Chapter 15 Noon on the 15th

Pei Qian was in his office, deep in thought.

Last night at 8 PM, the third season of *Pei Zong’s Daily Life* officially premiered exclusively on Ailidao.

From yesterday until now, a huge promotional page has been prominently displayed at the top of Ailidao's homepage, used to promote *Pei Zong’s Daily Life*.

Many viewers came specifically for it, vying to send barrages of comments. The short videos, barely over a minute long, were lively and bustling. The dense barrages of comments allowed many viewers who had just come from traditional video websites like Fanshu.com to see the unique appeal of this new form of video interaction!

Pei Qian didn't watch the premiere; he only checked the video's view count the next day.

It had already reached over 600,000!

Looking at it this way, the video’s final view count was likely to reach around a million.

These might not all be valid clicks, but even so, the video incentive revenue he would receive from Ailidao this time would have to be around 200,000.

Moreover, as popularity accumulated, the view count for subsequent videos would likely be higher than the earlier ones.

Calculated this way, the revenue share for all 10 episodes of the season could very well be over 2.3 million.

In other words, Ailidao was essentially spending over two million to buy the exclusive broadcast rights to the third season of *Pei Zong’s Daily Life*.

This price wasn't considered too high, and couldn't compare with the tens of millions in copyright fees for some popular dramas and variety shows.

But for Pei Qian, this was even worse than his worst-case estimate, and was already enough to make him collapse!

Perhaps, this was what was meant by misfortunes never coming singly…

There was a knock on the door; it was Assistant Xin.

"President Pei, this is the new company welfare that was determined previously. I need you to give it a final review. If there are no problems, we will issue it according to this."

Pei Qian took it and glanced over it.

It was the new welfare package that had been decided about a month ago.

After *Sea Fortress* was completed, Pei Qian introduced a series of benefits, such as company-wide salary adjustments, project bonuses, shopping cards, and mandatory reimbursement quotas, and so on.

And this time, Pei Qian had also decided on a new welfare benefit: full employee health checkups!

He had chosen a relatively high-end checkup, at Jingzhou's best Grade-A tertiary hospital, with high-specification checkup items, costing 3,200 yuan per person.

Now, Tengda, Fei Huang Studio, and Lazy Bones Internet Cafe had more than 50 employees in total, adding up to 160,000 yuan!

In addition, the regular welfare policies remained unchanged, and the shopping card quota was even raised to 3,000 yuan. Adding in all sorts of other cleverly-named benefits, a total of 500,000 yuan was issued to all employees this time.

Originally, Pei Qian had planned to save this money as a last resort for losing money.

If he could control the system funds to around 700,000, wouldn't it be wonderful to spend this 500,000?

But now it was a bit awkward.

Because according to Pei Qian's estimation, even after spending this 500,000, the system funds would still be in surplus!

According to the conversion ratio for surpluses, this money was equivalent to 5,000 yuan of personal property. Spending it meant Pei Qian would personally get 5,000 less.

Pei Qian didn't think too much about it. "Just do it according to this. Leave the documents for me to look at again."

"Okay, President Pei." Assistant Xin flipped through the notes in her small notebook. "There's one more thing. Today, a reporter from Amusement Times, Reporter Hu, called wanting to arrange an exclusive interview. This is already the third reporter this week. Should we just refuse them as before?"

Pei Qian nodded. "Yes, refuse them. Keep the same two principles as before: no one should reveal my name or true identity to the outside world, and no one should reveal our company's specific salary and benefits. Remind everyone again."

"Okay, President Pei." Assistant Xin turned and left.

So far, in the eyes of game media and players, Tengda was still a mystery.

Many people knew there was such a company, but who the boss was, what the benefits were like, and what the specific situation was inside the company, no one knew.

As for why Pei Qian did this…

There were two reasons.

First, if the specific amount of Tengda's benefits and salaries were leaked, seeing such good benefits and such high salaries, Jingzhou's outstanding talents would definitely break their heads trying to get in, and many people might even come from other cities specifically for this!

