Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 424 The Dividend of the Times
Du Yuhan wasn't the only one who started cursing after playing the game for a while. The reason is simple: players aren't stupid. Plus, the marketing strategy for "Night Spirit" was to target core players with large-scale promotion.

These players are indeed "stone-eating pioneers".

At the same time, this group of people also came to "see what kind of medicine Tencent is selling".

They came fiercely, and they cursed fiercely too.

Within just two hours of its release, the official comment sections of Night Spirit on various forums were already filled with laughter and joy.

[What kind of bastard is this lord? I play games to save the world, not to clear trade routes for this fat pig!]

[Holy crap? Didn't they say the scene where you flirt with girls during the closed beta was removed? How come it's back with a reskin?]

[They deleted the parts about 'taking action,' but not the parts about 'using words' and 'using thoughts,' right? This copywriting has too much personal bias.]

What happened to the promised animation system optimization? It feels worse than Final Battlefront!

[It's been optimized! Look at that matchlock gun that you can only get by spending real money. Its skills are so cool, its range is so wide! If you think it's not smooth, it's because you haven't spent any money.]

Many players quit the game and immediately started looking for common ground with the players.

Especially for players of "Final Front," who were already unhappy with "Night Spirit," seeing the explosive word-of-mouth, they immediately started to increase their intensity.

[Oh no! I was hoping Ye Ling would get that old thief Chu Chen to give me a ten-pull, but now, after Chu Chen sees this, won't he deduct one of my ten-pulls instead?!]

This comment, posted under the official "Final Battlefront" post, became the top-rated comment within just half an hour.

This was followed by a series of replies.

[Hilarious! You know how to make a good show.]

[I didn't have a choice before, but now I want to be a good person. —Leaves the Nth player who uninstalled and reinstalled *Final Battlefront*.]

[I'm doomed, I might get a 20-pull penalty. Not only did I play, but I also bragged to my friends that Tencent was going to make a comeback. Now my friends have blocked me, saying I have terrible taste. Is this reasonable? No, it's clearly Tencent's fault!]

I declare that *Night Spirit* is undoubtedly the funniest game of the year!

If we talk about the beginning...

At first, it was just a small-scale complaint, but once the player base reached a certain size, the quantitative change led to a qualitative change.

Talented players from all walks of life began to use their most proficient methods to create comprehensive "artistic reinterpretations" of *Night Spirit*.

But Tencent is Tencent after all.

As night fell that evening, the atmosphere of online conflict intensified.

The reputation of "Night Spirit" among players and the media began to become increasingly polarized, and coupled with the popularity of "Azur Lane", the entire Internet was in complete chaos.

They're saying over here, "Yi Xian's wife is the best in the world."

They're saying over there, "If you play Tencent games again, I'll chop off your hand."

They're saying, "The girls in Azur Lane are cute."

The message said, "Sorry, Star, I need to buy a skin for 95."

The media emphasized Night Spirit's "minor innovations in the action system" and "differentiated art style."

Players are saying, "Tencent's anime-themed games are for idiots."

Tencent's public relations efforts, StarCraft's marketing campaign, players' memes, and video bloggers who stirred up the hype all contributed to the success of "Night Spirit" on its first day of release.

That evening, *Night Spirit* reluctantly released a celebratory poster boasting over a million registered players on its first day, projecting an image of booming popularity. However, despite its overwhelming success on Tencent's media platforms, *Night Spirit* failed to even surpass *Fate/Grand Order* on the Apple App Store's bestseller list, which had already seen a major update nearly two weeks prior.

Furthermore, its reputation began to rapidly decline after the game's public beta launch.

The next day, Night Spirit's Apple Store rating skyrocketed from 4.8 at launch to 3.5. Even Tencent's own WEGAME rating dropped from 8.5/10 to 6.1/10.

And this was the result of WEGAME trying to save face by giving a low score, which was deemed invalid.

pity.

Ratings can be locked, but comments cannot.

Even the "positive" reviews were almost entirely negative.

"Tencent, if you had used the money you would spend on hiring online trolls to hire a better copywriter, you wouldn't have written such an offensive storyline."

"Final Battlefront player reporting in, leaving a one-star rating. You haven't learned a single thing about surpassing your master."

"Game experience: a mess. Story: a mess. Pay-to-win experience: a mess. Assessment complete."

These ratings are actually Tencent's own fault; after all, you "surpassed your predecessors."

Even though Tencent claims that "Night Spirit" hasn't lost, everyone knows in reality that the game is rapidly heading towards its demise.

In fact, Bao Si's approach was not unexpected.

In its previous life, from 20 to 25 years ago, Tencent basically followed the "Bao Si" process for most of its games. During these five years, Tencent officially announced more than 200 games.

Ultimately, however, Tencent Games' slogan changed from "Discover Infinite Possibilities" to "Building Everlasting Games" after 23 years.

why?
The answer is simple: in the past five years, among nearly 200 games, only a few, such as Dark Zone, Valorant, and Delta Force, have truly emerged as successful titles.

Moreover, "Dark Zone" can only be described as a barely successful film.

As for mobile games like "Black Sands," "White Night Aurora," and "Honor of Kings: Star Dawn," which plagiarizes "Naraka: Bladepoint," a whole bunch of other games are either launching with the same theme or...

Either you can't even log in at all.

To reiterate, the ultimate measure of a game's success is its quality. Even without the StarCraft universe, Tencent still proposed the "Evergreen" plan.
In this timeline, Tencent's "evergreen" plan will only appear sooner, because Night Spirit has already proven a fact in this timeline.

Faced with the stars, a 6-point work is no longer enough.

Perhaps thanks to Tencent's own traffic, Night Spirit can survive for a long time, but you can't expect a game of this caliber to win the reputation war with StarCraft.

That's a bit too much confidence.

~~~
While the reputation of "Night Spirit" continued to decline.

Despite the chaos on the internet yesterday, Azur Lane still garnered a lot of attention.

In its previous life, Azur Lane, thanks to its subject matter advantage, quickly topped the Japanese App Store best-selling chart after its launch, and its global revenue exceeded 100 million yen per month in early 2018.

However, Azur Lane has never been particularly popular in China.

Including 17 and 18, the level has always been neither the best nor the worst.

The objective fact that Tencent initially analyzed that the appeal of the "ship girl" theme was declining is indeed true. However, the Japanese market benefited from Azur Lane's status as a near-national game.

(End of this chapter)