Chapter 190 - Repent and be Saved (1/2)

Apart from these, there was the problem with the environment. Souls-like games were not successful from the beginning. They had gone through a period of having very low sales.

From the earliest-released Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls 3… all the way to Sekiro; the difficulty level decreased progressively. While maintaining Souls-like games’ essence, the game creators lowered their difficulty to cause an increase in sales volume.

This proved that the more difficult games were, the lower their sales volume would be.

What’s more, the success of Souls-like games depended on the region.

Demon’s Souls went in a direction completely opposite from what was set by the publisher. While researching and developing the game, Miyazaki Hidetaka played some tricks and created the game against the requirements set out to him. Instead, he created a game that fully reflected his own style.

By the time the management realized this problem, Demon’s Souls was already more or less complete. They were furious, but they could not do anything about it except to make a Hail Mary effort with it.

In the beginning, even the publishers did not think the game would succeed. If the leader of the project-Takeshi Kajii—had not persisted, the game might not have been published at all.

In the early period when the game was published, the renowned video game magazine -Famitsu-gave the game a low 29 points out of 40.

The game was more or less a failure locally. Miyazaki Hidetaka tried his best to make use of his network and contacted publishers in the United States and in Europe. In the end, the game unexpectedly became popular!

The key reason for this was that Souls-like games perfectly suited the taste of hardcore Western gamers who loved standalone games. Within China, Souls-like games only really became popular fifteen years later.

At that moment, the environment in the game industry matched what Pei Qian remembered. Difficult games were only enjoyed by the minority and were thus not very popular. Since that was the case, Pei Qian could solve the problem by creating an extremely difficult Souls-like game to be released only in China.

What’s more, in order to prevent this game from being discovered by people in the West, he had to create Chinese-style backgrounds. He also had to widen the cultural gap to ensure that people in the West would not be able to understand the game even if they tried!

Pei Qian could not help but feel overjoyed. Indeed, there was no limit to one’s creativity. If he had not been trying so hard to incur losses, he would not have realized that he was such a creative person!

Pei Qian succinctly explained the direction of the game to everyone. In sum, he had five requirements.

First, the game had to have Chinese scenery as its background theme. It had to contain huge amounts of riddles, puzzles, and Chinese content. It also had to be written in the ancient Chinese language. This was mainly to ensure that the game would not be discovered by Westerners and become famous as a result. In order to solve the riddles, one would need an excellent understanding of ancient Chinese. This would make the Westerners completely uninterested in playing the game!

What’s more, the game would primarily be sold domestically. Not translating the game into other languages would not constitute a violation of the system’s rules.

Second, the game had to be extremely difficult. Pei Qian requested for Bao Xu and Lu Mingliang to use all of their brain juice to think of ways to make players fail at the game. Their top priority should be to persuade players to admit defeat.

Third, this had to be a grand action game. There had to be huge amounts of models, movements, and scenery. They had to use up all the budget allocated for art resources!

They had to think of as many ways to spend money as possible!

Of course, ‘spending more money’ was relative to the investment Tengda Games made earlier. In fact, the limit Pei Qian set in his heart was twenty million yuan. He would want to spend more than that, but the System would not allow for it.

That amount was nothing compared to overseas research and development budgets for massive projects, which could easily go up to tens of millions or even a hundred billion yuan. However, compared to the investments that domestic producers made, it could still be referred to as a big project.

Fourth, this game had to maximize the period that players would be allowed to ask for a refund. According to the requirements of official games platforms, games bought on the official games platform could be refunded up to three hours after purchase. This limit could only be adjusted upwards, not downwards.

In fact, most games merchants wished that the limit could be adjusted downwards or gotten rid of altogether. None of them would voluntarily adjust the limit upwards.

However, Pei Qian decided to use the maximum limit that the official games platform would allow-five hours! For many small games, the total game duration was about three or four hours. To allow refunds up to five hours after purchase of the game would be insane. It would be as good as free.

To Pei Qian, three hours was not long at all. Some players of Dark Souls 3 would kill three hours fighting Champion Gundyr without even realizing it. The refund allowance period would be over by then.

Pei Qian decided to allow refunds up to five hours after purchase of the game and even offer a reminder to players ten minutes before the end of this five-hour-period. This reminder will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the game.

This would ensure that every player did not let the allowance period expire without realizing

it.

Fifth, the game’s name…