Chapter 41: Three Conditions!
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Pei Qian did not give the two much time to react as he continued.
“For this game, I only have three demands.”
“First, I hope that the game would be able to have a story mode and not just purely be for gamers to pit against one another. Our game must have depth and substance!”
“Second, we must take into account the feelings of new gamers best as we can. The simpler the game, the better!”
“Third, we must create epic weapons. As for their prices… the price to be able to use them permanently will be 888 apiece. You guys can decide on the price for the time limited trial period.”
Everyone was completely stumped while Pei Qian snickered internally.
That was the ease of destroying a game!
Pei Qian had already decided on creating an FPS for a long time.
The fact that he was sending a completely inexperienced team to create a FPS was a pitfall to begin with.
That was because compared to other games, FPS games had a much higher requirement towards hand sensitivity!
The most mature FPS game in the world – Counter Strike – was one that could be considered to be at full marks in regards to hand sensitivity.
Even if there was another game in the market that could reach 99 marks, it would still fail.
The reason was that the single 1 mark difference would be magnified indefinitely in the eyes of hardcore FPS gamers!
With the existence of Counter Strike, who would go and play another inferior product?
That was one aspect that was entirely different compared to mobile games and MMORPGs. Those two genres of games could be heavily repackaged to seem different from others. Even minor flaws would make them seem as though they were an entirely new game.
However, for FPS games, nothing could compensate for a single difference in hand sensitivity!
To pit themselves against Counter Strike was to court death!
Furthermore, Pei Qian’s three demands were nefarious!
While a story mode may seem good, it was in truth way beyond the capabilities of this team.
A story mode was a cla.s.sic example of a high risk low reward investment where the end result was often less than satisfactory – even after the team spent much effort and time to it, gamers might not buy into it!
With more resources such as time and manpower spent on the story mode, the other parts of the game were bound to be affected.
As for the new gamers experience portion where the game should be made as simple as possible, it would definitely stir the ire of their targeted group of gamers since FPS games often leaned towards elite gamers!
Most importantly, there was the third point.
Paywall equipment!
That was a lesson that Pei Qian had learnt from Ghost General previously.
In his previous life, the game, Crossfire, had managed to overtake Counter Strike despite its inferior hand sensitivity element.
However, there was no Crossfire in this world nor similar games.
Why was that?
Pei Qian felt that it was because the games ecosystem in this world did not allow for similar games to exist!
On the surface, what Pei Qian was doing resembled Crossfire where there were a large number of paywalls. However, the achieved effects would be different because the ecosystem was thoroughly different too!
In 2009 of his previous life, free to play games with paywalls were the rage.
However, in this current world, the trend was for a fixed purchase price as well as paying to play. Even a game like Qute Three Kingdoms was dissed by the gamers for having a 1,000 yuan paywall.
Back when he was creating Ghost General, Pei Qian had committed an error – he gave the game too much heart! With that, the gamers were extremely positive towards it and that created an incredible word of mouth effect that Pei Qian had not antic.i.p.ated.
In a certain sense, Pei Qian became a progenitor of evil where he had intentionally sold items way below their worth…
But of course, there was no time for Pei Qian to consider the sort of chain effects that event would continue to cause for him – his main goal now was to lose money on his next game.
Perhaps, the best way to do it was to make the paywall extremely high such that the game would be faced with a bad word of mouth!
It was true.
A FPS game which had a worse control sensitivity than Counter Strike coupled with an average quality and a lot of money spent on resources to create useless story elements. Not just that, the in-game guns could not be used casually and it would cost a lot to purchase them…
There were no pros to playing the game at all!
The game would definitely be doomed for sure!
Right now, what Pei Qian did was to create a thesis a.s.signment with three restrictive conditions for Huang Sibo and Bao Xu to complete.
As long as they were to satisfy the three conditions, they could do anything they wanted to the game and Pei Qian would not be bothered at all!
The best they could wish for of a FPS game created by an inexperienced team was for it to pa.s.s the vetting process. Earn money? No way!
Indeed, after they heard Pei Qian’s demands, Huang Sibo and Bao Xu fell into deep thought.
Huang Sibo was shocked at the level of freedom as well as difficulty.
Initially, he had thought that an experienced creator such as Boss Pei would micromanage the entire project. In the end, all he did was to throw in a generic direction for them to steer in!
A FPS game with story elements, paywall and friendly to new gamers to boot…
That would be extremely difficult!
However, Huang Sibo was not going to reject it outright. He had just decided on spilling his guts for Boss Pei right before the meeting, there was no way he was going to quit just like that.
The higher the difficulty, the more he was going to work!
How else would he be able to repay Boss Pei for the wonderful benefits and trust?
As for Bao Xu, he had not thought as much as Huang Sibo.
He was merely recalling his experience in FPS games and was considering how he should complete the mission that Pei Qian had set.
“Any questions?” Pei Qian asked.
Huang Sibo had wanted to reply when Pei Qian had already continued, “No questions? Very well!”
He swallowed his words back.
‘You’re not even giving us a chance to speak!’
Pei Qian circled around everyone.
“Alright, the design team will have a week to come up with the draft. Bao Xu, you’ll be in charge of the creativity aspect and the general picture of things. Huang Sibo, form the design team and start to have meetings to streamline the draft while a.s.signing the tasks.”
“Ma Yang, your job now is to learn more from the rest of them and try to help best as you can.”
“Inform me right away if you encounter any issues, especially if it pertains to money! Don’t be shy!”
“Meeting’s over!”
Pei Qian felt relaxed the moment he was done with the meeting.
Was that how it felt to be a boss?
Handing out all his tasks for his underlings without having to worry about anything? Was that how awesome it was supposed to feel?
But of course, for most bosses, even if they were to become overseers, they would still ask around and try to keep up with the progress of work.
However, Pei Qian was going to let go as much as he possibly could without asking more at all!
He wasn’t concerned as to how the end product would be like!
Naturally, he would have to drag out some of the critical phases as well, such as when they should produce the design draft, the first demo prototype and the deadline for vetting selection et cetera.
It was fine if the game was substandard as long as it could get through the vetting process and they had not wasted their time. Otherwise, the system would deem it as a violation.
Pei Qian’s goal was to allow this group of people under him to do and spend as they wished as long as the game was produced!