Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 28 Decision-making
Why is Xiang Lixuan so optimistic about Xingchen? Why is he so confident that Tencent will double the revenue after taking over?
We need to understand his confidence.

First, you need to know what 60 daily active users means!
Daily active users (DAU) is the most telling indicator of a game's real-time popularity.

In a horizontal comparison, let's not even talk about comparing it with anime games, let's just take CrossFire, which was still popular at the time and had 300 million mouse clicks.

With 300 million registered users, its daily active users are less than one million.

The online games "A Chinese Odyssey" (127 million views), "Fantasy Westward Journey" (227 million views), and "Hearthstone" (117 million views) are all popular.
Which of these "reciting menus" games isn't a mainstay of each company's business?

Not to mention, the number of players in "Final Front" was still increasing at this time.

The game already has 60 daily active users, and the number is still growing!

Moreover, the increase was not low.

These outrageous figures, coupled with StarCraft's current "wasteful" operating model, have resulted in StarCraft's valuation becoming increasingly high.

At the same time, the success of Final Frontier has also made other manufacturers eager to follow suit.

From their perspective, the current version of "Final Front" is really not very technically sophisticated.

Following Tencent's recent announcement of its withdrawal from the game, NetEase also stated that the upcoming "Onmyoji" is already developing an auto chess gameplay mode. It is said that its development team has signed a pledge to maintain the same release date even with the addition of the auto chess gameplay mode.

In addition, established manufacturers such as Xishan Giant and Wanmei have also announced their plans.

Although the emergence of these games has greatly displeased players who like "Final Frontline," a meme titled "Clumsy Copy" has even circulated among players.

The creator of the meme is unknown.

The image depicts a small figure with the Final Front icon standing in the center, surrounded by a group of "artists" bearing the logos of various manufacturers, each drawing on their own canvas.

This meme is used by gamers to express their dissatisfaction with domestic manufacturers' "borrowing" of content.

Although in today's society, copying and pasting is a favorite trick of capital.

But for ordinary people, this clumsy copying is also the source of many people's dissatisfaction with these so-called "big companies".

This has led to many people using this meme, even if they don't play the game, to prove that "big companies" only know how to copy.

To some extent.

This meme also boosted the popularity of "Final Frontline," as many casual players may not have played the game for various reasons.

However, they already had a vague impression of the game in their minds.

Incidentally, because so many companies copied it, players of "Final Front" also developed a strange sense of superiority.

There's a sense of superiority in the feeling that "I'm playing the official version, and all these junks are pirated," which in turn has garnered Starry Sky Games a lot of player support.

Under almost every other developer's announcement that their game will be released in an auto chess mode, there are fans of Final Frontline praising the merits of Final Frontline.

Even on Bilibili, someone made a video comparing StarCraft's Auto Chess game with Tencent's Auto Chess game. StarCraft's game had a clean and uncluttered interface, while Tencent's game featured a bunch of glittering recharge packages.

This video also went viral, reaching the top ten trending topics on Bilibili.

however.

The players' jokes and support for StarCraft cannot influence the decisions of capital.

Just like right now.

The reason for this meeting held by Tencent's investment department was not for anything else, not even because of Xingchen.

Rather, it's because there are too many projects copying "Final Frontline." NetEase's auto-chess product is even launching in June, and Tencent needs to release a corresponding product before June, otherwise it will lose the opportunity to copy Xingchen. Based on this crisis, Xiang Lixuan's idea is to give him more budget; he's confident he can reach an investment cooperation agreement with Xingchen before June.

Wan Wanggang, however, believes that a cooperation agreement with Li Xuan is impossible.

Since cooperation cannot be reached.

Then change your investment target.

Since Final Frontline was unavailable, they turned to the next best thing and sought investment in another anthropomorphic gun girl game, namely Gun Girls.

There's a joke that's been circulating in the industry for a long time.

If you want your game to get investment from Tencent, don't just submit a bunch of PowerPoint presentations; Tencent won't understand them anyway.

You should tell Tencent.

"I copied Three Kingdoms Kill!!" "Okay, Hero Kill, right? Project approved!!"

"I copied KartRider!" "Great! Tencent Speed ​​Racer, huh? Project approved!!"

"I copied Rise of Kingdoms!" "Great, it's Under the Grand Strategy, right! Project approved!!"

Although it's a joke, it's relevant to Tencent, or rather, to China's internet giants.

A benchmark is definitely a fast track for their investment approval.

Now, "Final Battlefront" is the benchmark, and when they can't beat "Final Battlefront", "GunGirls" rises in status.

In addition, there have indeed been investment opportunities for "Gun Girls" recently.

The conflict between its developers and operators is already common knowledge in the industry.

But even so.

Xiang Lixuan continued to argue his case based on reason.

It's important to understand that competition within large companies is no less intense than outside. If Wanwang Gang manages to acquire "Gun Girls," their next step will definitely be to launch auto chess as soon as possible and push it out across the board.

Coincidentally, both "Gun Girl" and the first chapter of "Final Battlefront" are scheduled for release in May.

Tencent's promotional resources are limited, and Wanwang has already used them, so he can't fulfill his promise to Xingchen Games.

Xiang Lixuan insisted on investing in Xingchen for two reasons: firstly, because he was involved in the project, and secondly, because he felt he was getting closer to success.

Chu Chen visited Tencent at least three or four times in the past month.

He often expressed his admiration for Tencent Capital and also became very familiar with the developers of another Tencent ACG game studio, "Azure Wars".

This gave Xiang Lixuan the feeling that he would soon take over Xingchen.

That's why today's meeting lasted from morning until 6 p.m.

However.
At 6 p.m., Xiang Lixuan called Chu Chen again in front of everyone and received a reply that he hoped to discuss the details in May.

The scales inevitably tipped in Wan Wanggang's favor.

For Tencent, decision-making should be based on cold, hard data, not uncertain promises.

(End of this chapter)