, so how much money did you make?’ and you reply, ‘We’re still losing money,’ how disappointing would that be!”
“It’s better not to say anything than to raise Mr. Pei’s expectations only to disappoint him.”
“In my opinion, we should wait until we turn losses into profits before telling Mr. Pei, giving him a surprise. This way, our position and that of Slacking Internet Café in Mr. Pei’s heart will be higher, and we’ll have more confidence!”
“Ma Bro, don’t you think that makes sense?”
Ma Yang thought about it and realized it did make sense.
They were still far from turning losses into profits. Telling Pei Qian about this good news now seemed pointless and made him look like he was seeking credit, bragging about a small achievement.
It was indeed inappropriate.
Ma Yang nodded: “Yes, that makes sense. We’ll talk about this later. When the Slacking Internet Café flagship store truly turns losses into profits, we’ll give Brother Qian a surprise!”