Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games

Chapter 99: One Of A Kind

Bao Xu glanced toward Pei Qian's office.

"Is President Pei in?"

"Nope, hasn't been in the past two days," replied Lu Mingliang.

On Lu Mingliang's end, the voiceover work was finally complete.

They'd started recording on the 25th of last month and, working on and off, had only wrapped up by the 1st of this month. The efficiency wasn't stellar, but acceptable.

After all, Lu Mingliang wasn't a professional voice actor. Even with a voice coach guiding him, early on, a single line often took dozens of retakes before it was satisfactory.

Now that the voice work was done, the team could fully focus on game development.

"Brother Bao, I sent you the full design doc for the new game. Can you take a look and see if anything needs changing?"

Lu Mingliang still held great respect for Bao Xu.

After all, Bao Xu was the original creative mind behind Ocean Fortress. In the entire company, when it came to deciphering President Pei's intentions, Bao Xu was second to none!

Bao Xu opened the document and skimmed through it briefly.

"If it's something President Pei personally decided, then there's no need for me to look. I probably wouldn't get it anyway."

Game design is a sensitive art—it doesn't lend itself well to arbitrary changes.

Everyone has their own ideas, and often there's no absolute right or wrong. The key is to have a unified vision—someone has to make the final call. Otherwise, the project turns into an incoherent mess.

So, when Bao Xu heard that this was a project Pei Qian had personally overseen, he had no doubt it was rock solid.

The smart thing to do was simply study it and learn—who would dare find fault with it?

This, of course, was exactly the kind of outcome Pei Qian had planned for.

The game was already in development, and now that Bao Xu was back, he'd have no way to get involved.

With no tasks to handle, Bao Xu would naturally retreat into gaming.

And that… would decrease the chances of the new game succeeding—perfect.

Plan: Success!

. . . . . . . .

Just as Pei Qian predicted—

Bao Xu skimmed the design doc and observed how the others were working. It seemed like the new game didn't need his help at all.

So, he booted up his PC and launched Ocean Fortress.

He hadn't gamed much in the past month, and the urge had been building up like crazy!

As the saying goes: absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Right now, Bao Xu felt like the company was heaven on earth—he never wanted to leave again!

But after a while, something felt… off.

The controls didn't feel quite as smooth as he remembered.

A month ago, he'd thought the controls in Ocean Fortress were perfect.

But now, after returning with fresh eyes, he sensed new areas that could be improved.

"Well, since I've got nothing better to do… might as well optimize Ghost General and Ocean Fortress a bit."

Bao Xu grabbed a random notebook and began jotting down areas for improvement as he played.

Since the release of Ghost General and Ocean Fortress, neither has received a single version update.

Did players have complaints?

Of course they did!

But… since Pei Qian wasn't listening—those complaints basically didn't exist!

It had been nearly four months since Ghost General launched, and Ocean Fortress had been out for one month.

Some fast-moving game studios push out updates every month.

Even the slower ones manage a new version every three months.

But for two games that were still making money and trending hot—yet hadn't been updated for months?

That was practically unheard of!

Pei Qian didn't want to update them at all.

The reason?

They were too damn popular!

Just look at Ghost General's lifetime pass sales, and Ocean Fortress's Rainbow Neon Fire Qilin skin sales…

According to the system's rules, any new version must include new monetization elements. No releasing updates for free just to "spend money."

Pei Qian had run the numbers. If he pushed a new update with fresh monetization… the players would definitely start spending again!

So, he pretended like nothing was happening and focused all his efforts on new projects.

No updates meant declining player interest—perfect for Pei Qian's goals.

And the rest of the dev team was too busy working like dogs on Game Designer to spare time for these older but stable titles.

But…

Bao Xu had nothing to do!

If he couldn't contribute to the new game, he figured he might as well make himself useful by tweaking the older ones.

First, he focused on fine-tuning the feel and responsiveness of Ocean Fortress's controls.

Then, Bao Xu opened up Ghost General.

Comparatively speaking, Ghost General had much bigger issues than Ocean Fortress.

Why? Because Ocean Fortress had been built through blood, sweat, and tears by Huang Sibo and a team of dedicated designers. It had gone through multiple rounds of testing and was relatively polished.

But Ghost General? That was something Pei Qian had thrown together by shoehorning a pre-existing template into something new!

Sure, a lot of the in-game text was quite detailed—thanks to Ma Yang, who had diligently (and shamelessly) made it all up.

But the battle system and many basic features? Those were riddled with small flaws. The template Pei Qian bought had originally come from a failed project. It might have been bug-free, but it certainly had a lot of room for improvement in terms of functionality and player experience.

Of course, the overall impact wasn't catastrophic.

After all, it was a mobile game. Player expectations weren't sky-high. As long as it was playable, people would tolerate the jank.

But Bao Xu could tell right away that there were many small problems worth fixing.

So he figured: might as well fix them!

Before long, his notebook was filled top to bottom with a long list of tweaks.

Since no new game content was being created, technically this wasn't a "version update" in the official sense—just some optimizations and bug fixes.

Bao Xu looked over his jam-packed notebook.

"Hmm… three or four days should be enough to finish these."

. . . . . . . .

Three days later.

In the Ghost General online forums…

Compared to the sleek, active forums of other popular mobile games, Ghost General's looked like a mess.

Why? Because the devs had never managed it.

Games like Cute Three Kingdoms had tight cooperation with forum admins. They'd parachute in official moderators, assistant moderators, and even assign staff to post regular dev updates.

But Ghost General?

Absolutely nothing.

It was a completely hands-off situation.

Some players had volunteered to become moderators, but they were very Zen about it. They'd only delete obviously illegal posts or spam. No real engagement otherwise.

Still, thanks to the large player base, the forum was lively in its own way.

Starting a month or two ago, people had been posting complaint threads. Recently, those threads have only increased.

"Can we get a version update already???"

"I maxed everything out ages ago… I've got nearly all the rare cards. Can someone tell me what's even left to do in this game…"

"I'm so jealous of Cute Three Kingdoms, they push an update every two months, and it's always late-game content…"

"This sucks. Other games at least give you long-term goals. You can recharge and grind toward something. But this one? You can't even spend money! I feel like I have no purpose…"

"This is the first time I'm seeing such a chill company. Ghost General ranks pretty high on the charts, right? Should be making good money. So why no updates???"

"We are not even asking for new gameplay anymore—just release a new character or some monetization features!"

Any gamer unfamiliar with Ghost General who stumbled into this forum would be completely confused.

Did they enter the wrong place?

What kind of game forum was this!?

In Cute Three Kingdoms's forum, there were always threads blasting the devs, cursing the designers, and flaming the event team.

"The events are a scam!"

"The new content is lazy and uninspired!"

You couldn't go a day without seeing posts like that. If you didn't, you'd assume the forum was down.

But Ghost General's forum?

The exact opposite.

Here, players were eagerly waiting for the devs to add ways to spend money.

Some even seriously debated what kind of monetization features the devs should add.

The most common suggestion was: release a new hero pack.

Others proposed low-ceiling top-up events—like paying 1 yuan to get some rare materials, or 50 yuan max for a special skin or bonus.

This kind of situation—where players are begging for monetization features and the devs are completely ignoring them—only existed with Ghost General.

It has become a one-of-a-kind phenomenon!

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