Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 373 The Feast of the False Holy Grail

Like I said before.

Just like the entry of domestic ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) games into Japan in my previous life, Starry Sky's development in Japan has been relatively smooth over the past six months, without encountering any problems.

There are minor issues, but the overall direction is correct, and besides, Xingchen isn't "stingy" (meaning their influence is not stingy).

Especially after FGO became popular, the influence of StarCraft in Japan expanded, affecting more industries, and this stable snowballing trend has basically taken shape.

So when he heard Li Suhao say that, he was really a little surprised.

“They’re targeting our new version. Starting last week, a lot of negative comments about us suddenly appeared on mainstream platforms like Twitter, 2ch, and NicoNico.”

Li Suhao spoke very quickly, clearly indicating that he was holding back a lot of anger.

The version update time for "FGO" is also a major update every two months, and the next major version update will be the remastered anniversary celebration in early October.

Therefore, in September, the Japanese branch began its regular promotional activities.

This promotion actually caused a problem. In this major update of "FGO", there is a PVP gameplay mode.

This PVP gameplay can be explained in one sentence: it's a variant of the FATE version of "AmongUs," also known as "Space Werewolf."

The reason for implementing this gameplay is mainly because StarCraft's internal "product positioning" for FGO in Japan has undergone some changes.

This "product positioning"

This is related to the current operation of FGO in Japan.

Although FGO had high revenue and a great influence in Japan in its previous life, even at its peak, the game's daily active users in Japan were less than a million.

The reason why FGO has such high revenue is because fans of the game are willing to pay.

Eighteen years ago, the Japanese game information website Appbank released the results of a survey on the total amount of money spent on the popular mobile game "Fate/Grand Order" throughout 2018.

In this survey, a staggering 20.6% of respondents reported spending over 20 yen on in-game purchases.
Although this is just a poll on one website, it offers a glimpse into the bigger picture.

In addition, Shiokawa's famous "abandonment motto" from his previous life can also be clearly seen, indicating that FGO in his previous life started from that time.

They're already focusing on existing customers and centering their operations around "heavy spenders".

Essentially.

This is similar to some Three Kingdoms games in China. Why do so many Three Kingdoms games release characters like Zhuge Liang and Guan Yu that cost thousands of dollars to obtain?

It's because there really are people in this world who are willing to spend money on anything you dare to spend.

Chu Chen himself knew of a very outrageous real case.

That was around 12. It was a relatively unknown Three Kingdoms strategy web game. There wasn't much to say about the game itself; it was just a reskinned web game.

In this game, when the server opened, I encountered a rich guy who didn't have any other hobbies except for an almost obsessive fanaticism for Zhuge Liang.

According to his gaming logic, if it's a Three Kingdoms game, he absolutely needs Zhuge Liang. As a result, he spent over 10,000 yuan and still didn't get him. He refused to believe it and spent tens of thousands more, but still didn't get him.

Anyone who played browser games back then knows that once you spent a certain amount of money, you'd get a dedicated customer service representative to check on you.

The young woman called, but before she could even speak, the rich man roared, "Damn it! Stop talking nonsense and just tell me, how much money do I need to summon Zhuge Liang?!"

Then the development team was dumbfounded, because in the current operational plan, Zhuge Liang was not even implemented in the game!

When Chu Chen first learned about this case, he thought it was quite absurd. But after truly getting involved in the gaming industry, he realized that it was not absurd at all.

Why do so many games prefer to cater to "heavy spender" players?
It's because there are real players, and a group of them, who are willing to pay for it.

Of course, every choice comes at a price. When you choose to cater to heavy spenders, the number of regular players will naturally decrease sharply, and what's really ridiculous is...
Once your daily and monthly active users drop to a certain number, no matter how much you try to attract heavy spenders, these players will still leave.
Therefore, on this world line.

Chu Chen's choice was to prioritize scale and daily active users. Under this operational strategy, the revenue of FGO in this timeline only increased by 10 to 20% compared to the previous life.

However, the core logic behind this growth is that after the player base increases, the profit growth is achieved through high sales volume with low profit margins.

Therefore, the number of players in the Starry Night version of FGO in Japan is almost double that of its predecessor.

Daily active users can generally be maintained at around 150 million, and in the early stages of version updates, they can reach around 300 million. This number is quite exaggerated when compared to Japan's population.

As the number of players increases, FGO is naturally growing as well.

For a game to remain popular, it needs to continuously release new content.

The same applies to FGO. In addition to releasing new chapters in a step-by-step manner, just like a novel, it also maintains a high daily active user count in order to cater to the preferences of more players.

The gameplay also needs to be updated.

Over the course of the year, some classic gameplay modes, such as the "Imaginary Number Maze," have been updated several times.

At the same time, some new gameplay elements will be added, and then it will be determined whether to make them permanent based on player preferences. This approach has been established in "Final Front".

The advantage of this approach is that even if the new gameplay in this version fails, it won't prevent players from coming back in the next new version to try out new gameplay.

There are downsides too, namely that developers will be under more pressure and cannot slack off.

After all, if they can't consistently produce fun gameplay, then everything from top to bottom might be "optimized" out.

In a typical company, being laid off is simply being laid off, but in Xingchen...
Especially after 17, Xingchen has implemented independent financial accounting for its studios, and its year-end bonus and performance evaluation system is much clearer. Anyone who has received a bonus...
No, you don't even need to have received it once. Just do the math yourself, and you'll know how outrageous the year-end bonus can be. If this is optimized...
That would be a real disaster.

And most importantly, Starry Sky is not like other companies that need to "sell".

As the founder, Chu Chen's control and prestige over the company are quite extraordinary. It is no exaggeration to say that, apart from Chu Chen, no one in the company is irreplaceable.

Under such pressure, even the FGO Japan team dared to innovate, and Chu Chen also suggested that they could try taking a "social route".

To further expand the player base of FGO in Japan.

This led to the initial concept of the game, titled "The Feast of the False Holy Grail".

This plan was initially conceived as a derivative game, but in order to avoid IP copyright issues and attract new players, Chu Chen ultimately chose the "auto chess" mode.

The gameplay of "The Feast of the Pseudo-Holy Grail" is actually quite simple. You can think of it as a variant of the previous game "AmongUs," which is "Space Werewolf."

(End of this chapter)