Chapter 9 Hiring a Tester

Lilith looked at Gu Fan with confusion.

Gu Fan stared back at her with determination.

The two faced each other, the room falling into a deadlock for a moment.

Finally, it was Lilith who deflated first, "Alright, it seems that it indeed was my problem..."

But quickly, she clenched her teeth and said bitterly, "Even so, that detestable Instructor Ding should bear the main responsibility! The two-hour promotion had already ended, why on earth did he have to study this BUG!

"Damn it! If it weren't for him, this BUG wouldn't have been discovered so soon, no, it might never have been discovered at all!

"I could have harvested much more negative emotions!"

Lilith angrily grabbed her twin ponytails, teeth itching with hatred.

Although the game did indeed have a "Bullet Bending" BUG, it was very well-hidden. Not just human players, but even the official "AI-debug" testing tools failed to detect it.

The move "Whipshot" was also not very common, only a few experts could master it, and who would seriously pay attention to the trajectory of a bullet after a whipshot?

If it weren't for Instructor Ding sticking his nose in, this BUG might well have gone unnoticed, and the game could have continued to collect a lot of negative emotions!

Gu Fan wisely did not speak. By now, he had perfectly managed to shift the blame.

This blame was half accepted by Lilith, half by Instructor Ding.

Gu Fan had been thinking whether Lilith, as a powerful Hell Demon, might, in a fit of anger, actually capture Instructor Ding to make him a colleague. But he quickly realized he was overthinking; Lilith, though angry, was helpless and could only watch as the game contributed fewer and fewer negative emotions.

Clearly, a Hell Demon in the Human World was not omnipotent.

...

...

Wednesday evening.

In the blink of an eye, "Infernal Trajectory" had been on sale for five days.

Although when calculating game statistics, most companies consider "seven days" as a milestone, for this game, there was no need.

Because all sorts of data clearly pointed to the same fact:

"Infernal Trajectory" was a hit!

On the night of its release, the game's sales began to soar, from dozens to hundreds, and quickly passed ten thousand.

After five days, the game had sold 120,000 copies!

By the weekend, sales were very likely to break 150,000.

A first week sales figure of 150,000 for a start-up game company was an extremely proud achievement. In fact, many games are a cause for champagne celebrations if they manage to sell a few tens of thousands in their first week.

Of course, "Infernal Trajectory" was inexpensive, priced at only 18 dollars, which obviously helped with sales, but let's not forget that Lilith had only spent a mere two million on marketing for this game.

Initial exposure was not saturated, meaning there was strong potential for continued success!

According to typical trends, "Infernal Trajectory" was expected to reach a sales figure of 500,000 in its first month.

In other words, after deducting the necessary fees for platforms and taxes, "Infernal Trajectory" was set to bring Transcendent Heaven Gaming Company close to five million in net revenue for its first month!

According to the contract previously signed by Gu Fan and Lilith, 70% of this money would be used for the development of the next game, and 5% would be given to Gu Fan himself as a bonus.

5%, meaning he would receive a bonus of about 250,000 for the first month!

As for negative emotions...

So far, the game had only generated a little over seven million negative emotions.

Even though the game's success had triggered the recommendation mechanisms on various platforms, with new players constantly coming in, the increase in negative emotions was slowing down, even showing a tendency to stall!

According to initial estimates, even if no new players entered the game, it was expected to contribute twenty to thirty million negative emotions.

But now, it had plateaued at just seven million!

It wasn't that it wasn't increasing, rather the rate at which players were generating negative emotions was about the same as the rate at which they were being discounted, resulting in a slower increase.

As time went on, the players' proficiency with "Bullet Bending" was improving, and the game might begin to generate more positive emotions. At that point, this seven million negative emotions might continue to decrease.

One didn't have to guess to know that Lilith would certainly want Gu Fan to fix this BUG.

But that was not possible.

Because the game was also part of the contract, if the game was changed, the contract would be voided, and then even the little bit of negative emotion value we have now would be gone!

These past few days Gu Fan has been living very comfortably.

As a programmer, it was his first time encountering a situation where "after the game was developed there was no need for subsequent updates."

Every day he would just refresh the game's sales figures, calculate his bonus, and not do anything else, which couldn't be more awesome!

However, such happiness always had an expiration date. When he saw Lilith appear in the living room again, Gu Fan knew his happy days were over.

It was time to prepare for the next challenge.

Lilith had been absent these past days, obviously gone somewhere to heal her wounds alone.

As for whether she went back to Hell or visited other offices of Hell's Earthly Office of Negative Emotions Collection, that was unknown.

Lilith seemed to have adjusted well, though she was still wearing a stern face, it seemed she had walked out from the gloom of the "Infernal Trajectory" game.

Clearly, she was ready to summarize the experience and start the next game.

"Come, I have a new work task for you!"

As she spoke, Lilith unceremoniously sat down on the living room's beanbag chair.

Gu Fan moved a small stool over to sit on and pretended to listen attentively.

Lilith cleared her throat and said quite seriously, "Before we develop the next game, I think we should first summarize the experiences and lessons from the last one.

"Don't you humans have a saying? Failure is the mother of success.

"Although 'Infernal Trajectory' did not collect as much negative emotion value as we had hoped, it was still not bad for a first attempt.

"After I went back to Hell, Old Lu even praised me. He told the other demons to learn from me, to be bold in developing entirely new business models to gather more negative emotions.

"So, we need to quickly step out of the shadow of failure and try again!"

Gu Fan nodded seriously.

Lilith paused for a moment, then said with confidence, "After my reflection, and your previous reminder, I believe that the main issue with 'Infernal Trajectory' was that the testing work wasn't done properly!

"The testing before the game's release was indeed too short, resulting in undetected bugs that had very serious consequences.

"So I've decided! For future games, extend the testing period, at least two weeks!

"Furthermore, I think it's a bit too much for you to handle both development and testing by yourself. Transcendent Heaven Gaming Company should hire a tester to share these tasks, don't you think?"

Lilith looked at Gu Fan seriously, her demeanor seemed sincere, but her eyes flickered with ulterior motives.

After all, Gu Fan was an experienced company man, not even intimidated by the bosses of big companies, so how could he fall for the schemes of a mere demon.

He immediately responded, "I completely agree!"

Obviously, when a leader says "What do you think?" they're not actually asking for your opinion.

They just want a positive reply to quickly and smoothly push their plan forward and, in case something goes wrong, to have someone to take the fall.

Gu Fan could also read between the lines of what Lilith was saying.

Why hire a tester?

In reality, with the current scale of the game, and having the design documents and art resources already prepared, there was no need to hire new staff.

For game testing, Gu Fan along with the "AI-debug" testing tool were more than enough.

But obviously, as a demon, Lilith was still quite suspicious; she still doubted whether Gu Fan had done something during the explosive success of the last game but lacked evidence.

Thus, she wanted to hire an additional employee for testing.

If this tester could discover bugs like "Bullet Bending" ahead of time, the tragedy of "Infernal Trajectory" wouldn't happen again!

Gu Fan was very clear about all this in his mind but he didn't mind.

For every policy from above, there's a countermeasure below; as a senior programmer who had fought with bosses for many years, Gu Fan was experienced.

He originally thought Lilith would then provide the design proposal for the next game, but unexpectedly she changed the subject and raised another question.

"So, do you think 'Infernal Trajectory' has any other lessons we can learn from?"