“CEO-man, honored boss-dude, we looked around and had some ideas." Burke from the Creative Department opened up the next meeting. For some strange reason, Zoli was almost sure, the newest manager was high as a kite. Of course, that couldn't be the case, because professional managers never did that – at least not at the start of a meeting or a workshop.

  And, most importantly, the company didn't have anything to snort, smoke, or abuse in any other way.

  “Credibly promote the end-to-end methods of empowerment.”

  “Huh? Ah, I will present the isshuesss we found.” Burke’s speech was slightly slurred, but pointing that out would mean shaming and thus harassing. Or bullying.

  “Sssho, Zhone 1… Asssh the Big Honcho said, we should dig out more tunnels. Corridors. Underground thingies. One of my guys even made a map!”

  Either the 'guy' was able to see 3D on a 2D drawing, masterfully blending flexible platforms, or was stiff drunk, and tried to pass modern art as a proposition. Zoli was completely lost in the overlapping, colorful impression. Like every manager, who didn't have a clue, what was presented, he gave the most obvious answer.

  “Looks good. Proceed with continually aggregate backward-compatible infomediaries.”

  “Huh? Ok, you are the boss, boss. We will continue planning out the cave sshysshtem. Anywaysch, with how large it issh going to be, we should make it a separate floor.”

  “Zone.”

  “Well, you can call it that. Populate it with cave critters. There are nice little gimmickssh, we can put into there. An invisible bridge acrosssh a chasshm! Hidden passagessh! Trapssh! It will be awesome! The mosssht excellent little murder hole there ever wash!"

  Zoli felt, that while his newest manager was actually competent, he was too eager and way too competent. If that continued, he would sooner or later aspire to take over Zoli's job! That couldn't be allowed! Zoli needed to come up either with a task, Burke was sure to fail, or repurpose the department into actually not doing anything.

  “Then, there issh Zone 2. We have thissh nice hot sshpring, and no way to make it adventurer-proof. Sshimple! Put it behind the Centipede Cave! With a hidden passage! Here, my Map Dude did a drawing for that too!”

  This time, the map was almost comprehensible, and it came with a preliminary design for the hot spring cave too. That part was artistically done! The passage opened up from a small, innocuous niche in the back of the Centipede Cave, the actual passage being hidden behind some rocks. If someone knew, what to look out for, it was obvious, but the casual observer would most likely miss it. However, the Scavenger Hunt in the cave made sure, it had to be searched. If the customers decided NOT to search around, they would not just miss out on the merchandise, but on the hot spring too! Fantastic!

  The cave, where the spring was located, was faintly illuminated by the water in an eerie bluish-green light. Otherwise, the pool was large enough for three or four people, with a narrow rim, where another four or five people could be seated. On one side, the pool was fed by a little waterfall, and on the other, the excess water was swallowed by a deep hole in the wall.

  “Ssshee, boss? Water goes down there, and recyclessh back to the front. Closed circuit! No adventurer could freely pilfer the water!”

  The whole scheme was actually nicely designed. It would have been a waste not to implement it. Besides, Zoli needed to do something with the spring anyway.

  “Winston! Rapidiously relocate and repurpose the maintainable total linkage!”

  “Yes, honored CEO, sir. We will move the hot spring to the back of the cave.”

  “The next point issh the sshpetial offer in Zone 2." Burke continued "The big honcho had a good idea, but let us modify it a bit! Make the sshpetial offer random! We have six different kindssh of peacocks, plus the ssshuper-sshpetial one. Randomize, which one issh presshent each day! We are working on an achievement, where the customers can get a sshpecial reward, if they collect all seven, and find the place with the prize!”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Where would you put it?” Zoli was intrigued by this new idea.

  “At the end of the outer two Biomes. Sshet up a stand or something, where the prizes can be redeemed. Implementing this scheme to the other sshpetial offers would generate… thingies…”

  “Resentment?” Winston asked.

