Cannon Fodder Genius Game Producer - Chapter 27

Chapter 27: The 27th Day of a Blockbuster

When Li Sheng and the others saw the name “Lin Cheng,” they all shared a complicated feeling, as if they were momentarily choked.

Given the evidence they currently possessed regarding Lin Cheng’s connection to the online water army, it was almost iron-clad proof that Lin Cheng was not a good person. Yet, this proposal that they all favored actually came from him.

The recent Super God update accident and the subsequent waves of trolls and water army manipulation were still fresh in their minds. Although Li Sheng and the others hadn’t managed to find out exactly which company Lin Cheng was colluding with, they had long been on guard against him.

Suddenly finding that a promising proposal was written by Lin Cheng made it very difficult for their feelings not to be complex.

Li Sheng: …Should we still follow the old rules?

Chen Shan: Let’s proceed as usual. This is fine—isolating him to a separate matter and reducing his contact with the main project. This was our original plan anyway.

Li Sheng: Alright then.

Lin Cheng had failed two mandatory missions in a row.

This was the greatest setback he had faced since his rebirth and binding with the system. He had originally thought this system was his pure “Golden Finger,” and he had never considered what the consequences of failing a mission would be.

It wasn’t until a few days ago, when the mandatory missions to slap Teacher Bu Shu and Jiang Ziye in the face expired and failed completely, that he truly experienced the cruelty of the system.

Mandatory Mission: Slap Teacher Bu Shu in the face. Progress: 0. Result: Failure. —Mandatory Mission: Slap Jiang Ziye in the face. Progress: 0. Result: Failure.

Failure Penalty: Protagonist Aura Brightness -2; Host’s Appearance and Physical Stats randomly -2. (Warning: The lower the Protagonist Aura Brightness, the closer the Host’s appearance and physical stats will return to the original values before binding with the system.)

Before seeing this warning, Lin Cheng had forgotten that his current upright appearance and excellent physical condition were all obtained after binding with the system. This failure penalty completely shattered his mindset. Now, he only wanted to complete his current missions at any cost and then show those two guys, Teacher Bu Shu and Jiang Ziye, who caused his failure, what for!

What mission should he use to go head-to-head with the people from Bu Shu Studio?!

The current “King of Games” Plot Achievement Mission required the final game to exceed other competing games in terms of discussion heat during the same period.

Lin Cheng searched the internet with a sinister gaze for the latest news on various games, and all the keywords that caught his eye were “Pay-to-Win” (Krypton Gold).

Lin Cheng also knew the news of Wang Fei going to Bu Shu Studio. Within Universal, everyone guessed that the first project of Bu Shu Studio would inevitably be a major focus project. As the project manager of Super God, Wang Fei was also very keen on mining profit points within a game.

Based on various information, Lin Cheng judged that the first game from Bu Shu Studio would definitely be a massive money-maker.

In that case… Lin Cheng carefully selected a game from the system’s game library, exchanged all his points for it, and submitted it to Jixing Studio’s monthly proposal activity.

Li Sheng: Congratulations. Your work, Wasteland, won first place in this monthly proposal competition. At the same time, judged by the Jixing Studio management group, your submission Wasteland has preliminarily reached production standards. You can choose to start the Wasteland demo production, and Jixing Studio will provide you with project startup funds.

After the demo is completed and passes Universal’s internal project initiation audit, you will receive financial and personnel support for the Wasteland project from Universal.

After receiving the notice from Li Sheng, Lin Cheng breathed a sigh of relief—the first step of the Plot Achievement Mission had been achieved. Next was making the demo and participating in Universal’s internal audit!

While Lin Cheng was advancing his missions step by step and secretly planning revenge against Pei Shu, the three members of Bu Shu Studio—Wang Fei, Pei Shu, and Jiang Ziye—were currently sitting around the conference table in the coffee area, collectively nursing a massive headache.

Pei Shu looked at the project budget Wang Fei had prepared, scratched his head with difficulty, and let out a sigh: “Old Wang, we don’t have enough money…”

That’s right. Bu Shu Studio, which occupied a high-end office floor with an outstanding environment and daily afternoon tea, was now so poor it could barely keep the lights on.

