Agreeing to Create Bad Games, What the Hell Is ‘Titanfall’? Chapter 60
Shen Miaomiao knew the first-day sales numbers for Phasmophobia—
Just over 2,000 copies!
It wasn’t even as good as the sales she’d predicted!
That’s why she’d been so chill about chucking Golden Wind aside and locking herself at home for a whole week to tackle her thesis.
After all, even if Phasmophobia could maintain 2,000 copies a day for a week, the total revenue would only be around 650,000.
After taking out the platform cut, it’d leave about 500,000.
Still a long way from the 2 million development cost!
Thinking about this, Shen Miaomiao couldn’t help but feel genuinely happy. She decided the first thing she’d do when she got back to the office tomorrow was kiss that green fifty-yuan note on her desk!
And then introduce it properly, telling it there would be many brothers and sisters coming to keep it company!
All dressed in bright red outfits!
And they’d all come in bundles!
When you run them through the money counter—swish—
It’s the most beautiful symphony in the world!
Shen Miaomiao could already picture herself swimming in a sea of cash.
Then, a crisp sound echoed in her mind.
Ding! Time’s up! This investment cycle has been settled!
Project: Phasmophobia
Investment Amount: 2,000,000 yuan
Rebate Amount: 0 yuan
Settlement Remaining Time: 0 (Settled)
Ding! Host has reversed losses! Hidden achievement unlocked: Back From the Dead!
Achievement Reward: Super Safety Net Card
Reward distributed! Host may use it at any time!
The smile on Shen Miaomiao’s face froze—she turned to stone.
Like she’d just been disconnected from Earth OL.
Huh?
It started?
And it’s over already?
Her brain crashed for a full two minutes!
Shen Miaomiao stiffly lifted her hand, mechanically logged into the YiYou Platform enterprise backend, and checked the data.
Under the “Latest Releases” section, next to Phasmophobia, was the current sales data—
Real-time sales: 55,557 copies
Total sales revenue: 2,500,065 yuan
Looking at those two figures, Shen Miaomiao didn’t even need a calculator to figure out Phasmophobia’s final seven-day profit after platform cuts—
2,000,052 yuan.
Not much, really.
Just 52 yuan more than the total investment.
Without a moment of hesitation!
Shen Miaomiao acted purely on instinct—
“What the f**k!”
SLAM!
She smacked her laptop shut!
This was b*******!
It sold barely over 2,000 copies on day one—
How the h**l did it sell over 50,000 in just one week?!
This was almost catching up to the sales figures of mid-to-large-scale VR games!
Shen Miaomiao was on the verge of losing it!
Honestly, if it was just a matter of losing money and failing, she wouldn’t have reacted this strongly.
After all, she’d failed and lost money plenty of times before.
The problem was—this d**n system was just too good at mocking her!
It even deliberately popped up a Back From the Dead achievement!
Oh, so I lost five bucks last time, made an extra fifty this time, and that counts as Back From the Dead?!
What kind of b******t is that?!
Shen Miaomiao felt like the system was outright trolling her!
Of course—
The most infuriating part wasn’t the system—
It was that behind-the-scenes hand that kept meddling and artificially inflating her game’s sales!
First-day sales of 2,000, one-week sales of 50,000—
Shen Miaomiao wasn’t an idiot. She could obviously tell something was off!
Right away, she was sure that something had happened while she wasn’t paying attention to the company this past week!
Otherwise, there was no way sales could have spiked like that!
With that in mind, Shen Miaomiao reopened her laptop and typed “Phasmophobia” into the search engine.
Click.
Soon, the screen was flooded with headlines—
“Terror Strikes! Multiple review sites give Phasmophobia sky-high scores!”
“Over 9.5 across all platforms! Phasmophobia sets a new standard for horror games!”
“What kind of game can earn this many high scores? An exclusive deep dive into Phasmophobia’s design brilliance!”
...
Reviews?!
Shen Miaomiao was full of question marks!
She’d heard Gu Sheng mention this kind of marketing before.
It was supposed to be a very aggressive promotion strategy, and players loved it!
But the problem was—normally, mainstream professional review teams only reviewed big-budget games!
