6: Chapter 6 Dead Cells

Meanwhile, at the top floor of the headquarters building of Antarctic Star Interactive Entertainment, the data line chart for "getting over it" was displayed on the projection screen: over 300,000 downloads on the campus platform in three days, and its popularity index remained firmly in first place across the entire internet.

Executive Teng Li sat in the main seat.

"Priced at ten Star Coins, buy-to-play model, no in-app purchases."

He read these terms and let out a scoff, "He's got the brains to make a game, but he doesn't have the brains for business at all."

No one in the conference room replied.

Executive Teng Li stood up and pointed at the little man in the iron pot on the screen.

"The core mechanic is suffering; the more frustrated players get, the more they want to beat the game. A ten-dollar buy-to-play model wastes its maximum value. Buy it, change it to free-to-play, add cosmetic gacha and resurrection checkpoints—max out all the pain-point monetization."

He looked at the supervisor on his left.

"Contact this Ye Fei. Offer him a junior planner position, plus a two-million copyright buyout contract."

The supervisor recorded this quickly.

"No poor student can refuse two million."

Ten minutes later, the supervisor came to report, sweating profusely.

After reading Ye Fei's reply, which stated he would "not consider it for now," Executive Teng Li immediately chuckled.

"He's got character." He put down his coffee cup, his voice devoid of any inflection.

"Notify the live streaming platform business line. Have all major platforms immediately ban 'getting over it' from being streamed, citing the presence of negative influences."

The supervisor recorded this quickly.

"Assign twenty more people. Change the pot to an iron basin, the hammer to a shovel, and name it 'shoveling to ascend.' Have a demo ready by 8:00 PM tomorrow." Executive Teng Li closed his laptop. "Launch it for free, add a stamina system and a weapon pool, and eat up the entire market for this gameplay style within a week."

"Also, don't forget to arrange a 6-yuan first-purchase bonus, a 30-yuan monthly card, and a 68-yuan premium monthly card."

"Yes," the supervisor hurriedly agreed.

At 11:00 PM, the number of viewers in Brother Bao's live stream approached 500,000. He had been grinding for fourteen hours, his eyes bloodshot, and the little man in the iron pot was hanging on the final ice cliff of the snowy mountain scene, only three hammer swings away from the summit.

"Brothers, fourteen hours. Today, I must trample it underfoot." His voice was hoarse as he gripped his mouse tightly.

The first hammer strike caught in an ice crack, and the character rose steadily. The second strike hooked onto the rock wall; he was only half a meter away from reaching the top.

The chat was flooded with messages of "witnessing history."

Brother Bao grinned, preparing to swing for the final time, when his phone suddenly rang, giving him a start.

Because of this jolt, the character traced a parabolic arc in mid-air, falling all the way down past the snowy mountain, the construction site, the furniture store, and the rock wall.

Two seconds later, the game screen froze, and a black pop-up window appeared: "This game has been removed and banned from all platforms across the entire internet due to suspected promotion of negative influences."

The game process was forcibly terminated, and the desktop returned to the wallpaper.

Brother Bao answered the phone, and the super-moderator's voice came through: "It's a hard order from Antarctic Star. This game is banned across the entire internet. Turn it off immediately, or your stream will be banned."

The call ended.

Fourteen hours of effort, only half a meter away from the summit, and it was suddenly forcibly disconnected.

Brother Bao was instantly filled with rage; he slammed his keyboard onto the floor in anger and ended the stream to protest.

The chat in the stream exploded with a massive number of question marks and angry insults, but it couldn't change the outcome. Within ten minutes, all content related to "getting over it" on every live streaming platform in the Xinglan Federation had disappeared.

The next afternoon, Song Yan rushed into the dormitory, holding up his phone.

On the biggest recommendation slot on the homepage of the Star Blue Gaming Platform, there was a bald man in a tank top, sitting in a red plastic basin and holding an iron shovel. It was "shoveling to ascend," and the promotional slogan read: "The world's first climbing challenge game, a 100,000 Star Coin prize pool awaits you."

Song Yan gritted his teeth: "They banned your game, and then immediately turned around and released a reskinned version!"

Ye Fei scrolled through the page, glanced at the player comments, and handed the phone back to Song Yan.

"Heh, they can't even copy it properly, why bother with them?"

He picked up the phone on the table. The screen lit up with a text message: "Xinglan Federation Bank: 1,608,750 Star Coins have been transferred to your account ending in 7749. Transaction note: Campus Work Platform Settlement."

After deducting the platform's commission and personal income tax from the total of 2.1 million, the actual amount received was 1.6 million.

He turned his head to look at the "dead cells" project proposal on his computer screen, which was open to the art requirements page. He couldn't finish pixel animations of this precision by himself even in a year; he had to outsource it.

Ye Fei opened the largest developer forum in the Xinglan Federation, found the top-ranked art studio, "Black Flame," and dialed their business contact number.

"Black Flame Studio, how can we help you?" a capable-sounding female voice replied.

"A full set of pixel action sprite sheets, dark fantasy style, large volume and high requirements." Ye Fei's tone was calm. "The attack wind-up, hit frames, and recovery frames for every weapon must be clearly visible to the naked eye. The monsters need multiple sets of hit-reaction animations, including freezing, burning, and poisoning. The budget is 1.5 million Star Coins, with half paid as a deposit."

There was silence on the other end of the line for two seconds.

"A big order. Send over the proposal, and we'll evaluate it."

Ye Fei packed up the first phase of art requirements and sent them over. Two minutes later, the female voice spoke again, sounding a bit confused: "The protagonist has no head, just a ball of burning cells? At 5-cell difficulty, the environment automatically stacks a plague, and if it fills up, you lose health and die, with no healing points?"

"Correct."

"We can handle this workload, but with this kind of difficulty setting, won't the players be furious?"

Thinking of those players who couldn't resist playing on the hardest difficulty, Ye Fei felt heartbroken.

"The more they curse, the happier I am," Ye Fei replied viciously.

The receptionist at Black Flame Studio was deeply shocked, but years of work experience told him that he didn't have to understand, but he must respect the client's wishes.