Chapter 1: If You Want to Make Money, You Have to Lose Money! If You Want to Lose Money, You Have to Make Money!

You Were Told to Lose Money By Making Games, and You Actually Did It?

Chapter 1: If You Want to Make Money, You Have to Lose Money! If You Want to Lose Money, You Have to Make Money!

October, Shanghai

Shanghai University, Dormitory 404

Chen Xu leaned back in his chair, staring blankly at the laptop screen in front of him.

As familiar yet unfamiliar memories continuously surfaced in his mind, this veteran web-novel reader quickly accepted the fact that he had transmigrated into a parallel world.

He was now a 21-year-old junior at Shanghai University, majoring in Game Development.

Before entering the program, almost every student who chose this major dreamed of becoming the producer of a blockbuster game.

But by graduation, everyone realized they had merely found a different way to work on an assembly line.

Yes—an assembly line worker.

A successful AAA game often involved hundreds, thousands, or even more people.

Programming, balancing, art, story design... all of it was like factory work, requiring employees to endlessly produce content.

A fresh graduate wanted to have creative control over a project with a budget of tens or even hundreds of millions?

Dream on!

Thinking of this, Chen Xu decisively pulled out his phone.

In his previous life, he had worked as a game planner while also handling programming and balancing. He had been stuck in endless 996 work schedules, and before turning thirty, he was already losing most of his hair.

Now that he had been reborn, was he supposed to jump back into the giant pit known as game development?

Absolutely not!

Just as he was about to open a food-delivery app and become a delivery rider, a translucent screen that only he could see appeared before him.

The screen was filled with information.

[Loss Conversion System]

[Detected Host Identity: Game Industry Practitioner]

[Current Settlement Field: Gaming Industry]

[Instructions]

Every settlement cycle, the system will provide the host with a sum of money and corresponding legitimate business activities.

At the end of each cycle, the system will settle based on the project's profit.

Losses will be returned to the host at a 1:1 ratio as freely disposable funds.Profits will be returned at a 100:1 ratio.Any continuing revenue generated after project settlement will be added to the profit pool of the next settlement cycle.

[System Funds: 100,000,000 Yuan]

[Settlement Time: 160 Days Later]

(If no official product is released by the settlement deadline, the deadline will be extended. However, each additional week will reduce the next cycle's system funds by 1%.)

[Personal Funds: 1,024 Yuan]

At first, Chen Xu was startled.

Then a wave of ecstasy surged through him. His heart began pounding as though he had just finished exercising.

Good! Excellent!

Game development was a bottomless pit?

Working for someone else's company might be jumping into a bottomless pit.

But working for his own company?

That was crawling into a warm and cozy nest.

And just look at this system's generosity.

It started him off with one hundred million yuan!

How could he possibly refuse?

Perfect!

This transmigration had absolutely been worth it.

After reading through the lengthy explanation, Chen Xu more or less understood how the system worked.

Lose money to make money.

The less money you had, the more money you could get.

Was there really such a wonderful thing in the world?

The system funds could only be used for legitimate business purposes.

The other amount was the money he could freely spend.

According to the instructions, the rules were simple.

As long as a game was completed, evaluated by the system, and released within the specified period, if its revenue during settlement failed to cover development costs, the loss would be transferred directly to Chen Xu's personal account at a 1:1 ratio.

Conversely, if the project generated a profit, the conversion rate would become 100:1.

For example:

Suppose Chen Xu invested 10 million yuan into a game.

If the game earned only 1 million yuan during settlement, the project would incur a loss of 9 million yuan.

That 9 million yuan would become his personal disposable funds.

But if the game earned 11 million yuan, then it would have made a profit of 1 million yuan.

That profit would be settled at a ratio of 100:1, meaning he would receive only 10,000 yuan as personal funds.

Furthermore, after project settlement, players could continue buying the game, generating additional revenue.

That revenue would be treated as profit and added to the next settlement cycle.

After taking a sip of cold water to calm himself, Chen Xu continued reading.

[System Usage Regulations]

1, Every expenditure must comply with the laws of China.

2, The host must invest in or create legal products with legitimate commercial value.

3, Every investment must be reasonable; the host may not intentionally lose money for the sake of losing money.

4, The host may not use personal funds to positively or negatively influence the product.

5, The host may not directly or indirectly reveal the existence of the system to others.

