Zhang Wang was stunned: “Mr. Pei, there’s no need for a production cost of 400 yuan, and it would be difficult to increase the cost that much anyway…”

Pei Qian frowned: “Difficult to increase? How could that be impossible?”

“Make the box a bit larger, find a famous artist to design the appearance, add some gold trim, improve the texture quality of the materials…”

“When you made the shared phone booths, weren’t you quite willing to spend money? Why are you becoming more frugal now?”

Zhang Wang felt quite ashamed after Mr. Pei’s criticism: “Alright, Mr. Pei, I’ll do as you say.”

He Desheng’s expression became extremely interesting.

He had initially thought Mr. Pei wouldn’t approve of this project, yet Mr. Pei not only quadrupled the investment but also raised the selling price from 260 to 488 yuan!

From any perspective, this thing wasn’t worth that much money!

He Desheng felt that this item was at most a little trinket for when you’re bored. If it sold for forty or fifty yuan, perhaps some people would buy it to play with at home.

But selling for 488 yuan…

Who would buy it?

Although its design was unique, it wasn’t particularly attractive, nor was it particularly entertaining. Apart from people with strange thought processes like Chairman Ma, who would be idle enough to argue with it for hours?

Even if there were some bored rich people in the world, it would still be impossible to sell twenty thousand units!

If they couldn’t sell after mass production and everything piled up in the warehouse, wouldn’t that be a pure loss?

He Desheng, initially wanted to say something, but then thought again—since Mr. Pei had spoken, he must have a plan.

So, it was better not to speak up, but to watch and learn.

Pei Qian patted Zhang Wang’s shoulder, his admiration evident on his face.

Fantastic!

It seemed that the previous shared phone booth was just a misunderstanding. This great inventor Zhang Wang was still very trustworthy!

If there were ten more unsellable inventions like this, Mr. Pei could easily lose 80 million yuan while also occupying warehouse space. It was too comfortable!

…

…

May 13th, Friday.

Tenda Games Department.

Hu Xianbin downed the last of his coffee and continued working with his head down.

Now, Tenda’s games department was divided into two teams. Hu Xianbin led one group developing “Struggle,” while Min Jingchao led another group operating GOG, engaging in a battle of wits with IOI.

The atmosphere between the two sides had developed obvious differences.

On Min Jingchao’s side, they enthusiastically discussed various heroes every day, creating a very lively atmosphere. On Hu Xianbin’s side, everyone was gloomy.

Mainly because the development difficulty of “Struggle” was already very high, and during the development process, they felt like various old wounds were being reopened, causing serious psychological damage. The atmosphere couldn’t be lively.

Hu Xianbin was still refining the game script, which wasn’t completely finalized yet. However, all the character concept art had been completed.

Undeniably, Master Ruan’s efficiency was fast.

Hu Xianbin saved the document and then opened the image collection that Ruan Guangjian had sent over a few minutes ago.

However, as he looked through them one by one, he became increasingly confused.

These game characters included the poor protagonist, rich protagonist, poor parents, rich parents, poor boss, rich boss, and so on—a large assortment.

Because they had chosen actors first and then created the concept art, according to the original plan, they should have just made minor beautifications and modifications based on the actors’ appearances.

However, the batch of concept art now delivered to Hu Xianbin had a sense of excessive force.

All these characters had been expressed in more exaggerated, more extreme ways, and some characters were drawn quite bizarrely.

For example, the poor family was all excessively obese, especially the mother of the poor family, whose body type seemed to be almost 300 jin.

The motion capture actors obviously weren’t that fat, so when doing motion capture, they might need some special methods to simulate this excessive obesity.

Additionally, the rich protagonist was handsome to an excessive degree, completely like a top-tier Western celebrity, looking bright and polished all over.

The poor protagonist not only had an ordinary appearance, but his expression showed obvious fawning and seemed to hide a hint of resentment.

These two expressions were forcibly combined on the poor protagonist’s face, expressed so clearly that it instinctively created a sense of discomfort.

In other words, Ruan Guangjian had almost explicitly written the deep characteristics of these characters on their faces.

After receiving this batch of concept art, Hu Xianbin’s first feeling was that it was inappropriate.

He was puzzled—how could Master Ruan Guangjian make such a basic mistake?

But Ruan Guangjian said that this was all at Mr. Pei’s request.

So Hu Xianbin immediately began to ponder if there was some deeper meaning here.

“The disadvantage should be that it reduces the game’s sense of realism.”

“The advantages… more bizarre art style and characters would highlight character traits and deepen players’ impressions?”

“Stylized images can serve as a symbolic function, making it easier to emphasize the theme?”

“Anything else… I can’t think of anything more.”

Hu Xianbin tried hard to interpret, and although he came up with some insights, he didn’t find them particularly convincing.

Considering that the development task for “Struggle” was heavy and there wasn’t much time for overly in-depth interpretation, Hu Xianbin had to let it go for now.

