Chapter 198 - Increase the Budget Estimate! (1/2)

It was normal for Lin Wan not to understand. This was because when she was working at Sun Strike Studios; she worked on Bullet Hole. Later, when she moved to Tengda Games, she helped to create Ocean Stronghold and Game Designer. All of these were client-side games.

Bloody Battle Song was a web-based game. One could say that it was a completely different kind of game compared to the ones she worked on before.

Web-based games made use of a set of unique design concepts and principles. The gameplay on mature systems for this type of games was rarely seen in client-side games.

Not only had Lin Wan never researched and developed web-based games, but she had never even played web-based games. She was not even interested in them.

Yet, in the meeting led by Ye Zhizhou, they employed common terms used in the development of web-based games and complicated English acronyms as well. When they were describing the gameplay, they also made use of a lot of slang words and short-forms that would only be known to people familiar with the internal processes.

Because of this—even though everyone spoke in Mandarin, Lin Wan found that she could only understand thirty to forty percent of the discussion.

Simply put, she knew every single word; but when strung into sentences, she had no idea what they were talking about.

Lin Wan had no choice but to silently take notes, without nodding or asking a single question.

She refrained from nodding because she did not understand what was going on, and she did not want to pretend that she did. She refrained from asking questions because she was worried that she would display her own ignorance and embarrass Tengda and Boss Pei.

On the other hand, Ye Zhizhou and Wang Xiaobin would steal glances at Lin Wan every now and then.

All they saw was Lin Wan’s somber expression and her writing in her book non-stop. It was hard for them to read her expression. They had no clue what she was thinking.

Although she looked young, none of them belittled her. After all, the people whom Boss Pei hired had never been of the same pattern.

If Boss Pei thought so highly of her, they guessed that she had to be either genuinely talented or someone with great, hidden potential. No matter what, they could not afford to offend her.

Every now and then, Ye Zhizhou would pause mid-speech to give Lin Wan time to express her opinions.

Boss Pei had not made any edits to the design manuscript, but who knew whether the Development Director would have any valuable suggestions to offer?

However, Lin Wan remained silent as she recorded the meeting. She did not utter a single word.

Ye Zhizhou was beginning to doubt himself.

Why don’t Boss Pei and this director have any suggestions?

Was my design manuscript really perfect?

It can’t be, right?

Have I been underestimating myself?

Finally, they finished discussing the design manuscript. Ye Zhizhou briefed everybody on the schedule for the project and the art resources that they would need for the game. He also proposed a budget of about two million yuan for the various art resources that they required.

After this, Ye Zhizhou looked at Lin Wan.

This director has to give a comment or two, right?

What else are you here for?

Lin Wan felt everybody’s gaze boring into her and began to panic inside.

What should I do? Even after listening to their discussion all day, I don’t understand a single thing!

Even if I understood a small portion of it, there’s nothing to discuss. Everything that I managed to understand was basic. Wouldn’t I be making a fool of myself if I raise it up?

The good thing was that Lin Wan did not show her panic. Instead, she successfully brought up a point that she knew Boss Pei would definitely not be happy with.

“I have no big issue with other things. The only problem is the budget estimate. According to my understanding of Boss Pei, he would not allow it.”

Ye Zhizhou began to feel nervous. Indeed, they would not get approval for the budget estimate after all!

Setting two million yuan aside for a web-based game did sound ridiculous.

Expenses for research and development should only make up a small portion of the total budget for web-based games. The majority of the budget should be used for marketing, like buying pay-per-click advertising on webpages, hiring celebrities, and the like.

This would be decided based on the target audience of the web-based game.

Web-based games were mostly targeted at white-collared workers and whales. These people did not have high expectations for the games’ graphics. Most of them played these games secretly while at work. They would not want complicated operations that would take up brainpower.

Instead, these people would only be interested in topping-up and killing others with their mouse.

On top of that, these people had higher purchasing power. Thus, it would be wiser to save money on research and development and spend it on advertising instead. This would maximize revenue earned from the game.

However, when Ye Zhizhou was calculating the budget, he decided that he did not want to go down the traditional path.

It was not easy to get Boss Pei to make a decision-this game would be named ‘The Powerful Version’. He could not possibly allow the graphics to be as bad as other ordinary web-based games.