…

…

99, The host may not choose projects that were failures in his previous life.

[Click "Next" to begin this cycle's mission.]

After studying the system carefully for more than twenty minutes, Chen Xu finally had a decent understanding of it.

Most of the rules were clearly designed to prevent him from deliberately exploiting the system for easy losses.

There was no way he could spend a fortune creating a deliberately terrible game, then sit in a KTV singing songs and holding a microphone while waiting for the loss settlement payout.

The lesson was obvious: crooked tricks wouldn't work.

If he wanted to lose money, he'd have to do it openly and legitimately.

"No loopholes or shortcuts? Not a problem. If Atari could collapse back then, then I, Chen Xu, can certainly lose one hundred million yuan in 160 days!"

"Atari, THQ, 3DO, and Sega during the console era—these predecessors are all role models I should learn from!"

Chen Xu wore a solemn expression.

At this moment, he was not fighting alone.

Thinking of the glorious bankruptcies achieved by his predecessors, Chen Xu confidently selected [Next].

In an instant, the lengthy list of system regulations collapsed into a single [Expand Full Text] button, leaving only the basic information panel displaying his starting funds and settlement deadline.

Then suddenly, a thought struck him.

"Wait... something seems off."

Just as he was preparing to begin his grand money-losing campaign, he remembered Rule 99.

He could not choose projects that had failed in his previous life.

Did that mean he could choose projects that had succeeded?

Could it be...

He quickly opened the browser on his laptop.

After a brief search, Chen Xu discovered that this parallel world truly felt like a parallel world.

The broad course of history was almost identical to his previous life, but many details were completely different.

Simply put, countless games, TV dramas, anime, movies, and even songs that he knew from his previous life simply did not exist here.

Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo—the traditional Big Three—still existed, but their products were completely unfamiliar.

Famous franchises from his previous life, such as Mario and Link, were nowhere to be found.

Many legendary game designers and producers were also absent.

At the same time, Chen Xu noticed something else.

Whenever he recalled a game, movie, or song from his previous life, he could reproduce it in his mind with astonishing accuracy.

Clearly, this was one of the "side effects" of transmigration.

All these signs were no longer subtle hints.

It felt as though fate was grabbing him by the head and screaming into his ear:

"What are you waiting for? Go become a plagiarist already!"

"Under normal circumstances, I should probably recruit a bunch of inexperienced rookie employees, deliberately start projects that look doomed from the outset, avoid every success factor from my previous life, and begin my glorious journey of losing money?"

Thinking this far, Chen Xu chuckled.

Too cliché.

Far too cliché.

After all, in nearly every "lose-money-to-become-rich" novel he had read in his previous life, the protagonist's plans to lose money inevitably backfired.

Either some extraordinarily talented rookie employee would betray their expectations and create a hit, or unexpected circumstances would turn a guaranteed failure into a success.

The common theme was simple:

Whatever you wanted to happen would never happen.

Thus, Chen Xu realized something important.

Crooked tricks were useless.

The more desperately you wanted to lose money, the harder it became to actually lose money.

The more determined you were to create a bad game, the more likely that game would turn out better than expected.

On the surface, losing money seemed easy.

Anyone could do it.

But did he really think the system would let him farm its gold so effortlessly?

How naïve.

So instead of relying on gimmicks and schemes, why not lose money the proper way?

Although he couldn't simply copy famous commercial failures from his previous life, who said that successful masterpieces couldn't also satisfy the system's loss conditions?

Movies were a perfect example.

Take The Shawshank Redemption.

From a cinematic perspective, it was an outstanding and beloved classic.

Yet that didn't stop it from losing money during its original theatrical run.

Games, in some respects, worked the same way.

"System, your gold is mine!"

Chen Xu's eyes shone with unwavering determination.

That said, he still needed to choose his projects carefully.

After all, losing money wasn't scary.

What's scary is losing money with no future returns.

According to the system's rules, any continuing profits generated after settlement would be added to the principal pool for the next cycle.

So if he wanted to make money, he had to lose money.

And if he wanted to lose even more money, he first had to make even more money.

Only by earning larger profits later could he receive larger budgets to lose in future settlement cycles.

The moment he connected all the pieces, Chen Xu suddenly felt a tingling sensation across his scalp.

Then realization dawned on him.

I understand!