On June 21st, the documentary “Breaking the Cocoon, Becoming a Butterfly,” filmed by Fei Huang Studio, was officially released on the AiLiDao website!

As a documentary, “Breaking the Cocoon, Becoming a Butterfly” didn’t include any embedded advertisements, nor did it secure any special revenue-sharing agreements with any websites.

If calculated according to AiLiDao’s standard incentive plan, even with over a million views, the revenue would amount to just a few thousand yuan, merely a drop in the bucket.

Therefore, Huang Sibo and Zhu Xiaocai had pretty much abandoned this hope, considering it a labor of love.

Since Fei Huang Studio had previously released the “Mr. Pei’s Daily Life” series of short videos and already accumulated a large fan base, this documentary immediately garnered widespread attention upon release!

In the video, Li Zhengwei faced the camera and eloquently shared his journey over the years.

“After my father left, I kicked the door open, went to Magic City alone, and began my professional career.”

“Looking back now, I don’t regret this choice. I feel I was born for esports. If I had followed the conventional path of finding a job, getting married, and having children, I would probably have spent my entire life in regret.”

“I’m not like those second-generation rich kids born with silver spoons in their mouths. My luck wasn’t good—I was born into a poor, destitute family. But from another perspective, my luck wasn’t bad either. I chose a career I loved and made a name for myself.”

“But I don’t recommend children follow my path.”

“After I became famous as a professional player, many people asked me about pursuing a professional career.”

“My answer is always the same:”

“If you’ve truly decided, then you wouldn’t be asking me this question. You would, like me back then, simply kick the door and leave, and forever firmly believe that this is my dream, for which I will strive all my life.”

“If you need my advice to make up your mind, then my advice is to first clarify one thing: Are you afraid of studying and trying to escape, or do you truly understand the price you’ll pay to become a professional player?”

…

Soon, the video’s comment section was filled with messages from players.

“First comment!”

“I was wondering why Fei Huang Studio stopped making ‘Mr. Pei’s Daily Life,’ turns out they were preparing something big!”

“This documentary looks high-end, big production!”

“A documentary about my favorite professional player, must support!”

“Never thought a professional player’s life would be so tough… kicking the door to become a pro is too harsh. Fortunately, his parents recognized him after his success.”

“Every word from Brother Li is particularly sincere.”

“This documentary is really meaningful. I have a younger brother who performs poorly in school, skips classes to play games, and keeps talking about becoming a pro. I think Brother Li is right—he’s not truly passionate and hasn’t considered whether he has the talent, he’s just trying to escape.”

“Yes, this documentary isn’t just promoting passion, struggle, and esports spirit—those themes have been overdone and might mislead young people. What’s valuable about this documentary is that it also shows the hardships and sorrows of this industry, especially making us aware of so many professional players who didn’t make it. It’s very objective.”

“Never thought Fei Huang Studio would produce such realistic and meaningful content, support!”

The player comments below the video were overwhelmingly positive!

“Breaking the Cocoon, Becoming a Butterfly” quickly entered the trending list in the gaming section, then reached AiLiDao’s homepage, maintaining high popularity!

…

…

June 23rd.

In Slackin’ Internet Café, Pei Qian closed the documentary video on his phone, took a sip of coffee, and temporarily set aside his worries.

“Phew… finally things went normally for once.”

“It didn’t make money, that’s incredible!”

“Breaking the Cocoon, Becoming a Butterfly” had been released for three days, and during these three days, Pei Qian had been extremely anxious.

He was terrified that Huang Sibo would suddenly call out of nowhere, saying: “Mr. Pei, the documentary made money again!”

Fortunately, such a scenario didn’t occur.

Pei Qian confirmed repeatedly that although “Breaking the Cocoon, Becoming a Butterfly” had achieved nearly 2 million views in three days, ranking among the top three on the site’s charts, it indeed hadn’t generated much revenue.

If calculated according to the incentive plan, the video would ultimately bring in only a few thousand yuan—a drop in the bucket.

This completely matched Pei Qian’s previous estimate.

“Not bad, gained more valuable experience about generating losses.”

“Facts prove that making unprofitable documentaries is indeed a good choice.”

“Feels like I can continue investing money in Fei Huang Studio.”

Pei Qian suddenly realized that after Slackin’ Internet Café, he seemed to have found another excellent way to lose money.

That is, making films that receive critical acclaim but don’t sell well!

After so many failures, Pei Qian had realized that generating losses wasn’t as simple as he had imagined.

The system had many limiting requirements to prevent Pei Qian from deliberately creating losses. For instance, the system stipulated that products couldn’t be shoddy or substandard, and games must have profit points, and so on.

In other words, the products Pei Qian launched had to be high-quality and couldn’t be intentionally ruined.

But now Pei Qian realized something: in the system’s judgment rules, “high-quality” clearly didn’t just mean profitable, but also included reputation!

For documentaries like “Breaking the Cocoon, Becoming a Butterfly,” the possibility of recouping costs was extremely low to begin with, but the system didn’t prevent it.

Including when Pei Qian opened Slackin’ Internet Café, the possibility of loss was high, yet the system didn’t prevent it either.

This indicated that in the system’s judgment, “reputation” was also an important metric. As long as a product could garner enough positive reputation, the system would still recognize it and wouldn’t consider Pei Qian to be deliberately generating losses.

Pei Qian had vaguely sensed this point before but hadn’t explored it deeply, mainly because games and films had different profit models.

In the gaming field, building a good reputation often meant high sales. With the system’s mandatory requirement to include profit points, the possibility of critically acclaimed games losing money was extremely small.

Historically, there have been games that received critical acclaim but didn’t sell well, but compared to films, there were far fewer.

But videos were different. No matter how good the reputation or how high the viewership, they might still fail to monetize, like this documentary.

“So, I just need to keep having Fei Huang Studio make these critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful films, and I can steadily generate losses!”

Pei Qian instantly found the future direction for Fei Huang Studio.

The next time he saw Huang Sibo and Zhu Xiaocai, he would find a way to persuade them to continue down the documentary path with no return, creating another stable channel for losses—perfect!

However, Huang Sibo and his team probably wouldn’t film esports themes next time, and what they would film remained to be discussed.

With just one week left until settlement, there couldn’t be any more unreleased products.

In other words, Pei Qian couldn’t do much now except spend money aggressively while praying things wouldn’t change.

Pei Qian checked the system funds, which were currently in a loss state.

“Everything that needed to be done is mostly done. The question now is how to maintain this lost state.”