506 Lessons Learned from Failure
May 1st, Sunday…
Pei Qian came to the cafe near his school again. He was going to meet a new game designer.
Only 1 million yuan out of the total amount of 1.8 million yuan was allowed by the system for school fees. There was 800,000 yuan left.
Therefore, Pei Qian asked Assistant Xin to search for a designer that had a certain reputation and had worked on some failed projects previously. He wanted to learn from some successful experience.
As to why the designer should possess some reputation even though he had failed before, it was because Pei Qian wanted to eliminate the interference of personal ability factors as much as possible.
If a producer himself failed and was worthless, the system would not allow him to charge so much tuition fee. On the other hand, if his failures were not outstanding enough, then there would be nothing they could learn from him.
What would Pei Qian learn from if someone was filled with failures? What if he learned something insignificant, would that not be a waste of time?
He had to find a successful and capable designer. The factors of failure on them would be very obvious like a 'highlighted' passage, easy to learn from.
What He An said was wrong. It was about the main reasons for success for Tengda. A large scale error correction exercise.
This big boss was mainly talking about his own failure, which was standard for Pei Qian.
Wouldn't it be a combination of what He An and the producer said today?
He managed to spend 1.8 million yuan giving lectures to himself. He also managed to learn some professional game production knowledge.
If he could pass the test by the system during settlement and would be able to make money-losing games based on what he learned…
Wouldn't he be earning money like a king?
Compared to He An's 'asking wrong questions', this big boss would be directly giving his 'standard answers'. The knowledge of losing money would be easier for Pei Qian to absorb this way.
Pei Qian was, therefore, very excited about this meeting!
This game designer arrived not long after he reached the cafe.
"Hello, Boss Ma! I'm Qiu Hong!" A man, with fluttery long hair, in his thirties shook hands with Pei Qian cordially.
Pei Qian had looked through Qiu Hong's resume before he arrived.
Different from He An's long glorious resume, this Qiu Hong's game production career could only be said to be bumpy. His resume could be regarded as a template for the middle-aged generation in the current domestic games market.
After entering the industry in 2001, he joined a large domestic game company as a systems designer. He successfully developed a Xianxia theme client-side game. Of course, that was a game with paywalls.
After two years, he managed to jump ship to another game company with the success of this game. He became the main designer of a certain Western Fantasy client-side game. The project was axed after its poor performance for an entire year of development.
After that, he changed to another game company and continued to be the chief planner producing a war-themed game with paywalls. He was successful this time and had obtained an impressive monthly turnover of more than 100 million yuan.
The war game could be regarded as an evergreen game. Its revenue might have declined after half a year, but it still operated for three years. It had accumulated a good reputation for Qiu Hong.
Relying on the prestige accumulated with this project, Qiu Hong decided to set up his own business, a game company with the investment that he had found. He developed another game with paywalls only to fail again.
Qiu Hong was currently in a state of dejection because his venture had failed. He was about to relax and do nothing when he got the news that someone was willing to spend 100,000 yuan to listen to his lecture. He readily agreed and came to Jingzhou.
Pei Qian was very satisfied with Qiu Hong's resume.
To make things simple, the higher one climb, the worse the fall would be!
This person was obviously focused on domestically-produced games with paywalls. He had achieved a monthly turnover of 100 million yuan as the chief planner five or six years ago. That was obviously something worthy to be proud of.
Moreover, these two failures did not seem to have happened because of money.
The first failure was that the company he jumped to had huge spending power, ready to spend as much as it took to create a masterpiece for that era. They were not short of money.
His second failure was also when he obtained enough funds from investors to start his business. He was not short of money either.
However, even so, Qiu Hong—who had a successful career and ample experience in the game industry—failed in his venture.
Huge investments, heavy losses. Millions in funds went down into the drain. That was in line with Pei Qian's expectations!
Pei Qian firmly believed that there must be something worth learning from in Qiu Hong's experience!
The waiter brought their coffees. They chatted as they sipped on.
Qiu Hong briefly introduced his resume. There was a very obvious difference in attitude between He An and him.
He An obviously exuded the aura of an industry giant and successful person. His qualifications crushed 99% of designers in the industry. He gave lectures based on his interest and had his own arrogance.
He would absolutely go ahead with his own contents even if 'Ma Yang' were to give him 200,000 yuan per lecture. He would leave if things didn't go his way.
