After the Spring Festival, the employees of Yangfan Studio returned to work.

This was the best Spring Festival they had ever had.

Not only did they receive six-figure year-end bonuses before the holidays, but the boss also gave everyone 10 days of annual leave. Having been busy for a whole year, they could finally spend more time with their families during the holiday.

Some employees used their savings and year-end bonuses to pay the down payment for a house in Rongcheng, finally having a home of their own. Others used their year-end bonuses to buy a car and happily drove their new vehicles to work.

On the first day of work, Xie Yunfan gathered everyone for a meeting.

“Welcome back to your workstations. The holiday is over. The research and development of our next game will officially start soon. I hope everyone will prepare as soon as possible and get back into work mode.”

“There is one more thing to inform you. The 13th to 17th floors of Building A have finished renovation, and the offices of each department need to be readjusted.”

The employees looked at each other.

In the second half of last year, they could occasionally hear renovation sounds from downstairs, and they thought it was another company.

They didn’t expect it was actually rented by the boss?

The boss really had a big move up his sleeve behind their backs!

Currently, Yangfan Studio has nearly 100 employees. Because the office building space is very spacious, even for the art department with the most people, the office is not crowded.

Is the boss renting a few more floors to continue hiring people?

Sure enough, the next moment they heard Xie Yunfan say: “The studio will be hiring again soon. We are short-handed, and expanding the team is imminent. The directors of each group should also prepare to welcome new colleagues.”

Several team leads nodded to indicate they received it.

Xie Yunfan looked at Liu Muyao: “Muyao, you tell us about the new office arrangements.”

Liu Muyao said with a smile: “Colleagues, the new offices have been cleaned up. The 13th floor will serve as the company’s reception, public relations department, and publicity department’s office area in the future. If guests visit, they will also be received here.”

Previously, the boss asked her to find a headhunter to poach a powerful public relations team.

Although there is no shortage of talent in the PR field, the boss had high requirements. In the end, she found a PR manager named Xie Ni who had worked at a large entertainment brokerage firm for 5 years.

Compared to the business wars in the gaming industry, the black marketing used by the entertainment industry to kill competitors is even more terrifying.

The PR team led by Xie Ni had several successful PR cases; she has a fast reaction speed and is very good at controlling the direction of public opinion.

Xie Yunfan poached her to form Yangfan Studio’s professional public relations department, also to deal with various smears from peers.

It wouldn’t do for him to come out and write copy himself every time a peer dealt with him; he was really too busy.

As for the publicity department, some personnel will also be hired recently.

Yangfan Studio will set up its own operations and publicity team, responsible for making various promotional posters and contacting different platforms for promotion. Having dedicated personnel will also reduce his pressure.

Liu Muyao continued: “The 14th floor is the office area for the customer service department and marketing department, as well as the peripheral exhibition area; the 15th floor is for the art, writing, and animation departments; the 16th floor is the newly renovated conference center; the 17th floor is the programming group and level design group; the 18th floor is modeling, data, and testing groups; the 19th floor is human resources, finance, logistics, and network department.”

After the redistribution, the office area for each department is three times larger than before.

Everyone was very surprised when they heard the HR arrangements.

They didn’t expect that in less than a year since joining Yangfan Studio, the studio’s scale would expand so rapidly.

It seems that the boss’s ambition is very big.

Perhaps in the near future, Yangfan Studio will be upgraded to “Yangfan Group,” becoming a large game company like Wings of Dream or Coolplay, or even becoming a Boss in the game industry?

……

After the meeting, all the employees went back to clean up their desks with excitement, preparing to “move.”

The “migration plan” inside Yangfan Studio was carried out in an orderly manner under the arrangement of HR and logistics. Colleagues helped each other, and the entire office area was incredibly lively.

When Song Qian arrived at the new marketing department office area, he was shocked by the scene in front of him.

This floor had many transparent display cabinets used to place peripherals. Currently, the cabinets were still empty, but as more games are released in the future, this place will surely be filled up slowly.

What made him even more excited was that he had a separate office!

The door plate clearly read the four big characters “Marketing Manager,” and the office area was over 20 square meters, with a comfortable boss chair and an extremely grand desk. It also thoughtfully placed a sofa for rest.

This space is bigger than the living room at home, and it actually belongs to his independent office?

Song Qian sat on the sofa, and a smile could not help but rise on his face.

