Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Chapter 230 New Way of Distributing Bonuses

After sending Zhang Zuting off, everyone in Shang Yang Games got busy editing the footage they got into an appropriate advertisement.

Style and length requirements for advertisements on webpages, video sites, and other places were different. For example, some websites only dedicated horizontal spaces to advertisements, some had pop-up windows, and some only allowed videos to be a couple of seconds long.

Thus, the same footage had to be molded into different styles.

If they had to cut a video from tens of seconds to a few seconds, they would naturally have to select the most important bits of the footage.

It was during this time that everyone realized how forward-thinking Boss Pei was.

The video that they recorded could easily be molded into a perfect website advertisement after making just a few edits!

Zhang Zuting’s lines were white short. What’s more, there was not much content to it. Roughly cutting the video and re-assembling it did not affect the video’s original meaning. This gave the editors a lot of space to play around with the video.

If players got tired of viewing the same advertisement in the future, all they would have to do is cut the video again in order to create a brand-new advertisement.

“Boss Pei, Zhang Zuting’s Mandarin isn’t good. He sounds quite awkward. Should we find a professional voice actor to dub over his voice? This wouldn’t be too expensive anyway,” suggested Ye Zhizhou.

Pei Qian shook his head at once. “No, let’s leave it like that! You have to trust the movie king’s acting skills and delivering of the lines. What’s more, the rawness of this advertisement could serve to close the gap between him and the audience. If we look for someone to dub his voice over, the advertisement would lose its soul. Do you understand?”

“Er…” Ye Zhizhou vaguely felt like there was something wrong with what Boss Pei was saying.

However, on further thought, they had already filmed the awkward video. Why should he bother with editing it?

Director Lin had guessed that Boss Pei had purposely looked for an outdated Hong Kong celebrity to film this awkward video to attract as many traditional web-based gamers to play this game.

Since that was the case, the advertisement had nothing to do with class. It seemed to make sense to produce a more awkward-looking advertisement.

At that thought, Ye Zhizhou said nothing more. Instead, he obediently prepared the marketing materials. He was ready to paste this advertisement everywhere once research and development of the game was complete.

Until now, they had been working on Bloody Battle Song: The Powerful Version for one and a half months.

one

Although they had created the game from scratch, they had more or less copied the gameplay of Bloody Battle Song. They also had a very clear idea of the art resources to useall they had to do was update them.

The bulk of the work had to do with the art resources. Since they had outsourced this work to many other companies, the art resources were being produced very quickly.

Based on their predictions, the game would be complete at the beginning of September. This was slightly earlier than their initial plan.

Since they would complete research and development for the game early, they could afford to spend more time trying it out. They could focus on the game’s statistics and make improvements. This would help them win more time over competing games…

All in all, there were many advantages to this.

Now, they were almost done with preparing the publicity. Ye Zhizhou planned to focus all his energy on research and development so the game could be released to players as soon as possible.

At the same time, Pei Qian was busy as well. He had to juggle Tengda Games’ research and development and cautiously take care of Fei Huang Workspace.

Repent and Be Saved’s research and development was progressing smoothly. Until now, they were almost 60% done with the game. According to the rate of their progress, the game would probably be ready for publishing in the middle of October. This included running tests, making adjustments, and tying up loose ends.

Pei Qian instructed Li Yada to produce a demo as soon as he could because he wanted to try it out first.

On one hand, he wanted to check if the game was as difficult as he had expected. On the other hand, he wanted to search for a chance to sneak ‘Boss Pei’s special weapon’ into the game, in a place where people would be least likely to find it.

The System required Pei Qian to be able to win the game with his own skills.

Honestly, Pei Qian was not considered a complete noob[1]. Of course, that did not mean he was particularly formidable either. He was just an ordinary gamer. When put in a group of equally bad gamers, he could sometimes carry others.

The System was only making a requirement like that to prevent Pei Qian from taking advantage of the loophole.

For example, Pei Qian had made the monsters in the first stage multiple times stronger than the players were at the beginning of the game. In terms of attack power, attack frequency, and movement speed; the monsters would overpower the players. No matter how good a player was, they would die within seconds. Only extremely rare gaming gods would barely be able to pass the first stage.

This would be akin to maliciously turning players away. It would be unreasonable.

The System had imposed this requirement so average and slightly-above-average players with a good enough understanding of the game (Pei Qian had a very good grasp of the game’s system) should be able to win the game after several tries.

This way, although the game would still be difficult, most players would still press on in the hopes of winning.

However, given how smart Pei Qian was, he thought of a way around this problem.

He had three main considerations:

First, the System required Pei Qian to win the game, but it did not stipulate how long Pei Qian could take!

Even if it took Pei Qian a hundred tries to win and even if he had to play from the day he received the demo to the day the game was published, it would still be considered a win.

