Guangzhou.
Tianhuo Studio.
"Tengda Network Technology Co., Ltd.?"
"They're coming to Guangzhou to visit and exchange ideas with our studio???"
Zhou Muyan was utterly baffled.
Since when did game companies start visiting other game companies for exchange and learning? He'd never heard of anything like this before!
Usually, the only ones touring major companies were university students doing social practice, organized by their schools to prepare for their future careers.
He'd certainly never heard of a game company organizing an employee visit to another game company!
At least, not in China.
Most domestic game companies prioritized profit above all else. Traveling long distances for such a visit was clearly unprofitable!
With a team of twenty to thirty people, the round-trip airfare, hotels, miscellaneous expenses, plus the cost incurred from these employees not working for a few days, would add up significantly.
Moreover, going through all this hassle wouldn't create any direct benefit—just pure losses.
They called it exchange and learning, but realistically, what meaningful exchange could possibly take place?
What kind of crazy game company would do this…
Zhou Muyan's instinctive reaction was to decline.
As Tianhuo Studio's lead producer, Zhou Muyan was fairly well-known in the industry.
Of course, strictly speaking, his reputation was rather mixed. Plenty of people criticized Tianhuo Studio, and as its producer, he naturally got caught in the crossfire.
"Zhou Muyan" wasn't his real name but a nickname—a popular trend among certain companies in southern China, including Tianhuo Studio.
Recently, Tianhuo Studio had been developing an FPS online game, spending over a year on it already. It is currently approaching the internal testing phase.
Given the current all-hands-on-deck situation with everyone working overtime, Zhou Muyan was hesitant to waste even half a day entertaining employees from a game company traveling all the way from Handong Province.
"Director Zhou, this company actually has a successful project. They're the developers behind Ghost General. I'd suggest taking some time to meet them. If you're too busy, perhaps Mr. Sun could handle it. Showing them around wouldn't take much effort," suggested the administrative assistant who had just gotten off the phone with Xin Hailu.
"They made Ghost General?"
Zhou Muyan paused, thinking the assistant's advice actually made sense.
As the saying goes, an extra friend means an extra path.
Although competitors often viewed each other as rivals, rejecting someone who traveled a long distance just to visit and exchange ideas seemed overly unfriendly.
Besides, Zhou Muyan knew about Ghost General. It was an emerging mobile game that had recently attracted considerable attention, and its producer certainly wasn't an ordinary person.
Meeting and getting acquainted with someone like that wouldn't hurt.
After all, spending one day meeting them and showing them around the studio wouldn't significantly affect their work.
Thinking about this, Zhou Muyan nodded. "Alright, agree to their request. Schedule it properly, and I'll personally handle the reception."
"Understood, Director Zhou. There's also the matter of the new hires' performance evaluation; the list of those eliminated under the bottom-ranking policy is ready for your approval."
Zhou Muyan took the list and glanced through it.
"Dismiss everyone except Lin Wan."
"Understood." Without further questions, the administrative assistant left with the list.
The bottom-ranking elimination policy was common practice at many game companies, particularly those frequently hiring fresh graduates.
Tianhuo Studio followed the same practice. Newly recruited graduates underwent evaluations after several months on the job, and the bottom 15% were let go.
After elimination, these fresh graduates usually found themselves in an awkward situation.
On one hand, they were no longer considered fresh graduates, having completely missed the prime campus recruitment period. On the other hand, they only had a few months of work experience—experience from a company that had eliminated them—making them extremely disadvantaged in subsequent job searches.
In other words, Zhou Muyan's casual wave of dismissal had effectively placed a huge stumbling block on these young people's career paths.
However, Zhou Muyan saw nothing wrong with this. Although he knew those eliminated employees would undoubtedly be cursing him and his ancestors privately, he couldn't care less.
In Zhou Muyan's view, the gaming industry was a jungle ruled by Darwinian laws—survival of the fittest!
There was no place for sentimentality in such a ruthless environment.
However, one name on the list was an exception: Lin Wan.
Lin Wan was a young woman recruited alongside the others from a prestigious university in Beijing, holding impressive academic credentials.
According to the bottom-ranking elimination scoring system, she was also among the lowest-performing 15% and should therefore have been eliminated.
Lin Wan made the same mistake as many young graduates—being overly optimistic and naive.
For Zhou Muyan, games were simply business.
But Lin Wan, like many idealistic youths, regarded games as art or dreams, inevitably clashing with the harsh realities of a performance-based elimination system.
In other words, she wasn't the type of talent Tianhuo Studio truly needed.
Yet, Zhou Muyan specifically singled her out from the list.
Not for any other reason—but simply because her family background was frighteningly influential.
Lin Wan's father was the CEO of Shenhua Corporation, the country's largest telecommunications and smart hardware developer—someone Zhou Muyan could never afford to offend.
Actually, "couldn't afford to offend" wasn't quite accurate. Zhou Muyan would eagerly seize any chance to flatter and curry favor with her father!
Of course, Lin Wan herself was unaware that her identity had already been revealed; she had joined Tianhuo Studio through standard campus recruitment procedures.
But Lin Wan clearly underestimated how much her father cared about her…
On Lin Wan's second day of employment, Zhou Muyan received a call directly from Shenhua Corporation's CEO's office.
There were two simple requests: firstly, Zhou Muyan and Tianhuo Studio should take good care of Lin Wan, making sure she didn't overwork herself; secondly, Zhou Muyan was requested to quickly crush Lin Wan's enthusiasm for the gaming industry so that she would abandon the idea of working there.
The message was delivered subtly and diplomatically, but Zhou Muyan was no fool—he immediately understood.
The CEO clearly didn't want his daughter working in gaming, but also wanted to avoid pushing her too hard and damaging their father-daughter relationship. Hence, he chose a more indirect approach.
For Zhou Muyan, this was actually a godsend opportunity, and he immediately agreed without hesitation.
Building a relationship with Shenhua Corporation, an enormous domestic powerhouse, would bring endless benefits to Tianhuo Studio in the future!
Therefore, while all the bottom-ranking employees were dismissed, Lin Wan remained.
Zhou Muyan had long considered how to quickly diminish Lin Wan's passion for games and persuade her to quit the industry.
It wasn't difficult at all.
He merely had to show her the truth about the gaming industry.
At least domestically, the game industry was essentially a sweatshop.
Bottom-ranking elimination, "996" working hours, abandoning dreams and ideals for profit, turning art into cash-grabbing schemes—
Such phenomena were not uncommon in China's game industry.
Of course, it wasn't all gloom—there were certainly brilliant designers and ethical studios as well.
But those were few and far between.
Zhou Muyan believed firmly that once Lin Wan saw the harsh realities clearly, she'd surely become disillusioned and leave the gaming industry—a practically guaranteed outcome!
<+>
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