At his previous company, he was PUA’d (manipulated) by the boss every day, and the meticulously designed peripherals couldn’t be sold. Every day he went to work, he was exhausted. At that time, he never thought that one day he would be able to make it big, become a marketing manager with revenue breaking one billion, and have an independent office.

The boss’s importance made him feel very moved.

For a workplace laborer, the importance of working with a good boss is self-evident.

He is very glad that he resigned decisively and jumped to Yangfan Studio; this is the most important turning point in his career.

The team leads of other departments also had a unified standard and had independent offices of 20 square meters. The new office equipment was purchased in advance by Sister Hui from the logistics department, and it was arranged quite properly.

The several team leads were especially happy.

The employees’ office area was also much more spacious than before, and there were many beautiful green plants in the office, which made people feel happy.

This should be the biggest surprise the boss gave to everyone after the Spring Festival!

On the first day of work, everyone was busy moving.

Xie Yunfan held a separate meeting with the HR department, asking Liu Muyao to prepare the next batch of employee recruitment as soon as possible.

In the afternoon, Xie Yunfan went to the neighboring Building B. The Qihang branch in Rongcheng officially started work today, and Luo Hang also brought a group of people over.

Qihang’s decoration style is concise and neat, using large areas of silver and blue, full of a sense of technology. It is quite different from the bright and lively style of Yangfan Studio, which is mainly beige and orange.

Xie Yunfan brought a bouquet of flowers and sent it to Luo Hang’s office: “Good luck with the start of work!”

Luo Hang smiled and took it: “Thank you.”

When Yangfan Studio started work, Luo Hang was far away in the Imperial Capital and ordered flowers online to send to Xie Yunfan. This time, Xie Yunfan just happened to return the favor.

The two sat on the sofa and chatted about the upcoming cooperation plans.

Xie Yunfan said: “I will hurry up to recruit people, the recruitment will end around the end of February. How is your side?”

Luo Hang said: “I brought the engineers from the technical department over and let them continue to overcome the problem of holographic game multi-player data processing. Other groups also brought some people to help.”

Xie Yunfan said: “Let the data department and programming group come over. I want to have a meeting with them. Whether many of my ideas can be realized after being holographized, you have to make the final decision.”

Luo Hang said straightforwardly: “Okay, no problem.”

A moment later, several team leads from Qihang came to Luo Hang’s office. Seeing Xie Yunfan, several people greeted him enthusiastically: “President Xie, long time no see!” “Hello, President Xie!”

Having cooperated on the “Ghost World” project in Qihang before, everyone was already familiar with each other.

Xie Yunfan did not stand on ceremony with them either and asked directly: “Our next game is a role-playing plot-oriented game. I want to introduce big data intelligent AI-type NPCs, making different responses according to the player’s different operations.”

Several people looked at each other, looking at each other in dismay.

Currently, the NPCs in most games are fixed program codes; what to say and what actions to take are all set in advance.

Even in plot-oriented games, if the player chooses A, what response the NPC gives, and if they choose B, what reaction the NPC has, these are all programs designed in advance.

Intelligent NPCs? No game manufacturer has tried this yet!

Xie Yunfan said: “We once did an intelligent boss in ‘Journey to the West’, which is the Six-Eared Macaque in the True and False Monkey King level. The boss directly replicated the player’s operations, and then added the boss’s own attack skills; it was done quite successfully. So I think, intelligent NPCs in holographic games should be much more fun than NPCs with fixed dialogue.”

Whether it is mobile games or holographic games, the core is actually “gameplay design.” When “Journey to the West” exploded in popularity last year, they also downloaded it to try.

Thinking of the Six-Eared Macaque boss, the level design group leader immediately said: “I also fought the Six-Eared Macaque. The design of replicating player behavior is very interesting, and it can be done in holographic games.”

Beside him, the programming group leader said: “President Xie’s meaning should be, intelligent NPCs that give different reactions according to the player’s different behaviors? This time it’s not a boss, but an NPC?”

The data group leader said: “This requires the introduction of big data algorithms. After all, player behavior is uncontrollable; they may not play according to the programs we designed. We need to collect a large amount of samples and let the intelligent AI learn to handle various events.”

Luo Hang nodded and said: “That’s right. Intelligent AI can learn through big data. If you make intelligent NPCs, as long as you set the core rules, for example, this NPC is a ruthless persona, then the AI responsible for him can deal with the player’s different reactions without breaking the persona.”

Xie Yunfan said happily: “That is to say, intelligent NPCs in the holographic version can also be made, right?”