Qiu Hong was completely different. He might have experienced success before, but he knew that he was still a nobody in this industry. He was, therefore, very polite and was willing to share whatever 'Boss Ma' wanted to hear.
Qiu Hong was a systems designer after all. Moreover, he only created domestically-produced games with paywalls. Such a designer usually had distinctive features; that was that they would not be troubled by money.
Qiu Hong felt that since 'Boss Ma' was willing to pay 100,000 yuan for a lecture, including round-trip air tickets, transportation, and other experiences; it was like the whales and his relationship. It was one of absolute dependency.
He had to do all he could to satisfy 'Boss Ma's' requirements.
Therefore, Qiu Hong was not angry when 'Boss Ma' said he wanted to listen to his failures. He only confirmed it again and agreed.
"Alright, I'll speak about it since Boss Ma wants to know. However, there is something that I have to clarify in advance.
"I will definitely need some time to prepare if I were to speak about successful experiences. Every successful case is a combination of countless success factors after all. I have to clarify all such factors to restore its full picture.
"However, it is much easier to talk about failures. I don't need much time to prepare.
"As the saying goes, 'the riverbank of a thousand miles collapses because of an ant's nest.' Many times, you make 99 right decisions, but everything would fail due to one wrong choice.
"Analyze the cause of failure and find the most critical factor of failure, and there you'll have it."
Qiu Hong told Boss Ma about his idea for the lecture while drinking his coffee. His goal was clear, to obtain the consent of Boss Ma as much as possible.
Pei Qian was very happy. "Great! I want to learn about how the ant's nest caused the collapse of everything. Please be sure to talk about it!"
Qiu Hong nodded. "Alright, in the following lectures, I will talk about one key factor that would lead to the failure of the project. I believe that Boss Ma will be able to avoid similar situations or come up with solutions with your intelligence."
Pei Qian gave a small smile. "Definitely."
Qiu Hong sipped a mouthful of coffee and sorted out his thoughts. "For the first lesson today, I want to start with something basic, but it is one of the most overlooked aspects.
"Project management.
"The biggest difference between games, movies, animation, and other industries—and novels and self-media… is that they are industries that require close division of labor and cooperation.
"In other words, no matter how good you are, it's useless if your colleagues are people who mess around. You won't be able to make anything good.
"Even a talented game producer needs a strong production team to turn his design into a successful game project.
"People are inherently lazy. Many employees in the industry treat their jobs as a position that earns a stagnant salary to support their families, not as a career they are striving for. Therefore, most of their enthusiasm for work was suppressed by themselves.
"This is where project management becomes very important.
"A huge reason that I managed to create a successful project but failed in my venture is that I lack project management skills.
"The consequence of this is that the development plan I made in the original company can always be completed smoothly, with a maximum delay of one week.
"However, in my own company, the development plan that I formulated is always delayed, even postponed many times. The game that was made did not meet my own expectations.
"Every department always had a variety of reasons to shirk responsibilities. It seems that everyone has completed their tasks, but after careful observation, no one seemed to be pushing the entire project.
"Everyone delays a little bit. With a little time, the development progress of the project will completely collapse…"
Pei Qian listened intently, with a fascinating expression on his face.
How… how admirable!
See, the employees of other companies need not have their boss say anything for them to be lazy!
What about Tengda's staff then? Their boss was desperately encouraging them to take breaks, but everyone was trying desperately to work overtime!
Pei Qian did not learn any practical methods from this precious failure experience other than envy.
According to Qiu Hong, failure in project management would become a state of disunity. It was impossible to carry it out if no one would cooperate. However, that was where Pei Qian had his doubts.
I have never done any project management, right?
Why did my staff not fall into a state of disunity but become an iron plate instead?
Needles could not penetrate, water could not seep through. He could not find a breakthrough even if he wanted!
Pei Qian was very interested in the things that Qiu Hong was talking about, but he still did not know what to do.
According to Qiu Hong, his failure was in not doing enough, not making good use of project management to motivate employees. In other words, not effectively supervising lazy employees.
However, while Qiu Hong did not do enough, Pei Qian did not do anything at all!
Not only did I not supervise the employees, but I even did the opposite to drive these overtime dogs home! It stands to reason that I over fulfilled the task, so why did it have the opposite effect?
Are my employees the problem, or am I the problem?
What a headache…
