Chapter 40 Struggle

April 6th, Wednesday.

After two days of hard work, Pei Qian finally managed to write a rough outline of the plot for *Struggle*.

The game's plot could be roughly divided into several major stages: birth, schooling, exams, work, love, marriage, home purchase, childbirth, and mid-life crisis.

This was the overall flow. Although the stages were the same for rich and poor, the experiences were completely different.

For example, from birth to schooling, a rich person's child would be carefully cared for by a nanny. As they grew older, they could play happily in a mansion, their toys were very expensive, they could hire very high-end tutors to come to their home and receive excellent preschool education.

In contrast, a poor person's child would have none of these conveniences, only watching TV and drawing pictures at home, and entertaining themselves alone after their parents went to work.

The other major stages were similar. In short, one could imagine what the general plot would be.

Things went badly for the poor, while the rich were unhindered.

To make the players more clearly feel the difference between the two, Pei Qian also considered adding some quantifiable data to the game, such as the player's current knowledge (professional knowledge, financial awareness, etc.), emotional intelligence (social skills, making friends, etc.), mental health, specific material wealth, and so on.

On the surface, these data would affect the player's game options. For example, a rich person's financial awareness could accelerate the accumulation of their material wealth, their emotional intelligence could give them a better chance to make friends with influential people, and their mental health could make it easier for them to adjust their mood at work and avoid problems due to excessive stress...

But this was only on the surface.

In fact, they would only affect some insignificant side branches and would not affect the final outcome at all.

Pei Qian's reason for doing this was very simple. If the gameplay could affect the final outcome, then how could he disgust the players?

If the poor could turn the tables and the rich could avoid being killed, wouldn't that become a *shuāng* (爽, satisfying) game?

Absolutely not!

Moreover, the setting of "seemingly selectable, but actually no choice" was originally considered a failed setting in the game industry, and most games that did this would be criticized.

The game's progress only went up to middle age, which was about 50 years old.

Confucius said, "At thirty, I had planted my feet firm. At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven."

For Pei Qian, if he were to choose a time for the rich players to be killed, fifty years old was the most suitable.

Too early, and there wouldn't be enough game content; too late, and it wouldn't disgust people.

A fifty-year-old rich man was in the prime of his life and career, had already obtained a very comfortable living environment, and most likely had a good marriage and children with unlimited prospects. Dying at this time should be the most unacceptable time for players.

And the poor... by the age of fifty, their lives were basically set, and the characteristics of their parents were already apparent in their children, and this cycle of poverty had already begun to show its signs.

In short, ending the game at this age was just right.

Of course, in addition to these fixed life processes, some unexpected events would also be added to the game.

For example: car accidents, illnesses, children being bullied at school, being scammed when buying a house, natural disasters, and so on.

These unexpected events would also slightly change the game's flow, and at the same time, they would clearly show the difference in the ability of the rich and poor to resist risks when facing these unexpected events.

Learning from the lessons of *Game Producer*, Pei Qian did not plan to do any narration this time.

All the content in the game did not contain any emotional color, and all dialogues and actions were as objective as possible, and would never induce players to produce rebellious psychology.

In addition, to prevent "people with ulterior motives" from forcibly deepening the ideological depth, Pei Qian set the rich and the poor as two completely unrelated individuals.

The one who finally killed the rich man was a homeless man, who had nothing to do with the poor man.

Even the homeless man himself was not the simple and kind poor man that most people imagined. He had hands and feet but was idle and lazy, and killed the rich man because he was greedy for money, not out of some noble reason to resist oppression.

The rich people that the poor could come into contact with, such as his superiors and bosses, were also completely unrelated to the protagonist in the rich man's version, and never had any thoughts of resisting.

As much as possible, avoid generating the easily misunderstood idea of "the rich oppressing the poor" or "the poor resisting the rich."

In addition to this, there was also the most important issue, which was how to prevent his confidant, Qiao Laoshi, from over-interpreting this game.

Pei Qian pondered over this point and finally came up with a solution.

The official forces out the *doujin* (同人, fan-made content)!

If I interpret it in advance, won't no one listen to your interpretation?

If no one listens to you, how can you backstab me?

Pei Qian could roughly guess which angles Qiao Laoshi might interpret from, no more than the wealth gap, the Matthew effect, the unreasonable distribution of social wealth, and class solidification. If his brain circuit was a little more peculiar, he might even analyze that the poor had no financial awareness, were short-sighted, and the rich did not know the taste of human suffering and could not understand the vicious cycle of life after falling to the bottom...

In short, the topic of the wealth gap had been discussed to death worldwide, and with a little divergent thinking, there were still many topics that could be brought up.

Pei Qian decided that as soon as the game was released, he would reveal these problems in advance.

Take Qiao Laoshi's path and leave Qiao Laoshi with no path to take!

Of course, Pei Qian was not stupid enough to backstab himself. Although he wanted the official to reveal these problems, he certainly wouldn't do it like Qiao Laoshi.

The same principle applies, it all depends on how you say it.

Like Qiao Laoshi, citing extensively, quoting classics, forcibly raising the value and adding depth, would definitely seem particularly bluffing and easily arouse resonance.

Pei Qian planned to use a simple, straightforward way to say all these points, the drier the better.

He could even induce players to have some wrong views in the game, for example, use two fixed endings to induce them to produce misunderstandings such as "the producer has a wrong idea of 'class can never be crossed' and 'fatalism'."

This principle is like telling a joke.

