Chapter 146 Standard Answer

May 1st, Sunday.

Pei Qian came to the coffee shop near the school again. Today, he was meeting a new game producer.

Of the 1.6 million yuan that the system allowed him to use for tuition, only 1 million had been spent, leaving 600,000 yuan unspent.

So, Pei Qian had previously asked Assistant Xin to find a designer who had worked on some failed projects but also had a certain reputation, wanting to learn some successful experience.

As for why he wanted someone who had failed but also had a certain reputation, it was because Pei Qian wanted to eliminate the interference of personal ability factors as much as possible.

If a producer was inherently a failure and useless, on the one hand, the system would not allow him to pay so much tuition, and on the other hand, his failure factors would not be prominent enough to learn from.

If a person was full of failure factors, which one should Pei Qian learn? What if he learned an unimportant factor? Wouldn't that be a waste of time?

He had to find designers with ability and successful experience. The failure factors on them would be very obvious, like they were directly "highlighted," making them easy to learn from.

What He An talked about was mainly the reasons for the success of Tengda's projects, which was a mistake book for Pei Qian, a large-scale error correction exercise.

Today, this big shot would mainly talk about his own failures, which was a standard exercise book for Pei Qian.

Wouldn't it be perfect to combine what He An said with what this producer said today?

Moreover, he was asking two big shots to teach him, successfully digesting 1.6 million yuan, and also learning professional knowledge of game production.

If he could pass the system's assessment during the settlement and then use what he learned to make money-losing games in the future...

Wouldn't that be a huge profit?

Compared to He An's "explaining mistakes" format, today's big shot would directly "explain the standard answer." For Pei Qian, the knowledge of losing money would be easier to absorb.

Therefore, Pei Qian was very much looking forward to this meeting!

Not long after arriving at the coffee shop, the game producer arrived.

"Hello, Mr. Ma! I'm Qiu Hong." A long-haired man in his thirties shook hands with Pei Qian warmly.

Before coming, Pei Qian had roughly checked Qiu Hong's resume.

Unlike He An's glorious resume as an ancient big shot, Qiu Hong's game production career could be described as quite bumpy and ill-fated.

His resume could be seen as a template for the middle-aged generation of the domestic game market.

He entered the industry around 2001, joined a large domestic game company as a numerical planner, and successfully developed a successful Xianxia (immortal hero) themed online game, of course, a pay-to-win game.

Two years later, with the experience of a successful project, he jumped to another game company and developed an online game with a Western fantasy background as the main planner. The project flopped. After a full year of development, the final test data was extremely poor, and it died prematurely.

After that, he changed to another game company and continued to serve as the main planner to produce a national war-themed pay-to-win game. This time, he succeeded, successfully achieving an impressive monthly revenue of over 100 million.

This national war game could be considered an evergreen tree. Although its revenue declined after half a year, it still maintained operations for three years and accumulated a good reputation for Qiu Hong.

With the reputation accumulated from this project, Qiu Hong decided to start his own business, found investment to establish a game company, and developed a pay-to-win mobile game, which flopped again.

Currently, because his game project had failed, Qiu Hong was a little disheartened and was in a state of wanting to relax. So, when he heard that someone would spend 100,000 yuan to listen to a lesson from him, he readily agreed and came to Jingzhou.

Pei Qian was very satisfied with Qiu Hong's resume.

To sum it up simply: He stood high enough and fell miserably enough!

This person was obviously focused on the field of domestic pay-to-win games and had already achieved a monthly revenue of over 100 million as the main planner five or six years ago, which was very proud.

Moreover, Qiu Hong's two failures did not seem to be due to money.

The first time he failed, the company he jumped to was rich and generous and was prepared to spend a lot of money to create a masterpiece that looked like a big hit in that era. They were not short of money at all.

The second time he failed, he also received enough funds from investors to start his business and was not short of money either.

But even so, Qiu Hong, who had successful game experience and rich accumulation in the game industry, still failed to start his own business.

The investment was huge, and the losses were heavy. Tens of millions of funds were directly wasted, which was very much in line with Pei Qian's expectations!

Pei Qian firmly believed that there must be content in Qiu Hong's experience that was worth learning from and drawing lessons from!

The waiter brought coffee, and the two chatted while drinking.

Qiu Hong briefly introduced his resume. From the attitude, the difference between him and He An was very obvious.

He An was obviously a big shot in the industry, a successful person whose qualifications crushed 99% of the designers in the industry. He gave lectures entirely out of interest, and the old man had an arrogance about him.

Even if "Ma Yang" offered him a price of 200,000 yuan per lesson, He An would resolutely tell him what he wanted to tell. You could listen or not, if you didn't listen, I would leave.

