Chapter 120: Acting in It Yourself?

At first, no one paid much attention to the board game Sanguosha.

Although the Sanguosha production team nominally hired the recently somewhat famous Liu Yiyan to sing the promotional song and put a great deal of effort into advertising and marketing.

But a board game is just a board game, a niche product; those in the country with money didn't look down on it, those who did look down on it had no money to make it, or they simply had neither money nor interest.

Yet, Sanguosha became a hit.

The speed and reach of its popularity exceeded these people's expectations.

In just a short ten days or so, the presence of Sanguosha appeared in every place without exception.

Enthusiasts created a dedicated Sanguosha Tieba to discuss the game's general-based mechanics; meanwhile, on the Tianya Forum, many young students also sparked wave after wave of heated discussion about Sanguosha.

The grand spectacle was comparable to the peak popularity of Monopoly back in the day, perhaps even surpassing it.

Catchphrases born from Sanguosha, such as "If you're a brother, come hack me," "Guo Jia must die," "Give the Loyalist a way to live," and "Zhuge Repeating Crossbow makes Lvmeng invincible," became frequently used terms in the second half of the year.

Every day during school breaks or work rest periods, there would always be a couple of friends asking you: "Want to play Sanguosha?"

The answer, of course, was yes.

After all, the player threshold required to play Sanguosha is very low; 4–8 people can get a game going.

Moreover, a game of Sanguosha is very short, taking about half an hour to finish, and if there are fewer people, the time is even shorter.

Young people can easily play a round of Sanguosha during their spare time.

It is a pity that despite Sanguosha's high popularity, the first edition's print run was not large, and both offline and online stores sold out.

This left many who wanted to play but couldn't feeling desperate; sometimes a whole class didn't have a copy of Sanguosha and could only borrow from the next class over, but the next class had one, yet they wanted to play too.

Therefore, scenes of dozens of people taking turns playing a single copy of Sanguosha were countless during this period.

The hunger marketing strategy Xu Heng learned from Leizi undoubtedly achieved huge success.

Even though the reprint of Sanguosha had a print run as high as 200,000 copies and lacked the benefit of the first edition's signatures, it was still snatched up in a very short time.

The success of the reprint sales completely made Huang Kai and the others understand the market potential of Sanguosha.

This time, Xu Heng did not give them a printing quota; he had only one requirement.

Print! You must print! And print in massive quantities! Keep printing until the first edition of Sanguosha saturates the market!

During this period, they could earn double wages for working overtime!

The workers at Shanyin Factory went crazy, and Huang Kai and the programmers and artists who designed the Sanguosha cards went crazy too.

Xu Heng was now like a leader on a podium, painting a pie for his subordinates, but the pie he painted was placed right in front of everyone!

The pie was real, and the money was real too.

So what else could they do?

Just do it!

The workers worked overtime to print the first edition of Sanguosha, and Sanguosha Studio began to design the first edition's expansion pack for generals.

Everything was steady and improving, flourishing day by day.

After hearing Huang Kai's report, Xu Heng also felt completely at ease.

The IP of Sanguosha had finally gotten on the right track; although the track was different from his previous life, the achievements would certainly be higher than in his previous life.

If the physical cards failed later on, he could pivot to mobile games, releasing "Ma Cha Ji" characters and "underworld" generals to bait for microtransactions.

Further down the line, Xu Heng only needed to maintain the operations of Sanguosha and plan its general development direction.

As for the rest, he just needed to leave it to Huang Kai and the others, and money would roll into his pockets continuously.

After all, he held 100% control of Sanguosha; aside from the necessary wages and funds for the company's daily development, the vast majority of the remainder was pure profit.

Letting out a long breath, Xu Heng lit a Nanjing cigarette on the balcony for the first time in a while; actually, at this price point, he preferred smoking Mount Huang.

However, he hadn't smoked in a long time and was too lazy to go downstairs to buy a pack, so this Nanjing cigarette was just something he grabbed from Sheng Bo.

Sheng Bo laughed at him: "Old Xu, didn't you say you quit smoking? How come you're smoking again after only a few days of quitting?"

Xu Heng said the pressure had been a bit high lately.

Sheng Bo patted his shoulder: "Starting a business at your age is indeed a burden, but don't put too much pressure on yourself. At worst, if we go bankrupt, we'll just start over; don't you have brothers behind you to back you up?"

To this, Xu Heng smiled and said nothing.

The two smoked two cigarettes on the balcony, and only then did Sheng Bo ask him: "How is your film crew's preparation going lately?"

"Not great, still short of people."

Ren Man had found a few actors interested in playing supporting roles and said they would come to Jinling in two days for auditions.

But the male lead position was still left vacant.

It wasn't that others didn't want to come; it was mainly that the Tangren side had some connections and means, creating public opinion online to infinitely disparage the film Love is Not Blind, causing some small actors who originally wanted to try their luck to give up the idea.

The current situation was that no one online was optimistic about his film, calling it a trend of a massive flop.

If it weren't for the high stakes offered by Ren Man's side, he probably wouldn't even be able to find supporting actors.

"If you ask me, you might as well go up and act yourself; you're planning to enter the entertainment industry anyway, and appearing on screen more can boost your popularity," Sheng Bo suddenly said.

Hearing this, Xu Heng frowned slightly.

What Sheng Bo said was a way, but the key was that he had never come into contact with such things, had no systematic training, and had no foundation; was he supposed to rely on talent to act?

"Give it a try, it won't cost you anything," Sheng Bo continued to urge him, "What if you're a natural actor and suited for this profession?"

Xu Heng thought for a moment, and finally shook his head: "We'll see; if there really is no one to play the male lead, I'll give it a try."

The next day, Xu Heng met with Ren Man at the agreed-upon place.

This was their third meeting, and also the audition day for Love is Not Blind.

This time, Ren Man also brought a short-haired girl and a short boy wearing glasses.

"She is Zhuang Xiao, my assistant; he is the producer of our team, Wei Wenhan, mainly responsible for the film's post-production editing; both are seniors at the Magic Arts Academy."

After introducing the two people she brought, Ren Man reached out to introduce Xu Heng: "This is the screenwriter and producer of Love is Not Blind; all the power for this film is in his hands, so I assume I don't need to introduce him."

"Hello, Brother Xu!" The short boy Wei Wenhan shook Xu Heng's hand very enthusiastically and smiled, "I'm your die-hard fan, Brother Xu. When you have time later, can you give me an autograph?"

"Didn't buying Three Kingdoms Kill come with a signed copy before?"

"Sigh, don't even mention it. The quantity was too low, I couldn't snatch one at all. The one my friend finally managed to get was a signed copy from Junior Schoolmate Liu," Wei Wenhan sighed, "Hunger marketing is not the way to go; it has really made life miserable for us players and fans."

"Heh," Xu Heng couldn't help but chuckle and said, "It's alright, I'll give you two copies once I'm done with my work."

He had several copies of the first edition of Three Kingdoms Kill with signatures; he had originally intended to keep them as mementos for his collection, but using them as gifts for a meeting now was just the same.