Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 12 Maintenance Can Be Fun Too

A few more days passed.

The exposure of "Final Front" has begun to increase exponentially.

Not only is word-of-mouth starting to spread among players, but major media outlets are also beginning to take notice.

Because Final Frontier was released on both PC and mobile platforms, the PC version was essentially just an Android emulator due to technical reasons.

Fortunately, Final Frontline is not a resource-intensive 3D game. Even with an emulator shell, it does not require high-end configurations to run smoothly.

Thanks to this simultaneous release on multiple platforms, Chu Chen was able to avoid some of the commission fees charged by Android and Apple channels.

After receiving his first commission, Chu Chen's first action was to sign promotional contracts with several domestic game media outlets and Bilibili, the home of the ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) community. He also invested in some content creators on Bilibili and live streaming channels on platforms like Douyu.

It's like throwing money around.

The main reason Chu Chen did this was that in China, small manufacturers had to be fast to succeed.

Those companies that want to rest on their laurels after just achieving success won't last long in China. Don't be fooled by the current popularity of "Final Frontline" and the almost unanimous praise from players.

The problem is that gameplay mechanics are not protected.

According to Chu Chen's estimate, Tencent will likely officially announce the launch of a game with the same gameplay by next month at the latest.

The game will be launched in six months at most.

The previous version of Auto Chess was launched in January 2019, and Teamfight Tactics came out in June 2019.

In other words.

Chu Chen needs to quickly build his own moat within six months, and the foundation of this moat is, firstly, the number of users. In the short period of time when there are no competitors, he must acquire users at all costs.

Even though this approach might seem a bit silly to people today, Chu Chen doesn't blame them. After all, people at this time probably can't imagine how long a well-made anime game can last.

Secondly, while Chu Chen was spending heavily on marketing and expanding his user base, he used the remaining money to recruit people aggressively, preparing the second competitive advantage for "Final Frontline": its storyline and gameplay.

~~~
Just as Chu Chen was frantically investing in publicity and promotion.

Devil
FlashBoom Games Studio

A spacious meeting room.

The atmosphere was somewhat awkward. The staff of "Gun Girl" sat around a long table, and on the projector in the conference room was a data comparison report.

One left and one right.

The data on the left side shows the results of the first open beta test of "Gun Girls" yesterday: 27 registered users on the first day, a peak of 6 concurrent users, and 17 in paid revenue.
This data is not good for Gun Girls.

As the first game in China to anthropomorphize firearms, "Gun Girls" is highly anticipated at this juncture.

Like "Final Battlefront," "Gun Girls" also features the theme of moe-fication of guns.

The earliest example of gun anthropomorphism can be traced back to a Japanese anime in 2011, which was an adaptation of the manga of the same name by Tennoji Kitsune. The content was basically about the daily high school life after anthropomorphizing various guns.

Later, with the emergence of ship girls, there were even more deeply anthropomorphized characters.

It was around that time that the Gun Girls team officially began to borrow this idea, combining it with the world view of their doujinshi game, Bakery Girl, to launch the game Gun Girls.

of course
The reason this game will become more widely known in the future is probably due to the continuous, explosive pace of its official sequel, Girls: Exiled.

The limping commander, gender-swapped Raymond, is truly too famous.

But that's a matter for the future.

Judging from the current situation, Gun Girls is still highly anticipated by many players. In fact, the promotional investment for Gun Girls was quite large before this open beta.

The number of pre-registrations on the official website alone exceeded one million, and even after removing the inflated figures, the actual number of pre-registrations was as high as 650,000.

Ultimately, of the 650,000 reservations, the conversion rate was less than 50%.
It was clearly affected by some external force.

But you're saying this data is bad?
That's not entirely true. With nearly 30 registered users and 17 in revenue on the first day of testing, it's hard to categorize it as bad. In fact, if you only look at this data...

Flashbang can even be celebrated with a champagne bottle.

This is, after all, data from an open test.

But there is another number right next to this one.

Those were the statistics released on the fifth day after the launch of "Final Frontline": the number of registered players exceeded 600 million, daily active users exceeded 30, peak concurrent users exceeded 20, and the revenue in five days exceeded an astonishing 200 million RMB.
Although this data shows a slightly lower revenue, it's still not comparable to "Honkai Impact 2," which earns 2000 million per month.

However, its daily active users and the growth rate of the number of players can be considered to be in the first tier of the ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) category, even higher than Honkai Impact 2.

It's worth noting that at that time, Honkai Impact 2 had less than 20 daily active users.

Moreover, this daily active user count is the result of almost daily maintenance for "Final Front".

This game, which had never been heard of before, suddenly exploded in everyone's ears like a thunderclap overnight.

"It's amazing that the user engagement is this high despite daily maintenance."

"That's right, if it were us, we would have been washed away long ago."

"They weren't affected at all. Every time after maintenance, they give players a ten-pull, and the players are still saying 'Thank you, Mr. Chen.' I'm starting to suspect they're just creating a gimmick."

Everyone has experienced server crashes during launch.

This kind of thing is especially common for small developers, just like the launch of "Gun Girls" today, which also caused a huge uproar.

Normally, if it explodes, it explodes.

What's the big deal? Just give them some compensation and that'll be fine.

So at the beginning, the Starry Sky server crashing and giving out ten free pulls was ridiculed by many people in the industry. They said, "How can you compensate like that? Isn't this just throwing money away?"

If you keep adding to your spending, who's going to spend money on in-game purchases?
However, after a few days, some people who follow Starry Night Games felt that something was wrong.

In the five days since the server opened, Starry Sky crashed a total of five times. Apart from the first two days, the first day crashed from 9 pm to 12 am, the second time crashed from 4 am to noon the next day, and the remaining three times crashed from 1 am to around 9 am.

Moreover, of the five crashes, only the last three were complete crashes, making it impossible to log in to the game. Rather than saying they crashed, it would be more accurate to say that they were maintaining and adding servers.

Even if the server really crashes at this time of night, you could just say it's for maintenance. Why would you need to issue an announcement and offer compensation?

Many people don't understand it.

On the fifth day, the server issues for "Final Front" should have been resolved and the game should have been running stably. Suddenly, a notification came from the official StarCraft team.

And a notice that read, "We've finally fixed it! If it crashes again, the boss will apologize for dressing up as a woman."

Things are starting to get interesting.

Let's start with this reminder. In fact, in the previous five crash announcements and compensation distributions, the official team would include a reminder in the compensation information, which basically said that the compensation should be claimed within 30 days.

If not claimed, the compensation will expire.

At first, no one paid any attention to this information, but soon players discovered that in addition to veteran players, even newly registered players could receive this compensation.

Not only can you claim it, you can even start claiming it from the first time the server crashes after launch.

Following closely behind were Baidu Tieba, online forums, and Bilibili.

Then posts and videos started appearing claiming to teach you how to get "Final Frontier" for free.

What about '100 free draws at the start' and 'a 3-minute speedrun tutorial for beginners that leads directly to your compensation email'?

There are even more outrageous.

"If you don't grab this deal now, the Final Frontier servers will be stable! Register now and you can get 50 free draws as compensation!! It's a good deal even if you don't play after claiming it!"

This is utterly ridiculous. It's not like you're getting eggs. If you don't play the game, what kind of compensation voucher are you going to get?
(End of this chapter)