The group looked at each other and nodded at the same time: “Yes!”

The data group leader said: “Theoretically, it can be done. But we haven’t done intelligent AI, let alone a large number of intelligent NPCs; we lack experience. President Luo, should we invite some engineers majoring in intelligence to be responsible for this work?”

“Hmm.” Luo Hang nodded and looked at Xie Yunfan: “I will hurry up to recruit some AI-related talents on my side. There is no rush for the new game, let’s start after we are fully prepared.”

Xie Yunfan said straightforwardly: “Then we will talk about it in mid-to-late March.”

Qihang directly found a headhunter company to secretly recruit talents in the field of artificial intelligence and recruited several powerful engineers.

Yangfan Studio has many people to recruit and uses open recruitment.

After the recruitment news was posted on the Internet, countless job seekers flocked to it. The studio’s recruitment mailbox was filled with dense emails, making the HR colleagues dizzy.

In last year’s recruitment, some people missed it, and some people were holding a wait-and-see attitude and did not dare to submit their resumes. This year, Yangfan Studio has already proven itself with continuous hit games.

Everyone wants to work in such a company with great development prospects.

The competition for positions is extremely fierce, with an acceptance rate as low as 5%, truly “the great waves wash the sand.”

After a detailed screening by Liu Muyao, the interview list was handed over to Xie Yunfan. This interview was still a holographic group interview, and the directors of several groups followed Xie Yunfan to interview and determine the candidates to be hired.

These newcomers will all join in March.

The HR department has been very busy these past few days, and Liu Muyao also got several capable assistants, arranging all the incoming employees properly.

Each group held separate meetings to welcome new colleagues.

The studio injected a batch of fresh blood, the atmosphere was more vibrant, and the office was much livelier than usual.

After a few days of adaptation, the new employees all prepared for the development of the new game.

At 9:00 am on March 20, Xie Yunfan gathered everyone to go to the new conference room for a meeting.

The entire 16th floor was renovated into a conference center.

The newly arrived colleagues saw the grand conference center and couldn’t help but exclaim: “This conference room is more than ten times more spacious than my previous company.”

“Meeting here really feels upscale!”

There are huge projection screens on both sides of the conference room, and people sitting in the back rows can see clearly.

There were 10 minutes until the meeting.

Everyone was chatting in twos and threes, but unexpectedly, a group of strangers pushed the door and walked in.

The employees looked at each other: “Who are these people? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them…” “The company is so big, it’s normal not to have seen them, they are new colleagues, right?”

Someone recognized the young man walking at the front at a glance – isn’t that Luo Hang?

President Luo is wearing simple trousers and a shirt today, paired with a coat; his figure is tall and straight, and his handsome appearance is very recognizable.

Gradually, more people recognized him.

“Holy crap, why is Luo Hang here for a meeting?”

“It seems that the next game will be a collaboration with Qihang.”

“Are those behind him all from Qihang? No wonder, I haven’t seen any of them!”

Xie Yunfan was sitting and drinking water. Seeing Luo Hang come in, he stood up and shook hands with Luo Hang with a smile: “President Luo, sit here.”

Luo Hang sat down next to him and said to his subordinates: “Everyone, feel free to find a seat.”

The people he brought sat down quickly in the back row.

When it was 9 o’clock, Xie Yunfan opened the PPT and said in a loud voice: “Today, this is the project initiation meeting for the new project in cooperation between Yangfan Studio and Qihang Games—’Palace Storms’.”

“Everyone, welcome our friends from Qihang Games who have come from afar!”

There was warm applause at the scene.

It seems it’s a collaboration for a holographic game! Everyone was very excited.

Waiting for the applause to stop, Xie Yunfan continued: “The new game is a holographic role-playing game with an overhead world background. I will first introduce the game’s settings to everyone.”

The game world view settings appeared in the PPT, as well as the “stream of consciousness sketches” drawn by Xie Yunfan.

“This is an ancient country thousands of years ago, we call it the Great Qi Dynasty.”

“Qi Renzong is the current king, that is, the emperor, the ruler of the entire dynasty. He has eight princes, and all of them want to inherit the throne. Our players need to play the Seventh Prince, who is the least favored by his father, survive in the thrilling power struggle, and finally ascend the throne.”

“At the same time, there are countless concubines in the emperor’s harem. Our players can also play one of the showgirls, survive in the harem struggle, and finally become the empress.”

“The former is the court political struggle route; the latter is the harem palace struggle route.”