  “No. I think Burke wanted to say assertively generate client-centered meta-services." Colette clarified the issue. Zoli agreed to the scheme. With multiple stages necessary to successfully complete the game, they could make sure, the customers returned to the company more often. Repeat customers would mean free marketing and higher revenue. It was no matter, what the final achievement or gift was – not, that the company had much in the line of merchandise or products – it was all about bragging rights.

  “Aaaaand, if the customer collected ALL the special offers, the final achievement would be even more awesome!” suddenly Burke started to speak more clearly.

  “Good idea! Appropriately scaling best-of-breed functionalities is the bricks and clicks of any successful enterprise!" Zoli congratulated his underling.

  “We are still working on a very compelling innovation for the mill and the pond in Zone 3, boss, but I can assure you, the integrated whatever will be leveraging something or other in doing stuff to methods of empowerment." In Zoli's opinion, Winston and Burke were strange. Every other manager took to the way of corporate speech like outsourcing to third-world countries, but those two simply weren't able to put a coherent sentence together. Maybe sending them to a dedicated workshop would alleviate the challenge.

  “Our most awesome ideas are, what we call Loot Boxes and Collectible Rewards. Names pending. Combining the two would be the ultimate goal.”

  “Formulate covalent strategic theme areas!" Zoli had not the faintest clue, what Burke was talking about, but he found if he said an imperative sentence, the others most likely clarified.

  “Yes, boss, I will explain." As Burke understood too "First of all, we place boxes, chests, or basically any container randomly in the field. Each container has a pre-defined chance to contain merchandise of a specified rarity. Say, we place a 'Trash Tier' chest somewhere, it would have an 80% chance of only containing Trash Tier things, and say, 0,5% chance of something Rare or Legendary. Now, the customers can pay to upgrade the chest to 'Epic Tier', and it will have a 33% chance of containing Epic Tier stuff."

  “Do you think, the customers would pay for the upgrades?”

  “Most certainly! Of course, no matter how much they pay, the company will still win out, the… we call it 'Drop Rate' will still be abysmal small. And the customer would need to pay more than the 'Drops' are worth."

  “Run the numbers through Finances. They ought to know Mathematics.” Zoli directed

  “Of course, boss. Soooo… And here come Collectible Rewards. The customers would need to collect ‘Fragments’ of the final reward, and those would be distributed randomly throughout the company premises. The best thing is, we could influence, where and when each Fragment is seeded. So, for example, one customer only needs one last fragment, but we can make sure, there is only a 1% chance to find it. Or a 0.000001% chance. The customer has to come back again and again and again to find that last fragment. In order to keep interest, we could give another customer the needed Fragment, so Customer One will know, someone indeed found the missing piece.”

  “An interesting scheme, made to synergistically monetize emerging niche markets!”

  “Yes, boss. Now, if we combine the Collectible Rewards with Loot Boxes, and make sure, some Fragments can only be collected through the latter…”

  “The customers would absolutely need to invest in obtaining cross-platform benefits!" Zoli finally got the idea behind the whole scheme. He was only unsure, of what kind of payment they were talking about.

  No matter, if it was currency, some contribution to the MPD, or another metric, Finances still hadn't been invented, revenue was always welcome.

  Zoli had to congratulate himself. Under his masterful guidance, the company started to take shape. New employees were hired, schemes implemented, metrics redefined, merchandise was researched, developed, manufactured, and distributed, and future-proof quality vectors were targeted.

  He was sure, he would be able to meet the deadline – after all, the Stockholder only demanded sufficient progress, not optimizing the whole dungeon, and making inroads in integrating new content.

  As a CEO he wasn’t exactly interested in the minute details of… well… anything, he had a mostly competent Executive Team to do the boring stuff, but felt an urge to check on Zone 4’s progress.

  Especially the Perks, HR, and the other departments came up with. If they made another mistake like the Basement Horror, it was good to be aware and file the issue, so a termination at a later date was supported by cold, hard facts.