"Wow, what a big family," Merry said as soon as she stepped in.
Her voice drew everyone's attention. Cynthia, standing next to her, made the introductions. "This is Merry, Miss Qin, the manager from the company we work closely with."
"Hello," Merry greeted them confidently.
"Hello."
"Nice to meet you."
"Hello."
…
After greeting each person, Cynthia led everyone to the dining room.
As she passed by William, Merry greeted him separately, "We meet again."
William smiled slightly. "Yes, welcome."
"Hehe."
They took their seats.
Dishes started coming out from the kitchen one after another.
Those who could drink had alcohol, those who couldn't had soft drinks—raising glasses was a must.
William said, "Welcome, Miss Merry, and thank you for coming from so far away."
After chatting briefly with Merry, Cynthia let her turn toward William. Merry said, "I didn't expect your new game to release so soon."
"You played it too?"
"Of course. If I don't understand a product, how could I do its marketing?"
"How do you feel about it?"
"I like it a lot. Sometimes I get so into it I forget about work. Too bad there aren't many levels."
"We're working on that."
As William said this, he glanced at Claire. It had been almost three days—if she still couldn't produce new levels, not only would the fans be unhappy, William would have to reassess her ability.
Noticing his gaze, Claire quietly lowered her head. With strangers present, she couldn't act as freely as in the office, and her shy nature took over again.
Merry said, "Lately I've been talking to quite a few companies that are getting ready to enter the gaming industry. They keep saying how hard it is to make games, but here with you guys, I haven't seen that at all."
"Is that so?" William replied casually. "Then that only means their technical skills aren't good enough."
"Really?" Merry smiled. "Maybe so."
Merry's visit brought the latest market trends. She had more detailed information than Cynthia's internal software. Being an industry insider, she knew exactly which companies were getting which games to promote—an open secret for her—and that also let her know things outsiders couldn't.
Of course, such things had to be kept secret. The fact that she could openly talk about them at the table meant she didn't see them as outsiders.
After dinner, Cynthia set up a mahjong game. From the looks of it, she planned to have Merry stay overnight. William and Aunt Oliver had no objection.
Originally, Claire had wanted to join, but William decided to take the rare chance to give them a group training session. So Claire was replaced by Marcus, and the last open seat was filled by Aunt Oliver.
William focused his lesson on using the game engine. Although he had already printed and handed out a guide compiled by the system, just reading a book couldn't explain everything—some things were easier to understand when explained directly.
To make the lesson more effective, William even had Chris help him carry a computer downstairs for live demonstrations, making the content more intuitive.
After listening to William's lesson, Claire sighed in relief. "So that's all it takes to get it done."
She had been the one suffering the most these days—being the first in the studio to actually use the engine to make a game. Even Chris was still in the experimental stage, so she had no one to help her.
After the game engine lesson, William talked about game design concepts. His own design skill level wasn't high, but the "Art Handbook (Beginner)" had given him the most complete knowledge of game design, enough to give everyone a solid foundation.
This part inspired Leon the most.
When designing characters before, he only thought about the clash between a character's backstory and the game's story. He never considered how the character would actually act in the game.
For example, with Olivia, he only thought about whether she could show the effect he wanted, but didn't think about her sword stance, her fighting moves, her walking posture, and so on. In that scene, the posture Olivia should display needed to be partly shown in the concept art—because concept art is the step that locks in the character's image and affects all later related designs.
Finally, William brought up the topic of expanding the studio. He made it clear that the current members were the core team and he hoped they could lead by example and improve quickly. Their positions would go to whoever was most capable—there would be no favoritism.
After answering some questions, the extra lesson for the night came to an end.
"Maybe we could do a catch-up class every week."
Seeing the results, William was tempted. During work hours, everyone had their own tasks, and he himself was busy with game development, so he didn't really want to take an hour out of work to teach. But after hours, it was more flexible.
They would have to see if everyone was willing. William hoped they would grow faster so he could worry less, but for them, it would count as overtime, so he'd have to ask.
"Boss, you joining?"
When William entered the mahjong room, Cynthia noticed him right away.
William waved his hand to refuse. He was just looking around. With guests here, it wouldn't feel right to go straight upstairs to rest.
After watching the mahjong game for a while, once Marcus had to go home and Aunt Oliver was ready to sleep, the match ended.
Finally, it was time for everyone to return to their rooms.
When there had been only one woman in the house, it wasn't anything special, but with two, it was different—now and then soft voices floated upstairs, making it hard for William to even take a shower in peace. Tonight, there was no way he could focus on game development, so he decided to just sleep early.
Before going to bed, he checked today's earnings.
"Happy Mahjong": 400,911
"Happy Match Mania": 310,129
Compared to the last two days, "Happy Mahjong" was growing steadily, while "Happy Match Mania" had been cut in half. This wasn't surprising — after all, it only had 100 levels in total. Players who finished them weren't going to replay or spend again. To keep them spending, they'd have to release new levels, and quickly too, because if they took too long, the players' interest would fade like the tide.
William hadn't planned to step into Claire's work, but the situation now forced him to. If they didn't release new levels, it would affect the company's profits. Even though there was no board of directors at the moment, William couldn't just ignore it.
And he hadn't forgotten that all earnings now had to be split in two more ways — to keep Cynthia, he had given her 10% of the shares, plus 5% of the WeChat game revenue. Strictly speaking, he still had shareholders to answer to.