To register the company, Meng Shu spent another week.
After withdrawing the earnings from his videos, he took the money to a reputable, well-established agency that handled company registrations. He explained what he needed and had them run the errands for him.
Meanwhile, he began searching all over the city for office space. That took an enormous amount of time. During the week, he spent nearly four days running around looking at rental properties, following agents from one place to another, yet none of them felt right.
The places with good environments were expensive.
The affordable ones had poor environments and were out of the way.
Or they were empty units that required him to pay for renovations himself.
Looking at the ten thousand or so yuan in his pocket, Meng Shu felt like crying without tears.
At the start of a business, there was too little seed money. He needed cash desperately!
Now, all he could do was hope that the Official Version of Dark Forest, with its excellent reputation, would sell like crazy.
Another day passed, but thankfully, things were not quite so difficult.
In the end, Meng Shu found suitable office space in an Industrial Park.
It was not large, but it came with basic renovations. The previous company had apparently been in e-commerce and had collapsed for some reason. They had left in a hurry, and some desks and chairs were still there.
Meng Shu figured he could make do with them, so he simply rented the leftover furnishings along with the place.
Once the venue issue was resolved, he hurried to an advertising shop and designed a barely passable logo to serve as the company's initial emblem. It would definitely be replaced later.
And so, after a week of busy work, his little company in this world—Only Game—was officially established!
He even had an LED sign made and installed it above the reception desk, so anyone who saw it would immediately know this was a game company.
He had decided on the name Only Game after thinking for about two minutes. It was basically the kind of name that came from slapping his forehead.
There was no profound or far-sighted meaning behind it.
It was simply catchy, easy to remember, common, and memorable.
Meng Shu was a practical person. He did not want to stuff all sorts of messy, meaningless symbolism into the company name, making it difficult to remember and mentally exhausting.
Wasn't a name even elementary school students could remember better?
He arrived at the Industrial Park, went up to Building C, 5th Floor, and stopped outside Room 520 before opening the glass door.
At a glance, he saw a neat, orderly company that was ready to begin business at any time.
The four glowing words, "Only Game," stood out clearly on the wall behind the reception desk.
Meng Shu took a lap around the not-so-large office, then pulled out a chair and sat down. He casually lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
Then, in a voice only he could hear, he murmured softly.
"The company's settled. Next, it's time to focus everything on developing games."
He took out his phone and opened Danmu Network, only to feel a headache coming on when he saw the huge pile of 99+ notifications.
He glanced through his private messages. There were still no new investors contacting him. It seemed that in this world, even if Horror Games had gained popularity, no companies were willing to back them.
This gave Meng Shu a deeper understanding of the horror genre in this world.
Compared to other types of games, horror games found it difficult to attract major companies before they truly exploded in popularity.
Meng Shu shook his head. That was only natural.
If Dark Forest were replaced with something else—say, Call of Duty or Need for Speed—then with its current popularity, someone would probably already be willing to invest.
Meng Shu let out a breath and spun once in his chair.
He needed money. He wanted to make a VR version, and he had a way to make one.
Meng Shu believed that with the system's help, the VR Game he created would definitely be better and more realistic than anything from his original world!
It would certainly stir up a storm in this world, where VR Games were hardly prominent and might as well have been nonexistent!
Still, it was not as though he had no options. Since there was no investment and no money, now that he had a company, only one path remained.
Meng Shu leaned back and stared at the ceiling, steadying himself as he crossed one leg over the other.
That path was EA testing!
In other words, Early Access!
Simply put, it meant putting an unfinished game still in development up for sale directly.
Then he could earn money while continuing development, easing the financial strain and ensuring he would not run out of funds before finishing the game.
This was a fairly common model in his original world.
For example, Cyberpunk 2077 had gone on sale more than a year in advance for player preorders, then used the money it made to continue development and ease its funding problems.
Then there was Baldur's Gate 3, which had released an EA version early on for 298 yuan and sold quite a lot of copies. Yet even by the time he had transmigrated, he still had not seen the Official Version.
This kind of release model—selling while developing—had supported several small game companies in his original world.
Domestic games like Amazing Cultivation Simulator, The Scroll of Taiwu, Seeking Longevity, and Dyson Sphere Program had all solved their early funding problems through Early Access.
During the sales period, they continuously used the money they earned to refine their games and develop new content, ensuring that even their unfinished EA versions maintained high player activity.
As it happened, this world had a global gaming and software platform called Cyber.
After being represented in Huaxia, it had been renamed the Cyber Platform based on transliteration.
The Cyber Platform was extremely similar to the Steam Platform from his original world, hosting many domestic and international games as well.
But the difference was that Huaxia had a local representative, so domestic games needed to be submitted for review and obtain an approval number before they could be listed on the Cyber Platform.
Fortunately, this world did not have so many restrictive rules. Game review was a perfectly normal process here, and it would not take a year or more just to get through the first review.
As long as a game did not involve politics or contain excessively disturbing content, it could generally pass and receive the relevant certification—even if it featured red blood, ghosts, or supernatural phenomena.
It could be said that this world greatly encouraged diverse development among game industry professionals.
Meng Shu decided to take the sell-while-developing route. When the Official Version launched, he would release the VR version alongside it, leaving players stunned and earning Fear Points from them.
As for console platforms, he would definitely port the game to them as well. There was no question about that.
However, he planned to wait until he had enough money and hire people to handle it.
After all, platform revenue cuts were not low. Without money, it was truly impossible.
There was another issue as well: the game's popularity had declined.
Meng Shu looked at the downward trend in the video data on his dashboard and could not help frowning.
But then he felt somewhat relieved. It really was only to be expected.
After all, there were too many entertaining things online now, and people's attention could easily shift elsewhere.
Dark Forest might have drawn massive attention before, but without further updates to maintain its popularity and audience engagement, it would only grow colder and colder.
Meng Shu needed to list an unfinished EA game to earn money if he wanted to develop the VR version.
But if its popularity was insufficient and its name recognition too low, the game might die the instant it was listed!
Therefore, before putting it on the Cyber Platform, he needed enough material to attract players, make them interested, and pave the way for the release.
He also needed to make players believe that the game was genuinely being developed steadily.
Only then would they willingly pay to support it.
With that in mind, Meng Shu closed his eyes and looked through the supplementary asset resources for Dark Forest within the system.
There was currently one promotional CG. He could not release that; it had to be saved for when the game went up for sale.
There was also the original soundtrack package. It did not really matter whether he released that or not, since there was no particularly memorable music in it.
That left only the game's concept designs and art assets.
Looking at those two things, Meng Shu leaned back in his chair and pondered with his eyes closed.
Time passed bit by bit. He had no idea how long it had been.
Gradually, voices drifted in from outside the office. It seemed to be quitting time already.
At that moment, Meng Shu opened his eyes. He had decided what he would reveal.
"In this world where the horror genre is so underdeveloped, Dark Forest's character and monster designs should feel pretty fresh, right?"
Before you continue