“This game will make a bold attempt, introducing an AI big data processing system, designing many intelligent NPCs, and letting them make different responses according to the player’s different reactions.”

Everyone in the audience pricked up their ears and listened carefully.

Court struggle and harem struggle? Players play a role themselves, participate in it, and there are various intelligent NPCs?

This game sounds… a bit exciting!

Many people have had some dreams when they were young, wanting to be princesses, princes, etc. Doesn’t this holographic role-playing game fulfill the dreams of players?

Holographic games focus on “realistic experience.”

In current holographic games, NPCs are basically fixed tool people. Even the previously exploded “Ghost World,” the endings of side-line NPCs are fixed, at most making two endings for players to choose.

Intelligent NPCs? Never heard of it!

The game introduced by Xie Yunfan is not just as simple as role-playing and intelligent NPCs.

It also involves palace struggles, political struggles…

Can this work?

Everyone was very expectant but also skeptical in their hearts.

Xie Yunfan continued to introduce the game background: “Harem line, there is a complete level upgrade path, from the showgirl who first entered the harem, to Changzai, Meiren, Guipin, Jieyu, Zhaoyi, Concubine, Noble Concubine, Imperial Noble Concubine, Empress.”

“We designed dozens of NPCs that can interact with players, such as the harem’s manager, the Empress, the powerful Imperial Noble Concubine, the four noble consorts: Shufei, Xianfei, Defei, Huifei, as well as many favored concubines. Players who want to ascend to the position of Empress will encounter countless obstacles; a little carelessness will result in death.”

“Court line, players are princes. In order not to become cannon fodder in the royal struggle, they must draw in all forces while protecting themselves.”

“The NPCs that can be drawn in include prime ministers, generals, as well as officials from departments such as the Ministry of Rites, Ministry of Revenue, and the Dali Temple. Since other princes may get rid of you, it is also very difficult for players to reach the step of ascending the throne; one wrong step may result in no corpse left.”

“Combining the court line and the harem line, it is a complete overhead dynasty.”

“This game background is complex. We fabricated an overhead country. The rise and fall of the dynasty is not a fixed, rigid plot direction, but more like an intelligent, changeable open world.”

“Every choice of the player may trigger the butterfly effect and affect the pattern of the entire dynasty.”

“Various emergencies will occur in the game. For example, an earthquake in a certain state requests rescue; a rebellion in a certain place needs the court to quell it; a certain official is investigated for corruption, and his daughter is demoted to the cold palace, etc.”

“Players encounter emergencies and need to react randomly.”

“Finally, various different endings can be played out.”

“Court line, the player ascends the throne themselves, or forms an alliance with a certain imperial brother, supporting the imperial brother they like to ascend the throne, and they themselves become a carefree king.”

“Harem line, after the player becomes the Empress, they can kill the emperor and become the empress themselves. This also involves the female emperor’s struggle in the court. You need to cultivate your own forces in advance; otherwise, killing the emperor directly will not work, and you will be killed by other princes.”

“Or, if the player is not satisfied with being the Empress, they can also kill other princes, cultivate their own son as an heir, support the son to ascend the throne, and become the Empress Dowager, listening to politics from behind the curtain.”

“Once this world is created and maintained under the operation of AI big data, players can travel to an ancient country thousands of years ago and have a thrilling game experience.”

“The philosophy of the game is not to promote intrigue and the hierarchy system, but to present a cruel ancient society and let players find ways to survive there.”

“On the surface, this is a role-playing game; in essence, it is actually a survival game.”

The employees in the audience listened with great interest.

A plot-oriented holographic survival game is so interesting!

Every operation of the player will affect the reactions of the NPCs. In such an ancient country with a strict hierarchy—if it were you, how long could you live?

Most players, without understanding the rules, wouldn’t be able to live for even a day, right?

Although being surrounded by zombies is also a survival game, this type of survival game relies on combat power. Players carry a gun and shoot around, and they will indeed get tired of playing for a long time.

And what Xie Yunfan created is a plot-oriented survival game. The existence of intelligent NPCs makes the game full of uncertain variables. Players don’t rely on combat power to survive, but on brainpower.

The most fun part is fighting wits and courage with NPCs.

The game hasn’t been made yet, but many colleagues in the production group are already eager to try it out.

After Xie Yunfan introduced the game design ideas, he continued: “The single-player mode of the game is easier to handle. Now there is a question, can a game with changing plots be played online?”

Luo Hang named: “Director Zhou, do you think it’s feasible?”