When Qiao Laoshi tells a joke, he gesticulates and vividly describes it, first creating enough suspense, and then, after the punchline is revealed, the whole place explodes, producing an excellent effect.

Pei Qian, on the other hand, doesn't lay the groundwork at all, and just throws the punchline on the ground.

In this way, the audience already knows what the punchline is, no matter how Qiao Laoshi creates the atmosphere, creates suspense, or speaks eloquently, this punchline will never land!

Pei Qian felt that his behavior was like marking "this person is the murderer" on the first page of a comic book, absolutely preventing Qiao Laoshi's *Deification* series of videos from ever being able to produce a new episode!

The more Pei Qian thought about it, the more satisfied he became, and he felt that he was a genius!

After completing everything, Pei Qian sent the game's plot outline to Hu Xianbin and asked him to expand it.

At the same time, different motion capture actors would be used for different roles in the game, all of whom had to be foreigners, and had to be scouted in advance.

Pei Qian was too lazy to take care of these things, so he left them all to Hu Xianbin. In any case, it would be even better if things were messed up.

If it's done perfectly... it doesn't matter, as long as he firmly grasps the game's plot and doesn't let it go astray!

...

...

April 7th, Thursday.

Pei Qian arrived at the office on time after lunch.

Yesterday afternoon, he had sent the plot outline of *Struggle* to Hu Xianbin, and also sent a message to Lin Wan to explain the matter of the *ioi* national server and let her connect with He Desheng.

Pei Qian didn't have any good ideas about how to specifically handle *ioi*'s national server.

There was almost no possibility of changing the game. It was also difficult to lower the pricing of heroes and skins, after all, Dream Chasing Ventures only accounted for 20% of Finger Company's shares and didn't have that much say.

From the perspective of the game's charging model, *ioi* was indeed not as friendly as *gog*, after all, all *gog* heroes were free, and the skin prices were several times lower than *ioi*.

However, Pei Qian felt that this shouldn't be a big deal. There were already many people in China playing *ioi*, and it already had a certain player base.

The biggest problem for them was not the price, but the network problem.

It was too laggy to connect to *ioi*'s international server with an accelerator, and there was no way to communicate with foreign teammates in the game.

As long as the national server came out, these people would definitely switch to the national server as soon as possible, so there was no need to worry about the start of the *ioi* national server version. With the ability of the people at Shang Yang Games, it could take off with a little operation.

Temporarily settling the two game departments, Pei Qian felt that the pressure on his shoulders had been greatly reduced.

However, even so, he couldn't take it lightly, because there were still many things waiting for him to deal with.

"Knock, knock, knock."

There was a knock on the office door, it was Assistant Xin.

"President Pei, this is the survey report on the fitness industry in Jingzhou City that you wanted. If you don't want to look at these data, you can go directly to the last page, there are conclusions."

Pei Qian nodded and took the survey report from Assistant Xin's hand.

He casually flipped through two pages, and sure enough, there were a lot of data and professional terms in front, which he really couldn't understand.

Pei Qian calmly flipped to the last page, reading the survey conclusion while asking, "So, are the gyms in Jingzhou City generally making money or not?"

Assistant Xin considered for a moment: "They make money and they don't make money. It depends on how you operate them."

Pei Qian: "Hmm? Explain in detail."

Assistant Xin obviously had some understanding of the current situation of the fitness industry. After receiving President Pei's task these days, he also conducted an in-depth survey of the fitness industry in Jingzhou, and he was completely familiar with this content.

"In short, limited by China's current level of economic development, most people do not have the habit of going to the gym regularly. Even those who have the habit of fitness often cannot afford the expenses of those high-end gyms."

"There are more white-collar workers in super first-tier cities, so the situation will be better. Jingzhou, as a second-tier city, has this problem especially obvious."

"Considering the various expenses of opening a gym, such as venue rent, equipment, labor, water and electricity, heating and cooling, and fire protection, many gyms have adopted a low-price membership strategy in order to attract more customers, which is difficult to support daily operations, let alone create enough profit."

"From this point of view, gyms do not make money. Many gyms that close down do so because they cannot make ends meet, so they close down. The more you invest, the greater the marketing pressure."

"However, gyms that really make money also make a lot of money. The main method is to find those high-asset customers and sell private coaching courses. The more you sell, the more you earn."

"The primary task of private coaches in most gyms is not to teach the students well, but to sell more courses. The internal groups and marketing groups of private coaches are similar. Whoever sells the most courses is sought after."

"In short, the current profitable gym model is to sell more cards, especially to trick new people into buying annual cards. New people have no fitness habits at all, and it is difficult to persist. If they buy a card and don't come, the gym makes pure profit."

"At the same time, low-priced fitness cards attract as many customers as possible, and then private coaches start to show their skills, finding high-asset customers and tricking them into buying private coaching courses, earning the bulk of the profits from this."

"There are also some other tricks, such as doing a free test the first time you go. Modern people have more or less health problems, and private coaches will deliberately exaggerate these health problems and take the opportunity to sell courses."

"In short, it is undeniable that there are more conscientious gyms in this industry, but generally speaking, there are many chaos and it is not very standardized."

"Many consumers who go to the gym are extremely disgusted with these chaos, but the reasons for this situation are more complicated and cannot be changed in a short period of time."

"President Pei, it is certainly a good thing for the industry itself that you want to enter this industry, but these objective problems must be considered carefully."

"Even for you, it is not so easy to create a high-end and conscientious gym brand from scratch."