Ready for Takeoff

More money?

Gu Sheng froze.

Whenever he had made games in the past, all he ever heard was that the budget was too high and spending needed to be controlled.

He had never seen a boss voluntarily ask to increase the budget!

Logically, this was a good thing. A willingness to increase the budget meant the boss believed in his abilities.

But...

Looking at his proposal, Gu Sheng felt a little troubled—

Where was he supposed to start increasing the budget?

After all, the only expense Mario Bros. required was the licensing fee for the Flash game development platform!

"As for Character Modeling and UI design, I... drew all of it myself."

Gu Sheng sounded a little guilty.

As he spoke, he secretly glanced at Shen Miaomiao.

After all, such a game development process did sound rather slapdash.

Sure enough!

After hearing Gu Sheng's words, Shen Miaomiao frowned. "You drew it all yourself?"

"Uh, yes." Gu Sheng grinned and nodded.

"You didn't spend a single cent?" Shen Miaomiao pressed.

"Uh, yeah." Gu Sheng kept nodding.

At that, Shen Miaomiao slapped the sofa with a bang, startling Gu Sheng.

"How can that be okay?!"

Shen Miaomiao stood up, speaking with righteous indignation.

"Golden Wind Game Company is a legitimate and professional game company!"

"And you, Director Gu, are the soul of our company! The commander! The upper structure!"

"How can you personally handle every little thing? Can you even take all that exhaustion and effort?!"

Huh...?

Shen Miaomiao's impassioned speech left Gu Sheng rather bewildered.

"...But I finished drawing it in ten minutes."

"That still won't do!"

Damn it, if you did everything yourself, how was she supposed to increase the budget?!

If she didn't increase the budget, how was she supposed to lose money?!

And if she didn't lose money, how was she supposed to lie around and make a fortune?!

"Outsource it! It has to be outsourced!"

Shen Miaomiao waved her little hand.

"I looked into it yesterday. Making a game requires lots of personnel and financial support. Art, levels, programming, all that stuff can easily cost hundreds of thousands or even millions!"

"You just make the arrangements! Don't worry about the money!"

"Our principle for making games is—don't aim for the best! Aim for the most expensive!"

Gu Sheng: ...

But he was just making Mario Bros.!

A Flash game!

His art skills were clearly more than enough already!

Why did they need to hire an outsourcing team?!

Was she burning money for fun?!

"Boss, here's the thing."

Gu Sheng truly could not bear to trick a fool into spending money.

"The soul of this game lies in its absurd, slapdash art style. If we switch to outsourced art design, we might not even be able to achieve this effect."

Stop it, Little Nezha! Even if you had money, you couldn't squander it like this!

But who would have thought that Little Nezha seemed dead set on wasting money? She waved a hand.

"Ah—Director Gu, that's where you're wrong!"

"Why not change our perspective? Can't we have outsourced artists recreate your template exactly, one-to-one?"

One sentence! It directly left Gu Sheng speechless!

Did she even know what she was saying?

Gu Sheng felt like his CPU was about to burn out.

"Then may I ask... what would be the point?"

As if she had expected Gu Sheng to ask that, Shen Miaomiao merely smiled calmly.

She put an arm around the utterly confused Gu Sheng and patted his shoulder.

"You don't understand this. Do you know what brand influence is?"

"I'd like to hear more." Gu Sheng bent down slightly and looked at Shen Miaomiao.

Little Nezha was a head shorter than him, so to cooperate with his boss's showboating, Gu Sheng had to lower himself a little.

"We're a newly established company, and we don't have much of a reputation."

Shen Miaomiao raised an eyebrow at Gu Sheng and patiently guided him along.

"So, if we want to make a name for ourselves, we need to ride the coattails of famous people in the industry. Only then can we make a splash with our first shot!"

"Wow—"

Gu Sheng let out a performative sigh of amazement, his attitude noncommittal.

