Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 471: Settlement
Pei Qian froze completely.
At that moment, it felt like he had spent ten seconds casting a fully charged Fireball, only for it to be reflected by the opponent's shield and splashed straight back onto his own face.
However, as someone who had experienced many storms, President Pei quickly regained his composure.
"Overseas distribution company…"
"As far as I know, domestic films usually aren't very popular overseas…"
"The box office is usually… around one or two million dollars, right?"
For this kind of basic knowledge, Pei Qian still had a rough understanding.
Although many successful domestic films attempt overseas distribution, due to cultural differences and language barriers, the results are often not very impressive. A film that can easily make over 100 million yuan domestically might only earn one or two million dollars overseas—and that depends heavily on the genre.
Pei Qian quickly did some mental calculations. If it was only one million dollars, after revenue sharing and exchange rates, it didn't seem like a very heavy burden.
A few million here and there—manageable.
What concerned him more was: which blind overseas distributor had actually picked up this film?
Huang Sibo smiled and said, "That's true."
"With many influential Chinese actors in Hollywood now retired, the overseas box office appeal of domestic films has been declining. At the same time, because the domestic market is developing rapidly and national confidence is increasing, many films now focus solely on the domestic market and no longer cater to overseas tastes."
"So in recent years, many domestic blockbusters that easily make hundreds of millions in China only earn one or two million abroad, with limited screenings and little influence."
"But precisely because of this, our film was able to stand out!"
"Journey of the Flying Star performed poorly worldwide, but since it was a high-budget overseas sci-fi film, A Better Tomorrow—with its extremely low budget—managed to achieve a similar box office while completely outperforming it in reviews. This gave overseas distributors great confidence!"
"Moreover, A Better Tomorrow has a unique advantage: it is entirely in English, set in a futuristic world that blurs national and ethnic boundaries, with no overly obscure local cultural elements. This makes it much easier for foreign audiences to accept!"
"And the film's themes—wealth inequality, overconsumption, and the alienation of people by capital—strongly resonate with international audiences!"
"So President Pei, don't worry. Our box office will definitely exceed one million dollars by a significant margin!"
"..."
Pei Qian didn't know how to respond for a moment.
Zhu Xiaoce added, "Oh right, President Pei, please don't underestimate the importance of English dialogue!"
"You see, foreigners are very resistant to subtitles. The reason is simple: English is a relatively verbose language, so reading subtitles is tiring."
"A strong example is that both China and Japan have large-scale bullet-comment video sites, but Western countries don't. That's because our writing systems are ideographic and highly condensed—you can understand comments at a glance. English doesn't work that way."
"The same logic applies to subtitles. Foreign audiences aren't used to them like we are, so whether a film has English audio is a key factor in whether they'll watch it!"
"So our full English dialogue is a huge advantage! Even though the three main actors have slight Asian accents, foreign audiences don't mind—they may even think it fits the characters' backgrounds and ethnic distinctions."
"In short, this film was designed from the script stage to match overseas tastes perfectly!"
"President Pei insisting on full English dialogue was truly far-sighted!"
Zhu Xiaoce gave a thumbs-up excitedly.
Pei Qian: "..."
He really wanted to say—no, you're wrong!
I'm not far-sighted at all!
I was just being shortsighted, trying to scare away domestic audiences by forcing English dialogue!
I never expected this thing… to end up going overseas in the first place!
However, looking at Zhu Xiaoce and Huang Sibo's reverent expressions, Pei Qian could only let out a silent sigh in his heart.
So frustrating!
...
...
March 30, Wednesday.
Over these past two days, GOG players have entered a state of ultimate celebration.
Early yesterday morning, the results of GOG's first season Spring Championship had already been finalized.
And today, the prize money had been fully distributed, pushing the event's popularity to a peak!
Across the internet, posts discussing the event could be seen everywhere.
Of course, there were some doubts about the true skill of the winners. After all, there is no perfectly fair system in the world, and a "sour grapes" mentality will always make some people jealous of the lucky few.
But this kind of noise was only a small portion.
Because the competition rules were open, fair, and transparent—even though there were certainly cases of duo-queue boosting or "carrying"—overall, those who reached the top 500 in such a short time truly had real skill.
Since the timeframe was short, cheaters and boosting studios didn't have enough time to react, and the results were locked and rewards distributed before any large-scale manipulation could form.
Players who received rewards were all delighted—posting their rankings, showing off their earnings, and receiving admiration. This further stimulated and boosted GOG's popularity.
In short, everyone was happy.
Players got money. The GOG team gained popularity. President Pei also spent money.
Only that, while everyone else's happiness was pure happiness, President Pei's happiness was mixed with deep anxiety.
Because he realized that the game's popularity was rising far beyond his expectations…
In Pei Qian's view, this was starting to feel a little out of control!
So, in a stroke of inspiration, he had assigned Hu Xianbin a task yesterday—to analyze the entire season ranking event and write a detailed report.
On the surface, it looked like homework. In reality, President Pei just wanted to understand what exactly was going on…
It had to be said that Hu Xianbin was extremely efficient. The report arrived today.
But after reading it, Pei Qian's heart only grew colder…
...
During the short but intense ranking rush, GOG's active user base—both mobile and PC—was skyrocketing every day.
The lure of "100,000 yuan prize" was irresistible to players. Even though reason constantly told them it was impossible to actually earn it, a sense of luck still drove them to try.
The generous seasonal rewards attracted a large number of new players who had never played this genre before. Combined with AI bots designed to protect new-player experience, most people had a very positive early experience, with strong feedback loops, giving them the illusion that they were naturally talented.
And by the time they realized they had no chance of winning the prize money, they had already played intensely for two or three days, become familiar with the game, and experienced its fun—making it unlikely they would quit.
