Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 346 Hindsight

It's no exaggeration to say that when Dawei heard Chu Chen say that Starry Sky also planned to make an open world, his mind went completely blank.

It felt like walking down the street when a large truck suddenly crashed into you.

Even a fool would know that after consolidating its existing market position, StarCraft would definitely move towards 3D games, and the anime-style rendering of "Cat Cat" has already shown some signs of this.

But an idea is just an idea; it's only when you actually hear Chu Chen say those words that you realize the truth.

The impact was quite significant.

Furthermore, Chu Chen explicitly mentioned the words "open world"!
"Mr. Chu, your joke has gone a bit too far."

The few words that Dawei managed to squeeze out were even hoarser than he had expected.

"Isn't your reaction a bit too exaggerated?"

Chu Chen seemed somewhat surprised. He looked at Dawei's wary expression, as if saying, "Don't come any closer," and found it rather amusing.

He was indeed half-joking when he said that, but he wasn't entirely joking either.

As the Star Engine matures and large-scale projects like Fate/stay night gradually get on track, coupled with the accelerated pace of mobile hardware upgrades, the game's development has become increasingly mature.

The timing is ripe for StarCraft to launch a large-scale 3D game.

However, Chu Chen was also a little conflicted at this moment.

There were several "versions" of the open world in the previous game, among which Genshin Impact was the earliest and most successful.

However, Chu Chen was actually a little conflicted about whether or not to create his own version of Genshin Impact.

Why was Genshin Impact successful?
This is a very broad question, and there are many answers, such as high-quality anime-style art, the freedom of open-world exploration, and innovative storytelling.

But... these things are mostly just appearances.

In Chu Chen's view, the success of Genshin Impact is due to many "external factors" in addition to its own quality.

On the one hand, Genshin Impact successfully attracted a large number of players who had left traditional MMORPGs by offering a "single-player" and "non-pay-to-win" experience on mobile devices.

In 20, players were already fed up with the daily grind of games, which felt like clocking in at work. They also had long harbored resentment towards the system's reliance on "numerical values" and the gameplay's insistence on "pay-to-win" tactics.

At this point, Genshin Impact removed strong social elements, eliminated direct PvP, and weakened dungeon team-ups, returning the focus of the experience to the players themselves.

Players are no longer bound by guilds and teams; they can explore the world at their own pace and develop their favorite characters.

For players who are exhausted by traditional online games but are used to free-to-play, long-term progression models, the transition couldn't be smoother.

In hindsight, Genshin Impact's success was inevitable in its previous timeline, in a world without stars.

However, that's precisely the problem.

Initially, Chu Chen's idea for open-world games was indeed to optimize Genshin Impact, follow Genshin Impact's path, and leave Genshin Impact with no way to go.

But when it came to actually getting the project approved, he wavered.

Chu Chen had to consider that even after the game was officially launched, it would be at least 20 years before it was finally released, thanks to his influence.

Is the gaming industry still the same in 2020 as it was in the previous life?

Hard to say.

In different circumstances, even if someone releases a game similar to Genshin Impact first, can it succeed?
do not know.

In particular, Chu Chen, as the boss of Xingchen, is quite sensitive to the general trend of the market.

Taking the revenue of "Honkai Impact 3" and "Onmyoji" in this timeline as examples, the revenue of these two games declined faster than in the previous life, although the speed was not obvious.

Looking at absolute numbers alone, it seems that the current market, and Chinese players in particular, haven't been significantly impacted by the Stars.

But in reality, that's not the case at all.

Because Stardust brought not only these two games to Japan.

Moreover, since the emergence of the stars, the growth rate of the number of users in the current Chinese ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) market is faster and more intense than in the previous life.

Under such circumstances, the revenue of these two games should theoretically be higher than in the previous life.

The truth is quite the opposite.

Under these circumstances, Chu Chen became more cautious about Starry Sky's first large-scale mobile game, and he ultimately gave a direction for the project.

It extracts the core success of previous open-world games such as "Genshin Impact" and "The Tide" and adds its own core elements.

Features like 'single-player mode,' 'de-pay-to-win', 'main story re-enactment,' and 'high-quality graphics' were among the more successful aspects of open-world games in the previous era.

On this basis.

Whether it's Genshin Impact or Naruto, one aspect that both have "not done very well" is the "open-world gameplay."

是 的
Although many second-generation games advertise themselves as having an open world.

In essence, even if Genshin Impact and Naruto were to be made into a miniature world like Honkai Impact 3rd instead of an open world, the impact on the core gameplay experience wouldn't be that significant.

Mihoyo was actually aware of this, so later on, Honkai Impact 3rd and Zone 0 no longer adopted the open world format.

Later, open-world games like Xenoverse, which were the first to adopt this concept, also realized this, and thus open-world games in the 2.0 era have been expanding their world gameplay.

Therefore, Chu Chen's challenge lies in how to truly make good use of the open world setting.

And in this area...

In the previous life, no long-term operation game had provided an answer. "Floating Dream Song" did attempt to provide an answer, but the experience of "Floating Dream Song" is difficult to reuse.

The production capacity of 2.5D games and the production capacity of 3D games are completely different concepts.

"Fantasy Beast Palu" is also a possible approach; the previous work, "Blue Starfield" by Manjuu, used the same model.

However, whether it will succeed remains to be seen.

It was for this reason that Chu Chen casually mentioned asking Brother Dawei if he wanted to have a project brainstorming session.

But it's obvious.

David was completely unprepared.

“Our project… is still in the very early exploratory stage, it’s barely even started, there’s really nothing to discuss. Besides, as you know, the company’s internal confidentiality rules are very strict for such core projects, and I… I can’t break the rules.”

David didn't hesitate for even a second longer.

He directly declined Chu Chen's offer.

"Okay, I understand. It's a trade secret."

He shrugged, his expression as relaxed as if he had just asked, "How's the weather today?" showing no embarrassment at being rejected.

After he finished speaking, he glanced at his watch.

"It's getting late, I have to go now, I still have some things to do at the company."

(End of this chapter)