Huayu: Live a carefree life

The next day, without the aid of alcohol, Xiao Wu indeed chickened out and, just like last time when he was asked if he was gay, acted as if nothing had happened.

Even Xiao Liu saw through her ostrich nature. He thought she would step up and be a brave warrior, but the little coward only dared to act crazy when drunk.

On the way to Hengdian, Xiao Wu chatted with Xiao Liu as if nothing was wrong, constantly ignoring the latter's suggestive glances.

Frustrated, Xiao Liu eventually ignored her and stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the scenery pass by outside the window.

Lu Jie felt this wasn't a solution, and considering Xiao Wu's feelings, he sent Xiao Liu to the bodyguard's car during the rest stop.

As they continued on their journey, Xiao Wu kept his head down, fidgeting with his fingers, afraid to look up at Lu Jie, lest he be asked about what happened last night.

She was drunk, but she didn't black out. When she woke up in the morning, the thought of clinging to Lu Jie and not letting him leave made her numb.

"Xiao Wu, what do you think of my piano performance at the company's annual party?" Lu Jie took the initiative to start a conversation.

Upon hearing that it wasn't true, Xiao Wu breathed a sigh of relief after what happened last night. "Ah...that's great, boss! It's been a long time since I've heard you play the piano!"

"What piece will you play this time? Luv Letter?"

"Let's change to a new song, Flower Dance, and Xiao Cun can dance along~" Lu Jie didn't press her when he saw that she had recovered.

The conversation continued along the topic of the annual meeting. "Our Lingjie annual meeting is on January 28th. Could you do an internal survey and see if everyone still wants to invite a girl group this year?"

Xiao Wu rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Is it you, old man, trying to send money to your Tara again?"

Lu Jie tapped her on the head. "You're rolling your eyes at me again! What's wrong with that? I liked Tara back in school, you got a problem with that?"

"Ouch, ouch... I give up, I'm totally convinced!" Xiao Wu rubbed his head and complained, "Besides TARA, who else do you want to invite this time?"

"Why invite so many people? It's not a concert. I've already led the performance, and you're all trying to escape?"

Lu Jie directly recommended, "You sing quite well, don't you? Represent the president and put on a show. If you can, bring Xiao Liu along. That girl has a good voice too."

"Huh? Didn't you already represent them?" Little Wu, the salted fish, tried to shirk responsibility.

"I'm the president, representing the entire company. You represent the president's office. How can you be the same?" Lu Jie didn't give her another chance to refuse. "It's settled then. Once you've decided what to sing, report it to Yangjin."

"Oh~"

Upon arriving in Hengdian, Lu Jie did not go directly to the set of "Spirit Sword Mountain" to visit Chen Yao, but instead went straight to the set of the new short drama project "Emotional Hunter".

Since Lu Jie proposed to vigorously develop short dramas on Weishi and suspend the push of GG content, Weishi's market share has been gradually increasing.

According to the forecast reported by the marketing department at this week's regular meeting, the market share is expected to increase to 11% to 13% by the end of December.

Short dramas have a promising effect on attracting viewers, but the threshold for producing short dramas is not high.

Although the initial budget for the short drama version of "Someday or One Day" was 500 million yuan, 400 million yuan of that was spent on purchasing filming equipment for the newly established production team, leaving less than 100 million yuan actually spent on actor salaries and filming expenses.

This also led to the fact that although Weishi was the first to try it out, Douyin and Kuaishou quickly followed suit and launched their own related modules.

Both companies target different audiences and have created short dramas with their own unique features.

For example, the most popular short dramas on Kuaishou right now are "The God of War Returns Home" and "The Dragon King's Son-in-Law," which mainly focus on suppressing the audience's emotions first, and then letting the audience feel extremely satisfied.

The most popular videos on Douyin are "The Heiress's Counterattack" and "The Billionaire CEO Falls in Love with Me," which focus on female perspectives and self-identification to achieve a sense of satisfaction.

It's useless to just criticize these two idiotic competitors for their "plagiarism"; we must retaliate.

Therefore, Lu Jie decided to leverage Tencent's biggest advantage by focusing on the gaming user group and creating short dramas that allow for human-computer interaction, or interactive film and game.

Simply put, it abandons the traditional approach of shooting short dramas in episodes and instead integrates cinematic storytelling with gamified interactive games.

This can be understood as turning the dialogue and plot of traditional games into cinematic representations, allowing users to decide the development of the plot and ultimately creating multiple different endings.

Of course, this was not Lu Jie's original idea; he was just copying what others had done. When he was young, he saw his cousin play the PS game "Survival," which was an interactive video game.

The idea came from a gamer who was playing World of Warcraft in the office when he saw someone recommending a game called "The Red Path of Infiltration" on the world chat.

Then someone said that the sister game of this game, "Invisible Guardian", would soon be available on Steam. Out of boredom, Lu Jie searched for it and found that it was indeed quite interesting, but the original version was too rough.

Then his mind raced. He first thought of the movie "Survival" that he had watched as a child, and then wondered if he could gamify the short drama.

Without hesitation, he immediately convened a meeting with the executives of Weishi and laid out his ideas.

Thanks to the turnaround brought to Weishi by the short drama module, coupled with the purging of a large number of long-term employees who were just coasting along, Lu Jie enjoys high prestige within Weishi.

After discussing it, everyone realized there wasn't much technical difficulty involved, and it would even facilitate monetization later. In the early stages, they could partner with QQ members to drive traffic, since they're all related to Tencent.

Even the studio that inspired Lu Jie, New One Studio, the producer of "The Invisible Guardian," is a subsidiary of a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent...

Now, the production cost of "Invisible Guardian" has increased by 2000 million yuan with an additional investment from Weishi. The original Steam release date has been postponed and it will be released simultaneously with WeGame.

The 20 million yuan investment in Weishi was not wasted. They will use the original cast and optimize many of the current PPT-style text-based scenarios into video scenarios, giving users a better experience.

Of course, this optimized experience will be exclusive to Weishi users, so there's no need to worry about the production team getting criticized.

Since the interactive short drama version was launched on Weishi, players who have purchased the official game can play the short drama version for free on Weishi.

"Hello Mr. Lu, I am Jiang Yan, the director of 'Emotional Hunter'. I am very happy to join Lingjie Entertainment and I am also very grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to direct."

As soon as I stepped into the film set, the young and handsome director Jiang Yan came up to greet me, and the other crew members and actors also waited for the inspection with smiles on their faces.

Lu Jie shook hands with him cheerfully, "Director Jiang, you're too kind. There are plenty of opportunities, but the challenge lies in seizing them. Zixian and I both have high hopes for you. Keep it up!"

Jiang Yan immediately patted his chest to express his determination, "President Lu, rest assured, I will definitely not let you down!"

Lu Jie patted him on the shoulder with a smile, then shook hands with Qin Lu, the head of the short drama department. "Sister Lu, you've been running back and forth between two film crews lately. You must be exhausted."

"It's not hard work, thank you for your concern, boss." Qin Lu is an intellectual beauty, exuding a mature and sophisticated aura in every gesture. "Everyone on the Hunter team is very motivated, so I don't need to worry about them too much."

(P.S.: Officially launching tomorrow. Thank you all for your continued support, and I humbly request your first subscription! Thank you!)