Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 358 Practicing Internal Energy

The first week of September saw a somewhat "bizarre" shift in the gaming world.

From Japanese media reporting that StarCraft Games earns hundreds of billions of yen a month, to domestic media claiming that StarCraft Games is about to "surpass" Tencent, this meme has gradually begun to circulate.

Although those in the know understand that this is actually a "black swan" event for StarCraft's non-gaming business.

Regardless, it is true that Starry Sky possesses funding "comparable" to Tencent's.

Given Xingchen's current gaming platform, distribution channels, and reputation among players, many media outlets are already "predicting" that Xingchen will replace Tencent in a few years and become the leading game company in China.

Suddenly, Starry Night Games became the "elephant in the room."

Moreover, some people actually began to believe that StarCraft might surpass Tencent, to the point that Tencent's stock price fluctuated. However, as the center of the storm, StarCraft remained surprisingly calm.

Chu Chen rejected the operations department's plan to "cool down" the situation.

His reason is simple.

"When the Americans say you have nuclear weapons, you better actually have them."

Since the media has already started hyping it up, even if the hype cools down, it's unlikely to cool down much further. So why not use this hype as a guide and strive towards that goal?

When everyone believes you are, then you are, even if you aren't.

So while the outside world was bustling and noisy, Xingchen was frantically practicing his "internal strength."

In early September, Chu Chen completed the internal studio adjustments at Starry Sky, reorganizing the current Starry Sky studios and determining their development direction.

It's also interesting to say.

The main reason for this studio restructuring is not due to any problems with the development team, but rather to streamline the backend, finance, and administration departments.
Because of the independent financial accounting system of the studios, when there were not many studios, each studio was like a branch office with its own financial accounting and auditing.
However, as the number of studios increases, the back-end departments inevitably become bloated and inefficient, and financial independence can easily lead to a lot of nonsense and trivial matters.

For example, the studio behind games like "Final Frontline" exudes an atmosphere of "being rich and powerful," with all kinds of budget requests being maximized.

Meanwhile, other studios that hadn't launched yet were like a "beggar gang".

While the profit-sharing system did initially have the core purpose of motivating the studio, it is, after all, a studio, not a branch office.

Ultimately, Chu Chen reorganized the backend department and also reorganized the frontend game studio, determining its development direction.

These adjustments began at the end of August and were basically implemented by the beginning of September. The advantages of a newly established dynasty and the agility of a small boat were still very obvious at this time.

After the final adjustments.

Starry Games has nearly ten game development teams worldwide.

They are A1: Star Studio, directly managed by Chu Chen, and the core team consists of Star Studio's veterans.

As the largest studio under Xingchen, it is divided into several subgroups.

The Final Team's main task is to continue developing *Final Frontline* and its spin-offs. Currently in development is *Final Frontline: Squad*, a game incorporating survivor-like, roguelike, and upgrade elements.

There's also the Micro Era team, whose main task is developing the game "Micro Era".

A2: Floating Dream Studio, currently headed by Jiao Xiaofei, with core team members from Tencent. Their main work is developing *Floating Dream Long Song*, its spin-off game *Bag Hero*, and new content for *Cat Cat*. A3: Meteor Studio, currently headed by Guan Lei, with a core team from Meteor Butterfly Sword. Their main development is *Destiny: Infinite Grail*. In addition, following the explosive popularity of *PUBG* this year, Guan Lei is also working on a preliminary project and technical research for a martial arts battle royale game.

A5: New Entertainment Studio is a studio that spun off from the original StarTap game platform's casual game development team. Currently, its main work is developing mini-games for StarTap.

It's also a classic 9.9 yuan mini-game.

Although this studio may not seem particularly remarkable within the overall studio system, it is a very important studio for Xingchen.

The team now has more than 100 members.

Since its launch on TapTap, StarCraft has released a new "mini-game" every two to three months. In addition to launching new games, they are also responsible for adding DLC ​​to games that have already been released.

For example, the popular games from last year, such as "Jump Jump", "Embroidery Needle" and "Doll", have now released eight DLCs.

Some of the games they developed were ideas provided by Chu Chen, while others were selected internally by the team.
For example, the game "Starry Sky Beast Chess" released in June this year is based on the traditional "Beast Chess" gameplay, but it shifts the focus from PVP.

It was changed to a "level-based" system similar to "Happy Match".

It can be understood as an endgame game of Chinese chess, with different chessboards, terrains, and special conditions added to the simple rules of animal chess, allowing players to progress through levels one by one.

The art style has also been upgraded accordingly.

After its release, the game garnered significant attention, easily surpassing 10 million downloads in its first week.

By this point, Chu Chen could be fairly certain that Star Tap was a sure thing, since Star Chess was only a 6 to 7 out of 10 game.

The fact that downloads can easily exceed ten million through Xingchen's channels is proof in itself.

Although...
The fundamental reason why these games have tens of millions of downloads worldwide is that these 9.9 yuan games uphold the tradition of Starry Sky.

That is, you can receive it for free during the first month of its release.

Whether you play it or not is another matter, but you should still claim it. However, claiming the first month for free does not mean that Starry Night Games is doing charity.

These games are also profitable.

Although many people once believed that "once a game is given away for free, no one will buy it,"...

However, taking "Jump Jump" as an example, after being free for the first month, it was free until August of this year.

In just over a year, it has sold nearly 4 million copies of the base game and 8 DLCs worldwide, totaling more than 30 million copies.

While the base game is priced at 9.9 yuan and is frequently discounted, the average price of each DLC ranges from 0.9 yuan to 6.9 yuan.

Although the price is low, if you sell a lot of them, even a small game can easily generate hundreds of millions in revenue a year.

In addition, StarCraft boasts a large lineup of casual games, which has grown from its initial explosive growth to now having 10 games.

Occasionally, there are also blockbuster hits, such as "Travel Frog," which was launched in April this year and was a "strange" blockbuster. All these games combined...

The revenue it contributes to StarCraft in a year is no less than that of "Final Front".

(End of this chapter)