January 5th, Wednesday …
Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong sat in the coffee area of Fish-Catching Internet Cafe, each holding a laptop and typing quickly on the keyboard.
Both of them looked like they were full of ideas, and their fingers never stopped moving. They only stopped occasionally to take a sip of coffee on the table when they were organizing their thoughts.
Both of them were working on a haunted house plan.
Everyone's experience in the United States was like a dream, but it was a nightmare.
'Smog Mountain' State Mental Hospital was the old site of an abandoned hospital. It was also known as the scariest haunted house in the world.
In the past five days, the tourism team had experienced the haunted house 'a few times'. The bitterness was indescribable.
The impression was too deep, and there were too many insights. They could even 'gain some new insights' and 'relive some blurry memories' in their dreams every night.
Therefore, Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong were full of ideas after returning to Jingzhou. They could not wait to write down their experiences and apply them to the haunted house project they were in charge of.
However, they did not copy it, but critically absorbed it.
They wrote for the whole day yesterday and the whole morning today. They were almost done with the basic plan under such efficient working mode.
"Come, let's compare," Chen Kangtuo suggested.
Both of them sent the documents on their notebooks to each other.
Both of them had not communicated much since they returned, mainly to avoid interfering with each other's thoughts.
Both of them came up with a plan each. After full discussion, they combined their plans to achieve the best effect.
Of course, both of them had a consensus on the general direction of the haunted house that Boss Pei had proposed before.
Boss Pei's opinion was definitely the core standard and could not be disobeyed.
'Let the courageous have nowhere to spend money, and the timid shrink back at the sight of it' — that was Boss Pei's original words.
After Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong went through the standard process of reading and understanding, they roughly summarized the following two key points:
Open three projects, and the degree of horror would increase step by step …
Through discounts and refunds, the bolder were charged less and the timid were charged more.
That way, the reputation of the haunted house could be guaranteed, and the profits could be guaranteed. At the same time, different customer groups could be considered.
However, the two of them didn't have a good idea of what kind of project they wanted to do.
That was why he needed to go to some successful haunted houses to collect materials.
Now that he had the material and the scare, the key was to look at the specific plan.
The two of them browsed through each other's proposals.
Chen Kangtuo was a little surprised. "It seems like we have a common understanding in many aspects. Maybe it's because we've both worked in the game industry, so we're used to solving problems with the game's thinking?"
Hao Qiong nodded. "Yes, maybe."
The two of them couldn't help but think of a few points in their plans.
The first project wasn't very scary and was suitable for multiplayer social games.
Chen Kangtuo's idea was to make it a classic horror locked-room escape, while Hao Qiong's idea was to make Be Me!
The gameplay of Be Quiet should be changed into a live-action version of Be Quiet.
QUIET.
Of course, the two of them didn't have any good ideas yet. They just had a simple general direction.
The second project was moderately scary and was used as a transition to the third project. It was basically a single-player game.
The venue for this project could be very small, but the horror effect would definitely not be bad. Only those who passed this project would be qualified to challenge the third project.
The two of them had the same opinion on this project. They both wanted to use a narrow space of a few square meters to a dozen square meters as a single-player experience.
However, Hao Qiong had an additional suggestion. They could use a container to decorate the interior of the container and install pulleys under it. That way, they could adjust the different projects at any time so that the players wouldn't be able to guess which project they were going to experience.
The third project was the scariest. It was dedicated to recreating everyone's experience in Smog Mountain Mental Hospital.
However, the plans that the two of them came up with were different from the ones in Smog Mountain Mental Hospital.
Currently, most haunted houses didn't have a perfect grasp of the rhythm.
Some of the smaller haunted houses in the country basically followed the same route. They had to walk from the beginning to the end. There were no additional exits in the middle, so they could only brace themselves and continue walking.
Fortunately, these simpler haunted houses wouldn't have any staff to interact with, so the scares wouldn't be that intense. Almost everyone would be able to walk through the entire process.
On the other hand, larger haunted houses would have a longer process and a higher degree of scares. Therefore, they had to have enough emergency exits so that the visitors could leave through the emergency exits at any time if they couldn't take it anymore.
Of course, they had to install enough surveillance cameras to observe the visitors' condition in real time.
For a super large haunted house like Smog Mountain Mental Hospital, they naturally had to have more emergency exits and staff on standby to bring out the visitors who couldn't take it anymore.
However, after the two of them toured the haunted house, they had the same thought: Normal people wouldn't be able to last in this haunted house. It was such a waste!
In fact, on the first day, the group didn't have a smooth journey in the haunted house.
Bao Xu and Hao Qiong were defeated in less than ten minutes. The ones who lasted the longest were Lin Wan and Li Yada, who lasted for more than twenty minutes.
Of course, Li Yada only lasted that long because Lin Wan was forcefully dragging her along. Otherwise, she might have given up as soon as she entered.
