Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 196 Favorable Timing and Location
It was 6 p.m.

"Om - hum -"

The violent vibration of the phone on the table startled Li Mingzhe awake. He sat up abruptly, his first thought being that he was hungry again after just finishing lunch.

As he reached for his phone, he glanced out the window. In his memory, the bright afternoon sun had turned into a warm orange hue, casting dappled patterns of light on the table through the gaps in the blinds.

He glanced at the time in the lower right corner of the computer screen—18:03.

It's already 6 PM!

Holy crap, I came here to work overtime, but I spent the whole afternoon playing games!! Games are so damn harmful!! I...I...I...
Forget it, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll work tomorrow, then I'll go home, eat dinner, and play for a while. It's already so late anyway.
My mind was racing with random thoughts, while my phone kept vibrating tirelessly.

The caller ID showed it was Wang Lei, the one who had asked him to buy the gift box that morning.

Li Mingzhe composed himself and swiped to answer the call.

"Hey……"

As soon as he said "hello," Wang Lei's rapid, machine-gun-like voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Old Li! The gift box! Did you receive the gift box from this morning?"

Wang Lei's tone was urgent and his voice was loud. Li Mingzhe was startled by his shout and subconsciously answered.

"They arrived around noon, six big boxes, piled up here with me."

"What's wrong? Why are you so agitated?"

"call--"

Upon hearing Li Mingzhe say that the goods had been received, Wang Lei on the other end of the phone let out a long sigh of relief. Li Mingzhe could even imagine him patting his chest in relief.

"As long as I got it! As long as I got it!"

"No... what's wrong?"

Wang Lei breathed a sigh of relief, but Li Mingzhe still looked completely bewildered.

"Brother, let me tell you, we've really hit the jackpot this time! The Japanese have gone mad!! Go check Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace app), if they still have those gift boxes in stock at that price, buy a few more, and if they can't get through customs, just ship them over."

"What nonsense are you spouting?"

Li Mingzhe was completely bewildered.

"Oh, no time to explain, go check out Xianyu (a secondhand marketplace app)! I tried listing on Xianyu in Japan, but those scalpers wouldn't sell to me."

The more Wang Lei talked, the more confused Li Mingzhe became.

But he still opened Xianyu (a Chinese online marketplace) and searched for "FGO Collector's Edition".

Then the refreshed page made his eyelids twitch. The links that had been displaying prices of 500 and 550 from the morning were gone, replaced by a uniform array of bright red price tags.

[FGO Collector's Edition available now, 1150 per set, first come, first served!]

[Collector's Edition, only opened, complete with box and manual, selling for 1020.]

[Local residents in Shanghai can meet in person. Standard version, 900 RMB, no bargaining.]

Li Mingzhe's mouth opened slightly as he suddenly remembered what the scalper who had delivered the goods to him a few hours earlier had said.

"It's only increased by a little over a hundred, that's pretty good, bro..."

In less than 5 hours, the price skyrocketed to over 1000 yuan. This isn't just price gouging; it's like the price is shooting up like a rocket!

Go crazy! ! !
How could this be so exaggerated?!

That's exaggerated, and there's something even more exaggerated.
Li Mingzhe flipped down two or three pages and found many listings on Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace), each with a description.

[We only ship to domestic addresses! We do not ship to overseas addresses! Please stop asking!]

There were even Japanese comments in the comment section, and on Xianyu (a second-hand marketplace), there were posts that were clearly machine-translated, or even posted entirely in Japanese, advertising the purchase of gift boxes...
"No, what... what's going on? Have all these people gone mad?" "A gift box that costs over 300 on the official website is being sold for 1000, and it's still sold out fast???"

Am I crazy?

Li Mingzhe was dumbfounded after reading it. Although he admitted that the FGO remake was much more fun than he had imagined, he still thought it was absurd to have a piece of merchandise being sold for three times the price.

"Has the official website stopped accepting reservations?"

Li Mingzhe then went to the official website.

"No, not at all... Holy crap!! 31 pre-orders!!!"

"It went up by 100,000 in five hours???"

"Holy crap, is it really that popular?!"

"This world is crazy."

To be honest, it's not that he's gone crazy, nor that domestic players have gone crazy, but rather that Japanese players have gone crazy. In a market economy, every cause has its effect.

A premium only occurs when demand exceeds supply.

The reason for the premium price of the FGO gift box in the Chinese server is unusually not in China, but in Japan.

To summarize in one sentence.

FGO is a huge hit in Japan
It exploded to a level that no one could have imagined.

When the price of goods on Xianyu (a Chinese online marketplace) in China skyrocketed, even Japanese scalpers could make a fortune by paying an extra 200-300 RMB for international shipping, the price of goods on Xianyu naturally followed suit.

~~~
The sudden popularity of a game seems to have no pattern.

In fact, there are patterns to be found; the simplified formula is roughly: [Initial player base brought in by marketing] x [Game quality] x [Reputation]

The most difficult part of this mode is the initial number of players.

To put it bluntly, all the marketing and promotion expenses are ultimately aimed at bringing a larger initial player base to the game, which is the fundamental reason why Tencent can "stand out from the crowd".

Although Tencent cannot control the latter two, it can control the first.

Chu Chen went to great lengths, creating wallpapers, Star Tap, mini-games, and even an alliance, all with the ultimate goal of controlling the first factor of this formula.

However, even though Chu Chen made a lot of efforts.

In China, StarTap still lags far behind Tencent, and even behind the Hardcore Alliance.

However, in Japan, when this remake of FGO was released...

Chu Chen did indeed, in fact, get a "Fujiko" trial card in advance and experience the terror of "nationwide traffic".

The game "Fate/Grand Order" became a hit in Japan. This success was a miracle caused by a combination of coincidences, with "favorable timing, location, and people" working together.

First, there is the foundation of FATE itself.

Although many people say that FATE is very popular in Japan, most people still have no idea just how popular FATE is in Japan.

Since the release of "Fate/stay night" in 2004, which miraculously topped the GALGAME sales charts with 14 copies sold, this "miracle" has lasted for more than ten years.

In 06, FATE was adapted into an anime for the first time and was a great success, with its DVD sales exceeding 100 million copies.

By 12, with "Fate/Zero," it had become even more terrifying. This was not just the Fate series, but also a model of "high investment," "high return," and "high influence" in the Japanese animation industry.

Even today, this animation from over a decade ago still boasts impressive visual quality.

After the huge success of Fate/Zero in 12, Mushroom firmly established the major policy of IP co-creation, and thus the Fate IP began to branch out.

In 15, the Blu-ray disc of "Fate/stay night [UBW]" was priced much higher than other anime, yet it still sold very well.

By 2016, the Fate series had nine licensed games, spanning PC, consoles, and mobile.
(End of this chapter)