A project with a budget barely over a million like hers?
They wouldn’t even glance at it!
So…
Where the h**l were these reviews coming from?!
Shen Miaomiao kept scrolling—
“YiYou announces exclusive Phasmophobia theme! Two steps to claim yours!”
“Supernova treatment! YiYou launches major event—share Phasmophobia topics to win a VR pod!”
...
She stared at the screen for a full two seconds.
And then—
She couldn’t hold it in—
She burst out laughing in sheer rage!
Pointing at the YiYou logo on the screen, she gritted her teeth—
“You little b****... you f*****...”
Once again, it was you!
Shen Miaomiao sighed long and hard in her heart.
Damn it!
She was smart enough to figure it out right away—
It was that extra 80,000 yuan she’d tacked on that had made Yan Sheng misunderstand!
Bro, could you stop overthinking?!
I was just trying to maximize the development budget within system limits!
Why the h**l are you always running around playing hero like that?!
But wait—
Thinking it over again—
Something didn’t add up.
Gu Sheng had told her before about how media reviews were a double-edged sword.
If the game was good, the reviews would praise it to the skies, driving sales way up.
But if the game was bad, they’d tear it apart, and the reviews could actually tank sales!
And those mainstream review outlets—
They valued their reputation.
You could pay them or pull strings to get them to review your game, but you couldn’t control the results!
Good was good, bad was bad!
Thinking of this, Shen Miaomiao scratched her head.
Because in her mind, Phasmophobia was completely counter to mainstream expectations—
It even outright broke the mold for horror games!
So why was everyone raving about it?!
Shen Miaomiao really couldn’t figure it out.
She randomly clicked on the most popular review and scrolled through it—
“BlackBox Review: Phasmophobia—A Joker Card That Redefines Horror Games (9.8/10)”
Shen Miaomiao stared at that 9.8 score, her mouth twitching.
That’s high!
She scrolled down—
The review said:
“No exaggeration—this is the best horror game I’ve played on a VR platform in the last five years. No contest.”
“Why? First, it pioneers an entirely new genre: co-op horror.”
“Second, and most crucially, it creates a whole new subgenre of horror games from scratch.”
“We call it—psychological horror.”
“It eliminates the traditional weapon system, leaving players defenseless and constantly on edge.”
“It eliminates the typical long-winded setup, cutting straight to the action for instant thrills.”
“It eliminates the expansive maps of traditional horror games, creating cramped spaces that crank up the tension.”
“From Vampire Survivors to Phasmophobia, Golden Wind once again demonstrates their unique understanding of game design.”
“From visuals to sound, from atmosphere to various mechanics, this game constantly reminds you: there’s a ghost here, but you can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“And that—that is the true essence of psychological horror.”
“...”
Reading line after line of the review, Shen Miaomiao’s brows furrowed deeply.
All those features they were raving about...
Why did they look so familiar to her?!
She scrolled down to the player comments—
“Straight to the point, sharp and accurate (thumbs up).”
“No weapons? What a b*****d move—super nerve-wracking once you’re in the game (angry).”
“The short gameplay format really cuts the filler and jumps right into the action. That’s some solid design (love it!).”
“Pay 45 yuan to play for five minutes before getting kicked? I’m such an idiot (lol).”
“This game’s intense. The way the space shifts gives me chills (scared).”
“9.8 feels about right. BlackBox nailed it (cracks a soda).”
“...”
Every single comment was from real players.
She looked at the reviews.
Then the comments.
Then the reviews again.
Then the comments.
Shen Miaomiao couldn’t help but let out a soul-deep question—
Huh?!
No weapons, short sessions, small maps, co-op gameplay...
Isn’t that the list of pitfalls I wrote down myself?!
In that moment—
Her mind exploded!
Who am I?
Where did I come from? Where am I going?
Did I choose the world, or did the world choose me?
Is the universe infinite? Is time finite?
Where did the past go? Where does the future end?
Who killed me?
And whom did I kill?!
After a long while—
The page scrolled to the end.
Staring at those glaring words:
“The New Flagship of Horror Games”
Shen Miaomiao let out a cry of utter despair—
D**n it all!
