Agreeing to Create Bad Games, What the Hell Is ‘Titanfall’? Chapter 3
"More budget?"
Gu Sheng froze.
Back when he worked on games before, the thing he heard most often was “The budget's too high, we need to cut costs.”
But he'd never seen a boss take the initiative to increase the budget!
Technically, that was a good thing. Willing to invest more meant the boss had faith in his abilities.
But...
Looking at his game proposal, Gu Sheng was a little troubled—
Where was he even supposed to spend more money?
After all, Cat Mario only had one real cost—paying for the official license of the Flash game development platform!
As he spoke, he sneaked a glance at Little Nezha.
To be fair, the whole development process really did sound kinda half-baked.
Sure enough!
After hearing that, Little Nezha frowned. “You drew everything yourself?”
“Uh… yeah.” Gu Sheng scratched his head with a guilty smile.
“You didn’t spend a dime?” she pressed.
“Uhm, nope.” He nodded again.
Upon hearing that, Little Nezha smacked the couch—BANG!—startling Gu Sheng half to death.
“That’s unacceptable!”
She stood up, voice firm and righteous.
“We, at Golden Wind Game Technology Co., Ltd., are a legitimate and professional game company!”
“And you, Director Gu, are the soul of this company! You’re the conductor! The architect!”
“How can you be doing everything yourself? That’s exhausting and unsustainable!”
Uh... what?
Little Nezha’s impassioned speech left Gu Sheng a little dazed.
“...But it only took me ten minutes to draw it.”
“That’s still not okay!”
Dmn it, if you do everything yourself, how the hll am I supposed to inflate the budget?
If I can't raise the budget, how am I supposed to lose money?
If I can’t lose money, how am I supposed to make lazy profit?
“Outsource it! It must be outsourced!”
Little Nezha waved her tiny hand.
“I looked it up yesterday—a real game takes tons of people and a massive budget. Art, level design, programming—you’re looking at hundreds of thousands!”
“All you need to do is handle the planning. Don’t worry about the money!”
“Our motto in game development is: Don’t aim for the best, just aim for the most expensive!”
Gu Sheng: …
But I just wanted to make a Cat Mario…
A Flash game!
And my art is already more than good enough!
Why the h*ll do we need an outsourced team?!
Are you just looking to burn money?!
“Boss, here’s the thing,”
Gu Sheng couldn’t bear to let her waste money like an idiot.
“This game’s soul lies in its crude, abstract art style. If we outsource the art, we might not even be able to replicate that effect.”
Please, stop it already, Little Nezha! Even if you’ve got money, this isn’t how you spend it!
But to his surprise, Little Nezha seemed hell-bent on throwing money away. She waved him off.
“Tsk tsk, Director Gu, that’s where you’re wrong!”
“Think about it—why can’t we just have the outsourced artists replicate your style exactly?”
One sentence. And Gu Sheng was left speechless.
Do you even know what you’re saying?
He felt like his CPU was about to overheat.
“Then may I ask... what would be the point?”
As if she'd anticipated this question, Little Nezha didn’t rush to reply. She smiled calmly.
She slung an arm around the confused Gu Sheng’s shoulder and patted it.
“You don’t get it, do you? Ever heard of brand power?”
“Do tell,” Gu Sheng bent down slightly to look at her.
Little Nezha was a whole head shorter than him, so he had to stoop a bit to play along with her moment of swagger.
“We’re a newly founded company. No name recognition,”
She raised a brow at him and coaxed:
“So, to get noticed, we need to piggyback off the fame of industry veterans. That’s the only way to make a splash!”
“Woooow~”
Gu Sheng let out a deliberately dramatic reaction, clearly not convinced.
Obviously, he still thought her strategy was straight-up dumb.
But since the boss had spoken, he didn’t argue further.
Not like it’s his money. Let her throw it around.
“Well, alright then,”
Gu Sheng sighed inwardly and shrugged.
“Then I guess I’ll… spend more—uh, I mean, invest more in production?”
“Invest! Go all in!”
Little Nezha beamed, looking like she genuinely believed in him.
“You just focus on making the game! Don’t you dare save me money!”
That afternoon, under the guidance of Little Nezha’s “delusional logic,” Gu Sheng got to work.
While keeping the original graphics and gameplay untouched, he tried his best to complicate things unnecessarily.
In this parallel world, there was a website called “Game Factory.”
It was a hub for all kinds of game developers—concept design, art, UI, 3D modeling, engines, you name it.
Gu Sheng logged in and immediately used the sacred “Sort by highest price” filter, then started contacting top-tier professionals in every field—art, UI, programming—to subcontract this intentionally ugly, low-effort game.
But top talent didn’t take just any job.
Especially not something like Cat Mario, a simple, janky little game.
Many high-profile developers rejected him at first glance—it was beneath them. No amount of money could convince them.
So Gu Sheng had to lower the bar again and again.
Finally!
After an entire afternoon of searching and haggling…
He managed to put together a “gold-plated” Cat Mario for a grand total of 10,000 yuan, and scheduled it to launch that evening.
Even wasting money took real skill—he’d truly given it his all.
After his report, Little Nezha still looked unsatisfied, but reluctantly nodded and accepted it.
10,000 it is.
Even with a tenfold rebate, that’s still 100,000. Better than just 200 bucks.
Time to take off!
Little Nezha was secretly thrilled.
She really had an eye for pigs (no typo), latching onto someone as genius as Gu Sheng.
Now she just needed to figure out how to comfort her “crouching dragon” if the numbers flopped tomorrow morning.
“Hm… how should I cheer up my dear sleeping dragon? Such a headache, oh ho ho ho…”
8 PM, Game Zone on SharkStream!
“Big thanks to ‘MonkeyNotSelling’ for the Jumbo Rocket, much appreciated…”
“Thanks to ‘biabiabia’ for the 99 card subs, you rock…”
After wrapping up the day’s game promotions, streamer Ayin rolled his neck and thanked the gift-giving viewers:
“If anyone’s interested, click the icon in the lower left corner to enter the game. Legendary sword on login—I’ll be waiting in Sand City.”
A flood of hyped comments filled the screen—
“It’s fun, I’ve already dropped 100k!”
“Hell yeah! Sold my house just to whale.”
“Tested it—works even for sensitive skin.”
“Bro, wrong grave (doge face)”
“Absurd lmao hahahahaha…”
“Just got out of the shower, the ad part’s over?”
“Let’s gooo! Time for the Dumb Game Review!”
“Boss, change the tape!”
“Main event time...!”
As one of the top streamers in the game category, Ayin had a huge following.
His regular viewers all knew: 8 PM sharp was the highlight of the stream.
That was when Ayin would pick the dumbest-looking games from random platforms and do a live review.
Each game got twenty minutes, and the viewers would vote to either “keep it” or “toss it.”
With the chat popping and gifts flying, Ayin nodded.
“Alright! Let’s see how many lucky winners get tossed tonight!”
He opened Yiyou Platform—a site for indie game releases, often called the “Little Valve of China.”
After some filtering...
He locked in on three tags: small scale, single-player, priced 1-10 yuan.
First up on the list—
A freshly launched game caught his eye:
Cat Mario