Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

A moment later...

The group chat exploded!

“Isn’t Tengda the company that created The Lonely Desert Road?!”

“!!!... They’re not making any messed up games anymore and have changed to mobile games?”

“To think that company could be said to have a heart! Is this for real?”

All of those people made a quick search and naturally found out that the game was created by the same company which made the messed up game that had gotten popular for a little – The Lonely Desert Road!

How was it possible that this company had a heart?

Ruan Guangjian explained hurriedly, “It’s for real. If you guys don’t believe it, you can download the game and try it for yourselves. The game’s extremely fair and you can play it all you want for just the fixed price of 10 yuan! The only in-game purchasable item is a 30 yuan permanent membership card that only gives you an additional 10 draw chance daily. Other than that, there’s no other paywalls!”

“Are you serious?”

Chen Qi was skeptical.

A mobile card game that did not have any in-game purchasable items?

How were they expecting to make money?

Were they hoping to recoup their cost with just 10 yuan from every player?

Wouldn’t that make this a game that was destined to lose money?!

Everyone were doubtful about it and purchased the game to check it out.

After they tried it, they found out that the game really did have conscience!

While there was indeed an in-game market, the only item on sale was a permanent membership card fixed at 30 yuan!

Most other card games would include purchase options for energy, stage challenge counts and card draws et cetera, but Ghost General did not have that!

Which meant to say that the gamers would be going through an almost identical gameplay experience without any distinction between the free gamers and the whales!

Even the only in-game purchasable item was a membership card that cost a mere 30 yuan!

That was equivalent to a single refill card for Fantasy World and what’s more, it was permanent!

Chen Qi was shocked.

He could not believe it!

As a famous game concept artist domestically, he was working for a top domestic game company and was a professional operating within the field.

While he was in charge of the aesthetics aspect, he had some knowledge about game design as well.

In-game purchasable items were the main source of profit for card games where many whales would top up in the ball park of hundreds or even thousands. A single whale would be equivalent to a couple hundreds of normal players.

That paywall model had originated from Qute Three Kingdoms and indeed, the in-game purchases of that game was the envy of many game companies.

Naturally, there were many gamers who would accuse that game of being corrupted.

But, which game company would pit themselves against money?

Chen Qi had not expected that there would be a company this righteous that not only would they spend all their money on developing the game such that they had nothing left for advertising, they would even cut their own source of income just to provide an equal gameplay experience for all gamers!

What sort of a spirit was this?

Childish... but noble at the same time!

Chen Qi’s eyes brimmed with tears. He recalled that he had joined the industry back when standalone games were prospering. Gamers like him had always remembered their core values and were striving to create standalone games that people could deem had a heart...

But now, there truly wasn’t much of these companies with souls left. f𝚛e𝚎𝘄𝒆𝚋𝚗𝚘ѵ𝑒𝚕.𝑐𝘰𝑚

“No problem, I’ll help you share it on Weibo right away. A good game like this must not be buried away!” Chen Qi was the first to reply.

The others naturally agreed with vigor.

“Indeed, it’s a game with a heart! I’m off to advertise it too!”

“I don’t have much followers on Weibo. How about this, I’ll go share it to my other group chats.”

“Those posting it on Weibo, don’t forget to include the original arts! They are the backbone of the game!”

Of course, there were those who had doubts about it.

Could this person have come just to make use of the veterans for free advertising?

However, that did not seem to be the case on second thought.

The main point was that Ruan Guangjian’s original arts were truly amazing and convinced everyone on its own. Otherwise, none of these famous veterans would want to help him advertise for free.

Furthermore, the game truly had heart such that all in-game paywall options were cut off completely.

This was a company with so much heart that they had not even spent on advertising nor increased the game’s price. What was there to suspect about actions that were this righteous?

Based on the current situation, the game was most likely going to make a huge loss. Casually helping to advertise would only be to delay its death.

Before long, the veterans in the group had already shared Ruan Guangjian’s Weibo and original arts.

Chen Qi had shared it as well, including a statement of his own.

“This is the work of a friend in my group. I really like his style of original art that reinterprets the traditional characters of the three kingdoms. With a rich imagination, his style is definitely one of its own.”

“P.S. He seemed to have produced this for a game called Ghost General.”

Chen Qi did not introduce it overly. It was partly because he had a direct nature and truly wasn’t someone who was good at being superfluous and at the same time, he did not want others to feel that it was purely a commercial advertisement.

If he bragged too much about it, it would come across negatively instead.

The statement that he had shared on Weibo gave off the feeling of a casual mention just to share his friend’s work.

Of course, even though these artists were veterans of the industry, they honestly did not have that much followers.

Take Chen Qi for example. While he was in charge of art and concept design for large scale domestic games and had quite a number of widely accepted original arts works, his Weibo followers was only around the range of hundreds of thousands. 𝐟𝙧ee𝔀e𝐛𝓃𝐨𝚟𝑒𝗹.c𝗼𝚖

For a similar post, the comments would mostly only be a couple of hundreds at best.

However, not all of Chen Qi’s Weibo friends were artists that were specialized in original arts for games.

Amongst his friends, there were veterans of the animation industry, famous creators of game companies or even some small-time actors and novelists et cetera.

There was still some clout he had by advertising to these people.

Before long, the comments on his Weibo increased rapidly.

“This is a modification of characters from the three kingdoms? Looks great!”

“Is this the work of an overseas artist?”

“It’s a domestic artist!”

“To think that even our domestic artists could create original arts with such an original style?!”

“Shocking! It feels so epic just looking at it!”

“The game’s called Ghost General? How come I’ve never heard of it?”

“All of those mobile games are cartoonish in design. I’m so sick of them! This style is extremely refreshing!”

“Let’s check it out!”

The reception was unusually warm!

Actually, this was normal as well. After all, Qute Three Kingdoms had already been popular for an entire year!

Through the year, Qute Three Kingdoms had caused the number of players for mobile card games to increase. As such, most mobile gamers would be able to pick up mobile card games with ease.

But on the other hand, they were starting to get tired of Qute Three Kingdoms’s style as well.

This was especially the case for its cartoonish design. After many creators hopped onto the bandwagon and mass produced similar games, majority of the gamers were sick of the repeated cartoonish designs!

On the contrary, Ghost General was entirely different. Just the set of original arts alone was enough to let the gamers know that this was an entirely different game from Qute Three Kingdoms and would be intrigued as well!