After all, when the game was released, everything would become clear.

He checked all the concept art and prepared to hand it over to an outsourcer for model creation. At the same time, they could also arrange for motion capture actors to begin performing motion capture.

After briefly arranging his upcoming work, Hu Xianbin once again focused all his energy on the game script.

While writing the script, Hu Xianbin encountered a very serious problem that had been troubling him for two days.

Strangely enough, he had encountered a numerical problem in this game.

Logically, this game shouldn’t have numerical problems, but one mysteriously appeared.

The rich version was going smoothly; the problem was with the poor version.

According to Mr. Pei’s requirements, the poor version had only one ending: letting the cycle of poverty continue forever.

Originally, Hu Xianbin hadn’t felt there was any problem. This was very logical. But the issue was that the game needed to account for the wealth obtained by both the rich and poor protagonists.

How much money the poor had, how much they needed to maintain basic living, how much salary they could earn after work—all of these needed approximate numbers, otherwise players would definitely pick at flaws.

If at a critical juncture, the plot arrangement was that the poor didn’t have enough money, leading to the vicious cycle ending, then they needed to find a way to ensure that the poor players truly didn’t have enough money.

But no matter how Hu Xianbin calculated, theoretically, the poor protagonist had more money than imagined and shouldn’t end up with such a miserable outcome.

In the poor route, players also had to make many choices, some with high income and some with low income. But even if they completely chose the high-income options, the result was still that cycle of poverty.

But looking at the data, after choosing all the correct options, the poor should be much wealthier than their parents and have a much happier life.

The ending couldn’t be changed because Mr. Pei had already decreed it.

Thus, a contradiction arose: proceeding this way, the game’s plausibility would be lost.

For a plot-focused game, if the game’s plausibility collapsed, everything would fall apart—both reputation and sales would plummet.

So, Hu Xianbin faced this as a grave threat, feeling that he must solve this problem to be at ease.

After thinking for a while, he still had no clue.

Hu Xianbin opened the character concept art again, browsing aimlessly, wondering if he could find some inspiration from it.

The rich protagonist, dressed in a suit, looked bright and polished—an upper-class person with no life worries. The special golden mark on the suit’s wrist was very eye-catching, obviously a luxury brand.

Two pure gold capital Ls joined together in a center-symmetrical way, artistically exaggerated, looking very designerly.

Hu Xianbin didn’t pay attention and continued browsing, coming to the concept art of the poor person after starting work.

The working poor person had a black briefcase tucked under their arm. Upon careful observation, you could see a logo faintly visible on the briefcase, as well as two pure gold capital Ls.

Hu Xianbin seemed to catch something and flipped backward to look at the shoes worn by the poor person in college.

The shoes also had this logo.

Hu Xianbin continued flipping forward and found that in almost 60-70% of all the concept art, people’s clothing had this logo.

All the rich had it, while among the poor, only those with relatively good economic conditions had this logo.

This was reasonable, after all, such luxury brands would be unaffordable for low-income people.

Hu Xianbin could roughly guess Master Ruan Guangjian’s thinking during creation.

These motion capture actors wore daily clothes when photographed, and the clothing in the concept art was redesigned by Master Ruan based on these characters’ wealth levels.

To highlight the characteristics of the rich, some luxury brands were needed.

So, Ruan Guangjian had created a fictional brand based on existing luxury goods as decoration for these characters in the concept art.

As for why there was only one brand, obviously because drawing multiple brands had no meaning.

Players’ memory is limited when playing games. If there were two brands, players might not remember and would get confused.

So, following the principle of simplicity and practicality, just one brand of clothing in the game was enough: clothing with the two golden L letter logo was a luxury brand, while others without logos were cheap off-brands.

This was a normal, natural design. When drawing, Ruan Guangjian probably hadn’t considered too much.

But looking at these images, Hu Xianbin suddenly caught a spark of inspiration.

His original intention was to find a reasonable explanation for the poor spending all their money.

According to Hu Xianbin’s previous calculations, if they only purchased necessities and affordable products, and made most of the right choices in the game, the poor person’s salary would allow them to save money and improve their life.

But to achieve the cycle of poverty ending decreed by Mr. Pei, the poor must be forced to spend all this money.

Now, there was a plausible explanation.

It was these luxury bags, shoes, clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, and so on.

After buying these things, naturally, their salary wouldn’t be enough!

Hu Xianbin let out a long breath, finally patching the plot hole in the game.

Now there shouldn’t be any players picking at flaws, right?

Hu Xianbin added these luxury goods expenses and found that the previously estimated wealth of the poor immediately became insufficient—not only was there nothing left, but they were in debt.

“Great, perfect solution!” Hu Xianbin excitedly clapped his hands together.

Although this handling method seemed somewhat hasty, the game’s plausibility was successfully resolved.

He didn’t think too much about it; after all, this wasn’t the core content of the game, just a detail showing the lives of the poor and rich.

Most players probably wouldn’t even notice these details.