A writer has arrived in the Chinese entertainment industry.

In the afternoon, Su Liu and Chen Duling, who had spent most of the day browsing, prepared to leave. The two avoided the central exhibition area and walked towards the entrance. When they passed the fan art area, Su Liu rubbed his eyes, almost wondering if he was hallucinating.

In front of a pile of colorful anime posters, there stood a sophisticated urban woman wearing a black cashmere coat and high heels.

"Wenxiu! What are you doing here?" Su Liu couldn't believe that An Wenxiu would be at the comic convention.

If I had to describe her, she and that domineering parent are practically the same kind of people, both completely out of place in the anime convention environment.

An Wenxiu turned around, and after seeing who it was, she raised an eyebrow: "Su Liu? What are you doing here? Why are you dressed like this?" She then looked at Chen Duling, "And who is this?"

For some reason, Chen Duling suddenly became nervous under the gaze of the older sister in front of her.

"Um... well, my name is Chen Duling." She nervously twisted the hem of her clothes. "I'm Su Su's... friend."

"Su Su?" An Wenxiu's lips curled into a playful smile, her eyes revealing a hint of understanding. "You are 'Miss Muse'."

Su Liu slapped her forehead. Damn it, she'd told everyone to stop calling him that!

......

After arriving at "Youxing", An Wenxiu immediately held a meeting with Yao Men and others. Youxing Company did not yet have a proper office space, and the studio was still crammed into a residential area near Jiaotong University.

There were several desks and computer equipment in the living room. An Wenxiu sat on the only single sofa, gently rubbing her temples. Two assistants moved a chair and sat behind her.

"Your CEO Su only gave us three months," she said, staring at the three people in front of her. "Today we must finalize the entire project's progress process."

Yao pushed up his glasses and immediately said, "President An, we must recruit enough people within a week. Even if we can't recruit enough, at least we can get all the departments running."

"I don't understand the technology, so I'll leave the specific selection to you three. You three will split up and work separately." An Wenxiu looked at the document in her hand, which recorded the needs and structure of the entire team. "The gameplay logic group will be handled by Yao Men. Chen Kai will take care of the engine tools group and the programming group. Qiezi, you'll handle the level value group."

"No problem," the three answered readily.

An Wenxiu pondered for a moment, then said with a worried expression, "Just like that, it will still be difficult to recruit enough people in a week." As if she had made up her mind, she added, "Let's offer salaries that are 20% to 50% above the market rate. You can decide the exact amount yourselves."

Don't let An Wenxiu's usual domineering and stingy behavior fool you; when it comes to making decisions, she's the most decisive.

A premium of 20% to 50%? This condition undoubtedly put the Yao family at ease.

"Mr. An, there's also the issue of accommodation," Yao said. "There will be many people coming from other places, and many of them may get stuck on accommodation and commuting issues."

An Wenxiu turned her head and gave a brief order to her assistant behind her, "Go now and rent thirty reasonably priced, move-in ready apartments as staff dormitories." She paused, as if she felt that wasn't enough, "Also, the company's office space can't be crammed here anymore. Chuangyi Space on Huashan Road started operating this year, go and rent a floor there."

Chuangyi Space is a creative office building operated as a stand-alone villa, with a total area of ​​approximately 2500 square meters. Each floor can accommodate about fifty people.

An Wenxiu had previously planned to move there after Fusu Culture's film and television company was established, but for now, it can only be used by Youxing for the time being.

"These two things must be done as soon as possible."

After An Wenxiu finished giving her instructions, the assistant didn't dare to delay and hurriedly went out.

"Go on," An Wenxiu turned to Chen Kai, "the game company must have a lot of equipment to buy, right?"

"Yes, Mr. An." Chen Kai cleared his throat, took out a piece of paper, and wrote as he spoke, "First, the programming team needs 15 high-end PC towers. Then the art team needs 25 high-end PCs and graphics tablets. The rest are 10 standard office PCs."

At this point, Chen Kai paused on the paper, not immediately continuing.

"Just say what you have to say." An Wenxiu met his gaze.

"Ideally, everyone should have dual monitors; dual screens can improve development efficiency by more than 30%. It just means more money..."

"I'll take it!" An Wenxiu said without blinking. "Compared to the others, this is just a small amount of money."

Seeing his boss's stance, Chen Kai felt a little relieved. "In that case, I suggest that all PCs use SSDs."

It's 2013 now, and SSDs aren't widespread yet.

"What's the difference?" An Wenxiu asked.

"SSDs are four to five times faster than regular hard disk drives in terms of read and write speed. Using SSDs can reduce the import time of programs and art assets by more than three times, saving a lot of time."

An Wenxiu turned to look at the other assistant, "Did you write it down?"

"Understood, Mr. An." The assistant quickly jotted it down in his notebook.

Then, Chen Kai continued, "There are also 3 compilation and packaging servers and 1 version control server. This part is used to establish automated processes. The daily output of a team of fifty people cannot rely on manual communication; that would eventually lead to collapse."

Where can I buy these servers?

"Go directly to enterprise hardware vendors, like Dell and HP. Of course, IBM is the best option; their System X series is very powerful, but it's also the most expensive."

"IBM it is." An Wenxiu made the decision immediately.

Such a generous investor! Yao Men and Chen Kai must feel like they're in heaven.

"Next is the enterprise-grade gigabit switch. The entire team will need to download a large amount of art assets from the SVN server, and a regular router will crash instantly. This can be solved by Cisco or Huawei."

Next, we finalized the selection of test units for both iOS and Android arrays. In the end, the total budget was around 120 million.

An Wenxiu sighed, beginning to worry whether 20 million would be enough. If things proceeded smoothly and normally, 20 million would be more than enough.

However, Su Liu compressed the construction period to three months, so the only option was to spend money to buy time.

Since she had decided to compete with miHoYo, she knew she had to seize the first-mover advantage, and An Wenxiu understood this, so she didn't hesitate to spend the money that needed to be spent.

"The art department needs to recruit 25 people, right?" An Wenxiu asked.

"Yes," Yao Men replied, "10 people for character and scene concept art. 8 people for 2D skeletal animation. 7 people for special effects, UI, and technical art." He couldn't help but chuckle after saying that, "It's a good thing it's a 2D mobile game, otherwise the technical art alone would have overwhelmed us."

"Leave the character and background concept art to me," An Wenxiu thought for a moment. She didn't plan to follow the usual hiring process or use headhunters; instead, she wanted to directly spend money on top artists in various anime and manga communities.

So she went to the CP Comic Con, hoping to sign some well-known fan artists on the spot.

Unexpectedly, I ran into Su Liu and his "Muse" here.