Clearly, he still thought Little Nezha's approach was incredibly foolish.

But since the boss had said so, he had no way to argue further.

It was not his money anyway, so they might as well burn it.

"Fine, then."

Gu Sheng sighed inwardly and shrugged.

"Then I'll waste mon—no, increase the cost investment?"

"Spend it! Spend as much as you can!"

Shen Miaomiao beamed, looking as though she were saying, I believe in you.

"You just focus on making the game 'well'! Don't save money for me!"

That very afternoon, Gu Sheng took Little Nezha's foolish philosophy as his guiding principle.

While ensuring that the original visuals and Gameplay remained unchanged, he did everything possible to make things needlessly complicated.

In this Parallel World, there was a website called Game Factory.

It was a gathering place for people working in game development, covering creative planning, art design, UI production, modeling and rendering, engine providers, and more.

Gu Sheng entered the website and immediately sorted listings by price from high to low. He began contacting top professionals in art, UI, programming, and other fields, asking them to subcontract portions of this shoddy, absurd-looking game.

But skilled professionals did not accept just any job.

Especially not a simple, crude little game like Mario Bros.

Many well-known professionals rejected it at a glance. Their reason was that making something like this was too degrading; no amount of money would make them take it.

So Gu Sheng could only keep lowering his standards.

Finally!

After an entire afternoon of searching and negotiating!

Gu Sheng barely managed to create this "gold-plated" Mario Bros. at a total cost of ten thousand yuan, with release scheduled for that night.

Wasting money required skill too. He had truly done his best.

After hearing Gu Sheng's report, Shen Miaomiao was still not very satisfied, but she could only nod and reluctantly accept it.

Ten thousand was ten thousand.

Even multiplied tenfold, that would still be a hundred thousand. It was better than two hundred yuan.

Ready for takeoff!

Shen Miaomiao secretly reveled in it.

She truly had a keen eye for pigs—no typo there—binding herself to a genius like Gu Sheng.

Now, she needed to think about how to comfort Director Gu.

After all, if Director Gu woke up tomorrow morning and saw a big fat zero, he would definitely feel terrible.

"Hmm... How should I comfort my own Sleeping Dragon? What a headache, oh ho ho ho..."

Eight o'clock that night!

Shark Live's gaming section!

"Thanks to Jiehou'er Buma for the Super Rocket, thanks..."

"Thanks to biabiabia for the ninety-nine membership cards, thanks, boss..."

Having just finished that day's game promotion segment, A Yin twisted his neck and thanked all the viewers who had sent gifts.

"If anyone's interested, you can click the icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen to enter the game. Dragon-slaying saber, free with one click. I'll be waiting for you in Sand City."

The chat immediately filled with supportive comments—

'Pretty fun, I've already put in a hundred thousand.'

'Awesome, I sold my house just to top up.'

'Personally tested, suitable even for sensitive skin.'

'Wrong funeral, bro. [doge]'

'Ridiculous, hahahahaha...'

'Just finished showering. Is the sponsored segment over?'

'Woohoo! Idiot Game Review is coming!'

'Boss, change the disc!'

'The main feature begins...'

As a top streamer in the gaming category, A Yin had countless fans.

And viewers who frequently watched A Yin's streams knew that eight o'clock every evening was the happiest time in the stream.

Because during this time, A Yin would randomly select the stupidest-looking games on game platforms and play and review them.

Each game would be tested for twenty minutes, and the viewers would decide whether to "keep it" or "carry it away."

Looking at the flood of cheers and small gifts across the screen, A Yin nodded.

"Come on! Let's see how many lucky ones get carried away today!"

With that!

A Yin opened Yiyou Platform—an indie game publishing platform known as the domestic Little Valve.

After filtering through the options!

A Yin narrowed his target to three tags: "small-scale," "single-player," and "priced at 1–10 yuan."

First up!

A newly released game caught his eye—

"Mario Bros."