Chapter 109 Self-Comprehension

While the interview at Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd. was underway...

Yuemeng Ventures.

President Ma was still absent today.

Although President Ma's whereabouts were always erratic, and the company indeed lacked funds for new investment projects recently, the fact that President Ma wasn't present still made He Desheng and others feel a hint of worry.

If President Ma lost interest in this "Nine Guarantees One" game, many of them might be immediately unemployed!

Even if they weren't unemployed, but merely fell out of favor, it would mean a bleak future career.

So, these professionals who accompanied President Ma to play games as a job and dabbled in investment as a side hustle were a little anxious.

After arriving at work, He Desheng's first task was to open his email and check for messages.

He had sent modification suggestions for the game to Finger Company last Friday. Today was Monday, so they should have replied, right?

Sure enough, there was an unread email from Finger Company.

He Desheng quickly scanned it.

It could only be said that they lived up to their reputation as shareholders.

Finger Company had already replied to the email on Saturday. However, Yuemeng Ventures had a holiday on the weekend, and no one was working overtime. He Desheng hadn't checked his email on the weekend either, so he only saw it today.

But regardless, the fact that they had given a response in just one day was enough to show Finger Company's importance to shareholders and domestic agents.

The content of the email was extensive, and the tone was very polite, using ample honorifics.

However, while the tone was euphemistic, the subtext was very clear.

Translated, it was essentially the following three points:

Thank you very much, Yuemeng Ventures, for your support and love for the IOI game.

Thank you very much, Yuemeng Ventures, for the valuable suggestions on the game, which were very inspiring for our game design.

However, due to some reasons that are difficult to express clearly in an email, Finger Company cannot promise to make changes based on these suggestions, as game design is a very holistic issue. Of course, if conditions permit, these modifications are not entirely out of the question.

After reading this rather official reply, He Desheng sighed silently and closed the email.

There was nothing he could do. Their attitude was already very clear; they weren't going to change it.

Although Yuemeng Ventures had shares in Finger Company and had obtained the exclusive domestic agency rights, with only this amount of shares, it was impossible to boss Finger Company around.

Moreover, Finger Company's attitude towards investors had always been consistent, maintaining a strong determination to remain independent and autonomous.

It was already quite good to receive such a polite reply in such a short time. If another company had made these suggestions, Finger Company probably wouldn't have even bothered to respond.

Thinking about it carefully, this was also very normal. Yuemeng Ventures appeared to be an investment institution on the surface. How could Finger Company change its current game content based on the suggestions of an investment institution?

Even if Tengda was behind Yuemeng Ventures, Tengda's influence wasn't that great overseas. Finger Company's reply would likely be the same.

In any case, this path was impassable.

If it were something else, giving up would be fine.

But considering everyone's livelihoods, He Desheng felt that he had to use a game to regain President Ma's trust.

Since IOI wouldn't work, were there any other similar games?

He Desheng considered it for a long time and suddenly remembered.

"Isn't Tengda also developing a similar game?"

"The brothers in the other department should be easier to talk to than Finger Company, right?"

He Desheng didn't have Li Yada's contact information, but he could contact Assistant Xin.

So, after obtaining Li Yada's contact information from Assistant Xin, He Desheng sent her the modification proposal.

As for whether Li Yada, the person in charge at Tengda, would accept this proposal...

He Desheng wasn't sure.

Although they were brothers in different departments, Tengda was also making games to earn more money.

If this modification proposal was contrary to Tengda's previous design direction, the person in charge at Tengda couldn't completely go against their own design philosophy and make major changes to the game just because of personal relationships.

But regardless, he should ask first.

Maybe the person in charge over there would be very interested in this modification proposal?

...

...

Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd.

"President Pei, sorry to bother you."

"Regarding this haunted house, could President Pei briefly explain the specific requirements?"

"Although Hao Qiong and I have some ideas, we're very worried that we won't be able to meet your expectations."

Looking at the message sent by Chen Kangtuo, Pei Qian fell into deep thought.

He still hadn't fooled them.

These two people had taken the initiative to ask. What should he do?

Pei Qian didn't want to give Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong "a clear path", because he felt that his mouth was blessed, and whatever he said would come true.

Every time he gave others bad ideas, they turned into golden ideas.

This made President Pei feel very confused and troubled.

So this time, Pei Qian didn't say too much to Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong, but just let them mess around on their own, hoping to muddle through.