It’s... I killed me?!
This is karma!
Shen Miaomiao gritted her teeth like she’d just swallowed a chunk of unwashed intestines.
But!
Once the regret passed, Shen Miaomiao decided to turn this into a learning experience!
No way—
She couldn’t keep blindly losing money like this!
She had to figure out the real reasons for her failures and work to avoid them in her next project!
Otherwise, if she just kept flailing around randomly, she might never manage to lose money properly, even in a thousand years!
Even losing money needed a strategy!
With that thought, she grabbed a pen and started jotting things down in her notebook while analyzing:
First! Game genres!
From Cat Mario to Who’s Your Daddy, from Vampire Survivors to Phasmophobia—
These games were either abstract in mechanics or niche in genre.
They were all carefully selected projects that seemed like guaranteed flops!
But!
Precisely because they were niche, they had almost no competition in the market!
And that was terrifying!
Because when a niche game suddenly goes viral, it’s easy for it to dominate the market!
As someone who’d majored in financial engineering, Shen Miaomiao understood all too well the terror of monopolies.
Any industry—whether it’s watches, jewelry, breakfast joints, or even junk collection—
Once a monopoly forms, the profits are astronomical!
Hmm!
Shen Miaomiao nodded.
Looked like her old thinking really was too risky.
For the next game, she needed a change in approach.
Time to go after popular genres!
Stuff like shooters, racers, sports games.
Genres where competition was fierce and breakout success was harder!
Scratch scratch scratch—
She jotted this down in her notebook.
Second! Marketing strategy!
She’d been way too conservative before, completely averse to marketing.
But precisely because of that, YiYou kept misreading her intentions, going off the rails with all these over-the-top marketing stunts!
Damn it!
Just thinking about it made her furious!
Besides, you can’t keep using the “no money” excuse forever—
Once, twice, maybe.
But ten, twenty, fifty times?
You can’t keep avoiding marketing forever!
Even though Gu Sheng looked like an inexperienced genius on paper, Shen Miaomiao always felt there was something off about him—
Like he had the vibe of an old hand in the gaming industry.
Over time, who knows if he’d start noticing the oddities?
So!
For the next game, she would do some marketing.
Make it look normal, and openly tell Yan Sheng, that scheming whale:
Stop self-sabotaging!
Scratch scratch scratch—
She jotted this down in her notebook.
Third! Game investment!
Nothing much to say here.
The higher the investment, the slower the ROI.
Simple as that.
She only hated that Comrade Lao Shen refused to fund her a single cent.
If only he’d let her tap into Shen Capital—
Her system rebates could hit astronomical levels, maybe even disrupt international currency markets!
Sigh...
But that was just a pipe dream, Shen Miaomiao thought.
She’d better stay practical and start small, step by step, opening her mind, exploring boldly, and working toward losing money in an orderly fashion!
With that, she tossed the pen aside, satisfied with her notes—
“Hm... popular genres... shooters, racers, sports... increase competition difficulty...”
“Hm... proper marketing... put on a show... reduce unexpected factors...”
“Then... invest big money next time!”
Perfect!
Shen Miaomiao clapped her hands.
Since she’d already pulled off some sneaky success, this time she’d take her beating openly!
Feeling brighter, she snapped her fingers—snap!
“System! What’s that Back From the Dead reward card about? Show me!”
Ding! Retrieving “Back From the Dead” Achievement Reward: Super Safety Net Card
Description: Upon use, the rebate multiplier for the next investment will be boosted (random multiplier).
Note: The multiplier will not be lower than the base rebate multiplier, with a maximum of 100x.
Seeing that—
Shen Miaomiao’s eyes lit up!
What a prize!
First, time reductions, now rebate multiplier boosts!
“Draw!”
With her crisp command, the multiplier began to spin—
And finally stopped on a gleaming 100x!
“Wahoo!”
Shen Miaomiao let out a shout of joy, jumping straight out of her chair!
“Hit the jackpot! The jackpot! The jackpot!”
“One hundred times! The grand prize!”
“This time, I’m really Back From the Dead, hahaha...!”