Chapter 22: Special Buff: -50%!

The work of adjusting values and revising the narrative text lasted for a full five days.

During these five days, Chen Ba, Yang Dong, and Lu Jing were busy from morning until night, with discarded narrative text reaching up to 200,000 words.

"Next time, we won’t make such a strongly narrative-driven game!"

"If we have to make such a story-driven game, then we must hire a professional narrative planner."

Leaning back in his ergonomic chair, Chen Ba sighed and said, "I’ve laid my cards on the table; I’m just a useless waste!"

"Same here!" *2

Lu Jing and Yang Dong looked dejected.

None of the three were professional narrative planners, and revising the original storyline and optimizing emotional resonance events was driving them mad.

It’s truly not a job fit for humans!

Yang Dong took on the mindset of writing love letters to a goddess, Lu Jing gave it his all like writing an exam essay, and Ba... Ba Ge unleashed his unmatched speed gained from years of dominating the gaming arena while both parents were still alive.

In short, they did their best.

Effort does pay off. At least on the second-level system page, Chen Ba saw that the narrative score for "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" rose from 78 to 85.

I really can’t go any further...

To achieve a higher narrative score, relying on the three of them alone was not enough. Without a professional narrative planner, reaching 85 was already decent.

Chen Ba was quite satisfied with this result.

No complaints even if dissatisfied, unless they immediately hired a narrative planner whose writing wasn’t subpar, otherwise, the result couldn’t be changed.

The good news was that during their busy time tweaking values and revising the storyline, there was progress in the "Bug Bounty" event initiated by Chen Ba.

A netizen from Ice City encountered a bug while playing the early access version of "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator"!

The bug originated from a trash can.

The maps in "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" are scattered with hundreds of large and small trash cans. Players can rummage through them to pick up junk, which can be recycled for a certain amount of "pocket money."

While searching a trash can near the park’s grove, this player from Ice City accidentally triggered a bug that caused the game to get stuck on the interaction page, halting the program.

After investigation, Chen Ba finally determined that the bug was caused by a logical error in the trash can interaction program, leading to a failure in map resource calls.

This was Yang Dong’s responsibility!

After all, the trash cans were his idea, and he was the one who wrote the code. He just needed to rework the interaction logic related to the trash cans.

The bug was legitimate, reward of a thousand!

Since this player reported a real bug to the studio, Chen Ba kept his word.

Not only did he reward the player, but he also posted about it in the game community to encourage other players to find more bugs in the early access version.

Unfortunately...

Despite the enticing thousand-yuan reward for each bug encouraging the players, no new bug reports came in the following days.

The only valuable player feedback pointed out a typo in the "game dialogue text," where [birds of a feather] was mistakenly typed as [ferret of a feather]. It was obvious to one that the creator didn’t attend college.

"Well... I really didn’t go to college!"

Lu candidly admitted his mistake to the player, expressing his intent to improve in this area and not make the same mistake again.

Such sincere words left this player, full of complaints, speechless.

Bro! I was just casually complaining, but you took it seriously?

...

In the blink of an eye, more than a month passed.

As the Mid-Autumn Festival approached, Chen Ba felt the time was ripe.

Until now, they had conducted 42 days of extreme high-pressure testing on "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" and mobilized thousands of players to identify 13 bugs in the game.

Of these, they discovered 10 bugs themselves, with only 3 bugs reported by players.

Continuing the test any further was pointless.

It’s been a long time since the early access version was released. The game is no longer a half-finished product, and players have been urging the official version to be released soon.

Besides, the development work has lasted from June to October, and Tianba Game Studio was on the brink of running out of resources.

Although some players purchased the game during the early access phase, most chose to wait and buy the official version upon release.

This means "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" must rely on the official version to truly break even and achieve profitability, rather than the so-called early access version.

"Let’s release the official version next Saturday!"

"We’ve almost ironed out the bugs, and even if there are some undiscovered ones, they probably won’t have too serious an impact."

After some thought, Chen Ba decided to release the official version of "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" next week.

The official version is priced at 25 yuan!

That’s an increase of 7 yuan compared to the early access version.

This pricing is reasonable since the early access version’s price was roughly 30% off, and it’s normal for the official version to be priced higher.

Moreover, the increase in game price was also due to the rise in production costs.

"Offering more for the same price" games do exist, but as a small studio, Tianba needs to survive first before considering player benefits.

The community’s majority supported this pricing decision, with only a few complaining that Tianba Studio had learned bad traits, indulging in price hikes!

But either way, since the pricing was already decided, even if players were to protest en masse, Chen Ba would not randomly change it.

"Cold Window Study Simulator" can be discounted though!

As a game launched in the summer, it hadn’t been discounted since its release.

It’s about time for a price cut and a promotion.

Previously, it wasn’t discounted because new games generally avoid price changes early on to prevent early buyers from feeling shortchanged.

Additionally, back then the sales of "Cold Window Study Simulator" were stable, not needing a discount promotion to boost sales.

Times change!

As time went by, especially with the introduction of the new "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator," sales of "Cold Window Study Simulator" plummeted, now less than a tenth of previous months.

In these circumstances, whether to boost sales or to celebrate the new release by Tianba Studio, this game deserved a discount promotion and shouldn’t maintain the original price.

Chen Ba pondered, "Let’s slash it by half!"

Buy early, enjoy early; buy late, get a discount; don’t buy, get it for free!

Even though it wasn’t at the "free giveaway" stage yet, this was the first discount, and without showing some sincerity, it would be hard to move those players.

So simply slashing it by half would do the trick.

The original price of 18 yuan for "Cold Window Study Simulator" now had a "-50%" green status box, available for just 9 yuan.

Nine yuan!

This was also why Chen Ba opted for a 50% discount—because a single-digit price and a double-digit price are entirely different concepts visually.

It’s similar to how stores price items at 9.99 yuan or 99.99 yuan for promotion.

Even though the difference is just one cent, the visual perception and purchasing desire of consumers are completely different from 10 yuan and 100 yuan!