In the small conference room, Evan and Emily sat across from each other.
After listening to Emily's story, Evan thought about it for a long time, carefully choosing his words before finally speaking.
"I think... honestly, you kind of had it coming."
Emily's head snapped up instantly. Evan found himself staring into a pair of beautiful eyes that were now absolutely filled with murderous intent. Startled, he quickly waved his hands in defense.
"Wait, wait! Of course Constellation was way out of line too—totally inhumane. I'm just saying that for someone with no connections or background like you to walk into Constellation and try to single-handedly change the company you'd loved since childhood... I mean, that's like trying to stop a freight train with your bare hands. It was never going to work."
Emily nodded, looking defeated. "What you're saying—I actually figured all that out myself after I quit and had time to think about it. But I still can't accept it. You know?"
Evan gave himself a little mental pep talk, then stood up and leaned over, placing his hand on Emily's shoulder with determination.
"So come help me instead!"
"Huh?" A trace of confusion still lingered on Emily's face, like she was trying to figure out how those two things connected.
"I value your talent—I really do. I know exactly how important a reliable systems designer is to a game's replayability and long-term success. Join now and you'll be a founding member of something real! Whatever kind of games you like, we can make those games. If you have opinions about game design, just speak up and voice them. There will absolutely be zero cold-shouldering here, I promise you that."
Evan instantly shifted into full persuasion mode, making promises like money was no object, basically showering Emily with assurances until she looked completely stunned.
Still, she managed to hold onto one last shred of rational thinking. "So what game are you actually making right now?"
Like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, Evan produced a thick stack of papers. "This is the basic game design draft. Take a look through it. If you have any questions, we can discuss them later. After you're finished reading, go find Lana at the front desk. Have her take you to my office, and we'll clarify the basic direction and vision for the game today."
Then Evan stepped out to pour Emily a glass of water. After setting it down, he left and closed the door behind him so he wouldn't disturb her reading. He straightened his clothes and headed toward one of the larger conference rooms. Lana had just informed him that the tech department and art team were already assembled and waiting for him to start the meeting.
This time around, Evan felt much more confident going into the meeting. Following industry practice, even though Evan already had a final game title in mind, before a game officially launched it was typically referred to by an internal project codename. And for this particular project codename, Evan had very thoughtfully decided on the name: "First Strike."
In Evan's words, this was Redbird's first real strike as they began to take flight. And since the name was First Strike, it naturally implied there would be a second strike, a third, a fourth, and so on down the line. If the company could operate in a healthy way, there would only be more and more of these strikes in the future.
For Redbird Studios, the actual production pressure for First Strike wasn't too overwhelming, because the core of the game really came down to two main points. First was the perfect technical presentation of the front-end technology on the web platform. Second was the demand for art assets and resources. The game used the tiered rarity system that was common in card games, which meant that monster cards of different rarities needed to be drawn with very specific visual feels to distinguish them.
Fortunately, even though Evan had never actually developed games in his previous life, he was absolutely a true gamer through and through. So he'd written out extremely clear and detailed art requirements for each rarity tier of cards in the planning document. This meant the artists only needed to take those corresponding visual elements and create original art that met Evan's specifications.
The greatest pressure, however, still fell squarely back on Evan's own shoulders. Redbird's weak front-end technical capabilities were something he'd been mentally prepared for from the beginning. At the meeting, Evan announced that he'd successfully reached a partnership agreement with Silver Ridge Games, and that they would be sending technical personnel to work collaboratively with the team for three months. The room immediately erupted into whispers and murmurs. Silver Ridge was one of the larger, more established game companies around, and being able to negotiate a partnership with a company of that caliber instantly wrapped Evan in this mysterious, impressive aura.
In Evan's estimation, it was only November right now. A web game by its very nature was a smaller-scale production, something that needed to be carefully and meticulously polished. So Evan's planned timeline went like this: one month for team integration and getting everyone on the same page, one month of intensive, focused development, and he expected to have a playable demo ready by the end of January. Chinese New Year this year fell in mid-February.
Northshore City wasn't exactly a major metropolitan area, and the majority of the company's employees were actually local to the region. So if everyone made one final concentrated push at the end of the year, the game might even be completely ready before the New Year holiday hit.
"Before the New Year," Evan murmured, looking up thoughtfully as he considered the timeline. It really was perfect timing when he thought about it. Right after New Year was typically a period of post-holiday fatigue for office workers returning to their jobs, which also happened to be an ideal window for web games to capitalize on. Sure, people's wallets might take a hit during the holiday season itself with all the gift-giving and celebrations, but for office workers specifically, year-end bonuses were definitely substantial enough to be worth targeting. So if everything could be completed according to his vision, they might actually get off to a really strong start right out of the gate.
After the meeting wrapped up, Evan returned to his office, where Emily was already waiting for him.
Having talked all morning long, Evan's throat felt pretty dry and scratchy. "You probably haven't eaten lunch yet either, have you? My treat. We can grab food and talk at the same time."
Evan was never particularly picky or high-maintenance when he was busy with work. Fortunately, Emily seemed pretty adaptable too. The two of them ordered a couple of stir-fry dishes at a small restaurant near the company and discussed First Strike while they ate.
Evan was genuinely pleased to discover that Emily really was the double-degree academic prodigy she'd seemed to be. She'd immediately recognized that the game's primary purpose and design were ultimately aimed at making money. Evan didn't try to hide or sugarcoat this reality. He directly explained the company's current financial difficulties and stated plainly that Redbird Studios desperately needed a period of aggressive expansion and revenue generation right now.
"After all, for small companies like us, the number one goal at this point is just survival. We're not going to do anything to actively harm users or rip them off, obviously. But guiding people toward the cash shop and encouraging them to spend? Yeah, that's definitely going to be part of the design," Evan concluded honestly.
Emily didn't seem opposed to this approach at all. "I read through the planning document in detail three separate times. I have to say, Evan, your game design ability really is top-notch and impressive. Your understanding and grasp of user psychology is genuinely exquisite—it's really sophisticated stuff. Just judging from what's on paper, this game has extremely high stickiness potential. Once players start, it's going to be very, very hard for them to let go."
Emily paused, looking up as she mentally organized and summarized her thoughts. "The more they invest in it, the harder it becomes to walk away."
Evan nodded in agreement. Making players unknowingly invest heavily in a game—not just money, but time and emotional energy too—was basically the fundamental core mechanic of most successful domestic games in his previous life, even if a lot of them were pretty trashy otherwise. It wasn't just about the money spent, though that was certainly part of it. Even though players themselves often didn't consciously realize it at the time, the accumulated time and sustained effort they invested in a game also made it incredibly difficult for them to just leave and walk away.
Even if players eventually entered a period of burnout or fatigue later on, by that point they'd already weighed all the money, time, and effort they'd sunk into the game. Abandoning it at that stage became genuinely difficult from a psychological standpoint. In financial terminology, players at this point were already deeply 'invested' and 'trapped'—the sunk cost fallacy kicked in hard, and walking away from the game became almost painful.
"That's a really good summary of the core concept," Evan said with a genuine smile. Emily was increasingly impressing him and meeting his expectations, and he felt privately grateful to Constellation for essentially sending such a talented person his way through their own incompetence. "It looks like you've really grasped the fundamental essence of what we're trying to accomplish with this first game."
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