Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 13 Subtlety
But players just love this approach.

It's a fool not to take advantage of a good deal. Many people have fallen into this trap by thinking, "I'll register an account first, claim the rewards, and whether I play later is another matter."

In addition, Starry Night Games updated today with the announcement about the "boss in women's clothing".

The players became even more excited.

Comments such as "I don't want to play the game, I just want to crash the server and see women in clothes!!" and "Can you really see women in clothes if the server crashes?" are common.

And they keep emerging one after another.

Some players even called on everyone to log in immediately after seeing the announcement.

Believe it or not, there really were people watching the spectacle.

As soon as the announcement was released at 9 a.m. this morning, players flooded into the server. The number of concurrent online players in the upper left corner of the game increased from 7 to 10, then to 15, and then to 20. The game queued up instantly.

However, the server eventually held up.

Even so, a large group of people were still clamoring to "gather" more troops that night, determined not to give up until they saw Boss Xingchen in women's clothing.

The players were having a blast over there.

The entire gaming industry looked at each other in bewilderment. If they still didn't understand that the whole so-called "crash" and "crossdressing" was just a marketing ploy by StarCraft, then they were fools.

"Hey, that's fucking amazing! They turned maintenance compensation into a new player acquisition bonus? And they're even getting players to spread the word on it? How did they come up with that idea?"

"Wow, did they know before the server even launched that it would crash due to the overwhelming number of players?"

"The key is that players actually fall for it!"

"This is absolutely amazing."

"When our servers experience slight fluctuations and the compensation is slightly less, players are practically flooding customer service's inbox."

"What about over there? Even if it really crashes now, all they need to do is throw a ten-pull, and the players will say things like 'Thank you, Mr. Chen,' 'Mr. Chen is so generous,' and 'It'll crash again next time'... It's unbelievable!"

"It's impressive, but you absolutely mustn't try to copy it. This thing can only be successfully implemented based on the high reputation of the Final Front."

"These stars are amazing!"

Some people think that Starry Sky's marketing strategy is very clever.

Naturally, some people will think this set of rules is just ordinary.

"No, what's so surprising about that? Isn't this just a variation of the usual tactic of having servers put bots in queues to create the illusion of a popular game? Is it really worth all this hype?"

"I mean, if I handed this kind of plan to my boss, I would be fired the next day."

"Exactly! You only see how popular the event is, but you don't think about how much money is being spent on in-game purchases! A game with nearly 30 daily active users only makes this little revenue? Isn't that just plain stupid?"

But no matter what.

Whether you think Starry Sky's marketing strategy is brilliant or just plain stupid, it doesn't matter.

all in all.

Five days have passed.

This game, "Final Front," which had almost no pre-launch promotion, is rapidly expanding its reach.

The number of registered users for the game is growing rapidly. Initial accounts are starting to appear on Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace) for just a few yuan each, and the hashtag "Has the Starry Sky Collapsed?" even briefly reached the bottom of the trending topics list on Weibo.

Besides videos aimed at attracting new users, various strategy videos on Bilibili have also started to gain traffic.

no doubt.

Another star in the world of anime has begun to shine. This is certainly good news for players, but not necessarily for Flash Blast. Huang Yu, sitting above the conference room, kept his hands in his pockets, making him look like Commander Ikari.

The atmosphere was solemn.

Although, in fact, the people in the meeting room were also very strange, because under normal circumstances, this kind of business analysis meeting should be held by Yao Meng, the person in charge of Zhenmian, the operator of "Girls' Frontline".

However, at this moment, the conference room was full of developers, that is, people from Flashbang; not a single person from the operator was present.

Even though they were in the office next door.

The boss looked unhappy, so the others could only try to chat about random things.

However, there were always people in the meeting room who got things done, such as the lead artist of Girls' Frontline and the future producer of Arknights, Umineko.

Umineko is considered a veteran of the Shinbaku game.

Seeing the meeting room in complete chaos, and with Huang Yu, the company's boss and chief planner, remaining silent, Hai Mao had no choice but to step in and try to steer the conversation back on track.

"Alright... enough of this nonsense... Huang Yu, we've verified this data repeatedly, it should be accurate."

"Six million registered users, daily active users—the growth curve drawn does indeed look like this..."

Actually, there's no need to do this data analysis.

Given the current level of discussion on the internet, this number is unlikely to be false.

However, Huang Yu had someone confirm the data in the conference room.

It's because he simply can't accept this situation.

With hundreds of thousands of pre-registrations for their own game "Girls' Frontline," meticulously crafted and arguably the most famous anime-style game in China and even worldwide featuring anthropomorphized guns, what was the result?
On the first day, there were barely 270,000 registered users and 170,000 in revenue.

As it turns out, this game that appeared out of nowhere actually became more popular than his "Girls' Frontline"!?

Where can I reason from this?
Huang Yu suddenly raised his head, his gaze sweeping over everyone, his voice devoid of any emotion.

"What about their gameplay, art style, and analysis reports?"

"In terms of gameplay, the opponent mainly focuses on PVP, with PVE as a secondary aspect. The PVP is a relatively novel gameplay mode, which, according to their official description, is called 'humanoid auto chess.'"

"The PVE mode is similar to our general direction, which is about raising gun girls, but it has been simplified in many details, making it more enjoyable."

"The art style is relatively consistent"

Hai Mao paused here, seemingly choosing his words carefully.

"Moreover, their character illustrations, how should I put it, are more... well, more in tune with people's hearts."

I was probably the only person in the entire conference room who seriously played "Final Frontier".

Hai Mao actually admires the art style of "Final Frontline" very much, especially the character illustrations, although some elements are similar to Girls' Frontline.

However, this elemental collision is essentially the same as some characters in Kantai Collection R and Kantai Collection C.

However, the opponent's character illustrations are clearly more detailed, and because the character illustrations in battle are life-size figures, the combat actions, combat feedback, and scene style are all better than Girls' Frontline.

If we simply compare the two games, Final Frontline is actually the more complete one.

Moreover, at this point in time, almost all low-cost anime-style mobile games are plagiarisms, not to mention the fact that Warship Girls is almost entirely translated into Chinese.

Other anthropomorphic games are basically all variations of the battle systems from shipgirls, so HaiMao actually admires "Final Frontier" for managing to come up with a completely new gameplay.
However, it seems inappropriate to say these things in this setting.

(End of this chapter)