As a result, these two people had probably figured out something was wrong and took the initiative to ask after a weekend.

Pei Qian didn't want to give them "a clear path", but if he really didn't say a word, it seemed a little inappropriate.

Hmm, he would just say one sentence.

Pei Qian thought for a moment and typed a reply: "Make it so that those with great courage have nowhere to spend money, and those with little courage shy away."

Less than two minutes later, Chen Kangtuo replied.

"President Pei, could you explain that a little more..."

Obviously, after carefully reading these two sentences, he had pondered them hard for another two minutes.

However, he still couldn't understand what this sentence meant at all, so he could only helplessly ask again.

Although this might make President Pei feel that he was a bit of a waste, considering that this was a major project worth ten million, Chen Kangtuo didn't dare to carry it out in such a daze.

Pei Qian chuckled.

Explain?

It was very simple. The meaning was to let those who were brave and dared to play, play as they pleased, with low fees that wouldn't make money; and to make those who were timid not dare to come and play at all, so naturally there would be no way to contribute to the haunted house's income.

Those who were timid wouldn't dare to come, and those who were brave wouldn't spend much money even if they came, so wouldn't this haunted house definitely lose money?

However, he certainly couldn't say these words directly.

Pei Qian didn't dare to explain too much, fearing that if he said the wrong thing, it would trigger the two of them to wildly overthink again.

At this time, silence was better than sound.

So, Pei Qian simply replied with three words: "Self-comprehension."

Chen Kangtuo: "...Okay, President Pei, I understand."

He handed the phone to Hao Qiong.

The two of them looked at the three words "Self-comprehension" that President Pei had replied on the screen, and were speechless for a moment.

What a self-comprehension...

The hint was just one sentence, wasn't the difficulty of comprehending it a bit too high?

Hao Qiong had heard that the general direction that President Pei had proposed before was often three to four points, and they were all relatively clear in their direction.

But now, it was highly condensed into one point, and it seemed too mysterious!

Teacher, this question is beyond the syllabus!

Chen Kangtuo felt a slight pain in his brain: "This... how do we comprehend it?"

Hao Qiong took a deep breath: "Calm down, calm down."

"Director Lin once told us how to analyze President Pei's intentions. Wait a moment, I'll recall the knowledge points first."

"The first step is to first clarify a belief, that is, no matter how unreliable the words President Pei says are, they must be correct..."

Hao Qiong began to analyze the profound meaning in President Pei's words according to the method Lin Wan had taught.

People with great courage, people with little courage.

These should be all the potential customers of the haunted house.

How these potential customers feel about the haunted house directly determines the success or failure of the haunted house.

According to common sense, it should be to allow both brave and timid customers to have fun and obediently pay.

However, the demands of these two types of customers are different.

Brave customers need a more thrilling and exciting adventure experience, such as staff members playing ghosts and frightening them at close range.

Timid customers, however, are easily dissuaded by such overly thrilling projects, and may not even dare to enter, so naturally they will not spend money.

So, how should these two different customer demands be reconciled?

Chen Kangtuo felt that the answer must be hidden in President Pei's sentence!

Make it so that those with great courage have nowhere to spend money, and those with little courage shy away.

Was he saying to make the haunted house particularly terrifying and then set a low ticket price?

In this way, timid people would not dare to enter and would naturally shy away, and the ticket price would be very low, so brave people would have nowhere to spend money...

It seemed that this was indeed in line with President Pei's statement.

But the problem was that this was not profitable and was not in line with common sense.

Why should timid people be made to shy away? Wouldn't it be better to get them to spend money as much as possible? Why should they be scared away?

It certainly wouldn't be that simple.

So, this idea had to be completely overturned.

Re-excavate the profound meaning in President Pei's words!

The two of them pondered for a long time.

Chen Kangtuo suddenly had some clues, slapped his thigh hard, and said, "I got it! I suddenly thought of something!"

"I'll briefly talk about my ideas, listen to them, and see if they make sense."

Hao Qiong nodded and listened carefully.

Chen Kangtuo said somewhat excitedly: "Our previous idea, to put it bluntly, was a high terror effect + low ticket price model, which would inevitably lead to huge losses for the haunted house, and is definitely a dead end."

"It's definitely a misinterpretation of President Pei's meaning."

"I was thinking, did we miss any key information?"

"President Pei deliberately concealed a key piece of information, which is very likely to be a test for us."

