Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Chapter 12: Card Games, I Choose You!

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

In his previous life, smartphones had started getting common and trending during 2010 to 2011. Alongside the wave, some of the popular mobile games such as card games started appearing around 2012.

However, smartphones had appeared earlier in this world and so by 2008, there were already card games.

By now, 2009, card games were commonplace.

When they were just introduced, card games were truly innovative and were popular for a long time.

However, due to the large amount of copycats, gamers were already sick of it and something as simple such as earning money just by creating something similar was no longer existent.

In this world, the progenitor of card games was called Qute Three Kingdoms. The reason it was popular was due to the same few reasons – cartoonish and cute style, traditional card gameplay et cetera.

In 2008, back when the Three Kingdoms’ IP wasn’t commonplace yet, gamers were more accepting of it in general.

However, thanks to the trend of smartphones, the game singlehandedly created a miracle and earned the creators a huge pot of gold such that their competitors were brimming with jealousy.

In this world, the game editors were extremely advanced and many indie creators can enter the playing field with ease. With that, all sorts of copycat card games started spouting out, causing the initial craze for card games that could have lasted for three to five years to burn out within just one.

As of now, gamers viewed card games with a sense of disdain and reluctance.

That was exactly what Pei Qian wanted!

Other than that, he had also noticed a huge difference between Qute Three Kingdoms and card games in his previous world.

In terms of paywalling, it was the complete opposite.

The game could be purchased with a fixed price of 5 yuan. Other than that, the in-game items were sold at a rather fair price. The concept of receiving a rare card by topping up 2,000 yuan or the likes of those did not exist in this world at all.

The in-game payments were basically capped at 1,000 yuan or so. Beyond that, there was nowhere else to spend the money on.

Despite that, Qute Three Kingdoms was still lambasted by the gamers for being greedy.

That’s because the ecosystem of this world was different from Pei Qian’s previous one.

Piracy wasn’t so rampant in this world owing to the strong IP Rights protection, so standalone game creators were having quite a good life.

Because of that, single purchases or top up refill cards were the main profit models that gamers have acknowledged and gotten used to.

When it came to Qute Three Kingdoms, it was clear that the creators did not dare to go overboard as well. They merely implemented a 5 yuan purchase price along with some slight in-game purchases.

Even then, they were lambasted to hell.

After researching through the market, Pei Qian started contemplating on how he should mess the game up.

The most straightforward method was to have a direct clash!

If the market already has an extremely successful game that’s practically the founder of the genre, all Pei Qian had to do was to copy it wholesale and he was almost guaranteed to be doomed!

Since card games were sunsetting right now, it’s time to create card games!

Qute Three Kingdoms is popular, isn’t it? I’ll create a game based on the three kingdoms too!

Gameplay shall be the same and a card game template on the resource website would be perfect to spend dozens of thousands on.

Of course, art resources can’t be copied blindly – that would result in copyright issues.

Pei Qian had not intended to copy the art style to begin with. After all, he was counting on burning money for the art resources. How else would he burn the whole 300,000 with just the template alone?

There was another important point – the paywall of the game.

Qute Three Kingdoms was really restrained in implementing their paywalls. As for Pei Qian’s game, should he have the gamers die in a huge paywall?

No! Hell no!

That was not what Pei Qian felt.

He understood gamers way too well – these were all hypocrites.

They may scold the game for being a scam and a money pit, threatening to never play it again.

However, when a new astronomically priced item appears, the whales were still going to pay for it even if they may complain.

If Pei Qian were to make the paywall of the game extremely high such as in the levels of dozens of thousands yuan, what would he do if he met a bunch of whales?

The spending power of a whale was equivalent to thousands of normal gamers. Wouldn’t he have to puke out blood if the game had turned profitable with just a small number of whales?

So, he had to reverse his way of thinking!

In order to prevent whales from splurging, the paywall of the game had to be sufficiently low!

Pei Qian thought about it. Since the paywall of the Qute Three Kingdoms was around 1,000 yuan, he’ll just have to lower it to... 500 yuan!

No, 100 yuan!

No, that’s not good enough. 30 yuan!

He’ll make it such that the whales won’t have a place to spend on!

But of course, as a card game, there must be common and rare cards.

The common method to it was to lock rare cards behind paywalls in order to increase the profit margins.

Pei Qian rejected that method. After all, he was here to lose money, not profit!

The most expensive in-game item shall be a permanent membership card that costs 30 yuan! Those who buy it will get a few additional card draw chances daily.

Other than that, there will be no other place for people to spend money on!

You guys want to donate money to Tengda? Dream on!

As for normal gamers, even if they don’t purchase the 30 yuan card, they would have card draw chances as well, albeit less.

That way, there won’t be enough reason for gamers to want to pay money!

As for the price of the game, Pei Qian really wanted to set it to be free. However, he decided against that on second thought.

There weren’t much free mobile games nowadays and most of them were priced at 1 yuan.

If Pei Qian were to make the game free, he might end up attracting a bunch of players.

What if it suddenly got popular?

Therefore, Pei Qian decided to go against the trend and set the purchase price at 10 yuan!

That’s more expensive than Qute Three Kingdoms!

As a super high barrier of entry, that 10 yuan will do its work to dissuade 90% of the potential players.

Think about it. A mobile game that’s completely based on a template without any innovative traits and a purchase price that is 5 yuan more expensive than the hottest game available – who would be stupid enough to buy it?

Of course, he mustn’t set that barrier too high either.

That 10 yuan was enough to achieve its intended effect of dissuading gamers from buying it. If he were to set it any higher, Pei Qian was going to earn money with just a mediocre number of gamers.

The more he earned, the more he lost. That won’t do!

With that, Pei Qian was decided on his goal.

Firstly, this would be a game with the most basic operational techniques.

Gameplays that other card games do not possess? You won’t find it here!

Gameplays that other card games possess? You might not find it here either!

All in all, the gameplay would be completely similar to everything else out there and have nothing new!

Not only that, this was a game that clashed directly with Qute Three Kingdoms!

They both revolved around the three kingdoms as topic.

They were both mobile games.

Theirs was authentic while Pei Qian’s was a counterfeit.

There’s no way anyone would choose this game instead of Qute Three Kingdoms!

Finally, this was a game that had an extremely stupid profit strategy.

First, the 10 yuan barrier of dissuading the normal mobile gamers.

Next, the 30 yuan paywall to stop whales from splurging on the game!

“I’m a bloody genius!”

“What a perfect plan!”

Pei Qian was totally impressed with himself. How could this game earn money with such a shitty design?

No way! There was absolutely no way!