I Just Want Players to Save Money, They Insist on Giving Me!
Chapter 204 - 91: He even makes free charity games? This young man has gone mad in his pursuit of merit!_1

Chapter 204: Chapter 91: He even makes free charity games? This young man has gone mad in his pursuit of merit!_1

Chang Detai has been suffering from headaches recently.

With only two or three months left until the golden autumn festival season, which is also the harvest season,

the China Broadcasting Bureau responded enthusiastically to the national mandate of providing agriculture assistance.

They required all cultural and entertainment industries within their jurisdiction to launch one or two public welfare events with a theme of helping farmers in the near future.

Among those tasked with this mission, the neighboring advertising industry felt most at ease.

The Advertising Management Sub-Bureau simply needed to recruit a few well-known large advertising companies under its jurisdiction to produce a couple of public welfare ads, easily accomplishing their task.

They specialized in this field, after all.

Moreover, the film and television sector wasn’t too hard to handle either.

Create a long video or a micro-film, invite some of the popular bloggers/UPs to shoot an episode about rural life, then elevate the theme at the end by focusing the camera on orchards or vegetable gardens spread across the hills with a tagline, "Our fruits and vegetables are in oversupply, please help us."

Never mind if it’s clichéd or outdated—its effect is undeniable, and there are always people willing to pay attention.

In the end, as long as the objective is achieved, you can hand in your report.

Besides the advertising and film and television brethren,

there’s also the riveting rise of a new industry in recent years, which also falls under the purview of the China Broadcasting Bureau—the live streaming/short video sector.

There’s even less to say about that.

Just find a reliable live streamer to sell goods, with good articulation, proper demeanor, and genuine sincerity, and fruits and vegetables will be flying off the shelves by the boxful.

After all, no matter the internet boom, people’s basic lives still depend on these fruits and vegetables—the demand is right there.

Finally, we come to the gaming industry, trembling in its corner.

As the little brother of the entire cultural and entertainment sector, the gaming industry has always been the unloved child, where a single regulation could cost them dearly.

Chang Detai felt that although he wasn’t quite at the point of losing half a life, it felt close enough.

Other industries could easily highlight the theme of assisting farmers.

But what about the gaming industry...

Should gacha games give out rice as a bonus with gold drops?

Or should the trending FPS battle royale games include airdrops that, when opened, spill out a crate full of watermelons?

Perhaps the ghosts in horror games might appear clutching bags of potassium fertilizer?

Or should fighting game characters rename their Skills to something like "Golden Autumn Fist," "Help Farmers Chop Down," "Vegetable & Fruit Small Jump," "Harvest Hit"?

No matter how you look at it, it’s quite awkward and does little to emphasize the public welfare theme of helping farmers.

This is also why Chang Detai has been feeling particularly anxious recently.

What complicates matters is that these public welfare themes must be spread for free.

Nobody charges for engaging in public welfare.

So the conflict arises.

Game companies develop games to make a profit. If it’s entirely free, they can’t make money, and of course, nobody would be willing to do it.

After much contemplation, Chang Detai, with his head in a whirl,

decided to take advantage of the quarterly summary seminar to see if he could gather a collective wisdom and encourage the group of outstanding game designers present to think of a solution.

Since the Game Supervisory Bureau personally extended the invitation, there was a matter of face.

Quite a few companies responded to the call this time.

Even the big three had sent their directors or senior planners to deal with the situation.

Before the meeting was scheduled to start, the temporarily rented large conference room was already full of people.

Many of the game designers from different companies were old acquaintances; upon meeting, they immediately engaged in warm greetings.

For those making their first acquaintance, they exchanged business cards before sitting down to talk.

Chang Detai also took the opportunity before the start of the meeting to pull a few influential figures in the gaming industry aside into a small office, to touch base and see if they had any suitable solutions.

This was to avoid facing an awkward silence when this issue was brought up later in the meeting, as the Game Supervisory Bureau was, after all, an official agency, which could be somewhat embarrassing.

After Chang Detai roughly explained the situation to everyone,

a short man with a "Chief Director of Grand Ceremony Entertainment" nameplate on his chest spoke up from the left.

"Director Chang, it’s not that we don’t want to do it. We would definitely respond proactively to the national call if we could. It’s just that this particular theme is... somewhat special."

Someone else chimed in, "Indeed, the gaming industry has been around for over thirty years now. If you count the first-generation computer programming games from the early days, it’s even been around for forty to fifty years, but there’s never been any game that fits with agricultural support..."

"It’s just not doable. Truly, it isn’t. Our forte is the immortal fantasy turn-based games, and just thinking of this theme fills my head with images of celestial immortals in battle, flinging their sleeves and out pop Skills of fruits and vegetables," someone said, and as soon as the words were out, the office filled with boisterous laughter.

The scene was admittedly somewhat abstract.

Chang Detai also touched the back of his head in embarrassment and said,

"Then can we consider a different approach? If it’s not possible to integrate the farming aid theme into our games, why don’t we develop a new genre around it?"

No sooner had he finished speaking than the room fell silent.

Although they didn’t express it outright, the designers’ expressions were somewhat speechless.

Director Chang, do you treat game development as if you’re digging cabbages out of the ground?

To just create a new genre out of thin air...

If new genres were that easy to develop, would we still be hecticly competing in the gacha game market?

The gacha system is the industry’s acknowledged stable pyramid structure. At best, we just try to extend and expand on that structure.