"Ahem. Everyone, stop what you're doing for a moment and listen to me talk about something, then you can get back to work, okay?" The other girls around her were all busy, and Chu Lian felt a little embarrassed making only them work. After waiting a while, she had everyone stop and join Liusu, Luoying, and Mo Li in listening to her.
"Hm? What's Master going to talk about this time?"
"No idea. The things she tells us are always pretty strange, but once we actually implement them, they somehow turn out surprisingly suitable."
"Exactly, exactly. But no matter what she wants to say, I'm already satisfied just because she came to see me."
"You pervert. Even the things you think about are different from everyone else's. Sure enough, all of you are perverts. Master obviously came to see me."
"Can you stop being so full of yourself? Just look at yourselves. No figure, no height. Why would Master even spare you a glance? Don't make me laugh."
"You heretics, shut up! Flat chests are the truly scarce resource in this world. We've already got more than enough huge breasts!"
"Oh? Don't tell me you don't know that the world is made up of protons, neutrons, quanta, atoms, molecules, and... breasts? With your bust size, you're definitely not one of them."
"Aaaah! You bastards! Can you stop bringing this up every single time? Other than breasts, what else do you even have?"
"We've got height, long legs, and brains. Unlike you, who loses the only useful brain she has the moment she gets angry..."
"Outrageous! I'm not finished with any of you!"...
Listening to the girls' bizarre conversation and seeing that they were only one step away from actually fighting, while Liusu, Luoying, and Mo Li, who were supposed to be leading them, looked positively eager to join in themselves, Chu Lian knew she had to intervene.
"Quiet down. Everyone, listen to me." As their master, she had faced this sort of situation every time she came in, so she had long since become skilled at handling it.
The girls were still puffing their cheeks in irritation, but no matter what, Chu Lian was their master, and one they willingly chose to obey. Since she had told them to stop fooling around, every girl immediately halted what she was doing and quietly looked at Chu Lian with an obedient expression.
Liusu, Luoying, and Mo Li, on the other hand, looked somewhat disappointed. If things had descended into chaos, they would have had an excuse to attack one another, and could even have taken advantage of the confusion to carry Master away.
Then, somewhere no one knew about, just Master and themselves could do all sorts of embarrassing things together. That would be absolutely wonderful...
"You three, cut every erotic scene out of your heads right now! Don't think I don't know what you're imagining. Just look at your expressions. Anyone could guess!" Chu Lian's roar rang out right in the middle of their fantasies.
The three glanced at one another and immediately noticed that each other's stances looked strange. Their thighs were tightly pressed together and rubbing subtly, while rosy blushes had appeared across their faces.
With expressions and movements like those, it was no wonder Chu Lian had seen through them at a glance. Even they themselves could tell exactly what the others had been thinking.
"Hmph..." They each gave the others a disdainful snort, slapped their cheeks, and refocused their attention on Chu Lian.
Knowing that she was seriously discussing something now, they did not want to interrupt. After all, Chu Lian was unbelievably adorable when she became serious. They could always go back to fantasizing later, but missing precious time spent admiring their adorable master would be a true shame.
Besides, they were very curious about what exactly Chu Lian had in mind that could save a group of people like them, who only knew how to spend money and had no idea how to earn it.
"Okay, you're all listening to me now, right? No spacing out, no fantasizing, and no random nonsense?" Only after seeing them all nod did Chu Lian continue. "I came here today to solve everyone's problem of constantly spending money without earning any."
"I'm not blaming anyone. I understand very well that having all of you earn money directly isn't appropriate, and it isn't your field either, which is why I have to worry about it instead. After all, as your master, I'm responsible for all of you."
Enjoying the adoring and affectionate gazes the girls directed toward her, Chu Lian smiled and continued, "You should all know that the game we've designed is far ahead of its time. At the very least, no one will catch up with us for more than a decade."