Qiu Hong was completely different. Although he had successful experience, he knew that he was not a top game producer in the game industry, so he was very polite. He was willing to talk about whatever this "Mr. Ma" wanted to hear.

After all, Qiu Hong was a numerical planner and only made domestic pay-to-win games. Most designers of this type had a significant characteristic, which was that they would not go against money.

Qiu Hong felt that since this "Mr. Ma" paid a price of 100,000 yuan per lesson to listen to lectures and also covered round-trip air tickets and pick-up and drop-off expenses, his relationship with him was just like that of a pay-to-win whale player and himself, absolutely his bread and butter.

He definitely had to do everything possible to meet "Mr. Ma's" needs.

Therefore, when he heard "Mr. Ma" say that he wanted to hear about his failures, Qiu Hong was not angry. He just confirmed it and readily agreed.

"Alright, since Mr. Ma wants to hear it, I'll talk about it."

"But there is one thing I want to state in advance."

"If I talk about successful experiences, I will definitely have to spend some time preparing. After all, every successful case is a combination of countless successful factors. I must clarify every successful factor in order to restore the full picture of this successful game."

"But it is much easier to talk about failures, and I don't need to spend time preparing."

"As the saying goes, 'A thousand-mile dike is destroyed by an ant hole.' Many times, you make 99 correct choices, but if you only make one wrong choice, it will still lead to failure."

"To analyze the reasons for failure, you only need to find the most critical failure factor in the failed project."

Qiu Hong told "Mr. Ma" about his teaching ideas while drinking coffee. His attitude was very clear, which was to try his best to obtain "Mr. Ma's" consent.

Pei Qian was very happy: "That's great. I want to learn from the lesson of 'destroyed by an ant hole.' Please be sure to talk about it carefully!"

Qiu Hong nodded: "Okay, then in the following courses, I will talk about a key factor that will lead to project failure in each lesson. I believe that with Mr. Ma's intelligence, you will definitely be able to avoid it well or come up with solutions."

Pei Qian showed a smile: "That's for sure."

Qiu Hong took a sip of coffee and sorted out his thoughts a little: "So, for today's first lesson, I want to start with a more basic but most easily overlooked aspect."

"Project Management."

"Industries such as games, movies, and anime, compared to novels and self-media, the biggest difference is that they are industries that require close division of labor and cooperation."

"That is to say, it is useless no matter how powerful you are alone. If your colleagues are a bunch of people who are just goofing off and wasting time, no matter how good an idea is, it can't be done."

"Even a genius game producer needs a strong production team to turn his design into a successful game project."

"And people are lazy. Many employees in game projects only regard their position as a job to earn a fixed salary and support their families. They don't regard it as a career they are working for. So most of the time, their work enthusiasm is suppressed by themselves."

"At this time, the means of project management become the top priority."

"The reason why I used to make successful projects but failed to start my own business is largely because I lacked the ability of project management."

"The evil consequences of this are that the development plans I made in the original company could always be completed smoothly, with a delay of at most one week. However, in my own company, the development plans I made were always delayed again and again. Even after multiple delays, the games I made still could not meet my own expectations."

"Every department always has various reasons to shirk responsibility to each other. It seems that everyone has completed their duties, but if you observe carefully, you will find that they do not seem to be promoting the progress of the entire project. Everyone delays a little bit of time, and the project's development progress completely collapses..."

Pei Qian listened silently, with a longing expression on his face.

So… so envious!

Look at other people's employees. The boss doesn't have to say anything, and they will goof off on their own!

What about Tengda's employees? The boss is desperately encouraging everyone to slack off and goof off, but they are trying every means to work overtime!

However, apart from envy, Pei Qian did not learn any actionable methods from this valuable failure experience.

According to Qiu Hong, failed project management will turn the company into a mess. No matter how awesome the design is, it can't be done without cooperation.

But at this time, Pei Qian had a question.

I haven't done any project management at all?

Then why haven't my employees become a mess, but instead become a solid iron plate?

Needles can't get in, and water can't splash in. I can't even find a breakthrough!

These things that Qiu Hong said, Pei Qian yearned for very much, but after listening to them, he still didn't know what to do.

If according to Qiu Hong, his failure was that he didn't do enough, didn't make good use of project management to stimulate the employees' enthusiasm, or didn't effectively supervise the lazy employees.

But Pei Qian thought that Qiu Hong just didn't do enough, and he didn't do anything!

I not only didn't positively supervise the employees, but also negatively supervised them, and drove all those overtime dogs home!

Logically speaking, I have already overfulfilled the task, so why did it have the opposite effect?

Is it my problem, or is it my employees' problem?

It's really hair-pulling…