"Do you know how many employees the company has?" Xu Meng asked, watching Yang Hui's eyes.
"?" Yang Hui paused. "I don't know, what about it?"
"101. There are 101 people in the company right now."
"So what?" Yang Hui didn't understand why Xu Meng brought that up.
But Xu Meng was already getting angry. "There are 101 people in the company, and 60 of them are married. Whether the game can turn things around and whether the company can survive affects at least half the income of 60 households."
"Without that half, their mortgages, car loans, rent, and child-rearing money will all run into trouble!"
"As for the unmarried ones, how much money does a young person need to get a foothold in the city?"
"If the company goes under, are you going to arrange jobs for all these people!?"
"I'm talking about work here, and you're coming at me with gender politics? Do you take the meeting room for Weiguang?!"
Yang Hui was left speechless, her face turning alternately pale and flushed.
Yet in the end, she still shook her head stubbornly and said, "No matter what, I cannot accept this."
"Fine." Xu Meng nodded. "Go down to HR to process your departure. You don't need to come in starting tomorrow."
Yang Hui looked at Xu Meng in shock, as if she hadn't expected him to dismiss her so decisively, without even a second of hesitation.
Following the shock came an intense sense of humiliation.
She angrily slapped the conference room table and hissed, "You won't succeed!"
"We'll see about that. You'll be boycotted by everyone! This isn't over!"
She stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
As Xu Meng watched her retreating figure, it reminded him of one thing—
Before starting production, he needed to put the company staff through a round of self-inspection to prevent anyone from smuggling personal agendas into the game, especially in the writing and modeling departments.
In this area, even a tiny bit of private agenda could often cause massive damage.
Xu Meng made a mental note of it and instructed the assistant, "Chen Mengling, go call the deputy director of the Art Department."
The little assistant, whose gaze had been tracking the disappearing direction of Yang Hui's back in a daze, snapped back to reality. "Ah, right away, I'm going!"
As she left the office, Xu Meng's voice sounded from behind her once more:
"Regarding character outfits, your first task starting now is to upgrade the texture of the black silk stockings."
The assistant stumbled, nearly tripping over herself.
...What? Chen Wanzhong thought he misheard.
"Black silk." Xu Meng calmly repeated. "Of course, you can also research white silk first, if that happens to be your preference."
"No! Wait, Boss!" Chen Wanzhong waved his hands repeatedly.
"I don't like white silk!"
After a brief pause...
"Well, it's not that I don't like it... I mean, not that kind of like..."
The little assistant slowed her pace, wishing desperately she could stay right there and listen to the end of this exchange.
Driven by professional ethics, however, she stepped away step by step.
The voice behind her grew fainter, and she could vaguely hear Chen Wanzhong trying to steer the topic back on track—
"Don't our current characters already have stockings?"
The boss's voice, though, remained crystal clear, audible from halfway across the office. "You call those stockings? That's just a piece of black cloth!"
"Some of them don't even have the texture of cloth; they're just a pair of black legs!"
Over in the art team's office area, unease filled the air.
Yang Hui was hardly a woman of gentle temperament; as she passed through, her face was contorted with fury, her high heels clicking loudly against the floor.
Without waiting for her subordinates to ask, she grabbed her bag and stormed out of the company.
Chen Mengling only caught sight of her retreating back, and the little assistant stretched out an arm to stop her. "Hey! You haven't handed over your work yet..."
In the next second, however, Yang Hui's figure vanished completely.
The little assistant could only sigh and quickly roll call, "Ding Nian, Xu Fang, the boss wants to see you."
With that, she hurried away, heading straight for the office.
Ding Nian and Xu Fang exchanged glances, then quickly grabbed their notebooks and followed.
When the assistant returned to the outer door, the office was still discussing the topic of stockings—
"What kind of effect are you hoping for, Boss?"
"Bring out the smooth and delicate look of stockings—translucent, fleshy, with gradient colors, and even the elasticity when they press against the flesh. Make all of that," Xu Meng said, his tone remaining entirely deadpan. "They need to be more charming than real stockings."
Chen Wanzhong stammered somewhat:
"Boss, when I see people wearing black silk on the street, I turn my face away... Making this... I really don't have any experience."
Outside the door, the little assistant quickly covered her mouth, barely holding back a laugh.
Chen Wanzhong's honest remarks left even Xu Meng at a loss for words.
Taking advantage of the quiet, the little assistant gave a gentle knock to announce herself and led Ding Nian and Xu Fang inside.
Inside the office, the expressions on all three faces were quite colorful.