"That's both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that for a very long time, our game will be unique. The disadvantage is that we have no prior experience to learn from and no competitors to push us forward, so we have no idea how we should develop this game."
"You might say that if we take the time to explore, we'll eventually figure it out."
"I understand that too. Time can teach us many things, including experience, knowledge, and everything else we want to know."
"But the thing we're most lacking right now is precisely time. Why do I say that?"
"I should have told all of you that this game is really only a trial run. The truly incredible game will be a super game containing almost countless worlds that are nearly indistinguishable from reality."
"Because that game is far too complicated and requires an enormous amount of content, I first need one or several games to test the market while also rescuing us from our current situation of spending more than we earn, accumulating vast amounts of money for us to invest in the next stage."
"My plan for that game is to basically complete it within three years and have it at least initially operational within five. The sooner we gather the necessary funds, the more time we'll have to prepare that game."
"That's why this game has to start making money from the very beginning. That's something we absolutely must accomplish. Otherwise, every later plan will have to be delayed, and we simply don't have that much time to prepare."
"But as pioneers, how exactly should we make money? Is there anything we can learn from?"
"I thought about it for a long time. With games, while maintaining playability, we can't sacrifice balance either. Otherwise, people will quickly get tired of it, and it'll end up becoming a game only a small minority still plays."
"Therefore, to maintain balance, powerful items, races, bloodlines, weapons, and things like that must all be found by the players themselves inside the game. We can't rely on selling those things to make money."
"Otherwise, it would inevitably create unfairness. We'd achieve our goal of making money in the short term, but once the players got tired of it, making money later would become even more difficult. And since this first game needs to lay the foundation for our ultimate project while also paving the way for any other money-making games we might release afterward, we absolutely cannot lose the players' trust."
"We can take Blizzard as an example... Sure, mages are Blizzard's favorite child, but at least in other respects, their balancing is pretty good, isn't it?"
"So if we can't sell powerful items, equipment, bloodlines, weapons, and the usual things traditional online games use, what can we sell to make money quickly?"
"What I'm about to talk about now is exactly that issue, and it's also content I need all of you to add into the game."
"Our game is divided into single-player and online modes. The gameplay of the two modes is completely different. I'm sure you've already finished everything in that regard, so I won't say anything more about it here."
"For the single-player game, since someone is playing alone, getting players to spend money is relatively difficult. So we can completely abandon any plan to make money from single-player mode and focus everything on the online multiplayer side."
"First, let's talk about our hardware. Even though it looks incredibly high-tech, under our design, we've actually compressed the production cost to only thirty yuan. So how much should we sell it for?"
"Three thousand yuan! At least three thousand yuan! That's the only way players will feel that our product is high-end. Even after deducting the symbolic two-percent tax the government charges us for this part... Huh? I know you're probably wondering whether the tax should be twenty percent instead. That's because we have someone powerful supporting us, so they'll only charge us this much. That's not something we need to worry about, right? Even after giving suppliers at every level eighteen percent in profit, we'll still keep eighty percent. Deducting the production cost gives us 2,370, so let's just call it 2,400 in pure profit."
"For the first release, we'll sell ten thousand units. Then, after it causes a sensation, we'll gradually release batches of three thousand, five thousand, two thousand, and so on."
"Of course, doing this will greatly stretch out the amount of time it takes us to make money, but that's fine. We have other methods."
"We won't charge single-player users anything, but for online players, we'll charge one yuan per hour. Even if they play for less than a full hour, it'll still count as one hour."
"Some people might say that's too greedy, but would anyone who can afford a three-thousand-yuan gaming device really be poor? Of course not. If they want to play online, they'll just have to obediently pay."
"That's our first charging method. It might not look like much, but out of every ten people, at least five should be willing to play online. From the first ten thousand units, half of them means five thousand people. If each one plays five hours per day, that's still twenty-five thousand yuan in daily income. It doesn't look like much, but little amounts add up. Besides, I'm deliberately estimating on the low side. The real numbers might greatly exceed that."