"President Pei never said that the haunted house can only have one project, right?"

Hao Qiong's eyes widened instantly, revealing a look of sudden realization.

That's right, these two sentences are not necessarily spoken to the same project!

The initial investment in the entire haunted house alone was as high as ten million, and follow-up investments were required. Moreover, it was built in such a remote old industrial zone, where it was inconvenient to go anywhere. The only advantage was that there was a lot of land, and the factory buildings could be used at will...

So, why did President Pei choose this location?

Obviously, he didn't plan to only do one project from the beginning!

Chen Kangtuo continued: "What if we open two or even three large projects to meet the demands of different consumers?"

"Make it so that those with great courage have nowhere to spend money, which means that we have to find ways to get money from those with little courage."

"Make it so that those with little courage shy away, meaning to satisfy those with great courage with a very stimulating experience."

"But, we definitely can't really scare the timid people away. We have to let the brave people rave about our haunted house, make the timid people shy away from the haunted house, but keep looking around and hesitating at the door... and eventually transform into brave people."

"This is President Pei's ultimate goal!"

Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong continued to analyze, and President Pei's goal gradually became clear.

These two simple sentences can be broken down into the following points.

For brave players, this place should be very scary, and at the same time, the cost is very low for them. In this way, they will rave about this place, vigorously recommend it to their friends, and repeatedly bring them to play.

And for timid players, they will be afraid because this place is very scary, but they must not be completely scared away by this fear.

Even, we have to find ways to earn more money from timid players!

So, how to charge less for brave players and more for timid players?

It's very simple, through discounts and refunds!

For example, the longer you stay in the haunted house, the cheaper the ticket becomes. If you can clear the level, you can consider directly refunding 70-80% of the ticket price, or even waiving the fee depending on the situation.

This can well achieve President Pei's requirements!

However, this situation is a bit too idealized and has some loopholes.

Timid players shy away and watch outside the haunted house, provided that they come to the haunted house here.

If they haven't even considered coming here to play, then naturally it is impossible to achieve this effect.

So, the haunted house must have a project suitable for slightly timid people to play.

In this way, when these timid people are playing some less scary projects, they will also see those brave people playing very thrilling projects.

Moreover, this thrilling project will be reduced or exempted depending on the length of time it takes to clear the level.

In this way, these timid people will try to enter, but because they can't complete the entire journey at all, both the tickets and the extra spending will be higher.

For example, you can sell things similar to the Buddha statues in "Turning Back Is the Shore" at the door. Taking this thing can not only provide lighting, but also allow the staff members playing ghosts to reduce their fright on him.

This is equivalent to value-added services in the game.

In this way, the experience of the two types of consumers can be taken into account!

A project that is not so scary but fun, used to attract timid consumers.

A very scary project, used to attract those brave people.

After the timid people come, they will be curious about this scary project and generate additional consumption. In this way, the haunted house's income is definitely much higher than simply selling tickets, and the profitability can naturally be guaranteed.

Thinking of this, the originally confused two people felt suddenly enlightened.

"So that's how it is!"

"Then our task is very clear now."

"This haunted house must have at least two to three major projects. There must be a project with a low degree of fright, but strong social attributes, suitable for multiple people to play repeatedly, used to attract timid consumers."

"There must be a project with a high degree of fright, which attracts horror enthusiasts from all over the country. The ticket will be reduced or exempted depending on the length of time they persist."

"As for the third project... it can be a transitional project. After all, the horror coefficient spans too much between the first project and the third project, and some timid consumers may still not dare to participate."

"Let them go to the second project to practice their courage first, and then they can go to the third project to continue the challenge."

The more the two people discussed, the more excited they became, and they immediately began to write a proposal document!

While typing, Hao Qiong sighed: "Seriously, this analysis method that Director Lin said is really useful."

"So many things were analyzed all at once!"

Chen Kangtuo nodded: "Yes. But then again, the guidance given by President Pei is more important."

"It seems that President Pei has already been confident about this project for a long time."

"Not only has he foreseen the ultimate form of this project in advance, but he can also extract the key points for the success of this project and use such a short sentence to hint at us!"

"President Pei is really too powerful."

"In that case, what else do we have to worry about?"

"There will be absolutely no problem if we do what President Pei has told us to do!"

The two people were originally very unsure and worried that they would screw things up.

But now, both of them were full of confidence and also full of expectations for the haunted house that would be built in the future!