According to the group's observation, this wasn't an exception.
Most of the visitors who had just finished watching the short film in the queue after buying their tickets were scared out of their wits. They couldn't take it anymore after entering the door.
Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong agreed that it was a pity.
They had put in so much effort to create such a terrifying haunted house, but they had dissuaded more than half of the visitors before they even entered. That was too much of a waste.
As the saying went, pigs had to be fattened before they were killed.
It was just like a game. It was normal for some people to be dissuaded at the first level if they created a game that required suffering. However, if more than half of the people were dissuaded at the first level, it could only be said that there was a problem with the difficulty setting.
The difficulty should increase gradually. Even if the players were to suffer, they had to control the degree well. They couldn't really torture them away.
If their own haunted house brainlessly copied Smog Mountain Mental Hospital's method, there would only be one outcome: no one would care.
That was because Smog Mountain Mental Hospital was the scariest haunted house in the world. Its reputation had already spread, and it had a guaranteed flow of customers.
On the other hand, their haunted house was built in the suburbs of Jingzhou City. It wasn't famous to begin with, and it couldn't attract tourists from all over the world for the time being. If the threshold was too high, they would definitely not be able to recoup their costs.
Thus, every visitor was important.
Chen Kangtuo and Hao Qiong each thought of a solution.
Hao Qiong's plan was to sell tickets that allowed multiple entries. At the same time, he would deliberately reduce the horror level in the early stages.
He would arrange some fun but less scary segments in the early stages. He would think of a way to keep the visitors here.
At the same time, each ticket allowed multiple entries. The ticket price could be set higher. That would be equivalent to giving the visitors a certain buffer time to calm down before entering the haunted house to challenge.
That was what Hao Qiong and the others had done in the United States. In fact, the first time was very scary. They wouldn't even remember what they were doing, and they would be in a state of confusion.
However, after entering again and having a certain psychological expectation, the haunted house would become interesting.
However, ordinary visitors wouldn't line up again and pay for the ticket again. Naturally, they wouldn't be able to experience such a feeling after suffering a second time.
Thus, Hao Qiong thought that he could directly set the tickets to allow multiple entries.
That way, even if some visitors were temporarily scared off, they would still be able to enter again since the tickets allowed them to enter again. After a period of time, they would calm down and play again.
That way, he could gain a batch of repeat customers.
On the other hand, Chen Kangtuo's plan was to design the haunted house as a circular route with the safe house in the middle.
After passing each small stage, the players could enter the safe house to rest and adjust their emotions.
Most people wouldn't be able to stand walking around the haunted house for more than an hour like in the 'Smog Mountain' mental hospital. That meant that most people wouldn't be able to complete the entire haunted house.
It could be said to be a serious waste of resources.
Therefore, Chen Kangtuo thought that he could use some methods in games to solve this problem.
Many horror games had settings like 'save points' and 'safe houses' to allow the players to rest when they were constantly on high alert. After relieving their nervousness, they could continue the process.
Therefore, Chen Kangtuo thought that he could add the mechanism of the safe house into the haunted house so that the players could constantly adjust their emotions during the tour and not be easily scared off.
Although their plans were different, they didn't conflict with each other. They could completely coexist.
Hao Qiong was a little worried after reading Chen Kangtuo's plan. "Will this arrangement make our haunted house be cleared quickly? If the visitors can clear it on their first try, they definitely won't come a second time, right? "
Chen Kangtuo shook his head. "I don't think the ultimate goal of the haunted house is to scare the visitors so much that they can't clear it. If the visitors are scared off at the first stage, what's the point of the subsequent process no matter how good and terrifying it is?
"If the visitors can finish the entire haunted house, there will naturally be many opportunities to scare them.
"In fact, whether the visitors finish the haunted house or not, there is a high chance that they will not enter the same haunted house again.
"If most of the visitors are scared off at the beginning, their evaluation of the haunted house would definitely not be very high. That would not be good for building a reputation. Other new visitors would see the evaluation and say that the haunted house scared them off at the beginning. Most of them would be dissuaded.
"Since that's the case, we should think of a way to let the visitors play a little longer. Step by step, we should leave a deep impression on them. That would be more beneficial for us to build a reputation and attract new visitors."
Hao Qiong thought about it and nodded. "Yes, that makes sense.
"Should we first report the progress to Boss Pei or come up with detailed plans for each project?"
Chen Kangtuo said, "We definitely can't come up with all the detailed plans at once. The first and third projects are more difficult to design. They take up a lot of space, and the gameplay is complicated. We need to think about it in the long run.
"For these two big projects, we'll roughly set aside the site first. We'll recruit people while we do it slowly.
"The second project is made up of many small projects. It's relatively simple and easier to do. We'll roughly finalize the second project first. Then, we'll show the entire plan to Boss Pei.
"We can start after Boss Pei gives the nod. We'll slowly consider the first and third projects during the construction of the second project.
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