Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 25 Interactive Wallpapers
And so it happened very quickly.

Someone posted the registration process along with their invitation link.

"A freshly released Japanese beginner's guide, complete with pictures and text, guaranteed to teach you everything you need to know!"

It's no wonder that gamers are among the most curious people in the world.

Quite a few Japanese players, unaware of the facts, clicked the link out of curiosity in the comments section of this post.

Anyway, when Su Qing closed the webpage, the wallpaper had already reached 100,000 favorites. According to Pixiv's rules, each favorite corresponds to one user.

10 favorites means that at least 10 people have viewed this picture.
This includes a large number of overseas users.

In other words, although Chu Chen has not conducted any publicity or promotion at this moment, "Final Front" has actually begun to gain popularity overseas, especially in the Japanese and South Korean markets.

In addition, the auto chess gameplay mode means that even if the latency is a bit high, it will not affect the battle at all. And the first batch of Japanese players who tried it out got to play it on the Chinese server.

Its reputation is also spreading. As the saying goes, Japanese players also need to attract new players, and naturally, they can only attract Japanese players.

Therefore, if you check the data for Final Frontline at this time, you will find that this Chinese server, which only has Chinese language support, already has quite a few Japanese players.

The origins of these players are somewhat subtle.

~~~
Su Qing's mind was filled with all sorts of random thoughts.

And so we waited for several more minutes.

Finally, Chu Chen raised his head and glanced at Su Qing, then called her over to his side.

"Take a look first and then I'll tell you."

Chu Chen moved his chair back slightly so that Su Qing could see what he had just drawn in his notebook.

Because Xingchen does not have a separate office for the boss.

So this conference room became half of Chu Chen's office.

Aside from his own work, Chu Chen spends most of his time in this conference room "meeting" with various work groups or interviewing new employees.

Therefore, this meeting room is affectionately known among Xingchen's employees as the "Dean of Students' Office."

Chu Chen took a step back.

Su Qing naturally moved forward.

Today, the girl was still wearing that black and white dress, her slender and straight legs encased in white over-the-knee socks.

To be honest, this kind of outfit is actually quite difficult for the average person to pull off.

But when Su Qing wore it, it looked very suitable.

"So beautiful, is this a new character illustration?"

Su Qing glanced at Chu Chen's notebook.

The things drawn in the notebook were actually not very complicated. Chu Chen drew a simple computer window and a mobile phone window in the notebook.

And a 95-level character illustration was drawn on it.

Chu Chen nodded, turned around and was about to say something when he suddenly realized that Su Qing was standing a little too close.

To see the contents of the notebook, Su Qing leaned slightly forward.

Chu Chen then subconsciously took a step back.

"Uh, well, that's right, it's a desktop pet, or you could call it an interactive wallpaper."

Chu Chen's idea to create interactive wallpapers wasn't something he came up with on a whim; it was an idea he'd had for a long time.

His idea stemmed from a desire to create a traffic portal for Xingchen.

Traffic entry point.

This word sounds very high-class.

When this term is mentioned, most people probably immediately think of Tencent's QQ chat software and short videos, which weren't very popular at the time.

However, this word doesn't have to be so sophisticated.

Strictly speaking, anything that users can see can be a traffic entry point.

Following this line of thought, what are the things that a player will see 100% of the time every day?
A: Wallpaper for computer or mobile phone
This is similar to how the first thing a person does upon waking up is to open their eyes.

Whenever you play a game, you first need to turn on your computer or phone, right? So, what's the first thing you see when you turn on your computer or phone?

Wallpaper, of course.

This is actually a huge traffic entry point, and also an entry point with successful cases.

Wallpaper capitalized on this demand, selling 18 copies worldwide within three months of its release in 72. While the explosive popularity of this paid live wallpaper app was partly due to its "workshop" which allowed users to view suggestive content, its success was also partly attributed to this.

However, it is undeniable that the emergence of Wallpaper did fill a market gap, and the "Deer's Cry" project launched by miHoYo later also gained a lot of traffic.

However, in 16, live wallpapers were still in their infancy.

in short.

The market is huge.

Chu Chen could gain a large number of users simply by replicating Wallpaper and pushing it out for free.

In my previous life, it was at the age of 23.

The wallpaper software industry, though seemingly insignificant, is worth tens of billions of yuan.

The number of installations for live wallpaper apps is in the hundreds of millions.

Even PC-based, paid software like Genki Launcher and UPUPO have 60 to 70 million registered users and tens of millions of daily active users.

This is because their software is designed for profit.

If Chu Chen completely disregards profitability and focuses solely on user scale, building a wallpaper app with tens of millions of users based on the existing popularity of "Final Front" would be a breeze.

With some effort, a scale of hundreds of millions is not impossible.

However, Chu Chen did not choose to directly replicate Wallpaper.

The reason is very simple.

A large number of users does not necessarily mean that the software can become a traffic portal. Otherwise, 360, with its huge number of installations, would not have ended up in its current state.

Traffic entry point, traffic entry point.

The key is not only traffic, but also the entry point.

Chu Chen's goal is not just to provide players with free wallpaper software.

He also wants to use this software to achieve his desired goals.

Based on this logic, Chu Chen came up with the idea of ​​"interactive wallpaper".

"Shouldn't we contact Big Bear and the others for this? I'm just the copywriter."

Su Qing glanced at Chu Chen's plan.

My first thought was that this thing didn't seem to have anything to do with her. After all, dynamic wallpapers are just software and art development, while she was the copywriter.

Do you expect me to write copy for live wallpapers?

You know what, Su Qing actually guessed one thing correctly.

Chu Chen called her over, and it really was about the copywriting.

Do you know what love is?

Love Follows, a game that most people have heard of but haven't played.

This game, released on the NDS in 09, was once the dating game that introduced a generation to romance.

The gameplay of Love Follows is not complicated; it simply gives players an interactive virtual girlfriend.

Its core selling point is that the game is completely synchronized with real time, allowing players to interact with their virtual girlfriends based on real-world time.

For example, going to school together, chatting during lunch break, and special events will be triggered during holidays such as Christmas.

It can be considered the culmination of interactive dating games.

Many later interactive anime-style games also drew inspiration from this, such as Papergames' "Love and Producer".

"Of course I've heard of it. You mean you want to make this interactive wallpaper the kind that follows you wherever you go?"

"Yes, but not completely."

Given Starry Sky Games' current development capabilities, it would be quite difficult to create an interactive wallpaper software like the "Love Follows" type.

It's not just the technical difficulties in development, but also the inherent flaws of wallpaper-type software.

If too many functions are added, it will inevitably lead to increased power consumption and increased resource usage, and the increase in power consumption and resource usage will lead to increased resource usage.

This will naturally create barriers to entry.

A competitor can easily defeat you with just one sentence: "It's easy to use, but it drains the battery too quickly."

Therefore, it is necessary to strike a balance in this process.

(End of this chapter)