...

...

In the evening.

The first recruitment of Tengda Group had come to an end.

Although there would be a Tengda spirit compatibility test later, that had nothing to do with the examiners and staff.

The personnel who participated in the interviews had undergone strict screening, and the length of each interview would be strictly controlled. Although the time was slightly extended, it was not much different from the estimate.

However, this work still continued until after 5 p.m.

Because after the interviews, the examiners and all the staff had to calculate and weight the scores of all the interviewees, sort out the final list of candidates, and notify the interviewees.

This time, various departments had recruited a large number of new members.

Among them were core employees with many years of experience, as well as college students who had just graduated or would graduate next year.

Although cross-interviews meant that the various heads could not directly interview job applicants in their own departments, the final results were basically satisfactory to everyone.

After all the work was done, the heads of each department happily went out for a meal to express their gratitude to each other.

After eating for more than an hour, they prepared to go home separately.

Li Yada took advantage of the dinner opportunity to carefully ask Huang Sibo and Lu Mingliang some questions.

Although the two people had different ways of understanding President Pei's intentions, the results seemed to be the same by different routes.

It was not until the gathering ended that Li Yada found an opportunity to take out her phone, saw He Desheng's friend request, and the game suggestion rectification plan he had sent.

"This kind of plan... looks very risky."

Although Li Yada's understanding of similar games was not as deep as Bao Xu's, she had led the development of GOG for so long, and she could clearly analyze the advantages and disadvantages of most designs.

In the eyes of most people, this 5v5 confrontation game represented by "Shenqi" is undoubtedly a fair competitive game.

Since it is a competition, the higher the difficulty, the clearer the distinction between master players and rookie players.

However, too high difficulty will also lead to too high a threshold for the game, persuading some hand-handicapped players to quit.

Lowering the difficulty will indeed make the game experience better for novice players, but for many masters, "easy to get started" may also be one of the reasons for them to lose their sense of superiority...

In short, these suggestions seem to make some sense, but they also have some dangers.

Li Yada found it difficult to decide how to choose.

After considering it for a long time, she still couldn't make a decision.

Originally, she wanted to ask Bao Xu or President Pei, but Li Yada changed her mind and remembered what Lu Mingliang had said during the dinner.

At that time, Li Yada asked Lu Mingliang what he thought was the most important quality of a game designer.

Lu Mingliang thought for a while and said that the most important quality was not to be too confident in yourself.

Li Yada didn't understand, so Lu Mingliang explained it a little more.

According to Lu Mingliang, most designers are very confident in themselves.

Because before becoming a designer, most people must first become a game enthusiast and senior game player, and then they can enter the game industry and move upwards step by step.

If you are not confident in yourself, many designers may not have entered this industry in the first place.

Therefore, most designers are full of confidence in themselves.

This confidence is certainly a good thing, but sometimes it can make you blind.

Each player is just an individual, and their tastes and preferences vary greatly.

And games are bound to be impossible to satisfy everyone.

A good game only needs to satisfy the tastes and needs of the target player group.

So, what if the things the designer likes are completely contrary to the target player group of this game?

Many designers will fall into blind confidence, and the games they make will be divorced from the players and will undoubtedly fail.

On the contrary, designers who are not so confident in themselves will humbly listen to opinions, make the game more in line with the tastes of most players, and achieve success.

Therefore, not being too confident does not mean doubting yourself, but not blindly believing in yourself or blindly following others.

Observe the players as objectively as possible, and find a balance between personal preferences and player demands.

Thinking of this, Li Yada couldn't help but reflect on herself.

She herself was not blindly confident, but...

Was it inappropriate to blindly trust Bao Xu?

Although Bao Xu is indeed experienced in similar games, he is likely to make the mistake of "overconfidence" that Lu Mingliang said...

After thinking again and again, Li Yada decided.

There was no need to ask Bao Xu or President Pei about this plan, just make a new version!

Among these changes, the content of game mechanics such as last-hitting economy and kill bounty is relatively easy to do; it is slightly more troublesome to shrink the map, but it can also be changed in a few days; the more troublesome content, such as designing some heroes suitable for novices or masters, these need to be considered in the long term, but there is no rush.

In the early stage, you can completely change these basic mechanics first, make another version, and also update it to Mo Yu Internet Cafe.

After a period of time, just compare the player data of these two versions, and wouldn't it be clear which version is better?