Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

October 12th, Tuesday…

Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd… Li Yada had just finished speaking to a few translation workspaces.

After talking to Boss Pei, Li Yada had contacted several reputable translation workspaces in the country. She had also distributed a portion of the game’s synopsis for them to try translating.

Li Yada had purposely picked out a few riddles in the game for the translation workspaces to work on as well. She wanted to see how high their standards were.

Most secondary plots required players to find clues and hints within poems. Only then would the relevant plot developments be triggered. These could only be captured by highly-skilled translators.

On one hand, they had to capture the full meaning of the poem, being careful not to miss out on any important parts of the message. That would allow foreign players to solve the riddle in the poem.

On the other hand, they had to ensure the poems remained beautiful. If such beautiful, ancient poems were translated into a pile of random facts; it would become meaningless. Players would not be able to appreciate the beauty of these words.

Thus, this really put the translators’ skills to the test. Ordinary translators would not be able to translate the poems well.

The translation workspaces had already handed in their completed translation tests. After that, Li Yada handed them to Assistant Xin for reviewing, but the latter had rejected them all.

The translations were not bad, but they had not quite captured the beauty of the language.

Li Yada’s English standard was average, but even she could roughly spot the flaws in the translations.

It went without saying that the flaws were much more obvious to Assistant Xin, who was once an assistant to a famous international enterprise’s Vice President. She was adept in three languages. While she was not good enough to translate the game, she was still able to differentiate the good translations from the bad.

Thus, Li Yada told the various translation workspaces to redo their translation tests with higher standards. If they refused, Li Yada would have no choice but to turn them down altogether.

Once she finished dealing with the translation workspaces, Li Yada began to feel emotional. Boss Pei was right indeed.

They could not rush these things!

Translating Repent and be Saved would be much more difficult than translating other games. If they rushed things, they could mess everything up and fail to ensure high-quality work.

Their rush to produce the game in multiple different languages could end up damaging their own reputation. That was not a good representation of Tengda’s way of working at

all.

Tengda had never been stingy with investments. As a company, they focused on every single detail and did it well. This was the core spirit that every employee of Tengda learned from Boss Pei.

“Forget it. I’ll take Boss Pei’s advice and avoid rushing matters.”

Li Yada had tried to look for skilled translators who were reputable in the industry. However, it was extremely difficult to do so at such short notice, and she had no relevant connections as well.

There were several professional translators and translation workspaces listed on the officials’ website for resources, such as the ones whom Li Yada had already contacted. Yet, there was no guarantee that their standards would be high.

Also, most reputable and skilled translators weren’t interested in translating games.

Normally, highly-skilled translators focused on translating contemporary, famous films. Comparatively, translating games would be akin to manual labor for them. Even if Li Yada tried to contact them, there was a chance that they would turn her down.

What’s more, Li Yada had no idea how to contact them.

Thus, she finally understood that there was no rushing these things. She had to take things slow.

On the other hand, her collaboration with Ma Yiqun of Zhongdian Chinese Network was going quite well. Ma Yiqun had approached Li Yada before, suggesting collaboration between the official novel and the game. She had happily agreed to this. It sounded like a win-win situation for both parties. What’s more, at the heart of things, they were working for the same company. Collaborating would be akin to lending a helping hand.

They started brainstorming together and quickly figured out a good plan.

Li Yada discovered that Ma Yiqun was planning to organize a seven-day login event. After completing multiple tasks on the website for seven days in a row, the reader would be rewarded with a gift in the game.

Li Yada pondered for a moment and decided to go one step further. They could link the accounts together!

All they had to do was allow one account to access Zhongdian Chinese Network, Tengda Games TPDb, and the like, right? This way, all players of Tengda’s games could use their gaming accounts to log in to Zhongdian Chinese Network. Any reward they earned would be distributed to this same account.

What’s more, this would not be troublesome to set up. In fact, it could be easily done.

As for the in-game rewards, Li Yada had thought about distributing consumables at first. These would include the three souls and seven immortal forms that could be used for upgrading, props to strengthen one’s weapons, and so on.

However, on further thought, she realized that it would be too stingy.

Repent and be Saved was a buy-to-play standalone game after all, there was no need to be so stingy.

She decided to distribute unique looks instead!

However, it was far too late to create new models for the game now. Li Yada wrecked her brains and finally thought of giving players special items to change character models. They could make use of the existing pill’s image, name them ‘Look-Changing Pills’, and allow them to be reused.

It would not be difficult to produce these pills; they would just have to change a few codes in the system.

Of course, players would not be allowed to change the character models at will. Some monsters and bosses had huge models, which could result in bugs if they were altered. Thus, the pills would only allow players to change the appearance of characters that looked like the protagonist. This included small monsters and NPCs.

At the same time, there would be a cooling-off period attached to these pills. All in all, the pills would only serve as entertainment.

No matter what, there would be various female NPCs in the game who were quite good-looking. Although they would not be the most beautiful ladies, they would be considered beauties in the game’s world.

