Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 226 Who!?

"Yes, I paid."

In the office, Zhou Wei, who was in charge of StarCraft North America's game operations, also looked grim. He pushed up his glasses, trying to appear calm.

"Following standard procedure, we signed a cooperation agreement with IGN's marketing department, which included a homepage feature and a review article. They promised to report 'fairly and positively'."

"Fair and positive?"

"This is freaking fair and positive?!"

There's no doubt something went wrong; someone must have done something in the middle of this.
Steam?

It's unlikely. Although Steam is indeed the biggest player in the PC game distribution market in North America, Valve is a large and powerful company.

Moreover, judging from its corporate style, Steam is generally the type of company that focuses on quiet development and is unlikely to resort to such underhanded tactics to target a newly emerging platform.

Google?

It's possible that StarTap and Google are direct competitors, and the two even had a conflict in January.

Ultimately, Activision Blizzard, along with American casual gaming giant King and other US companies, sued Google, freeing StarTap from its restrictions.

However, Google has been promoting the idea in the industry that StarTap is not secure enough and that its low revenue sharing model will have an irreversible impact on the entire gaming industry.

Besides Google, Apple is not entirely out of the question.
Thinking about it this way, the distribution channels affect far too many people.

It seems normal for Xingchen Tap to get criticized after breaking into the mainstream... So the real issue now isn't about who made the criticism, but rather what to do after it happens.

"What should I do?"

"If you don't know, why don't you give President Chen a call first?"

When in doubt, consult Doraemon... no, consult President Chen. This is not a shameful thing at Starry Sky Games. On the contrary, Chu Chen emphasizes this to every senior executive when they take office.

"If you all can't figure it out, call me immediately. If you do, we'll work together to find a solution. If you don't, then I'll assume you can solve the problem."

For Fuller, IGN's unexpected defeat completely disrupted his plans.

Fuller was still a little dizzy when the call connected, and it took him a few minutes to report the current situation to Chu Chen.

After he finished speaking, Fuller, a middle-aged man in his forties, also became inexplicably nervous.

He didn't know how Chu Chen would react after hearing this—surprise? Or anger?
After all, in his previous report to Chu Chen, he said that the media had been taken care of, but now he has suffered a complete setback.

However, what he didn't expect was.

After listening to the phone call, Chu Chen remained silent for a few seconds, then let out a soft chuckle.

"Heh, IGN gave us a 6?"

His voice held no trace of nervousness, but rather a hint of excitement...?

Yes, yes.

"This is fantastic news!"

"Good thing?"

Fuller was stunned. Was it a good thing that IGN gave it a score of 6?
"It's alright, I understand. I'm still in a meeting at Bluehole, let's talk about it tonight. Let's wait and see..."

The phone hangs up.

Fuller held the now-silent phone, genuinely impressed.

He showed no panic or surprise whatsoever; his composure... made him subconsciously feel that this was no big deal.
Seeing that Fuller didn't react, Zhou Wei couldn't help but ask.

"Mr. Fuller? What did President Chen say?" Fuller repeated Chu Chen's words.

He said to let the bullets fly for a while.

"????"

"what?"

Fuller, an American, hadn't seen "Let the Bullets Fly," but Zhou Wei had. However, he still didn't quite understand it. Let the bullets fly for a while? Where are they flying to?
The office fell silent after those words.

The two grown men stared at each other, unsure how to react.

~~~
2 p.m.

California sunlight streamed through the blinds, casting dappled patterns of light into the dark-carpeted room.

Alex was lounging in his gaming chair, surrounded by three monitors forming a fortress, with the main screen displaying the game's start screen.

The End-of-the-World Survival Guide

"Alright, alright, everyone in the chat room, I know you've been spamming this lately."

"A game from China? Please, a Chinese game? The last time I played a Chinese game was... I don't think I've ever played a Chinese game before."

"Anyway, I think playing this kind of game is a waste of time."

As a game streamer, and a gaming blogger with over two million YouTube subscribers, Alex has a lot in common with other game streamers.

For example, he has a humorous way of speaking, exaggerated reactions, and is quite good at playing games.

However, ALX must have its own unique skills to have accumulated more than two million fans in the YouTube live streaming arena.

His unique skill lies in his adeptness at "showing off and then slapping people in the face."

Alex's streaming logic is roughly as follows: he will first find a game, regardless of what the game is, whether it is popular or not, or what its reputation is.

Before even playing, they'd be full of sarcasm and everyone would be pessimistic.

He would then use these things as covers or titles, which is essentially the same as those who mindlessly criticize game companies to gain traffic; they simply seek attention by being "different."

In the context of the Chinese internet, this refers to people who think, "I'm the only one who doesn't find XX fun."
However, his ability to have two million followers is not just superficial. His second key to success is his reaction time, which he demonstrated after mocking the game earlier.

Once he actually starts playing, if he feels that the game is really trash, he'll become incredibly arrogant, constantly mocking and hurling all sorts of profanities.

But if the game is fun, then they'll put on a Sichuan opera-style face-changing act, exclaiming "OMG!", "Awesome!", "Masterpiece!", and might even slap themselves in the face, saying they shouldn't have been so sarcastic at the beginning.

Although this kind of trick is obviously fake.

But the audience loves to watch them. Just like the Hyperthyroidism Brother and the Speechless Brother, you'll find that many internet celebrities use the same tricks, but they can keep coming up with new and interesting ones.

In ALX's livestream, every time he starts a new game, people speculate about when he'll "change his tune."

That's the charm.

You know exactly what he's going to do next, but you still watch.

Just like this time, after Alex finished lunch, even though 1 p.m. is not usually the peak time for game streamers, his chat room was flooded with comments.

Alex opened the Star Tap.
"Ha, trash games are trash, why do they need to be downloaded to a separate platform?"

"I feel like this game is priced at $6 just to trick us into downloading this shitty platform. Those disgusting capitalists!"

"If you guys hadn't kept urging me to play, I wouldn't have played such a cheap game. At this price, it's obviously garbage..."

(End of this chapter)