Chapter 560 - Teacher He, I’ll Keep Your Advice in Mind! (1/2)

He An continued speaking. “Of course, everything that I want to say constitutes smuggled goods as well. I hope you can understand this, Boss Ma.

“That’s because there’s no such thing as an objective and fair expression. Anything that has been through artistic processing would be affected by the hidden intentions of the person who did the work.

“However, the goods that I am about to smuggle were produced by me alone. They are my personal vision for the future local gaming industry. Boss Ma, it’ll be great if it resonates with you, but it’s also fine if it does not.”

Seeing He An’s stern expression, Pei Qian pushed his conflicting emotions to the back of his mind and listened intently.

“I am going to split today’s lesson into two parts. “In the first part, I am going to talk about my successful experience while working on The Landlord Game. I will also theorize how I managed to smuggle the right ‘goods’ and exercise restraint at the same time.

“In the second part, I will briefly talk about my views on the gaming industry’s prospects for development-or shall I say, my proposal.”

Pei Qian nodded.

He could very clearly see that He An looked different today than in the previous two lessons. In the previous two lessons, He An had been speaking as an observer. He had been carefully analyzing successful cases and interpreting successful elements as a professional.

However, today’s He An seemed to have a glow that only belonged to preachers who cleared confusion by giving moral and practical instruction. He reminded Pei Qian of old gentlemen who worried about their countries and people. Pei Qian wondered if he was just seeing things. After organizing his thoughts, He An said, “First, I want to talk about The Landlord Game.

“Actually, the game’s gameplay did not come from me alone. The inspiration came from a board game I played during my enlightenment years. The origins of the game can be traced back to an American political economist named Henry…” Pei Qian had a vague impression of this story, but everything he knew was in a mess, and he did not really understand it. Now, hearing He An’s narration, things were gradually becoming clearer. This political economist named Henry was born in poverty. He worked as a sailor, a miner of gold, and a printer. Throughout his work, he came into contact with countless people who were even poorer and of a lower class than

him.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States developed at a speed that was visible to the naked eye. However, that also caused an unprecedented widening of the gap between the society’s rich and poor.

Henry realized that the accumulation of limitless wealth had not been improving the lives of the poor. Instead, it had only been widening the gap between themselves and the rich.

The income of the top one-percent of society had surpassed the sum of the bottom fifty percent of society’s income.

Thus, Henry began thinking about the reason behind this massive inequality. In the end, he completed an entire thesis entitled ‘Progress and Poverty’, which exposed the root cause of all of it—the United States’ land privatization system.

In the early twentieth century, a female journalist named Elizabeth inherited Henry’s theories and decided to create a board game to test them. After a lot of development, the board game’s rules were finally perfected. That was the prototype of He An’s game, The Landlord Game.

He An sipped his coffee and continued speaking. “While I was working to produce The Landlord Game on the computer, I wanted to make it more interesting. That was why I added a lot of fascinating game play.

“For example, I added a variety of props and cards, increased the number of special events, established a perfect stock system, incorporated character voices, created a lottery mechanism, and so on. I also added different maps and polished the style of the game… “All of those designs served to make the game more interesting and cause gamers to love it more. “Obviously, that game contains smuggled goods-my agreement with Henry’s theories.

“Many people have tried analyzing my game, looking for elements that were confirmed by reality. For example, the poor get poorer, and the rich get richer; buying land emphasizes one’s first-mover advantage; location is king; insider information is important when dabbling in the stock market; paying attention to surrounding events is important when making investments; the essence of war is the redistribution of resources; people who do not have starting capital cannot enter the market…

“I had thought about most of those when I started designing the game. I only had a vague understanding of some during the designing process. However, I had absolutely no clue of an extremely small number of those things when I was developing the game. It was only when I was trying to perfect the rules that they took shape.

“Obviously, I had stuffed a lot of smuggled goods in that game. However, that game did not cause any gamers any disgust. Instead, it resonated with many people. That is one example of a successful plan. “In general, there are three principles to follow when trying to smuggle goods: “First, convey positive value.

“Second, guarantee fun.

“Third, have appropriate depth.

“The quality of any product must be achieved, be it a game or other cultural products. Generally speaking, games should be ‘fun’. Otherwise, they would not qualify as games. Gamers would not welcome it. The goods you smuggle would not be able to affect others

“You need to have appropriate depth so as not to disgust your players. “Some of them would dabble and stop. They would only have a preliminary and superficial understanding of whatever you want to express. For them, the main pleasure of the game would lie in the gameplay. “Some would be savvier. Of their own initiative, they would make associative connections between the game and the world around them.

“Some would dig deep into every detail of the game. They would completely understand the goods that you’re smuggling. In very rare cases, they might even over-analyze your thoughts…