Beautiful Girl Game

Tang Yao didn't have many options at the moment.

Although there seemed to be plenty of opportunities to make money, most of them weren't very reliable given her current situation...

The main issue was that she didn't have much confidence in taking risks. And between the limits of what she knew from her previous life and the differences in this parallel world, there were too many variables.

She didn't think there were many directions she could count on. The more conservative option was to draw a serialized comic and become a manga artist; the more adventurous one was to try making a mobile game.

If she were on her own, she wouldn't mind playing it safe and drawing comics for a couple of years first.

But she wasn't on her own, and the conservative approach was too slow. Even if she quit her job right away, won a newcomer award, and immediately started preparing for serialization, cutting down the initial meetings and prep work as much as possible, then made it through the life-or-death first ten chapters, she probably wouldn't make a decent amount of money until the collected volumes went on sale.

And by then, Xun would probably have graduated.

Tang Yao didn't think she'd be able to work during that period, and the sisters would likely struggle to get by on their savings alone.

Besides, by the time she'd gone through that whole process, the mobile internet would be starting to take off.

So Tang Yao was more inclined to take the risk: make a mobile game before most people caught on, take advantage of being first, and earn a big pile of money as quickly as possible.

That would solve all their problems. Whether she liked it or not, it was the easiest way she could think of to make quick money... She really needed money.

Actually, after accepting her new identity, Tang Yao had already been thinking about the possibilities. Otherwise, she wouldn't have looked so deeply into this world's technological development.

That was also why she'd cared so much about her year-end bonus. More savings meant more confidence to take a risk.

It was just that plans never kept pace with change.

She'd heard about cloud servers from Kang Ming... Opportunities like this didn't come along often. Once cloud services were truly up and running, renting computing power wouldn't be so simple anymore.

Because once cloud services were up and running, Changli Group, which had paid for their development, would have its own departments use them first.

Want to rent them then?

You'd have to wait until there was spare capacity!

The cloud infrastructure was already in place, but still in the testing phase. For some reason, Changli Group, despite footing the bill, wasn't willing to be the guinea pig, and was relying on outside customers to test the service instead. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This meant that if Tang Yao really did make a mobile game, she wouldn't need to worry about setting up physical servers. And considering that even Kang Ming's lousy game platform could rent servers, the prices were probably very reasonable. With affordable prices and none of the costs of running physical servers, were the bugs and security holes in an early-stage cloud service really a problem?

Not a problem at all.

That was why Tang Yao had suddenly brought up wanting to start a business with Li Xue today.

Of course.

It all sounded great in theory, but there were still plenty of practical problems.

For example... convincing people that mobile games could make money would be pretty difficult.

Tang Yao thought mobile games could make money mainly because of her experience in her previous life. But for the people who'd grown up in this world, getting them to believe out of the blue that mobile games could make big money really wasn't easy.

Just like Miss Li in front of her.

After all, true pioneers were few and far between. And if you counted those who'd failed along the way, there were even fewer.

In fact, even in Tang Yao's previous life, most people who made money on mobile platforms were sharp-eyed followers who happened to enter the market during its boom.

That was still an impressive achievement in its own right...

"Just as I thought..."

"What do you mean, 'just as you thought'?"

Li Xue watched Tang Yao fall into thought and then suddenly sigh. She gently took her arm and gave it a little shake.

She was a bit worried Tang Yao was getting stuck in a rut.

After all, she knew Tang Yao really was short on money.

But even if she was desperate for money, she couldn't just jump from one idea to another on a whim.

"Miss Li, I'm fine... But have you really not noticed?"

Tang Yao took the phone from her pocket and gently waved it in front of Li Xue. It wasn't the latest model, but apart from the screen-to-body ratio, it already looked just like a smartphone. "Phones are getting more and more powerful, and they're only going to get better. Isn't it a bit wasteful to use them only for making calls and running social media apps?

"More importantly, everyone has a phone. It's not like a PC—you can pull out your phone anytime, anywhere. On your commute, before bed, during a break... If you could provide users with apps to fill those little pockets of free time, don't you think the potential would be huge?"

