"Zhang Wang was taken aback. "President Pei, there's no need for a production cost of 400 yuan. Besides, it'll be difficult to increase the cost any further…"

Pei Qian frowned. "Can't increase it? How could it be impossible to increase?"

"Make the box bigger, get a famous artist to design the exterior, add a gold trim, and refine the texture of the materials…"

"Weren't you willing to spend money on the shared phone booths? Why are you regressing?"

Zhang Wang was ashamed after being criticized by President Pei. "Okay, President Pei, I'll do as you say."

He Desheng's expression became quite interesting.

He originally thought that President Pei wouldn't be optimistic about this project, but President Pei not only quadrupled the amount of money to be invested, but also raised the selling price of this thing from 260 to 488!

No matter how you look at it, this thing wasn't worth that much money at all!

He Desheng felt that this thing was, at most, a small toy to pass the time. If it sold for forty or fifty yuan, maybe some people would buy it and take it home to play with.

But selling it for 488…?

Who would buy it?

Although this thing had a unique shape, it couldn't be said to be particularly beautiful, and it had no entertainment value at all. Except for people like President Ma with strange ideas, no one would be free enough to argue with it for hours, right?

Even if there were some bored rich people in this world, it was impossible to sell 20,000 units!

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

He Desheng originally wanted to say something, but then he thought about it again. Since President Pei had spoken, he must have a solution.

So, he'd better keep his mouth shut and watch and learn.

Pei Qian patted Zhang Wang on the shoulder, his face overflowing with admiration.

Fantastic!

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

If there were ten more inventions like this that couldn't be sold, President Pei could easily lose 80 million yuan, and it would also take up space in the warehouse. It would be so comfortable!

…

…

May 13th, Friday.

Tengda Games Department.

Hu Xianbin tilted his head back and finished the coffee in his cup, then continued to bury himself in his work.

Now, Tengda's game department was divided into two teams. Hu Xianbin was leading a group of people to develop *Struggle*, while Min Jingchao was leading another group of people to operate GOG, fighting wits and courage with IOI.

The styles of the two sides had become noticeably different.

Min Jingchao's side was enthusiastically discussing various heroes every day, and the atmosphere was very lively; while Hu Xianbin's side was completely gloomy.

The development difficulty of *Struggle* was already very high, and during the development process, they felt like their scars were constantly being exposed, and their hearts were severely damaged. The atmosphere couldn't be lively.

Hu Xianbin's game script was still being perfected and had not been completely finalized, but the character designs for all the game characters were basically completed.

It had to be said that Boss Ruan's efficiency was fast.

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

However, after looking through them one by one, he became more and more confused.

These game characters included a poor protagonist, a rich protagonist, poor parents, rich parents, a poor boss, a rich boss, and so on, a whole bunch.

Because the actors were selected first and then the character designs were drawn, according to the original plan, they should have been slightly beautified and modified based on the appearance of the actors.

However, the character designs that were now in Hu Xianbin's hands had a feeling of being overdone.

All of these images used more exaggerated and more extreme expressions, and some characters were even drawn very bizarrely.

For example, the whole poor family was excessively obese, especially the mother in the poor family, whose body shape was almost 300 *jin* (approximately 330 pounds).

The motion capture actor was obviously not that fat, and some special methods might be needed to simulate this excessive obesity when doing motion capture.

In addition, the rich protagonist was a little too handsome, completely like a top-tier star from Europe and America, his whole person was radiant and dazzling.

And the poor protagonist was not only plain-looking, but his expression also showed obvious flattery, and seemed to hide a trace of resentment.

The combination of these two expressions on the face of the poor protagonist was too clear, so that people would instinctively feel a sense of discomfort.

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

After receiving these character designs, Hu Xianbin's first feeling was that something was wrong.

He was a little puzzled, how could Boss Ruan Guangjian make such a low-level mistake?

As a result, Ruan Guangjian said that this was all requested by President Pei.

So Hu Xianbin immediately began to speculate whether there was any deeper meaning in this.

"The disadvantage should be that it will reduce the sense of realism in the game."

"The advantage… a more bizarre art style and characters will highlight the character traits and deepen the player's impression?"

"A stereotypical image can play a symbolic role, making it easier to highlight the theme?"

"Is there anything else… I can't seem to think of anything."

Hu Xianbin tried hard to interpret it, and although he did come up with a few things, he didn't find them particularly convincing.

Considering that the development task of *Struggle* was very heavy and there wasn't much time for in-depth interpretation, Hu Xianbin had to give up for the time being.

Anyway, everything would be revealed when the game was released.

He checked all the character designs and prepared to hand them over to the outsourcing company to create the models. At the same time, he could also arrange for the motion capture actors to start performing the motion capture.

