Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 359 Chu Chen's Management Science

Their existence, along with the marketing tactic of offering the first month for free, has gradually become popular on StarTap, with many casual game developers also using this tactic.

These game developers, along with StarTap itself, have essentially allowed StarTap to gradually occupy a niche in the Android game platform ecosystem, both domestically and globally.

Following A5 Studio is the newly established A6: Xinghai Studio. The core of this team consists of Zhou Xun and more than a dozen core members he brought from Pathea Technology.

Their mission is singular: to transform "The Wandering Earth" from a project proposal into a sci-fi game that will be released simultaneously with the film and captivate all players.

Next, we'll talk about the Japanese side.

Starry Night Games has two development teams in Japan.

One is B1: Moonlight Studio, led by Shiokawa, which includes some people who were acquired from DEWORK and is mainly responsible for the daily operation and version updates of FGO.

B2: Ishii Studio, led by Akira Ishii, with the core team consisting of Akira Ishii and others recruited from Vanillaware and other companies. They are currently developing *Touhou Gensokyo*.

Although Fuller of StarCraft America wants to develop games, the StarCraft game engine is still under development, and Fuller cannot spare the time.

Therefore, Starry Sky Europe and America's branches are mainly focused on operations.

Besides these game studios, Starry Sky also has a large number of affiliated studios, such as the rapidly developing Starry Sky E-commerce Studio and Starry Sky Animation Studio.
It can be said that Chu Chen has a personality that earns a lot of money and dares to spend it.

This caused the expansion speed of Starry Night Games to become quite exaggerated.

As the company's expansion rate became equally exaggerated, the difficulty of management also increased. Chu Chen quickly realized this after the project entered the double-digit era.

It's important to know that Chu Chen not only manages the studios mentioned above, but also has recording/animation/engine studios under Starry Sky.

Moreover, as the number of staff increases, the administrative, legal, and financial departments also become increasingly large.

This is not finished.

In addition to coordinating with the internal studio, Chu Chen also has to work with the third-party studios that Xingchen has heavily invested in, so you can imagine the workload involved.

Even though Star is currently on the rise and has the positive buff of "startup cohesion", the management pressure is still not small.

Chu Chen may be an expert in game development, but when it comes to company management, he's practically clueless.

Fortunately, Chu Chen knew what his strengths were, so his way of solving management problems was to make the most of them.

The gaming industry is a rather "special" industry, in that production costs are relatively clear to those in the know.

Whether production costs are clear is a critical issue for all companies. In the past, many large companies spent hundreds of millions to develop something that turned out to be a mess.

Another example is XPeng Motors' revival, which was essentially caused by the top management's inability to control production costs.

Chu Chen has nothing else.

In this area, he is truly strong. Based on the logic that any cat that can catch mice is a good cat, Chu Chen has developed a unique "1-on-1" monthly reporting system since the beginning of 17.

Every month, Chu Chen would arrange the shifts.

For example, if studios A2, A3, and A5 are coming to give a report this afternoon, he will take some time a day in advance to read the monthly reports of these three studios.

Wait until the afternoon of the next day.

The main creators of the three studios would take turns reporting to Chu Chen's office. The reporting time was usually not very long, only about an hour.

For smaller studios, such as animation studios, the timeframe might be even shorter. Even Japanese studios like Li Suhao, Shiokawa, and Ishii Akira require in-person presentations at the company.

The core of this management mechanism is that Chu Chen understands game development, so even if there is only one monthly report, Chu Chen can directly extract a lot of information from it.

Because Chu Chen understood this, the monthly report was no longer just a formality.

Just like a teacher, even if they encounter a student they have never met before, they can roughly tell from the test paper whether the student has any problems and where the problems are.

This "monthly exam paper" system not only solves the progress management problem for Starry Night Games' internal game studios, but it is also applicable to the third-party core studios invested by Starry Night Games.

For the heads of each studio, this "monthly exam" was both painful and exhilarating.

The pain stemmed from the fact that Chu Chen at this moment truly resembled a grueling university professor, meticulously correcting each section of his "graduate students'" theses.

It's refreshing because Chu Chen can really solve problems. There's nothing more satisfying than reporting a problem directly to your boss and having your boss give you a solution right away.

So much so that there are always a few days like that every month.

The rest area outside Chu Chen's office forms a unique scenic view.

Several simple sofas are arranged in a staggered manner. On ordinary days, these sofas are where employees rest at noon, but whenever it is time to report on work, this place becomes the waiting area outside the "examination room".

Just like now.
At 9 a.m., the heads of several different studios, some sitting and some standing, each with a laptop in hand, each with a slightly different expression.

Guan Lei of A3 Meteor Studio was looking down at his tablet, repeatedly revising his PowerPoint presentation. This time, he was planning to make empty promises to Chu Chen, wanting to set up another team within A3 to develop a martial arts game.

The main reason he had this idea was because the success of "Floating Dreams" made him really eager to try it.

On the other hand, Jiao Xiaofei seemed more relaxed. The "Floating Dream Song" demo went smoothly, and "Cat Cat" also sold well, so he wasn't under too much pressure.

He was whispering something to the head of Starry Sky Animation Studio at that moment.

However, overall, most people still looked quite serious.

In fact, normally speaking, they are all people who have experienced the ups and downs of big companies, and reporting their work is a routine matter for them.

But reporting to Chu Chen felt completely different. Other bosses looked at KPIs and results, but Chu Chen looked at the process, the logic, and the thinking hidden beneath the data and words.

"Fishball, you're here too? So many people are giving reports today?"

Jiao Xiaofei saw the two people walking from the elevator entrance and greeted them with a smile.

"Brother Jiao."

Upon seeing Jiao Xiaofei, Yuwan quickly greeted him and then offered an explanation.

"I'm not here to give a report. There's supposed to be a big meeting this afternoon, so I came to ask you guys for some advice beforehand..."

"Is there a large meeting this afternoon?"

"Yes."

"No wonder, I was wondering why I saw Umineko in the animation studio earlier."

(End of this chapter)