Universe Infinite Canteen-Chapter 387 Wasting Natural Resources

```

Baldy and his crew had racked their brains trying to hand out flyers and recruit players by the roadside, working high-intensity 48-hour days with a mix of intimidation and threats. But after all that effort, they’d managed to distribute a meager forty-some game CDs.

Now that Ma Lu had made his move, within just a few short minutes, more than half of the 200 game CDs that Baldy brought were snatched up, leaving him utterly stunned.

Afterward, Baldy even called Coconut Jelly to bring over another 300 game CDs within twenty minutes.

However, those who came later, having not witnessed the magic of Lotus Leaf Charcoal Cake with their own eyes but only heard about it from others, weren’t as crazy about it.

Still, by the time they closed shop at night, over a span of four hours, the Red Ridge Project Team had given away over 300 game CDs.

Baldy did some quick math and realized that in less than half a day, Ma Lu had accomplished what would equal nine months of work for the marketing department.

At this point, he could barely maintain his fierce demeanor, as his lips would involuntarily curl into a silly grin every time he spoke.

When he decided to hire Ma Lu as a special consultant, leading the operations of Red Ridge, he didn’t have much confidence deep down.

It was only because he and his subordinates were clear they weren’t cut out for this and had no choice but to seek outside help.

Ma Lu wasn’t a professional game planner either; he was just a restaurant owner, so Baldy was somewhat worried whether he could really revive Red Ridge.

New n𝙤vel chapters are published on freeweɓnøvel.com.

But the project team had hit rock bottom, so it couldn’t get much worse.

Baldy was somewhat going with the mindset of a ’dead horse as a living horse doctor’, letting Ma Lu take charge and gamble on it. Surprisingly, it paid off.

Just looking at the speed of player recruitment, although it still couldn’t compare to Succubus Queen Corinna’s side, it was far superior to their previous blind attempts.

Moreover, it likely surpassed the other brother project teams under Lord Aisagon. A warm feeling spread in Baldy’s heart—could it be that this year they’d not only meet their KPIs but also receive Lord Aisagon’s commendation?

"Don’t celebrate too early," reminded Ma Lu, who was standing nearby. There were no more customers in the store, and He Xiaoqian and Ma Youyou were cleaning up together.

Ma Lu pulled Baldy aside to continue guiding the project team on their subsequent work, "Attracting traffic is just the first step. The next crucial task is to keep players in the game for a long time."

"But we have the Pie Coupon Fragments," Baldy argued. "I’ve already had them added to the game, and a server-wide announcement has been made. The event will be online punctually at 10 a.m. tomorrow."

Monsters from the Abyss of course wouldn’t drop Pie Coupon Fragments, but the players’ interaction with the Abyss wasn’t direct, but mediated through "Red Ridge" the game.

Without altering reality, the project team’s programmers could add some Virtual Items to the game, along with features like a mini-map, an inventory, and even directly modify values.

Of course, this kind of "modification" was limited to the numbers the players saw, with no actual effect on the game’s reality.

For instance, today Mengmengda could change a player’s HP from 1 to 1000, which looks like a thousandfold increase, but in reality, they would still die with just a scratch.

This was why Mengmengda was unexplainably upset when Ma Lu criticized the values as being trashy earlier.

Aside from some mission materials or reward numbers he programmed, core values like combat difficulty and drop rates were untouchable for him.

Even the values for missions weren’t for him to decide. For instance, the outrageous task of exchanging Black Mud for backpacks was actually decided by Baldy, the producer, based on the team’s KPIs and the production cost of the backpacks.

Mengmengda simply filled in a number and ended up taking the flak for his superiors, enduring the players’ scolding.

However, even if only the player interface could be modified, there was still considerable room for operation.

Ma Lu also made numerous optimizations, such as assigning colors to bones according to their quality: the lowest level being white, followed by green, and above that were purple and gold, and even orange.

In addition, he introduced a Combat Power system common in reskinned online games, despised by many players but only because it was deeply tied to monetization.

In reality, the Combat Power system allowed players to directly feel their strength increase, just like equipment colors, enhancing positive feedback during gameplay...

But all these optimizations and changes were mere details, and even the Lotus Leaf Charcoal Cake promotional event couldn’t really solve the core problem of Red Ridge.

—Players lacked the motivation to keep playing.

Baldy and the others may have put up the semblance of a game framework, but in truth, it was just a front to recruit players for grunt work.

And naturally, the idea of grunt work was not inherently appealing.

By comparison, Succubus Queen Corinna’s competing product also started in the Abyss, with the same skeleton role-playing and the same intense Wild Monster battles and sparse quest rewards.

But her players, controlled by the "big head" with an objective, immersed themselves joyfully in the game.

Carnality has always been one of humanity’s oldest and most primal driving forces.

Of course, Corinna benefited from racial talent, something other Abyss Lords couldn’t learn even if they wished to.

But this didn’t mean that Red Ridge couldn’t offer players a driving force to play.

As far as Ma Lu knew, besides games like NIKKE that emphasized visual impact, another category of online games was hugely popular, rivaling the former.

In such games, players didn’t care about the beauty or ugliness of NPCs or characters. Moreover, online rates were exceptionally high, with some playing nonstop day and night, and both the pay-to-play rate and player retention were higher than other types of games.

—This is SLG, or more accurately, war-themed SLG games!

Besides carnality, conquest is a human nature, especially in men.

But constrained by today’s global structure and legal regulations, opportunities for territorial expansion and self-coronation are nearly non-existent.

Players could only find such pleasures in games, and the Abyss just happened to provide them with such a stage.

So, Ma Lu thought Baldy and the others were wrong from the start. Rather than making a role-playing game, it was better to go for an SLG.

No player wants to be a Minotaur’s lackey, but brandishing Brother Bull’s banner for world conquest, no man could resist.

If building resources are scarce, go plunder! If there’s an abundance of nearby Wild Monsters, let the player’s armies sweep through! If labor is scarce in the towns, go enslave the neighbors.

In Ma Lu’s opinion, using players as the Lowest Level Goblin grunt work was a waste of resources, a total travesty.

```