"Next, once people are playing together, wherever there are people, there will be social circles, and wherever there are social circles, there will be grudges and rivalries. It's inevitable that they'll start wanting to compete. And people who can afford our gaming devices and don't care about online fees certainly won't mind spending even more money to crush their rivals."
"And how will they crush each other? If your equipment looks good, then mine will look even better. If your mount is cool, then mine has to be cooler."
"Exactly. We'll sell appearances, outfits, skins, and even all sorts of cosmetic DLC that only we can produce. These things will only affect how items look and won't increase equipment stats, but I'm certain people will flock to buy them."
"The better-looking something is, the more expensive we'll sell it. Conversely, ordinary-looking things or less popular styles can be cheaper. We can divide them into several different tiers. Luoying, I'm sure you and the others will be very experienced in this area. So I'll have to ask you to come up with different kinds of cosmetic designs. Weapons, mounts, equipment, usable items, hair ornaments, decorative earrings, rings, bracelets, clothing, skirts, pants, stockings, shoes, and so on can all be designed and sold separately."
"Everything I just mentioned was about individual players. Now I'm going to talk about groups."
"Most people don't like being alone. Once online play exists, all kinds of small groups will inevitably emerge. Didn't we already include many designs related to this?"
"For example, Western-style mercenary guild teams, squads belonging to various alliances, Eastern-style tavern companions with shared ambitions, and all kinds of towers, halls, organizations, and so on. If players want to construct or establish one themselves, they'll first need to complete a series of quests and then raise their favorability with a certain quest NPC."
"Items that raise favorability can be obtained through quests, but the quantity will be extremely limited. Even if over a hundred people work together, creating an organization will still take at least a month. Of course, we can say the difficulty is meant to increase players' sense of belonging toward their group."
"However, we can make some favorability-raising items available for purchase from certain Mystery Merchants. And the currency used to trade with Mystery Merchants can be designed as a special currency that can only be obtained by completing special quests or exchanged at an equivalent rate using yuan."
"How much money would it take if they wanted to buy enough items to max out favorability? That depends on how large an organization they're trying to establish. Different organization levels will require different amounts."
"For the first level, they'll need to buy thirty thousand yuan worth of items, and even then, it'll only shorten the minimum establishment time to half a month. For the second level, double it to sixty thousand, and it'll still require at least half a month... Then we keep scaling upward. The highest level is seven. At that point, let's make it two million... Ahem. Sure, it's a little expensive, but there'll be lots of people, so everyone can contribute a little. Besides, we've already given them ways to obtain the necessary items through quests. If they still choose to spend money, that's not my fault, right?"
"Once the organization is established, that's when the really big expenses begin. Buildings themselves won't cost money, but we can sell DLC for different building appearances. Legendary structures, famous real-world landmarks, and so on. Pyramids, the Forbidden City, the Pentagon, Hanging Gardens, the City of Angels, Lava Hell, and things like that... Some of these can be obtained through quests, but most will only be available from Mystery Merchants."
"As long as the land they've obtained is large enough to support those buildings, they can purchase cosmetic blueprints for them and hand the blueprints over to craftsmen for construction."
"These are only blueprints. Depending on difficulty, rarity, and other factors, one blueprint could cost anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand. Some could even be limited to a single copy, first come, first served. That would give players even more motivation to spend."
"But having the blueprint alone won't be enough. They'll also need all kinds of cores. For example, the City of Angels would require a flight power system, while Lava Hell would require obsidian crystals, and so on..."
"All of those would take a very long time to collect. Of course, they could also be purchased from Mystery Merchants."
"We wouldn't be forcing them to do that either. It would all be entirely their own choice, right?"
Chu Lian rattled off such a huge pile of ideas in one breath that all the girls stared at her dumbfounded. Their master really knew how to make money, didn't she?
"You think that's all? Too young. The real main event comes next... and I'll also explain the parts I didn't make clear just now."