Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 312 This thing is a bit strange

Cao Yongqiang quickly picked up his phone and opened the large group chat with several hundred people.

Sure enough, the latest messages were all posted by his boss, General Manager Luo, who also tagged several key project leaders of Tianya Mingyue Dao, including Cao Yongqiang.

"Everyone should pay attention to yesterday's competitor product launch and analyze whether it poses a threat to us."

"Competitor's product launch?"

When Cao Yongqiang saw this sentence, he was stunned for a moment.

He turned to look at Chen Ming, who also looked bewildered.

"What's going on? Does Tianya Mingyue Dao have a new competitor?"

"Could it be that NetEase is brewing some big surprise? But wait, I haven't heard of any martial arts projects from them recently."

"Who could it be? Has Wanmei appeared in the world of Jade Dynasty??"

"What the heck is Starry Sky Games?"

After scrolling through the records again, Cao Yongqiang almost blurted it out.

The name is Starry Night Games.

Cao Yongqiang certainly knew about it, after all, it was known as the black swan of the global game market in 2016, but in his opinion, this black swan was indeed black.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with him.

The Arctic Working Group also had no plans for anime-style games, so naturally they didn't pay much attention to Final Frontline. Therefore, Cao Yongqiang was completely baffled after seeing this message.

He's a developer of anime-style games, how could he possibly cross over and make a martial arts MMO?

I was puzzled, but since President Luo had spoken, it must not be without reason.

He took a deep breath, replied to General Manager Luo in the group, and said that he would organize a competitive product analysis meeting for the team immediately.

Only then did he suppress his disdain and click on the link.

The link redirects to a video playback interface. The video's cover features a white-haired girl in ancient costume with pigtails, holding a long sword and having a sharp look in her eyes, against a background of ink-wash style landscape.

"It looks quite professional..."

Cao Yongqiang muttered something to himself and pressed play.

Initially, Cao Yongqiang clicked on the video with a purely sarcastic attitude, especially when he saw that "Floating Dreams" was actually a 2.5D perspective game, a type of martial arts game that had been eliminated from the market several years ago.

However..
The more he looked, the more surprised he became.

Of course, he wasn't surprised by the various details in the game, because these details were completely incomprehensible to him.

"Is this a single-player game? What threat does that pose?"

Although it's a martial arts game, in 17 in China, the ratio of single-player to online game users was estimated to be 1:9, which is an overestimation, even for a martial arts game made by Starry Sky Games.

Cao Yongqiang didn't think the other side could make a splash.

"It seems to be a long-term, service-based online game, similar to Terminal Battlefront."

"Huh!? It's free???"

Upon hearing that the game was a long-term service game, Cao Yongqiang sat up straight, his entire demeanor instantly becoming serious.

no way.

You should know that the term "long-term service-oriented online game" was coined by Xingchen.

Originally, this was a term Chu Chen frequently used in his reports to the "official" authorities to distinguish Starry Sky Games from other game companies in terms of their business strategies.

After all, for those who need to hear reports, you can't understand anything about spending money on in-game purchases.

To put it another way, it's about low profit margins and high sales volume; not pursuing short-term windfalls, but rather focusing on long-term operations on an annual basis. The other party will understand. Because many companies in real life actually do this; Xingchen simply incorporated this concept into the game.

And as the stars gradually became famous.

This term gradually appeared in the media and in articles analyzing why Xingchen was successful. Subsequently, this term gradually became a symbol of "conscience".

Later on, many domestic game developers started promoting their games as "long-term service online games."

Including "Moonlight Blade," which, during its anniversary celebration this year, proclaimed its goal as a "long-term service-oriented online game."

of course
Players aren't stupid.

Although many people are calling for it, only Xingchen has truly gained recognition so far.

This understanding exists not only in the world of anime and manga games, but also in a wider range of contexts, which is why Chu Chen demonstrated this demo.

Although it seems to be a completely different type of game from Tianya Mingyue Dao, and the monetization strategies are also completely different, the core theme of the other game is indeed Wuxia (martial arts).

And it's a free martial arts game.

this point is very important.

Because it's free, it means there are no barriers to entry, which means there's no cost of trial and error. So even if it's 2.5D, even if someone has never played StarCraft games before, they might give it a try just because of the word "wuxia" (martial arts).

After that, Cao Yongqiang went to browse the forums related to Tianya Mingyue Dao and the discussions on Fumeng Changge.

Then the more I looked, the more surprised I became.

"This thing is a bit strange! We need to report this to the boss."

Cao Yongqiang had this idea.

This is because the release of the PV for "Floating Dreams" quickly triggered a "Burning Wind" effect in the domestic game industry.

This is a very complex and coincidental chain.

First, since Final Frontiers is a game with PVP gameplay, the composition of the Final Frontiers player base is very complex under the influence of auto chess.

Or, to put it another way, for all games with over a million daily active users.

The complexity of the player base is a fundamental requirement; without complexity, it's impossible to achieve a million daily active users.

Secondly, besides "Final Battlefront," StarCraft also has "PUBG" and "Fate/Grand Order." StarCraft's casual players on TapTap can be said to cover a wide range of players.

Within this large group, quite a few are themselves "victims of domestically produced online games."

After watching the PV of "Floating Dreams and Long Songs", this group of people will not directly compare it with current domestic martial arts online games such as "JX3" and "Tianya Mingyue Dao".

After all, these games and "Floating Dreams" are clearly not the same type of game.

However, from 10 to 17, various domestic martial arts games were released one after another, which objectively accelerated the overall popularity of martial arts games among players.

At the same time, it has also caused a large number of players to feel disappointed with domestically produced games.

This seems contradictory, but it's not actually that contradictory.

In this context, the martial arts flavor of "Floating Dreams" becomes very special, just like when "Black Myth" came out, you immediately found it interesting.

And it's the kind of "familiar" kind of interesting.

The same goes for "Floating Dreams". Although the game's graphics are not incredibly good, or rather, the graphics of "Floating Dreams" are just average for domestic games.

However, the art style is very well done, and it does create a strong "jianghu" (martial arts world) feel. In particular, on the official website of Xingchen's game, there is a video of a player pushing open the door of the inn.

This video is only a few dozen seconds long, but it feels very novel.

(End of this chapter)