Not only that, players' sense of luck also drove them to constantly "switch back and forth."
Those confident in touch controls went to the mobile version.
Those confident in mouse and keyboard went to the PC version.
Players getting destroyed on PC assumed mobile players were weaker and switched.
Players frustrated on mobile assumed PC controls were better and switched again.
With cross-platform progression, players didn't resist switching at all—in fact, they enjoyed it, even increasing their willingness to buy skins.
After all, skins were shared across both platforms: one purchase, double enjoyment.
After switching back and forth repeatedly, when players finally realized they were bad at both versions, their gaming habits had already been formed.
In short, the event was accurate, ruthless, and efficient—it swept up veteran players while also attracting a huge number of newcomers. In a very short time, it boosted GOG's popularity to an extremely high level through massive prize incentives, and ended before studios or directors could react, maximizing fairness.
The rest of the report was just more unrestrained praise of President Pei…
...
After finishing the report, Pei Qian fell silent.
Finally, he had figured out the reason for the abnormal data.
It seemed that money had indeed been lost—just that the cost was a bit too high, far beyond his original expectations…
"Doesn't matter."
"As long as this cycle ends in a loss, that's fine. I'll deal with the future later."
"However, the current state of GOG also exposes a huge flaw in my understanding of game design…"
"No. The next game absolutely has to change this situation. I can't keep making profits anymore!"
"Summarize experience, learn from lessons—I must make a game that fails properly!"
After several days of closed-door reflection, Pei Qian had finally come up with a very good idea for a flop game.
In the next cycle, he would definitely arrange both game departments properly!
...
...
March 31st, Thursday.
The system interface automatically appeared before Pei Qian's eyes.
[Wealth Conversion System 20]
[Host: Pei Qian]
[Profit Conversion Ratio: 1000:1 | Loss Conversion Ratio: 10:1]
[Settlement imminent]
[System Funds: 3.77 million + 860,000 (↓5.37 million)]
[Fixed Assets: One commercial-residential villa at Mingyun Mountain Villa (8.61 million)]
[Personal Funds: 340,000]
[Settlement Processing—]
[Converting Wealth]
[System funds: 3.77 million + 860,000 (↓5.37 million)]
[Personal Funds: 920,000 (↑530,000 × 110)]
[If wealth conversion value exceeds 200,000 this cycle, a mysterious system reward will be granted. (Claimable)]
[Unfinished project: Fright Hostel. Must officially open before next settlement.]
Seeing this, Pei Qian finally let out a long breath.
Relieved!
After buying the house, he had about 180,000 left. He earned 100,000 from writing a film script, and received several tens of thousands in New Year red envelopes.
Most of his daily expenses were reimbursed by the company, so he didn't really spend much of this money, and it had all been saved up.
This time, after converting more than 580,000, Pei Qian's Personal Funds had returned to 920,000.
Though it had been hard, it was still worth it!
Relatively speaking, clearly losing money was still more "cost-effective." For the same conversion of 530,000, earning money would require earning 500 million.
Moreover, that 500 million had to remain in the company's accounts at settlement time and could not be invested elsewhere in order to qualify for conversion. But if all that money just sat there unused, how could it generate even more profit?
So no matter how he looked at it, losing money was the correct way to use this system.
Pei Qian noticed that after the system reached 2.0, due to the Matthew effect, the ratios had been reduced—but it seemed that the difficulty of achieving losses had also decreased accordingly.
Previously, Pei Qian had to struggle hard and only managed to incur losses once every three settlement cycles.
But now, it seemed he could achieve losses steadily.
On one hand, after repeated failures, he had gradually become more familiar with the system's "personality" and developed more methods—such as expanding into certain industries that allowed "drinking poison to quench thirst" or exchanging money for reputation.
On the other hand, after the system upgrade, more conveniences had been provided—such as a charitable quota each cycle and allowing certain projects to be extended across two cycles.
This time, being able to take a loss, the tens of millions poured into "Fright Hostel" had been crucial.
By calculation, converting 600,000 personal funds over five months could be considered a monthly income of 100,000!
Well, congratulations!
With this money, furnishing the new house with furniture and appliances and doing some nice interior decoration would be more than enough.
Of course, he still had to keep pushing forward.
In addition, Pei Qian also noticed a minor hidden risk—fixed assets. The villa under Mingyun Private Kitchen had increased in value by more than 200,000…
Using company funds to purchase fixed assets for business operations could indeed burn a large amount of money at once, but Pei Qian had always been cautious about doing too much of it, because these assets affected settlement.
The biggest problem with fixed assets was that they were discounted at a factor of 10 when calculating system funds. The loss calculation formula was:
Loss = Initial system funds − Current system funds − Fixed assets ÷ 10
This was very annoying.
If the system's initial funds were 10 million, and the company's total fixed assets were worth 100 million, then even if Pei Qian spent all system funds, it still wouldn't count as a loss.
However, this was only the first settlement under System 2.0. In the future, the initial system funds would keep increasing.
As long as it rose to 20 million, 30 million, or even 50 million, Pei Qian could consider purchasing more fixed assets under the company's name for production and operations.
And the more system funds there were, the more he could lose—and the more money would be converted.
"Hopefully next cycle's system funds will be higher…"
Pei Qian silently prayed.
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Tn: I updated the story once a day, but if you want to see more chapter of this story ahead of time, please go to my Patreon.
Latest Chapter: Chapter 536: Still Going with the "Bare Walls" Style[1]
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[1] https://www.patreon.com/HannibalNotBarca/posts/losing-money-to-164800513?collection=1399284
[2] https://www.patreon.com/HannibalNotBarca/posts/losing-money-to-164800513?collection=1399284