Tang Yishu returned to her desk after sending Old Liu off.
“How’s the situation?” Li Yada asked.
Tang Yishu hesitated for a moment. “There are a lot of bugs in this game… so I asked him to go back and fix the bugs before coming back.”
Li Yada was a little surprised. “Huh? Isn’t this game already online? Why are there still so many bugs?”
“That doesn’t make sense, right?”
Tang Yishu twiddled her fingers. “I… I’m not sure either.”
Li Yada nodded. “Perhaps the other companies are not as good as Tengda in all aspects, so the testing team is not very good. It’s alright, you did the right thing.”
“It’s normal for there to be one or two bugs in the game. However, there are so many bugs that it affects the normal game flow. That can only mean that this company’s work cannot be done properly. The testing department is not doing their job. There’s a problem with internal management.”
“If there are so many bugs that it affects players’ normal experience, they should not be released. Instead, they should be modified until there are no bugs before going up. It’s right to dissuade them.”
“It’s alright. This is just one company. Let’s look for another one.”
Li Yada had an ominous feeling even though she said that.
That was because the first company had a game that had already been released. Logically speaking, there should be fewer bugs.
The second company’s game was still being developed.
The game called ‘Blade of the Empire’ was almost done. There was only the final finishing work left. The testing work was definitely ongoing, but the completeness would definitely not be as good as the projects that had been released.
There was a high chance that there would be more bugs than Heroic Song, which was a copy of Bloody Battle Song.
There was a big problem now.
Was it just bad luck that he happened to encounter a bug in the game? Was this a coincidence?
Or were all other games companies like that?
Li Yada had started working in Tengda not long after entering the industry. Thus, she did not have much experience working in other companies.
In her impression, Tengda’s games had never been troubled by bugs.
During every research and development period, bugs would pop up like bamboo shoots after a rain. The testing department kept lifting bugs, and the development department kept repairing them. Normally, bugs would be fixed before the game was released.
Even if some follow-up modifications were required after publishing, the workload would not be huge.
Therefore, she had always felt that changing bugs was nothing more than a physical job. If the bugs were not changed when the game was released, it could only mean that there was a problem with their attitude.
If he could not even do this kind of physical work, what else could it be but an attitude problem?
However, from the looks of it now, the companies outside really did not seem to be that good.
“Forget it, let’s not think about this anymore. It might have been a coincidence previously. How could every company not fix bugs?”
Li Yada felt that she was overthinking. Thus, she shook her head and stopped thinking about it. Instead, she continued with her own work.
…
Tang Yishu waited at her desk for more than an hour before the boss of the second company arrived on time.
Tang Yishu invited him to the conference room as per usual.
“Manager Tang, hello, hello.”
“My name is Yan Qi. I have sent over information about our company and my personal resume.”
Tang Yishu nodded. “Yes, yes. Please take a seat.”
Tang Yishu read the information given by Li Yada carefully after Old Liu left. She had ample time this time so she remembered everything.
Yan Qi and his company were basically the epitome of many mobile games startups.
He had previously been the chief planner of a games company in Shanghai. The project that he had led had been considered a success. However, the boss was too stingy. He had earned six to seven million yuan a month. In the end, the entire project team did not give him a single cent in bonus.
The boss put it nicely: He wanted to use the money he earned to advertise and earn more money.
At the same time, he made a picture, saying that after a few months of advertising, the money earned from the game might multiply. At that time, everyone would be rewarded a huge sum.
Yan Qi had been in the workplace for two or three years after all. How could he not know how ridiculous this was? Thus, he ran away decisively.
On the day he resigned, he knew that he had done the right thing. That was because the boss had only verbally persuaded him to stay. He had not even mentioned a salary raise or bonus.
Obviously, this boss did not care if his employees left or not.
That was normal. After all, the game had already been created. It could earn a few million yuan every month with stable operations. Would it matter whether the employees left?
If he managed to get rid of a chief planner, he could hire more people in the future. In any case, there was no shortage of people in this industry.
After quitting, Yan Qi did not want to be a high-ranking employee anymore. Thus, he had the idea of starting his own company.
He was from Jingzhou. He heard that Jingzhou had been developing very well in the past two years. The game entrepreneurship environment was not bad. Thus, he pulled a few friends from the industry to Jingzhou and established a new mobile game company. He also obtained a few million yuan in venture capital from local investors in Jingzhou.
After half a year, the game was finally out.