If many particularly talented people voluntarily lowered their salaries to join, Pei Qian would have to rack his brains to think of reasons to refuse. If the reasons weren't reasonable, the system wouldn't agree, and he would be forced to accept some outstanding talents…

He couldn't even get rid of the people he wanted to eliminate now, and now more people were coming? Wouldn't that just be making things harder for himself?

Second, Pei Qian couldn't let his parents know his true identity just yet. He wanted to keep it a secret for as long as possible.

Pei Qian also didn't want to become famous. After all, with fame comes trouble. Once he became famous, many people would be watching him, and many things would become inconvenient.

The system had a rule that he couldn't let others suspect the system itself or challenge its existence. Pei Qian didn't want to create unnecessary complications.

Therefore, Pei Qian didn't accept any media interviews.

Many media outlets called Tengda's front desk wanting to interview, but they were all politely refused. This time was no exception.

…

Pei Qian looked again at the 500,000 yuan welfare plan on the table.

"Think of it this way, it's equivalent to taking five thousand yuan out of your own pocket to give employees 500,000 yuan in benefits."

"Thinking about it like that, it's still pretty worth it…"

"Ah, I really am a good boss."

Pei Qian couldn't bring himself to do something like letting his employees receive 500,000 yuan less in benefits just to convert 5,000 yuan of his personal property.

No matter what, these employees were all sincerely working for him. Although Huang Sihao, Bao Xu, and the others were always trying every possible means to interfere with his plans, these people were indeed loyal to him…

And from the employees' point of view, they were all wholeheartedly dedicating themselves to the company!

It's just that, in Pei Qian's eyes, they were all helping him screw things up…

"Forget it, let it be. The salary and benefits will remain the same, and we'll still add to them according to the previous plan."

"We can't mistreat our brothers."

"I didn't lose money this time, but I'll keep trying next time…"

Pei Qian felt a faint sense of melancholy.

He resolved to learn from his pain.

Summarize the experience, learn from the lessons.

Figure out exactly why *Game Producer* succeeded!

Or, figure out if *Game Producer* had any major flaws that could be inherited in the future.

It had been two weeks since the game was released, and many players and professional game reviewers had already analyzed and studied the game online.

This time, Pei Qian didn't need to ask the design team to summarize the successful experiences; he only needed to flip through the online comments to roughly understand where he had failed this time!

First, the more authoritative game media:

"*Game Producer* is a very successful interactive storytelling experience, and it has completely subverted the traditional game storytelling method."

"In this game, you will play as a game producer, and your goal is to overcome numerous obstacles and choose the most likely way to successfully produce a game. Will you become a star producer, or go bankrupt in obscurity? It all depends on your choices."

"The highlight of this game is that it maximizes the player's experience of entangled mentalities and difficult choices, which is precisely the real inner experience of game producers!"

"But, if it were just that, then this game could only be considered an excellent simulation game. Compared with some traditional simulation games, it has no special advantages other than being more beautifully rendered."

"What makes this game a masterpiece is the narration that constantly accompanies the player in the game, which is precisely the finishing touch of this game!"

"When you first play the game, you may find the narration noisy and feel angry at being ridiculed, but if you think about it carefully, you will find that it is precisely the narration that makes the game interesting!"

"The narration can be regarded as the greed in every producer's heart, or the people pointing fingers at him. For a content producer, the difficulty is not in finding ideas or making the right choices, but in persisting in oneself amidst the naysaying of others, staying true to the original aspiration, and only then can one achieve final success!"

"In short, this is a game with rich content, profound ideas, novel gameplay, and is different from other games. It not only conveys to us the difficulty of game producers, but also reveals the real reasons for the chaos in the game industry, and also encourages all content creators to stay true to their original aspirations and forge ahead!"

Overall score: 9.0 points

Summary: Uses black humor to conduct an in-depth analysis of the entire game industry, giving players a refreshing interactive game experience!

Advantages:

Black humor;

Multiple endings make people unable to stop;

The finishing touch of the narration;

Profound exposure of the industry, thought-provoking.

Disadvantages:

Sometimes it deliberately restricts players, but this is part of the game content.