With a total of 800,000 in capital, Pei Shu had reserved 200,000 for server rental fees after the project launch and employee salaries; another 50,000 was spent on the initial purchase of office equipment—these were all necessary expenses.

The remaining 600,000 was all invested by Pei Shu into the development of Project: Immortal Fate.

Pei Shu had considered many things, but he had forgotten to consider eight years of inflation.

Prices from eight years ago and prices today were worlds apart. Pei Shu originally thought that since he was someone who had managed to produce two independent games by scrimping and saving, and had suffered from the lack of funds during indie production, he would inevitably have no major issues with estimating and using funds.

But… his face truly hurt now.

In the past, Wang Fei had been ruthless when spending budgets on the Super God project. After all, Super God was a Super S-rank project for all of Universal; the budget was ample, and any shortfall could be replenished at any time as long as the spending was reasonable.

Back at the Super God project, for the recently released expansion, the promotional CG for just one new character was worth 7.5 million RMB. This time, they introduced three new characters, and the price for the promotional CG was nearly 20 million. The production cycle for the character CG was as long as six months, featuring high-quality production akin to cinematic animation.

And that didn’t even include internal developer costs and various placement fees for the CG. In short, the estimated total cost for one new expansion approached 50 million.

Since coming to Pei Shu’s Bu Shu Studio, Wang Fei had promptly adjusted his mindset, telling himself this was a studio with a total investment of only 800,000 and only three formal employees. Out of these three, only Jiang Ziye was honestly drawing a salary; Pei Shu had promised him a plan involving project dividends and post-stage salary/bonus supplements, and Pei Shu himself, of course, didn’t need a salary.

For these reasons, Wang Fei had been very cautious while making the budget. But even so, there were times when the budget couldn’t be suppressed.

Pei Shu looked gloomily at the character design portion of the budget—basic player character images, 6 stages each for male and female, 30,000 each; 20 NPC character images totaling 50,000; monster images totaling 20 for 50,000; Immortal Realm maps and special scene package content totaling 100,000… plus scattered item icons, UI design, and so on.

Holy crap. That meant just the art budget would require at least 300,000.

Aside from art, programming costs were another major chunk. A full programming package would cost at least 100,000. There were also fees for applying for a game publication number, voice acting, music, and sound effects… during this period, there were also costs for renting servers for testing, adding new program functions, and so on.

The figure of 600,000, which originally seemed sufficient to Pei Shu, could barely sustain them until the final game launch after this simple calculation.

Wang Fei looked at the budget and also felt a headache: “I’ve already tried my best to cut it down, but we need to ensure basic game quality.”

Pei Shu understood this as well. For example, regarding programming—if they really tried to save money by finding students who hadn’t graduated yet, it’s not that they couldn’t write code, but these students lacked game development experience. To be honest, the programming knowledge students receive in school is a completely different matter from the programming logic used in actual development applications.

Code written by such inexperienced programmers could have problems starting from the underlying structure. If these problems aren’t detected during low-load testing, they could lead to a total program crash once testing numbers increase or redundant information builds up during development. Or, the server could crash directly under the impact of player numbers at launch.

So Wang Fei was right—one cannot skimp on programming.

“Then what about the art…?” Pei Shu glanced at the art section, which occupied the bulk of the total cost.

Wang Fei was silent for a moment: “This is already the lowest price this team can offer. This is also a well-known team in the industry. Furthermore, game art is what provides the first-glance impact to players. Currently, we have preliminarily determined the art style and the art quality standards. To reach this quality standard, the cost cannot be low…”

Pei Shu let out a long sigh.

A budget of 800,000. He originally thought it would be enough to make an idle game, but he never expected that eight years of inflation would almost shatter his dreams tonight.

Jiang Ziye was also a bit worried. He thought for a moment and said tentatively: “Regarding art, is it possible to follow the current established tone and quality standards, but then individually invite artists on the WG outsourcing platform? If we outsource to a team, there are actually management fees for the art team. We could take over the management work ourselves and audit the final art effects personally.”

“It’s just… a bit tiring,” Jiang Ziye frowned. “Also, our control over art quality might indeed not be as good as professional art personnel.”

As the saying goes, every profession has its specialty. None of the three people present were art professionals. It was fine for them to look at a picture and confirm if it was the effect or style they wanted, but when it came to auditing and judging the quality of the finished product, or how to provide revision suggestions, that was a different story.