After briefly sorting out his next work, Hu Xianbin once again focused all his energy on the game's script.

In the process of writing the script, Hu Xianbin encountered a very serious problem that had been bothering him for two days.

It was very strange, he actually encountered a numerical problem in this game.

Logically speaking, this game shouldn't have any numerical problems, but it appeared so magically.

The rich man's version was going smoothly, but the problem was with the poor man's version.

According to President Pei's request, the poor man's version only had one ending, which was to let the cycle of poverty continue forever.

Originally, Hu Xianbin didn't think there was anything wrong with that, it was very logical, but the problem was that the game had to account for the wealth obtained by the rich protagonist and the poor protagonist.

How much money the poor man had, how much money he needed to maintain his basic life, and how much salary he could earn after working, all of these had to have a rough figure, otherwise players would definitely find fault.

If at a critical juncture, the plot arranged for the poor man to not have enough money, which ultimately led to a vicious cycle ending, then they had to find a way to ensure that the poor player really didn't have enough money.

But after calculating, Hu Xianbin found that, theoretically speaking, the poor protagonist had more money than he imagined, and shouldn't have ended up in such a miserable situation.

In the poor man's 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, they would still end up in that cycle of poverty.

But according to the data, after choosing all the correct options, the poor man should be much richer than his parents, and his life should be much happier.

The ending couldn't be changed, because President Pei had already decided on it.

So this created a contradiction: if they continued to do this, the game would lose its rationality.

As a game that focused on plot, if the game's rationality collapsed, then it would be all over, with a double collapse in reputation and sales.

Therefore, Hu Xianbin was facing a major crisis and felt that he had to solve this problem to be at ease.

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

Hu Xianbin opened the character designs again, flipping through them aimlessly, wondering if he could find some inspiration from them.

The rich protagonist was dressed in a suit and leather shoes, radiant and dazzling, looking like a carefree upper-class person. The special golden logo on the wrist of his suit was very eye-catching, obviously a luxury brand.

Two pure gold uppercase L's were joined together in a centrally symmetrical way, and at the same time, they were artistically exaggerated, looking very design-oriented.

Hu Xianbin didn't pay attention to it and continued to flip through, until he saw the design of the poor man after he started working.

The poor man after work was carrying a black briefcase in his arm. If you looked closely, you would find that the logo was faintly revealed on the briefcase, also two pure gold uppercase L's.

Hu Xianbin seemed to have caught something and flipped forward again, seeing the shoes that the poor man wore when he was in college.

The shoes also had this logo on them.

Hu Xianbin continued to flip back and found that almost six or seven out of ten people in all the character designs had this logo on their clothes.

All the rich people had it, and only those poor people with better economic conditions had this logo.

This was very reasonable, after all, poor people with low incomes couldn't afford such luxury brands.

Hu Xianbin could roughly guess Boss Ruan Guangjian's thoughts when he was creating these designs.

These motion capture actors were all wearing their everyday clothes when they took pictures. The clothes in these character designs were all redesigned by Boss Ruan according to the wealth class of these characters.

And in order to highlight the characteristics of the rich people, they obviously needed to use some luxury brands.

Therefore, Ruan Guangjian made up a brand based on existing luxury brands as the decoration for the characters in these character designs.

As for why there was only one brand… obviously because there was no point in drawing another brand.

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

Therefore, based on the principle of simplicity and practicality, one brand of clothing was enough in the game: the brand with the two golden L's logo was a luxury brand, while the other brands without the logo were cheap and miscellaneous brands.

This was a very normal and natural design, and Ruan Guangjian probably didn't think so much about it when he was drawing.

But looking at these pictures, Hu Xianbin suddenly caught a trace of inspiration.

His original intention was to find a reasonable way for the poor man to spend all his money.

According to Hu Xianbin's previous calculations, if the poor man only purchased necessities and affordable goods, and made most of the right choices in the game, his salary would definitely be able to be saved and improve his life.

But in order to achieve the poverty cycle ending that President Pei had ordered, he had to force the poor man to spend all this money.

Now, he had a rationale.

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

If he bought these things, his salary would naturally not be enough!

Hu Xianbin breathed a sigh of relief, finally patching up the loophole in the game.

Now, no players should be able to find fault, right?

Hu Xianbin added these luxury expenses and found that the originally estimated wealth of the poor man was immediately not enough, not only leaving him with nothing, but also enough to put him in debt.

"Okay, problem solved perfectly!" Hu Xianbin clapped his hands excitedly.

Although this approach seemed a bit hasty, the game's rationality 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 to show the lives of the poor and the rich.

Most players probably wouldn't even notice these details.
"