"..."

Li Xue furrowed her delicate brows slightly, then said, "Are you saying mobile devices are going to take off? I remember someone telling me something similar—that mobile devices would be the future and all that. But games? Isn't that too big a leap? PCs are so much bigger, after all."

As she spoke, the mature beauty raised both arms and showed just how big a PC was, then pointed at Tang Yao's phone. "A phone is so small. If all you can make are little games, players won't want to open them again after playing once. In that case, only a few would make money..."

"Who said I wanted to make the kind of little game you only open once?"

Tang Yao smiled. "Why not bring online games to mobile?"

Li Xue instinctively began to object. "That wouldn't work, would it? Online games are so..."

Tang Yao patted Li Xue on the shoulder, cutting her off. "Then we'll make a game specifically for phones. Something like... a beautiful-girl gacha game."

Li Xue paused, then instinctively asked, "...A game that uses you as the selling point?"

"...No! How could I be the selling point?"

Tang Yao froze, then explained with a faint blush, "By a beautiful-girl game, I mean a game where you collect beautiful girls."

"Collect beautiful girls... How would you collect them?"

"That's where the evil gacha system comes in, along with that evil Square Enix."

Tang Yao seemed to remember something amusing. She gently shook her head, then gave Li Xue a brief explanation of gacha games aimed at anime fans, which were completely different from online games that encouraged players to compete and climb leaderboards.

She'd been thinking about this genre for a long time.

As for why she'd chosen it...

It was a funny coincidence: in her previous life, Tang Yao had been an illustrator who drew beautiful girls for trashy gacha games.

And this kind of game was relatively inexpensive to make.

"..."

As Tang Yao explained, Li Xue seemed to have discovered a whole new world. She was completely bewildered.

When Tang Yao finished, Li Xue seemed to understand, then immediately said, "No way! Isn't that just making players pay out of love? How could anyone spend money on a paper character? I don't think anyone would take this seriously..."

"Exactly the same."

Tang Yao wasn't surprised to hear Li Xue say that. She just felt a little wistful.

Back when Square Enix released Million Arthur, the first anime-style gacha game, nobody had thought it would succeed either.

It completely went against the way online games were run at the time.

But when the game's revenue figures came in, everyone was stunned.

Soon afterward, a wave of gacha games followed.

During that period, so-called mobile game companies sprang up like mushrooms after the rain. All kinds of shoddy mobile games flooded the market as everyone tried to get a piece of the pie.

But Tang Yao didn't intend to argue. Accepting new things really was difficult.

She didn't want Li Xue to keep overthinking it, either.

"Right. That's why we need a popular original work to make it happen."

Tang Yao didn't continue the topic. Instead, she looked at the file folder she'd brought and changed the subject. "For example, a manga with compelling characters..."

That was right.

Her choice of a gacha game was also related to her job as a manga editor.

If she could draw a popular, compelling manga like the ones from her previous life, it might even help build interest in the game. Before, she'd thought of using her connections to have someone else draw it. Now, she might be able to draw it herself. After all, she'd already tried...

That could bring a lot of attention to a gacha game that sold itself on its characters.

As for what to draw... She had plenty of choices.

"A compelling manga..."

To be honest,

Li Xue was already struggling to keep up with Tang Yao's train of thought. She sighed, looked at Tang Yao's earnest face, gently took her arm, and tried to persuade her again. "You mean getting manga readers to pay for it? Tang Yao, that's impossible. It's too risky, too far-fetched..."

"I know."

Looking at Li Xue, who was still worried, Tang Yao said helplessly, "It's only a plan for now. For the moment, all I can do is think about it. I don't have any money or investors. I can draw most of the girls myself, and I could even draw the manga on my own, but without enough money, it definitely won't work."

That was right.

It all sounded great.

But the problem was that she had no startup capital.

Tang Yao looked at the worried mature beauty in front of her and joked, "Honestly, Miss Li, I wish you knew someone in venture capital who could introduce me."

At first,

Tang Yao was only joking.

But she hadn't expected

Li Xue to fall silent for a moment before softly saying, "Someone in venture capital... I do know someone."