The virtual empire starts from the game

Chapter 157 Spending money to grab the market? Who are you grabbing from? (Seeking monthly tickets)

Geek Star is a full-time digital up-host.

In the early days, he simply made mobile phone review videos. Relying on real and independent review content and superb camera language, he successfully gained a large number of fans.

After graduating from university, he started his own business, set up his own studio, and operated the account seriously.

But as he went along, he discovered that if he wanted to ensure good returns—not only to support himself but also to support his studio—relying solely on the website’s creative incentives was not enough.

It would be difficult to maintain a balance between income and expenditure if we were to be so picky with merchants as before.

Faced with the choice between "disbanding the studio" and "lowering the standards for accepting business orders", Geek Star chose the latter.

This indeed brought him much more income than before.

He felt he had made the right choice.

As for lowering some content production standards, pretending not to see some product flaws, and occasionally saying something against one's will...

To be honest, once you get over that hurdle in your heart, it’s actually not difficult at all.

He regarded these as "something he had to go through when entering society" and "the necessary price for achieving business success" and put them out of his mind.

But everything has a price.

If you do too much soft advertising, there will always be failure.

After failing once or twice, the trust he had worked so hard to build up in the hearts of his old fans quickly dissipated.

The number of video views was halved, and the number of fans decreased instead of increasing.

In order to expand its influence and attract new fans, Geek Star had to start new business with his studio——

In addition to mobile phones, we also review electronic products such as tablets, computers, smart watches, etc.

It is effective at first, but the effect fades quickly.

——It is difficult to raise the already lowered moral standards and video production standards again.

So they continued to expand their business scope, including TVs, speakers, cameras, headphones, game controllers, and even ergonomic chairs...all kinds of related products were included.

But it was also only popular for a short time and then quickly declined.

There are fewer and fewer business orders.

Eventually the studio was disbanded.

After losing their team, attention, credibility and reputation, Geek Star returned to square one.

But he refused to give in.

In order to regain attention, he began to frequently produce videos of violent tests to attract the audience's attention.

Disassembling the machine is one of the steps involved and is often the beginning of violent testing.

By this time, his image in the minds of netizens has become more like a live blogger.

After seeing this post, everyone knows that Geek Star is trying to take advantage of the popularity.

But people have always been relatively tolerant of bloggers who make fun of others, and no one said anything unpleasant. Even those negative history comments that were deleted every time did not appear much this time.

Netizens just routinely praised him for being "really rich" and "really generous."

The geek star quickly responded:

"I'm not showing off my wealth. Dream Building is sold at such a low price that I can't show off even if I want to."

Netizens immediately responded with a string of question marks.

Geek Star is happy to share what is left after a long round of product evaluations.

Connections and knowledge.

So he posted another long post:
“The prices of these products from Dream Building are really too low.

Of course, this is not from the consumer's perspective, but a conclusion drawn from business logic.

Whether it is VR glasses or somatosensory clothing, there are similar products on the market.

Although DreamZhu’s technology is more advanced than theirs, the cost calculation should be the same. Considering the R&D investment, I would not be surprised if DreamZhu increased its pricing by 5 or even 10 times.

This is also the view of many friends in the industry.

So when I saw the price that Zhumeng offered today, I was stunned.

I bet:

Either the dream is built by cutting corners and delivering substandard products, or it is simply a loss-making business!
——Of course, I think it is mostly the latter.

The manufacturers selling motion sensing suits and VR glasses in the market must be in great pain.

The price of their products is not inferior to that of DreamCrafts - or even higher, but the effect is far behind and they are almost products of the same era.

I really don’t know what else they can do except wait to die…”

This post was much more popular than the previous one, and the comment section immediately became lively:
"Spending money to seize the market? I think I've seen this episode before!"

"You've seen shit! Dream Building has no competitors at all. The market is all his. Is it worth it to spend money to grab it?"

"Then why does Dream Building want to gain publicity at a loss?"

"Could it be that the interns are setting the price and they filled in the wrong number?"

……

After a while, this trend became more and more popular, and many related practitioners emerged one after another.

Their messages were almost all complaints:
"I can prove that what he said was true. I make VR glasses. When my boss saw the price of the Dream VR glasses, he locked himself in the office and no one could get him out. I was worried that he might have committed suicide by drinking pesticides."

"Fuck! I'm in charge of developing omnidirectional treadmills. HR just came to me and told me to be mentally prepared... Am I going to be unemployed?"

"Fuck, I'm the worst off! I'm working on the somatosensory service, and HR just notified me that our entire department has been shut down!"

"Our boss hasn't given up yet. He has reserved DreamBuild's products and plans to study whether he can overtake others."