His game was called “The Blade of the Empire”. It was an ARPG mobile game, which was an action game.
Logically speaking, this type of game had a relatively high threshold and was not suitable for start-ups. However, thanks to the official game editor and Yan Qi’s previous work experience, the development was quite smooth.
Of course, he was limited by his investment and definitely not particularly outstanding. However, Yan Qi felt that his own game was still of decent quality. It should not be a problem to support the company after it was released and earned a little money.
For most mobile games start-ups, the idea of becoming rich overnight was too unrealistic. The first thing they should consider was how to survive.
The game was almost developed. Yan Qi had also contacted many game channels.
For small companies, the more channels they had, the better. There was no need to think too much about the ratio. They would take as much as they were given. Small companies basically had no say.
Therefore, when he heard that there was a new gaming platform in Jingzhou and that it was quite close to his company’s office, Yan Qi was very happy and came immediately.
“This is the beta version of our game. At the moment, only a small portion of players are playing it. However, don’t worry, Manager Tang. There are very few bugs left. It will not affect the normal game flow.”
Tang Yishu nodded and took the cell phone.
“Alright. Boss Yan, this is the agreement. Take a look.”
“If you are satisfied with the conditions of the agreement and the number of bugs that appear in the game within half an hour does not exceed three, we can sign the contract today.”
Yan Qi accepted the agreement and felt a little surprised.
That simple?
He had also discussed it with other channels before. These channels were getting worse.
Some gave very low dividends while others requested for huge changes to the game. In any case, they all raised conditions. However, some were particularly excessive while others were relatively alright.
He had never seen a channel like Dawn Games where they requested for only three bugs to appear in half an hour.
Half an hour? Three bugs?
Yan Qi felt that there should not be any problems?
Even though the game ‘Blade of the Empire’ had not been officially released and there were many bugs, these bugs were basically concentrated in some large-scale and deep gameplay in the later stages.
Half an hour was basically the early stage.
When developing and testing the game, they had to optimize the newbie guide. Thus, they had made many changes to the early stages of the game. These had the least bugs.
Yan Qi felt that as long as he was not particularly unlucky, he should not have encountered three bugs in a row in half an hour, right?
One of them tried the game while the other looked at the agreement. The guest room was temporarily quiet, leaving only the sound effect of the fight in the game.
Yan Qi had just looked at the beginning and saw that both sides were splitting the profits evenly. Tang Yishu had already encountered the first bug.
The newbie guide was stuck. There would have been a gray cover on the screen during the guidance process, illuminating the places that players wanted to click and pointing with the arrow. However, after clicking the button, the cover did not disappear normally. The screen remained gray and translucent.
“Ah, this…”
Yan Qi was a little awkward.
It was not that there was anything strange about encountering bugs. The key was that it was too fast!
What’s more, he had never seen a new finger causing a bug. Not to mention him, he had never even seen a test team in his company.
Before Yan Qi could explain, Tang Yishu skillfully exited the game and re-entered.
“It’s alright. You can continue reading the agreement.”
Yan Qi had a vague ominous feeling, but he could not say anything. He could only continue reading the agreement seriously.
…
Half an hour later, Yan Qi had read the agreement carefully twice. The number of bugs that Tang Yishu had found had finally been settled.
Tang Yishu found 12 bugs of various sizes within half an hour!
There were four very serious bugs here. Once they appeared, the game flow would not be able to continue. The remaining bugs might not have such serious consequences but it would also have a very bad impact on the game experience.
Yan Qi could not hold it in anymore.
There were too many bugs. What was happening?!
He even suspected that the program on his cell phone was installed wrongly. He did not install a stable version but brought the development version.
Why else would the stable version have so many bugs in the early stages?
That was illogical!
Tang Yishu seemed to have expected this outcome. She handed the cell phone back. “It’s alright, Boss Yan. It’s normal for games to have bugs. Go back and fix it. We’ll sign the agreement as long as we can control the number of bugs in half an hour to below three.”
“By the way, have you read the contents of the agreement? Are you satisfied?”
Yan Qi nodded. “I’m satisfied. What can I not be satisfied with? These conditions are already very good for us.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve already memorized the few bugs you encountered. I’ll get them to make use of the time to edit them!”
“It’s our duty to fix the bugs. We even have to thank you. If we had not coincidentally encountered these bugs, we might not have known that bugs exist in this place.”
“If these bugs were officially released, the losses would be huge.”
Yan Qi thanked Tang Yishu profusely and left with his cell phone.
