Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 10 The Evergreen of the Gaming Industry

Based on the current flow of water.

Within half a month at most, the revenue can fully cover the development costs. Keep in mind that this is not the golden age of ACG mobile games, which will be two years from now and have monthly revenue of over 100 million.

Contemporaneous analogy.

Two years ago, Honkai Impact 2's revenue in its first month after launch was just over 1000 million yuan!
But what was the marketing strategy for Honkai Impact 2 at the time?

As for Chu Chen's "Final Frontline," what kind of promotional campaign is it? Moreover, this is only the first day of the server launch, and the number of players may continue to surge in the next few days.

"Holy crap! Half a million on the first day! Earning tens of millions a month is no dream!"

“It’s sent!”

"Mr. Chen is awesome!"

Everyone looked relaxed, except for a programmer with a particularly round figure standing next to Chu Chen, whose expression was somewhat subtle.

It was Xiong Rui, the one among the "three bears" in the programming group whose physique most closely resembled the Chinese character for "bear." He had just been grinning foolishly, but now the smile on his face froze.

Xiong Rui, being large, was squeezed at the very front and had the clearest view.

"Penetration rate...0.4%? Is it that low?"

Xiong Rui scratched his hair, which looked a bit greasy from staying up all night. It wasn't that he was ignorant of the industry; on the contrary, as one of the core programmers, he was quite familiar with the game data on the market.

With these registration numbers and online users, it's definitely poised to be a blockbuster.

But why is the penetration rate so low?
"Isn't this exactly what we expected? Let's go, it's my treat for everyone to barbecue! Oysters, kidneys, order whatever you want!!"

Chu Chen understood Xiong Rui's situation.

This paid data actually looks a bit strange.

Under normal circumstances, even low-quality online games in China have a first-day paying rate of 2% to 5%. If it is a two-dimensional game, it can be even higher due to the emotional appeal.

比如《崩坏学园2》早期付费渗透率就在10%到15%，就连不怎么逼氪的《战舰少女》付费率也在3%到5%之间。

Looking at it this way, 0.4% is simply too low, even abnormally low.

However, at the same time, the paid amount for "Final Battlefront" exceeded the average level.

Taking Honkai Impact 2 as an example, its ARPPU in its first year was 114 yuan. It wasn't until Honkai Impact 3 that miHoYo's ARPPU exceeded 300 yuan, while Genshin Impact once reached a terrifying 600 yuan.
This is because since the Honkai Impact 3 era, miHoYo has implemented a heavy spending model, with high gacha costs, constellations, and weapons, making most players either not spend money or spend a lot.

And now the data for "Final Battlefront" also shows this trend.

On the one hand, the relatively saturated welfare strategy and new user acquisition strategy make it unnecessary for most ordinary players to spend money, given the foreseeable future.

Like "Warship Girls", "Final Frontline" allows players to collect all the characters over time, providing a completely seamless experience for both casual and paying players.

On the other hand, for those true "whales" (players who spend real money on in-game purchases), they don't care about anything else; they just want to complete the entire collection right now! Immediately! Right away!

As the saying goes, you can't guess what a whale (a person who spends a lot of money) is thinking.

Even though the cost of gacha pulls in "Final Front" is not high, basically only 3 yuan per pull, and there are even discounts in the gift packs, don't forget that there are also many characters in "Final Front".

This isn't a 3D game. The initial version of "Final Frontline" had nearly 50 characters, including 30 five-star characters and 20 four-star characters.

Even without considering duplicates, it would be a bit of an overstatement to try and get 30 five-star characters by force.

Therefore, the data ultimately presented to everyone is a low-penetration, high-average-consumption figure.

But still the same sentence.

The current data is in line with Chu Chen's expectations, so he doesn't plan to change anything to increase the low penetration rate in order to obtain higher revenue.

Chu Chen knew very well that what Starcraft needed right now was not to overdraw the game's lifespan to generate profits, but rather to expand its user base with high reputation and low profits.

This was the approach he decided upon after careful consideration.

After all, only when the user base grows can Chu Chen's next strategy of low profit and high volume take effect, and only then can the emotional payment model, which is the methodology of making players like the characters and then monetizing them, be put into practice.

Essentially, the current mainstream games in China treat players like pigs to be slaughtered. They first lure players in with the lure of free access, and then exploit them in various ways.

The ultimate result of this approach is actually quite simple: a large number of players will quickly leave.

After all, people aren't real pigs. What Chu Chen wants to do is treat players like sheep or cats, profiting by grooming them.

Don't be fooled by the fact that this model may not seem like a quick way to make money. You should know that as the user base grows, it's not just ordinary players with low spending who can generate incredible profits (like the 6-yuan skins in Honor of Kings).
More importantly, with more ordinary players, heavy spenders will also follow.

Just like "The Final Front" right now.

Even though you can get a five-star character every five days if you just play the game normally, there are still whales who want to spend money to complete the collection in one day, and then post it in the community and are hailed as rich by thousands of people.

For whales (high spenders), the more ordinary players there are, the more comfortable they feel spending money.

Their payment is for another kind of emotion.

I won't go into details here; let's get right to eating some skewers!
~~~
Just as Chu Chen was checking the data.

Under the same starry sky.

There's another person working overtime.

This person is Chen Mo, the editor of the GamerSky forum.

As a gaming website, in its early days, most of the posts on GamerSky were copied posts and commercial listings. However, in recent years, with the decline of traditional domestic online games and the rise of mobile games, GamerSky has changed its focus.

Gamer forums have also entered a period of transformation.

After all, the era of making money simply by posting ads for online games, selling media activation codes, and attracting traffic by distributing activation code events is gradually coming to an end.

Today's players need more refined and realistic content.

So in the last two years.

Even if many games don't pay for advertising, gamers will still try to ride the wave of popularity and write articles.

Especially single-player games.

无论是已经发售的，比如今年2月的《幽浮2》，亦或是今年即将发售的《战地1》《文明6》《泰坦陨落2》《看门狗2》《最终幻想15》

The homeless people have all written a lot of articles.

Chen Mo was also one of the main editors of these articles.

However..
He was about to go to sleep tonight when he was pulled out of bed by a phone call from his editor-in-chief, who said that the boss had to write an urgent article by tomorrow morning.

"No! Can't you just let me get a good night's sleep and write tomorrow?"

"The investor is in a hurry..."

"Hey, this is about writing articles. The client is anxious, but they can't stop me from sleeping, can they?"

"They added money."

"How much?"

"I can't tell you that, but if you finish writing it tonight, I'll send you a big red envelope of 1000 yuan."

"real!?"

"real!"

What's the name of the game?

"The Final Front"

Despite the large red envelope, Chen Mo, who had just gotten out of bed, originally only planned to play around with it casually, take a screenshot, use a template, and stuff in the points that the sponsor wanted to see. That would be enough.

After all, there have been many anime-style games like this recently.

Most of them are just reskinned versions; the gameplay is simply matching little figures together, so there's not much to brag about.

However... once Chen Mo actually opened the game and started playing, he realized something was wrong.

"This...is interesting."

(End of this chapter)