"Overtaking on a curve? With the technology of Dream Building and the pricing... you still want to overtake? That's ridiculous! Our boss also wants to see if he can copy it, haha... I don't believe in anything you say about learning from others! I have already written my resignation letter and will send it to HR later." "Still chatting? I have already submitted my resume to [Neuromancer], I suggest you hurry up too."

……

Tragedy fills the land.

This description is not an exaggeration at all.

While gamers were cheering because of the lower-than-expected prices, companies producing similar products were falling into despair.

Startups had their investments withdrawn, new products failed to sell at all, and related departments were closed down.

Layoffs, transformations... are coming one after another.

——Some companies have been preparing for these things since the first day of the Cologne Games Show.

But there is still a little bit of luck after all. The products that we hope to build dreams of are very expensive and sell at a high price.

Give them more time to slowly transform and seek new ways out.

But on the day when DreamZhu announced its price, the huge rock hanging over the heads of many bosses finally fell.

The people and horses were knocked to the ground.

Zu Rongyao, who was far away in Cologne discussing overseas cooperation, had anticipated this and had already instructed the human resources director of Neuromancer to seize the time and recruit more available talents.

The players watched the fire from the other side, watching the chaos and excitement, unmoved.

It was not until the afternoon that they discovered that the bright yellow [Pre-order] options on the product pages of [Tactile Gloves] and [Body Sensing Synchronized Suit] had turned gray one after another.

"?"

“Why can’t I make a reservation?”

"The website is down?"

"What, did you finally realize that the temporary workers were mispriced?"

……

Netizens were surprised and speculated what went wrong.

The geeks were shocked and confused and said in the group:
"It can't be that... the stock has been pre-ordered, right?"
-
At this time, Xu Meng was escorting the Ningzhou Municipal Government staff out of the company building.

After the six-story office building was completely renovated, he moved the Dream Building headquarters to Jinghu.

After all, there is more space and better scenery here.

As for the staff of Ningzhou Municipal Government, their purpose of coming here is also very simple -

"We care about the business environment of local private enterprises and star taxpayers, provide policy support for technological innovation enterprises, and provide targeted tax incentives for software innovation."

When Xu Meng heard these words, his head was full of question marks.

He is not clear about the policy support for technology innovation companies, nor does he know what the standards for software innovation are.

What does “research” research? And what kind of care does “care” involve?

He didn't understand any of it.

Fortunately, it doesn’t matter whether he understands it or not.

The only purpose of this delegation's visit is to deliver welfare.

If the considerable tax revenue from the previous "Frost and Snow Project" only made the city government pay attention to the Dream Building Company.

When DreamWorks showed off its high-tech motion sensing suit at the Cologne Games Show, which caused quite a stir around the world, DreamWorks - and Neuromancer - were directly listed on the list of key attention.

Keeping this company in Ningzhou has become a task that must be taken seriously.

——Especially when they discovered that [Neuromancer] also had commercial and technical cooperation with the military.

If it weren’t for waiting for Xu Meng to come back, the research team would have come a long time ago!

Various tax preferential policies that Xu Meng had never heard of, as well as support and preferential treatment for science and technology innovation enterprises, came one after another.

After listening to it over and over again, Xu Meng only remembered words like "tax exemption, tax reduction, tax refund, deduction, green channel..."

He was bored and even a little sleepy.

In order to resist the urge to sleep, I had to keep my face tense and look very serious.

The company's financial director endured it for a long time, until he could no longer bear it, and quickly wrote a note and handed it to him -

[Boss! Smile!]
[Adding all these policies together, the development cost of "Lord of War" can save at least 20 million! ]
[You can also reduce the loss of hardware by half!]
[I beg you, please be nicer!!!]
Seeing these lines, Xu Meng suddenly woke up.

Everyone is in high spirits!
Without hesitation, he put on a joyful expression and nodded frequently to show that he was listening carefully.

He also expressed his gratitude to the government for its support to the company and said that he would continue to work hard to provide more jobs, create more value, take root in Ningzhou in the future, and contribute to the development of Ningzhou.

Since nice words don't cost any money, Xu Meng just said them.

Both the host and the guests were very happy.

After saying goodbye at the company gate, both parties felt that it was a meaningful meeting.

Watching the car go away, Xu Meng stretched.

He did not return to the office, but called his assistant:

"Let's go, it's time to catch the next game."

But just as he finished speaking, a man suddenly jumped out from behind him and reported to Xu Meng excitedly:
"Boss, good news! The stock has been sold out!"

This is Zu Rongyao's deputy director Siyu, who is responsible for tracking pre-orders and sales after the hardware is put on the shelves.

When Xu Meng heard this, the first thing she felt was not happiness but surprise.

Because this is unscientific!

　Please give me a monthly ticket.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)