"Come on, man..." Peng Linmu couldn't help muttering. "There's no need to be this conservative, is there?"
Chen Wanzhong looked a bit embarrassed.
Xu Meng intervened in time. "Stop talking nonsense over there, or I'll make you wear stockings as a reference for him."
"Uh." Peng Linmu immediately shut his mouth.
Chen Mengling shifted her right foot slightly, planning to make a small contribution—with her dormmates showering her with praise every day, she was quite confident in her figure.
Before she could speak, though, Xu Meng said, "Get the photography and motion capture equipment ready. Have the operations department reach out to talent agencies and hire eighteenth-tier models with great figures who are uninhibited to record reference material."
"It's best to invite some foreign models to capture body data for different physiques."
"Got it." The little assistant took notes rapidly.
"Prepare the outfits in advance too. Not just stockings, but swimsuits, cheongsams, JK uniforms, maid outfits, bunny girls, reverse bunny girls... basically any 'winning' outfits common in 2D media. Frost Snow Project needs them all. Prepare everything that can be prepared."
"Ah." The little assistant blushed slightly as her pen flew across the paper.
"Or we can just find one of those photo studios that shoots for cosers and hire both the costumes and the makeup artists to come over."
"In short, gather your references carefully and start the character remakes as soon as possible." Concluding his summary, Xu Meng looked toward the two newly arrived deputy directors.
Ding Nian was also a young woman, three years older than Chen Mengling, but wearing a pink floral short-sleeved shirt, her face looked even more youthful than Chen Mengling's.
Xu Fang was a man, but perhaps due to some traits inherent to artists, he dressed far more meticulously than most men.
Compared to the three frantically overworked, rough-around-the-edges guys—Xu Meng, Peng Linmu, and Chen Wanzhong—this was even more apparent.
So much so that Xu Meng's first impression upon looking at him was always that the guy gave off a distinctly gay vibe.
"Yang Hui has resigned. You two will take charge of the Art Department for now."
"Your next task is to comprehensively update the character splash art and work with the modeling team to complete the character costume overhaul."
"Draw the female characters first, and make the artwork a bit sexier. As for which male characters to delete or change the gender of, we'll tell you later."
"Oh, and..." Pausing here, he added, "You guys don't have any issues drawing this kind of character art, do you?"
Hearing this question, Ding Nian and Xu Fang assumed the boss was doubting their professional competence, and quickly expressed their confidence:
"No problem at all!"
"Not a single issue!"
Good.
Xu Meng nodded with satisfaction.
Qualified wage earners.
He then moved on to the next task:
"After the clothing comes the physical dynamics of the character models."
"To put it more bluntly: the characters' chests and butts need to have elasticity. They can't just sit there like plastic models without moving an inch."
"Take a look at what the players are saying—" Xu Meng swiveled his computer monitor around to display player comments.
"Stone boobs!"
"Aren't you ashamed to provide players with a product like this?"
Peng Linmu and Chen Wanzhong hung their heads in shame.
Xu Meng then laid down his demands: "Put real effort into it! Create the gelatinous jiggle and dynamic bounce of jelly—for both chests and butts!"
"Not only do they need to sway, but they also have to react to the character's various movements—walking, running, jumping, combat—generating different dynamic changes accordingly."
"In one sentence: push the sexual tension of the characters to the absolute limit!"
Chen Wanzhong felt his vision go dark at the edges.
Making parts of the character models sway wasn't a matter of whether it was lewd or not, nor was it a technical issue; it was purely a matter of raw, grueling crunch!
Stone boobs and plastic butts certainly didn't look good, but low polygon counts in the modeling could significantly reduce the workload.
Yet the effect demanded by the boss...
To say nothing of anything else, just for a single butt, the render polygon count would skyrocket from 3,000 to 30,000!
And that might not even be enough!
Looking across the entire ACG game market, very few titles possessed that level of detail.
By this standard, every single modeler in the company was going to be working overtime until they coughed blood!
Peng Linmu felt much the same way. Xu Meng's demands weren't just for the modelers; programmers, animators... not a single department would escape.
Yet once the boss had spoken, what else could they do besides head back and crunch?
"Understood."
"Got it."
"Go back and hold a meeting with your teams. I want a schedule on my desk by the end of the day."
Xu Meng looked back at the little assistant. "Meng Ling, the Operations Department director is next. Please call them in for me."
For everyone at Dream Building Game, today was a chaotic and rushed day.
The entire company had been set to fast-forward by Xu Meng.
Like a train about to derail, paying no mind to flying parts, it was about to charge wildly ahead!
Before you continue