Chapter 25: Silently Made A Note

You Were Told to Lose Money By Making Games, and You Actually Did It? 

Chapter 25: Silently Made A Note

"President Chen, NGI really went too far this time!"

Inside the office, Ying Gao and Xiao Dao spoke with indignation written all over their faces.

"Exactly! Aren't they deliberately making enemies for us? We should've demanded to review their draft before they published it." Xiao Dao clenched his fists.

"Yeah. We've never really been interviewed before, so we forgot this kind of thing could happen." Ying Gao rubbed his temples with a headache.

"On the bright side, though, our popularity is pretty high now. A lot of players are paying attention to us." Xiao Dao tried to look at the positive side.

NGI's article had praised them to the heavens, practically portraying them as the saviors of the gaming industry.

From their perspective, it certainly felt good.

But it also made them enemies.

Especially for Ying Gao. Before the company had been acquired, he had maintained connections and contacts throughout the industry.

Studios would occasionally communicate with each other about their projects and release schedules to avoid launching games at the same time.

After all, games weren't like movies.

Movie audiences had to physically go to theaters, so only a handful of holiday release windows were truly lucrative.

Competition was inevitable.

Games were different.

As long as releases weren't concentrated within the same month, most companies could avoid direct clashes.

But after NGI's article was published, many of Ying Gao's old industry contacts had reached out to complain.

"From now on, if we ever do another exclusive interview, I want final approval on the draft! Otherwise, just decline the interview outright. If they keep pulling stunts like this, who can stand it?"

Chen Xu slammed his hand on the desk.

As for offending industry peers, he honestly didn't care.

In fact, he thought it was great.

If those competitors got worked up and decided to target Sekiro when it launched, Chen Xu would probably laugh himself to sleep under his blanket every night.

Because no matter what happened, such hostility would almost certainly hurt Sekiro's early sales.

And for him, that would be wonderful news.

The thing that actually annoyed Chen Xu was that he had once again fallen into the system's trap without realizing it.

Perhaps things had been going too smoothly recently, causing his guard to drop.

Why had all those veteran "loss-making geniuses" like President Pei never managed to lose money successfully?

Wasn't it because they constantly got sabotaged by misunderstandings and overactive imaginations from all directions?

Just like NGI now.

People kept reading far too much into everything he said, then they arrived at interpretations that even he himself had never considered.

And somehow those interpretations always sounded incredibly noble.

Reading the article made even Chen Xu feel embarrassed.

It painted him like some kind of saint when all he wanted was to farm gold coins and make money from the system.

Sure, with the system backing him, he had confidence and plenty of leverage.

And yes, he would love to be famous someday—to be worshipped by countless players and respected by the entire gaming industry.

But first, he needed money in his pocket!

The total amount of money he could freely access right now was only 404 yuan.

What kind of gaming-industry saint could he possibly be?

"Tell everyone not to casually reveal anything about the game. And they're absolutely forbidden from disclosing company information. Violators will be severely punished." Chen Xu instructed.

They couldn't keep letting information leak out.

Otherwise, the hype would become uncontrollable.

The company's newly registered official account—which originally had only thirty or forty bot followers and had never even posted anything—had already grown to more than two hundred thousand followers.

If even more information leaked out, things would really get out of hand.

Whether the attention was positive or negative didn't matter, as long as discussions heated up and players kept arguing, the company's visibility would continue to rise.

Then those who were excited would buy the game at launch, and those who hated it would probably buy it too, just so they could criticize it with evidence.

Wouldn't the launch sales explode?

And if that happened, how was he supposed to lose money?

"Understood, President Chen." Xiao Dao and Ying Gao nodded solemnly.

Their expressions became serious.

This was President Chen's vision.

He wasn't chasing short-term traffic and hype.

He was choosing to calm down, focus on polishing the game, and let the final product speak for itself.

Looking at Xiao Dao and Ying Gao's earnest expressions, Chen Xu suspected they had once again come up with some strange interpretation of his intentions.

But he didn't pay it much attention.

Because no matter how much they misunderstood him, the direction of the game was still ultimately under his control.

"By the way, President Chen, the writing department has finished the dialogue and text for Sekiro. Could you find some time to review it?"

Ying Gao had already returned to his workstation. Xiao Dao, who was about to leave the office as well, suddenly remembered something and stopped to speak to Chen Xu.

Although Sekiro wasn't a story-driven game, it still contained a considerable amount of text, dialogue, item descriptions, and narrative content.

There was no way Chen Xu could handle all of it by himself.

So Chen Xu had primarily written the game's background setting, story outline, and several iconic lines himself.

The rest had been expanded upon by the writing department.

After all, this wasn't a particularly critical aspect. As long as they followed the overall narrative framework and filled in the fragmented storytelling elements, it would be fine.

"Let me take a look."

Chen Xu turned on his computer and opened the document sent over by the writing department.

The story, dialogue, and item descriptions were all generally fine.

There weren't any major problems.

However, there were certain sections that left him speechless.

Many parts contained references and tributes to films and anime.

They were essentially Easter eggs.

The original Sekiro actually had quite a few of these. For example, there were references to poems by Li Bai.

Even the story elements involving the Fountainhead Palace, the Divine Dragon's Tears, and the Divine Heir becoming an ordinary person after severing immortality were partly inspired by the OVA Mashin Hero Wataru: The Story That Never Ends.

Naturally, in this parallel world, that anime didn't exist.

But Chen Xu had no idea how much research the writers had done. Somehow they had discovered a similar source of inspiration and inserted their own tributes without affecting the main storyline.

If the media uncovered those references after launch, wouldn't that just create even more publicity and bring in extra sales for free?

Yet deleting everything outright felt a little unfair to all the writers who had sacrificed their hairlines working on it.

"Let's tone these elements down a bit. They're too obvious."

"Easter eggs and tributes shouldn't be created specifically for players to notice."

"Players should stumble upon them naturally. We shouldn't be guiding them toward those discoveries."

"Some game companies treat Easter eggs and references as marketing tools to generate buzz, but I don't want us doing that."

Chen Xu highlighted several sections and handed his feedback to Xiao Dao.

For things that had virtually no impact on game quality but could significantly increase a game's popularity—Chen Xu hated them with a passion.

"Understood! I'll make sure to pass your philosophy along to the writing department!" Xiao Dao nodded seriously.

As expected of Brother Xu, his perspective was on a completely different level.

In the end, a game's success should be determined by its quality.

Excessive hype could easily cause players to become annoyed.

And once players developed negative feelings, they'd find faults with a game no matter how good it actually was.

Publicity was important, but sometimes it could become the very sword that stabbed its wielder.

An excessive pursuit of traffic and attention might make a game's sales look impressive in the short term.

But what it sacrificed was player trust and loyalty.

It was no different from killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

As this thought crossed his mind, Xiao Dao suddenly felt enlightened.

No wonder Brother Xu hadn't shown the slightest excitement over the attention generated by NGI's interview article.

This lesson had to be remembered.

When the time came to handle the game's marketing and operations after launch, he would need to think carefully about it.

Xiao Dao silently made a note to himself.

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Tn: I updated the story once a day, but if you want to see more chapter of this story ahead of time, please go to my Patreon.

Latest Chapter In Patreon: Chapter 70: A Pledge of Loyalty!

Link to the Latest Chapter: https://www.patreon.com/HannibalNotBarca/posts/you-were-told-to-165271947?collection=2202558