Second, the System did not stipulate how Pei Qian had to win.

He could hide an extremely formidable weapon somewhere in the game, in a place where nobody would suspect. If he could easily eliminate monsters with that weapon, he would still be considered a winner.

Lastly, the System did not stipulate which ending Pei Qian had to get.

He could create multiple endings for the game, one of which only required the player to unlock 30% of the game’s plot. Even if he took the shortest route to get to an ending of the game, it would still be considered a win, right?

Thus, Pei Qian was well-prepared. He would wait for Repent and Be Saved’s demo to be released. Then, he would find a place to hide his special weapon. After that, he would begin his training.

The demo might be produced in two or three days. Then, Boss Pei would have to get busy.

It all sounded torturous, but as the saying went, ‘no pain, no gain’. If he wanted to incur losses, how could he not work hard?

He had invested nearly twenty million yuan into Repent and Be Saved; he could not let it go to waste!

Apart from this, Pei Qian considered modifying some company procedures slightly. At the moment, Tengda Games’ gave out project rewards and bonuses. Fifteen percent of each game’s profit would be distributed to the employees as bonus.

Fei Huang Workspace was similar. Thirty percent of the profits would be distributed to the members of the workspace as a form of reward.

Pei Qian’s initial intention in coming up with this system was to spend as much of the money he earned as possible. This would allow him some relief from thinking about spending the System Funds.

However, after a period of pondering, Pei Qian found a huge problem with such a system!

If they could get such a large project bonus, the employees would be motivated to earn more!

Take Fei Huang Workspace for instance. They did not make much money from their last film. That was why Huang Sibo and Zhu Xiaoce received only their base pay, without a single cent of bonus.

Although Pei Qian gave them a high basic pay to begin with and the video had received good feedback, their income did indeed take a hit.

That was why they decided to work on reviewing digital products and producing short videos this time. This would increase their chances of getting sponsored partnerships. Pei Qian could not help but wonder if this was related to their pay.

Of course, part of it was that they did not want to let Boss Pei down. They wanted to help Fei Huang make profits so Boss Pei did not always have to fill in the gaps for them. However, they must have been partly motivated by earning a bit more bonus for themselves.

That was why Pei Qian increasingly felt like something was amiss.

This way of distributing bonuses seemed to be akin to drinking poison to quench thirst!

Although it helped Pei Qian spend more money in the short term, it also greatly motivated employees to earn more money for the company. This brought more money-the root of all evil—to Pei Qian’s System Funds!

Thus, Pei Qian had to change the system!

Of course, it was impossible to get rid of the bonuses; that would be inhumane. What’s more, if he kept the bonuses, that would be causing more trouble for himself. He would be more stressed when trying to get rid of the funds.

Instead, Pei Qian needed the perfect solution to deal with all the problems.

He had to distribute the money and dispel the employees’ passion for making profits for the company.

After some thought, Pei Qian finally thought of a good idea.

Provided that he could keep the employees’ bonuses constant—with the slight hope of them increasing, he would distribute bonuses based on reputation instead of profits!

In other words—while he distributed rewards based on the amount of profit each project earned before, he would now distribute rewards based on the project’s reputation.

The better the reputation of a project, the greater the bonus employees would obtain. Even for a project like Coming Out of the Cocoon as a Butterfly which incurred losses, employees could still obtain the full extent of rewards if the project’s reputation was good.

Pei Qian could come up with a grading system for projects’ reputation: S-grade, A-grade, B-grade, and C-grade. According to the investment made into each project, Pei Qian would grade the project’s reputation. Each grade would earn those who worked on the project a different bonus.

The bonus percentage would vary for different types of projects.

For example, games normally earned profits over long periods. Thus, the period over which the bonus was to be distributed would be slightly longer as well. On the other hand, videos would be at their most popular in the first three months after uploading them. That meant the bonuses could be distributed at one

go.

This way, employees could focus on the reputation of their projects instead of profits.

Pei Qian would encourage everyone to engage in projects that did not make a profit but could become very popular. That way, Pei Qian would not earn profits, and the employees would receive huge bonuses. Wasn’t that perfect?

Of course, there would still be projects that could generate profit and be reputable.

However, these were the minority.

Under most circumstances, reputation conflicted with profit. It would be difficult for employees to achieve both.

Thus, Pei Qian decided to think more about the practicalities of this plan. He would come up with a set of rules and try to push this plan out before the game was published. Once he set the rules and gained the validation of all his employees, the effect would be deep and far-reaching. One could say that he would be reaping the benefits of this plan for a long time.

The thought of his employees becoming obsessed with the reputation of their projects and forgetting about generating profit made Pei Qian feel as if the entire company had just become extremely noble!

(1) This is a slang for ‘newbie’ or someone terrible at what they do.