Chapter 190: What Kind of New Game to Make
Pei Qian opened the file.
Hmm, over twenty applicants, both male and female—with a slightly higher number of women, likely because it was a liberal arts major.
Most of the resumes were extremely plain—hardly any awards or recognitions, and not many listed special skills either.
As for appearances… to put it politely, they were all very average.
But that was to be expected. If they were attractive girls, even without much ability, some company would've surely hired them for an administrative role as a decorative "flower vase."
The ones still left by July usually shared a few key traits:
Poor academic performance, so no chance of getting into graduate school.
No family connections or background, so they couldn't pull strings to get a job.
No experience in student leadership or part-time work, so they had no way to find employment on their own.
In short, they were perfect.
Yep, this time he might've actually received a batch of genuine slackers.
Pei Qian was very satisfied. After flipping through their files casually, he made up his mind to hire them all.
Like the saying goes—there's no such thing as trash, only misplaced resources.
And to him, these people were exactly that—misplaced resources.
'But now, I need to think about what work to assign them.'
He thought for a moment about the job positions he currently had available.
Put them in the game development department?
Not a good idea.
That department was already running smoothly. Even if these people only ended up doing menial tasks, their incompetence wouldn't be enough to wreck a project.
And he couldn't just parachute them into management roles either—that would be too suspicious.
Assign them to the Moyu Internet Café?
No good either.
Those roles were mostly physical labor—waiters, delivery drivers, that sort of thing. These people were still his fellow alumni, and it wouldn't sound great to have them wiping tables. Not to mention, anyone could do those jobs; it wouldn't make full use of their unique value.
'How about setting up a brand new company just for them?'
A lightbulb went off in his head. That's it!
Start a new company, dump them all in, and let them shine in their own… chaotic way. Perfect!
Of course, the boss of this new company had to be someone trustworthy.
On one hand, the boss couldn't be the type to pull shady tricks or dodge taxes—these students were his seniors, yes, but ultimately still strangers. He couldn't fully trust them.
On the other hand, directly putting them in management would raise questions—people would suspect something was off.
So, he would first pick a lucky guy from within his own company, let him start a new business, assign some staff for finance, HR, admin, and then bring in all these jobless students. That way, everything looked above board.
Then the new company could start operating normally… and start losing money. Everything would go just perfectly.
Pei Qian thought it over for about two minutes—and already had someone in mind.
Wasn't there still one lingering "problem" he hadn't solved yet?
Now was the perfect time to take care of it too!
That guy Ma Yiqun—he was still writing scripts and storylines at Tengda Games.
Pei Qian had only hired him in the first place to act as a sort of "bad luck charm," to balance out his own good fortune.
But leaving Ma Yiqun idle all this time seemed too forced, which was why he had reluctantly assigned him to the game story department.
In the end, Ma Yiqun had taken the scripts and beautified them, polishing the wording and giving several games a big boost in narrative quality.
That kind of person definitely had to be transferred out!
And now, the opportunity has finally come.
As for what to have him do...
He already had a plan in mind.
Start an online web novel platform!
First, it was Ma Yiqun's dream—and supporting employees' dreams had always been one of President Pei's core values.
Second, Ma Yiqun had failed miserably at writing books multiple times, which proved he had zero talent in this field. Putting him in charge of such a company? Pei Qian had no concerns at all.
Third, the web novel industry was actually pretty easy to lose money in.
There was already a very well-developed platform in this world called Infinite Chinese Web, which had grown into a massive site. Several investment groups had tried to enter the space, but only a handful had succeeded—most ended up crashing and burning.
And now, he was entering the field purely for fun. Toss in some funds, hire a team of editors and authors, and under Ma Yiqun's leadership... guaranteed to lose money!
Come to think of it, he should've launched a web novel site a long time ago.
As for how much money it'd take? That varied wildly. You could operate with one million, or you could burn through a hundred million.
If you were poaching star writers, buying exclusive rights for top novels, building distribution networks, and managing IP licensing, then yes, it would cost a fortune.
But if you were just creating a small, basic website—hiring a few editors, buying up some failed manuscripts for cheap, giving out a symbolic full-attendance bonus, and renting cloud servers and a domain—then you could get the whole thing running with just about a million or so.
Pei Qian decided he'd first give Ma Yiqun around 1.2 million to "play around with." If things really started bleeding money, then he could increase the investment later.
...
That afternoon, Pei Qian arrived at the company.
First order of business: arrange tasks for the game development department.
After the last DLC release, the game team had been coasting for a while. Now that a new cycle had begun, he had to get everyone moving again.
After all, the system had strict rules—no slacking off, and no long gaps between product releases.
Everyone was already eagerly awaiting the announcement of the next game project.
But this time, he didn't call everyone to a meeting. There were just too many employees now—the meeting room couldn't hold them all.
He only called Lu Mingliang, Bao Xu, and a few other core members from various departments.
As usual, he planned to lay out his general concept and nail down the game's direction. As for the specific details? He'd let them handle it however they liked.
Mainly because... even if he wanted to set the details, he simply didn't have the ability to.
Before long, everyone had arrived.
Lin Wan was there, notebook in hand, ready to take detailed notes.
Ma Yiqun was there too. He didn't bring a notebook, but he was paying very close attention.
Pei Qian silently thought to himself:
'As soon as this meeting ends—I'm transferring both of you!'
As for what kind of game to make this time, he had thought it over for quite a while and now had a rough plan in mind.
Based on his past experiences, mistakes that had been made once must not be repeated.
Due to the system's restrictions, he couldn't just make a trash game and sell it at a high price to scam people. While pricing could fluctuate within a certain range, overall, the cost still had to roughly match the investment.
Also, thanks to the massive success of his earlier titles, Tengda's new games were now under intense scrutiny from gamers.
This meant any new game was likely to be hyped before it was even finished. There was no longer any hope of quietly releasing a title with no promotion—like Lonely Desert Road or Ghost General—and having it go unnoticed.
So the only way now… was to make a niche, word-of-mouth game. Something with a huge investment, but so obscure or unappealing that, even with awareness, most players wouldn't buy it or even want to play it!
And he knew plenty of games like that.
Souls-like games such as Dark Souls or Bloodborne, or certain ultra-difficult 2D side-scrollers, fell into this category.
He quickly ruled out side-scrollers—mainly because the investment needed was too low, and even if it failed, it wouldn't lose much money.
If he was going to do it, he had to go big. Throw in tons of money, especially into high-end art and visual resources.
Of course, Pei Qian was well aware that Souls games were wildly successful. Their sales were massive—they definitely weren't the kind of games you'd lose money on.
But success depended on many factors. You had to consider the whole picture.
Every genre of game has both hits and flops—the real difference lies in the execution.
Plenty of companies had tried to copy the Souls formula. But how many of them actually succeeded?
Almost none. They all crashed and burned. It just proved that only Miyazaki could really pull it off.
Pei Qian certainly didn't see himself as having that kind of talent.
Besides, even if he wanted to perfectly replicate the Souls series, he simply didn't have the money.
After adding up the system's initial 8 million, plus income from a few games and some miscellaneous revenue, and subtracting various expenses…
Pei Qian calculated that he could scrape together at most around 20 million yuan for this new game.
That kind of budget wasn't nearly enough to make a proper AAA game.
He did have enough people—after all, Metro 2033 was made by just 30 developers, and he currently had 60 to 70 developers on hand, with plans to recruit more.
But even so, with only four months of total development time, the manpower would still be stretched thin. The game's content would have to be tightly compressed.
In other words, it could only be a miniaturized version—with significantly reduced scope and content.
Which only increased the chances of failure!