Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 309 Wrestling
"This detail is so exciting! It allows you to wander through streets and alleys, climb over walls and enter houses, or even sneak into the palace at night, making the infiltration gameplay completely feasible."

"Freedom! This is true freedom!"

"When a game world gives you the power to break into other people's homes, believe me, the first thing most players will do is definitely not to become some kind of chivalrous hero!"

A comment appeared on the screen.

[It would be best to make the bathhouse and the girl's boudoir model more detailed (doge)]

Jiao Xiaofei couldn't help but burst out laughing when he saw this, but the video blogger obviously couldn't see the comments, so he continued to analyze the video.

"A free and realistic martial arts world has been laid out before us, but it is still missing the most crucial element—combat."

"That's right, how should we fight in this world?"

"Judging from the fleeting glimpse of sword light in the PV, the traditional stationary, casting-based, keyboard-mashing MMO combat mode has most likely been abandoned. What will it be then? Will it be an action system that responds to each move? Or a hardcore fighting style with blocking, dodging, and parrying?"

"Can we use our light-footed skills to fly to the rooftops and fire arrows at the enemies below? Can we kick an enemy off a cliff? Can we use the wine jars, tables, and chairs in the scene for interactive attacks?"

"Starry Night Games has kept all of this hidden far too well!"

"This combat system will be the final and most important piece of the puzzle that determines whether 'Floating Dreams' can achieve legendary status! If it really works, brothers, I can't even imagine it!"

"A living, breathing, seamless open world, coupled with a combat system that delivers visceral, bone-crunching blows..."

Logically speaking, no one understands games better than Jiao Xiaofei, the "producer".

However, Jiao Xiaofei was watching these videos over and over again, completely engrossed in them.

It's worth noting that in all his years in the industry, he has never worked on a project like this one, where the release of just the first promotional video generated such high anticipation from a huge number of players.

This feeling is so strange.

He still remembers when he first joined Tencent and entered his first project team, the first thing the producer told him was that as a game developer, he should not look at the game's reviews.

"Player reviews are meaningless; revenue is what matters."

For a long time, Jiao Xiaofei strongly agreed with this statement.

But now it seems that this is not the case at all.

From the celebration banquet—or rather, from the press conference—to now, he's been spending almost every spare moment today scrolling through videos and frantically reading comments.

It's just like drug addiction.

Can't stop at all.

Even now, it's the same. He just keeps watching one video after another, and before he knows how much time has passed, there's a knock on the door.

Jiao Xiaofei, holding a tablet, opened the door.

Outside the door was Niu Xiangdong, the art director and one of the main creators of "Floating Dreams".

He had originally planned to ask Jiao Xiaofei if she wanted to go for barbecue, but when he opened the door and saw Jiao Xiaofei's appearance, he was shocked.

"Brother Fei, what's wrong?"

"Oh, I'm looking at player feedback."

"Why are your eyes so red? Have you been crying?"

Did I cry?

Jiao Xiaofei rubbed the corner of his eye and found that there were indeed tears.

~~~
Time comes the next day.

The domestic internet is becoming even more lively. XGAME, which was overwhelmed by Starry Games' massive promises yesterday, is starting to exert its strength. It released two announcements that evening.

These two announcements were written in a very "thoughtful" way, using both English and traditional Chinese characters.

Nominally targeting overseas and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan players, everyone knows that this is just a smokescreen, and its true target audience is self-evident.

The announcement was also simple.

It explained how to obtain the coupons and stated that they could be used on all items without any minimum purchase requirement.

The main ways to acquire users are through user acquisition, daily check-ins, and online time – the same old methods.

Although specific mission details were not released.

After all, it won't be launched until next month, but the public opinion has really shifted from overwhelmingly praising Starry Sky to a more complex situation.

The media began to hype it up.

[Nostalgia versus reality: Which is the best solution for the Chinese game market?]

[Planning for the future while focusing on the present – ​​who will emerge victorious in the August battle?]

Do we really need a martial arts game? A veteran industry professional provides an in-depth analysis of market demand.

These articles are all very well written; they don't mention a single good thing about "Tencent" or a single bad thing about "StarCraft".

But between the lines, there's a sense that "the stars are castles in the air, while Tencent is down-to-earth."

In the article, they elevated Tencent's introduction of AAA titles to a whole new level—"introducing advanced industrial standards to the Chinese game industry," "allowing domestic players to keep pace with the world's top levels," and "forcing domestic manufacturers to produce high-quality games through market competition."

By employing a series of combined tactics, a purely commercial agency activity was transformed into a roundabout way of "learning from the barbarians to control them" to achieve national salvation.

"I think I understand now. Fujiko is saying that even though I'm distributing foreign games, I have a patriotic heart?"

"The person upstairs is right. To put it another way: Even though I'm not a good kid, I brought home someone else's good kid, so you all have to praise me."

"Isn't this just compradorism? And they talk about it in such a refined and elegant way."

Thanks to Fujiko's "good reputation," various jokes and memes have emerged in the player community, thoroughly mocking Tencent's move.

However, it must be acknowledged that Tencent's strategy did indeed work.

Debate itself generates buzz.

When a topic can spark a large-scale debate, it means that it has successfully attracted everyone's attention. The public opinion field, which was originally focused entirely on the new games in the Star Project and Floating Dream Song, has begun to change.

Moreover, the amount of real money Tencent has invested is far more than that.

Some influential streamers and video bloggers in the gaming community have also begun to change their approach.

Yesterday, they were analyzing the "Floating Dream Song" PV frame by frame and shouting "the renaissance of domestic single-player games". Today, they have started to do a plot review of "The Witcher 3" and a gameplay guide for "Nioh".

The video's title was also quite subtle.

"While waiting for 'Floating Dreams', these three masterpieces are worth experiencing again!"

While it may seem like they're satisfying players' cravings, they're actually driving traffic to the XGAME platform.

It's fair to say that Tencent's counterattack was indeed very fierce.

Indeed, on the surface, a "struggle" formation has re-emerged.

However, at a deeper level, most players are actually discussing "Floating Dreams" more, especially anime fans, which reflects this emotional bias.

(End of this chapter)