Thus, Li Yada thought that this would be particularly attractive for players.

She made the necessary arrangements.

After distributing the work to his subordinates, Li Yada accessed TPDb, intending to check Repent and be Saved’s overall rating. All of Tengda’s employees had already developed the habit of visiting TPDb when they had free time on their hands. After all, the website’s ratings determined their following month’s bonus. They could not possibly ignore them.

The amount of revenue that the game generated was quite irrelevant; they only worked to generate revenue if it was convenient. If they wanted to earn bonuses, the employees had to ensure that their project’s ratings hit the roof.

“Eh? It’s 9.1?!”

Li Yada perked up and sat upright. The rating had spiked!

How did it increase so much in a single day?!

On closer inspection, Li Yada realized that the games media had finally released their reviews!

Ratings from games media held a huge weightage in the overall ratings on TPDb. The higher the ratings given by reputable and influential games media were, the higher the game’s overall rating would become.

Li Yada scanned the games media’s comments and realized that they had nothing but praise for Repent and be Saved.

“After producing Game Designer, Tengda Games has once again produced a refreshing masterpiece that redefines innovation.

“This up-and-coming game company is always providing its players with novel experiences. In a few short weeks, players went from criticizing the game to praising it, and from rejecting it to fully embracing it.

“Tengda Games can be counted on to produce superior works. It’s almost as if the phrase ‘cutting corners’ doesn’t exist in their dictionary.

“Before this, no designer would have thought that such a difficult, hardcore game would succeed in the local market. Yet, Tengda Games has done it again. Repent and be Saved makes its players suffer willingly and find joy in the process.

“That’s why this game is expected to be the standard for perfect combat systems in the future.

“The game displayed originality by including the concept of the epitaph. From various other details within the game, one can also appreciate the designer’s inspiration and talent.

“Other designers would also do well to learn from this game’s difficult mechanisms.”

Various other game reviewers and media also reflected similar sentiments.

These reviewers and media were not reacting like many players did when the game was first released. This was because after one week, the players’ impressions of the game had undergone a 180-degree change. These game reviewers and media took everything into consideration before writing their reviews.

What’s more, these game reviewers and media would not give the game a low rating just because they could not complete it. They were all professional.

Ordinary players only gave Repent and be Saved a low rating out of vengeance, after seeing how difficult the game was and suffering through it. However, these game reviewers and media could see other things:

The game’s quality, the outstanding combat system, the beautiful scenery and style, the complexity and depth of the plot, the glorification of traditional Chinese culture to a certain extent, and the gameplay and originality of the system which pointed out the future direction of action-based games’ development…

Since the game reviewers and media were incorporating all of these considerations in their rating of the game, it was no wonder that they gave such high ratings! Among all of these things, Li Yada was the proudest of the official platform’s review.

“Repent and be Saved depicts a helpless world that is born out of ancient Chinese culture. The artistic recreation of this world gives players a brand new experience.

“This is a helpless world set in the Degenerate Age, where the six realms are broken. Its outstanding difficulty allows players to feel the helplessness of being stuck in a world like that. Again and again, they are tortured by death. However, this world also hides countless curious secrets. It pushes every single player to pick himself up after each revival, in the hopes of accomplishing his personal mission to save the world!

“Deep ancient poems, torturous fights, rich background stories, and hidden philosophies; these are what make Repent and be Saved a memorable experience and a risk worth taking! “This is the most praise-worthy thing: while domestically-produced, traditional Chinese-style games are on a decline and other local game developers slavishly copy foreign developers, Tengda Games chose to walk a path of absolute originality.”

“Repent and be Saved has blended traditional Chinese culture into the background story, the game’s content, and the game’s core spirit extremely well. It plays an instrumental role in spreading traditional Chinese culture in the new age. “May other game developers and designers push the boundaries of their minds and learn from Repent and be Saved, to further glorify traditional Chinese culture and build the game industry’s confidence in our heritage!”

Of course, the official platform had to do something to express their validation of the game.

Without any doubt, Repent and be Saved would be given a few more recommendation spots. This was to be expected.

Li Yada could not help but feel emotional. Boss Pei is Boss Pei indeed; he did not have to put in much effort in producing such an outstanding game!

Official recommendations… what are those to Boss Pei? He’s received so many of those!

Li Yada read the media’s praise for Repent and be Saved once again, feeling pleased with herself.

“I took over the development of this game midway through, but I contributed to the game’s success!”

She had still been reading the game’s reviews when the lady from the front desk ran over.

“The official platform’s staff just called. They wish to discuss translating a foreign version of the game.”

“Huh? The official platform’s staff?”

Li Yada did not dare to brush it off. She quickly got up to receive the call.

The official platform had Tengda’s office number; that was why they called the front desk directly.

Li Yada felt quite excited. After all, this was her first time speaking to the official platform’s staff over the phone. After exchanging a few pleasantries, the other party quickly dove into the purpose of his call.

“May I ask if you have any intention to produce Repent and be Saved in other languages and venture into the overseas market?”