In the audience, Director Zhou from Qihang scratched his hair and asked: “What is the specific form of playing online? Do several players enter this dynasty together and affect the direction of the dynasty?”

Xie Yunfan said: “That’s right, we support at most two-player online. For example, two players go to the court line together, one plays the Seventh Prince, the other plays the Prime Minister’s son, supporting the Seventh Prince to take the throne. Or, two players go to the harem line together, covering for each other, helping one person become the Empress.”

“If one goes to the court and one goes to the harem, the player in the harem needs to assist the Seventh Prince’s mother to become the Empress, making the Seventh Prince the Crown Prince; in the end, the Seventh Prince ascends the throne, the female party can leave the palace and change her name, and return to be the Empress for the male party, and the two join forces to govern the country.”

Everyone was stunned.

It can be like this? Playing role-playing with friends is a bit shameful but also a bit exciting!

Couples enter the game together, one ascends the throne, marries the other as Empress, and joins forces to govern the country? Or brothers and sisters go together to cooperate and influence the direction of the dynasty?

Of course, players who don’t like teaming up can also go alone to defeat all NPCs.

The game gameplay is rich and diverse, and the endings that can be played out are also varied.

Director Zhou understood Xie Yunfan’s meaning and said: “For the online mode, if you team up to go to the court or the harem, it’s easier to handle, just let the teammates share the game events and progress; if one goes to the court and one goes to the harem, we can split the game into two parts to handle, and every period of time, such as one day in the game, combine the data.”

Xie Yunfan nodded and said: “Let’s do single-player first, and handle online teaming after the single-player is done. In the later stage, if the game matures, we can also let players divide into different camps for online confrontation.”

“The workload of the early preparation of the game is very large. Everyone will have to work hard for a while next. Writing group, first make the entire dynasty’s architecture and character relationship network.”

Writing group: “…”

Boss, we are going to go bald!

Fabricating an entire dynasty, and making a character relationship network?

This NPC is that NPC’s relative, a concubine in the harem is the daughter of an official from the previous dynasty; Official A and Official B are in an opposing relationship, and friends with Official C…

Clearing up the complex relationships of hundreds of NPCs is not an easy task!

However, Ye Xiang is a screenwriter, has written many original scripts, and has rich experience in designing character relationships; Shen Xingye, who came from Qihang, has done highly acclaimed plot-oriented mobile games and is good at handling delicate emotional lines; Zhou Shiyue, Xie Yunfan’s classmate, is also a big shot writing novels.

With these three capable men in the writing group, plus the dozen or so employees after the expansion, designing a game background is not a problem.

Xie Yunfan said: “I will work with the writing group to make the character relationship table as soon as possible. Other groups, follow the framework I gave you first. If there is anything you don’t understand, feel free to ask me.”

Luo Hang smiled and said: “Colleagues from Qihang, from today on, fully cooperate with President Xie’s work arrangements.”

Xie Yunfan looked at him and said: “Okay, let’s adjourn the meeting and everyone go busy with your own work.”

After the meeting, Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang came to the office on the 21st floor together.

Luo Hang teased: “This game will probably drive the programming group and data group crazy. And the writing group, the number of lines written can compare to a large TV series.”

Xie Yunfan said: “Holographic games will become more and more popular in the future. While the peers have not reacted yet, we join forces to be the first to eat crabs, isn’t it good?”

The two looked at each other and smiled.

Below is the wetland park with a pleasant environment. They stood side by side in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking at the scenery outside, their hearts full of the passion of entrepreneurship.

The first game company to create intelligently changing plots.

Yangfan and Qihang have always been at the forefront of the industry.

Now, the gaming industry is still divided into three parts: Wings of Dream, Coolplay, and Qihang. But both believe that in the near future…

They will become the leaders of the entire industry.

Even standing at the peak of the world’s holographic games.

Work together, starting from today!

__

Author’s note:

Let me explain, not using famous palace struggle TV series as the game background involves copyright issues. TV series are not like “Journey to the West” which is open copyright. If Fanfan uses it directly, it is equivalent to plagiarism. Not writing history is because history has too many controversies.

So, let Fanfan fabricate a dynasty himself, and he can play freely~

Players can also play out the female emperor ending. After a girl ascends the throne, she can change the country’s talent selection system, and let all women be officials.

The ending of this world is determined by the players, I think this is better.

Fighting wits and courage with NPCs in the early stage, governing the country in the later stage, please look forward to it!