The younger generation, starting from where the wind blows...

Chapter 19 The Birth of a Hit (Part 2)
Yang Tao was simply attracted to Yang Muye's looks; she didn't have any other feelings involved.

After all, he's five years older than Yang Muyi.

Instead, she was more interested in the two games developed by Yang Muye, and kept pestering him to give her more chances to play.

Yang Muye glanced at the time in the lower right corner of the computer screen; it was already past 9 o'clock.

He immediately replied to Yang Tao: "What time are you planning to go to sleep, senior?"

"Let's play a little longer, I can't fall asleep if I go to bed too early."

"Okay, then wait a little longer, something unexpected might happen."

Yang Tao immediately sent two question marks.

Yang Muye did not offer any further explanation.

Yang Tao had no choice but to open two web pages at the same time, one of which was "Niu Le Ge Niu" and the other was "Yang Le Ge Yang".

I've used up all my challenge attempts on both sides, so I can only look at the leaderboard.

On the campus side, two more universities in Yenching have passed the test, one of which is a higher vocational college.

On Kaixin.com, the Yanjing leaderboard has gained another person, temporarily taking the lead nationwide.

The teams from Shenzhen and Shanghai were very close behind.

At 9:13, the "Niu Le Ge Niu" server suddenly went offline and became inaccessible.

Yang Tao was about to send a private message to Yang Muye when she suddenly remembered that Yang Muye had said something unexpected would happen later.

Could it be——

Two minutes later, the "Niu Le Ge Niu" server returned to normal, and then issued an apology announcement.

The server crashed due to too many users logging into the game at the same time, but has been restored to normal after emergency repairs by the backend.

To express our apologies to all users, the official team will give all users three free chances to try again.

When Yang Tao arrived here, she was still not entirely sure.

She still couldn't pass the level after using up all three free challenge attempts. When she switched the webpage to "Sheep and the Sheep", she found that the server there had also crashed.

It returned to normal within minutes, and the official account issued the exact same apology announcement, also compensating all users with three free challenge opportunities.

Yang Tao has finally confirmed that the server crashes on both sides were orchestrated by the official team.

This marketing tactic—

I've never seen a star fruit before.

Yang Tao opened her Renren (a Chinese social networking site) friend list and saw that Yang Muye was still online, so she immediately sent him a private message.

"Who posted the apology announcement on Kaixin.com? They should have their wages docked! They wrote 'Top Sheep List' as 'Top Cow List,' copied and pasted it without even checking it, didn't they?"

"Senior is so thoughtful, but this was on our own. On the one hand, we wanted to tell everyone about the connection between the two games to avoid being misled, and on the other hand, we wanted to give everyone the impression that the company that developed the game was just a makeshift operation."

"why?"

"If a game developed by a makeshift team can't even pass the review, anyone with a modicum of self-respect would find it unacceptable."

"..."

Yang Tao was truly speechless this time: "Did you choose the wrong major? You should have studied marketing."

"Is my senior praising me?"

"Yes, I'm praising you!" Yang Tao replied irritably.

"So I went to study marketing. What do you think the teachers at the school can teach me?"

Yang Tao was stunned when she saw the message Yang Muye sent.

Although the tone was arrogant, what was said was indeed the truth.

Teachers can't teach Yang Muyi anything; on the contrary, if Yang Muyi's game succeeds, it can definitely be written into marketing textbooks as a classic case.

"Then you don't need to go to university. Marketing professors can't teach you anything, and neither can business administration professors."

These are Yang Tao's honest thoughts.

"But college life is great. If you go, you'll regret it for four years at most, but if you don't go, you'll regret it for a lifetime."

Yang Muye replied. Yang Tao...I wholeheartedly agree.

She misses her university days very much; otherwise, she wouldn't still log into the school's intranet from time to time even a year after graduation.

"Then I wish you great success with your game!" she replied finally.

"Thank you so much for your support, senior. Please help us promote this when you have time. With your popularity, you're sure to attract a lot of users. I'll treat you to a big meal later."

Although she had long ago made a promise that she was good at refusing people, Yang Tao did not refuse this time.

After closing the chat window with Yang Muye, he posted an advertisement link for "Niu Le Ge Niu" on the school's homepage.

At 10 o'clock, Yang Muyi saw that Yang Tao's status on the school's intranet had changed to offline.

Then, the phone rang.

The call was from Ma Qiushan. His tone was beyond excited; he was practically wild.

"Muye, guess how many users have played our game by 10 o'clock? 400,000 on Renren and 370,000 on Kaixin!"

Why are you so excited at such a short time?
"How much is the daily revenue from value-added services?" Yang Muye asked calmly.

"More than 50,000 on the school's online platform and more than 70,000 on Kaixin.com. I always thought we should launch both at the same time. Now it seems that Kaixin.com is making more money," Ma Qiushan replied happily.

With a total of 120,000 yuan from both sides, and the platform taking half, I only earned 60,000 yuan, which is still a long way from breaking even.

However, Ma Qiushan still emphasized that this result has far surpassed all the previous mini-games on Renren.com.

On Kaixin001, it's second only to the website's signature mini-game, "Parking Wars."

In less than a day since its launch, "Niu Le Ge Niu" has already broken into the top five in the number of users on the Renren.com programming competition leaderboard.

Moreover, this is only the first day, and the ads on Mop and Tianya haven't even started to take off yet.

"Makino, I think we can start celebrating with champagne now!" On the other end of the phone, Machusan was so excited that he started to ramble incoherently.

"You could be even bolder and just go for a yacht," Yang Muye said, his tone revealing no emotion.

He was clearly referring to Maqiu Mountain, but he pretended not to understand and declared with great bravado that when the real celebration banquet came, he would charter a yacht and take everyone out to sea for fun!

"Why don't you pay my rent for a year first?"

Yang Muyi's words silenced Ma Qiushan on the other end of the phone.

After a few seconds, Ma Qiushan finally spoke awkwardly:
"I know now is not the time to celebrate, but I'm just happy."

"I still have a little money left in my card—"

"No need, no need. Let's wait a few more days and make back the two million we've invested in advertising before we celebrate." Ma Qiushan was really embarrassed to let Yang Muye spend any more money now.

"Are you dreaming? What I mean is, both games have been launched. Besides staring at the backend data every day, shouldn't you find something else to do? Even the donkeys in our village wouldn't dare to rest like this!"

"Huh?" Ma Qiushan was stunned.

"Take some money from the advertising budget and find a reputable media outlet to interview you, so that everyone knows that these two games were made by Shanye Technology, and also reveal the development progress of their third game."

"The third game?"

"Oh, 'Goose, Goose,' didn't I tell you about it already?"

"Are you really going to do it?"

"Nonsense, of course we're not really doing it. We're just spreading rumors to find someone to take over."

Upon hearing this, Ma Qiushan finally realized what was going on.

You mean penguins?

“Yes, once ‘Cow’s Cow’ and ‘Sheep’s Sheep’ become really popular, we can go to Shenzhen to talk to Tencent. We can develop a new matryoshka game for them, or if they take a fancy to either cow or sheep, we can sell them the copyright and let them develop it themselves.” These were all things Yang Muye had already planned.

Ma Qiushan was smart enough not to ask the foolish question of whether it was okay to not sell.

Penguin has been criticized a lot over the years for being a copycat.

Although penguins are domineering these days, at least they still have some sense of reason.

Buy if you can, copy if you can't.

If "Niu Le Ge Niu" and "Yang Le Ge Yang" continue to be popular at their current pace, and as long as they set up their nests well, they won't have to worry about penguins not taking the bait.

(End of this chapter)