Wang Fei finally gritted his teeth: “I’ll go to the WG outsourcing platform first to check and confirm the price for art outsourcing that can reach our quality effect. If the cost can be significantly compressed, we’ll do it that way.”

After making the decision, Wang Fei shook his head and laughed with a bit of irritation.

“It’s been many years since I’ve been this ‘hard-working and frugal’ while doing a project.”

Pei Shu also laughed: “Old Wang, don’t say that. Our current conditions are already quite good!”

That was true. Just seeing this huge office area with only the three of them—that was indeed a very good environment. Unfortunately, office environment is one thing, and capital is another. Even if they stayed in such a good office building, it couldn’t hide the truth that they were short on money.

After finishing that, Wang Fei began to care about other progress on the project.

Pei Shu nodded: “The breakdown of various functions in the overall system plan has been completed. But for an idle game, numerical values are a focus. I still need to consider how to build the numerical framework.”

At this point, Pei Shu smiled: “After all, we are a game with a ‘Dual Cultivation vs. Body Refinement’ system confrontation!”

Wang Fei heard the hidden meaning in Pei Shu’s words and snorted irritably: “You really intend to do that? When you get beaten to death by players, don’t say I know you.”

Beside them, Jiang Ziye, who was still studying the project budget, let out a melancholic sigh upon hearing the conversation: “I feel that before the players beat Teacher Bu Shu to death, they might beat me to death first.”

In the current division of labor, Jiang Ziye is the lead writer for the project. This meant that all the gameplay points provided by Pei Shu would be packaged into a plot by Jiang Ziye, finally forming a set of text received by the players at the front end.

In other words, Pei Shu was in the back using gameplay to “pit” the players, while Jiang Ziye was the one “aiding the tyrant” by packaging these mechanics with text and transmitting them to the players.

As soon as Jiang Ziye thought about the plotlines he was currently writing, he felt his life might not be long.

While Pei Shu and the others were talking, a link was sent to Wang Fei’s phone.

Li Sheng: Regarding the company’s pre-initiation demo projects this time, the one numbered 39 belongs to Lin Cheng. He took first place in Jixing’s internal proposal last month.

Li Sheng: Sigh. That game setting he gave is actually quite good. This is so annoying—sometimes a person’s character and talent really can’t be mentioned in the same breath. It’s truly irritating to see.

Wang Fei glanced at his phone and clicked on the pre-initiation demo introduction on Universal’s official website. This kind of introduction usually doesn’t reveal too much information—at most, it lets people know it’s a project with a post-apocalyptic wasteland background.

After looking, Wang Fei returned to his phone and glanced at the frustrated Li Sheng.

Wang Fei: Since you also know his character is no good, the true ownership of this work is actually still in doubt.

Li Sheng: …I know about the ‘True and False Producer’ incident, but after I found out the contributor was him, I searched the internet and didn’t see any new games with similar settings. I haven’t seen any unfinished projects with similar themes in indie games either.

Wang Fei: Before Jiang Ziye stood up, no one thought there would be a ‘True and False Producer’ incident either.

Li Sheng: …Surely not? Jiang Ziye’s incident was bizarre enough. Can it happen again?

Wang Fei: It’s hard to say. We can’t currently determine if his guilt exists. Let’s wait; time always proves everything.

After saying this, Wang Fei put down his phone and told Pei Shu and Jiang Ziye about the matter.

Upon hearing Lin Cheng’s name, Jiang Ziye’s brow furrowed slightly: “Teacher Bu Shu, Teacher Wang… there’s something weird about this Lin Cheng. It’s hard for me to explain, but we must be careful of him.”

Wang Fei’s eyes flashed as he heard Jiang Ziye’s words, remembering the previous Super God update incident.

Pei Shu glanced at Jiang Ziye, then at Wang Fei, and finally smiled: “Let’s not mention Lin Cheng’s weirdness for now. However… I have a feeling that this new game of his will likely be aimed at us. It might even go online at the same time as our game.”

Wang Fei and Jiang Ziye were both startled.

Pei Shu laughed: “Alright, let’s go full steam ahead from now on. I hope in the coming collision, we can practice the name of our studio—Bu Shu (No Loss/Not Losing)!”

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