Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 445 Tokyo Game Show

Time flies.

10 month 30 day.

Tokyo, Makuhari Messe, 7:30 a.m.

With an hour and a half to go before the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) officially opens to the public, the massive venue is already bustling with activity.

Zhao Yang and Li Rui, wearing vests with the "Starry Sky Games Alliance" logo and employee badges, walked through the employee entrance and entered the exhibition hall.

Both of them are die-hard fans of Starry Night Games.

Since we were both studying in Tokyo, we decided to exhibit at TGS a long time ago. We originally planned to buy tickets to enter, but we ended up leaving before the tickets went on sale.

Li Rui actually found a volunteer recruitment application channel on the official website of Starry Japan.

The experience of buying a ticket to enter as a visitor is definitely completely different from attending the exhibition as a "staff member".

With the mindset of broadening their horizons and giving it a try, the two submitted their resumes.

Unexpectedly, the two were selected thanks to their status as Chinese students studying abroad and their fluent Chinese and Japanese. Moreover, during the pre-exhibition training, they discovered that, apart from themselves and a few other boys, they were also among the first to be selected.

Most of those selected were Japanese girls.

When assigning roles, most of the girls were assigned to reception, fixed guides, or cosplay.

Their job was as "patrol" volunteers.

This job is actually not complicated. It involves patrolling the exhibition area after the venue opens, maintaining basic order, and answering any questions that visitors may have.

Aside from the long walking time and the inability to try out games, it's basically like paying to visit an exhibition.

Therefore, the two were already quite excited during the training a few days ago.

Today, wearing my work badge and seeing the long queues in the plaza outside, while I entered through the staff entrance, I couldn't contain my excitement.

"It should be just ahead, right? With the lights on, it's a little hard to find the way."

When the two of them arrived yesterday, most of the screens and lights in the exhibition halls were off. Now that they are all on today, it does feel a bit unfamiliar.

The Tokyo Game Show, Japan's largest game exhibition, is held at the Makuhari Messe venue.

This is a multi-purpose exhibition hall with three exhibition areas: the international exhibition area, the international conference area, and the Makuhari Event Hall.

There aren't many exhibitions that use all three halls; TGS is one of them.

Since there are three exhibition areas, the Tokyo Game Show actually has a main exhibition area and a secondary exhibition area. For example, this year's TGS, in order to highlight TGS's status as Asia's premier exhibition, established the China Pavilion in the secondary exhibition area for the first time.

The setup of this exhibition area itself wasn't anything special, since the Chinese manufacturers participating, such as Tencent and NetEase, didn't seem to be taking this exhibition too seriously.

Moreover, its influence in Japan is indeed somewhat lacking.

However, for the Starry Sky Games Alliance, this position is far too undesirable.

There was actually some dispute between StarCraft Japan and the TGS officials over the location of StarCraft Games Alliance's exhibition area, but in the end, StarCraft's influence prevailed.

In the official TGS poll asking which game exhibitors you are most looking forward to, StarCraft Games came out on top.

It's even higher than many Japanese domestic manufacturers.

It's important to understand that this isn't a vote-rigging platform; it's a ranking where you need to register as an official TGS member to vote, and only those who have previously purchased votes can register for official TGS membership.
In short, it has extremely high gold content.

Therefore, TGS ultimately decided to set up the Starry Night Games exhibition area separately in the main venue.

Right next to it are Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Capcom.

It was a truly impressive lineup. However, despite sensing the popularity of the Starry Night booth, TGS executives still had some concerns after finalizing the booth selection.

These concerns vanished in early October after TGS released tickets and achieved a record-breaking sell-out.

Last year, TGS tickets didn't even sell out, but this year they sold out ahead of schedule. If you didn't believe that StarCraft Games' participation in the exhibition wouldn't have helped, TGS itself wouldn't believe it.

That's why the Starry Night Games Alliance's booth was so eye-catching this year.

It's not just because of its good location, but also because it's "big enough".

"Holy crap, Lao Zhao, look! Xingchen is really something else! The size of this exhibition hall, my god, that's outrageous."

As mentioned earlier, the Starry Sky Games Alliance booth is located right next to Sony's.

Sony, as a major Japanese manufacturer, had a fairly large booth, but compared to Xingchen's booth, it looked rather small and insignificant.

"It's too big, it's really too big."

Yesterday, the Starry Sky exhibition area was dark, so I didn't really notice anything.

But looking at it today, it's truly outrageous.

"When I saw the TGS venue photos before, I thought they were photoshopped, but I didn't expect them to be real."

"How much money must have been spent to build this booth?"

Is the Starry Night Games Alliance booth actually big? Not really. After all, it's a joint booth for more than a dozen companies, and with so many game companies, the booth naturally takes up a lot of space.

In addition, the Star Alliance booth design this year was also very interesting.

It employs a massive back-to-back structure.

On one side facing the main passage is a stage, behind which is a densely packed game demo area.

Outside the demo area, there was a separate booth for the Star Alliance flag, surrounded by a bunch of small, neatly arranged booths, like stars around the moon, encircling the core area.

"This design is awesome."

Li Rui was amazed.

"The front is the stage, which can be used to hold press conferences and events to attract people, while the back can directly guide people into the trial area and various sub-booths, making full use of the space."

"Indeed, this traffic flow planning is clearly the work of an experienced person."

The two of them actually knew absolutely nothing about venue design.

But that doesn't stop the two from bragging. There's no way around it; Chinese gamers these days rarely see their own game company so impressive at overseas exhibitions.

When the two arrived at the exhibition, the staff who had trained them the day before were already there. They quickly greeted the two and the first thing they did was to take them around the Starry Sky booth.

After all, the two of them were on duty.

After walking around, it was already 8 o'clock, with one hour left before the official start.

Although there were only staff members inside the venue, all the manufacturers were basically ready. The air was filled with background music from various games and the shouts of the staff, and the atmosphere was already very exciting.

Just then, a small commotion arose at the entrance of the main passage.

Zhao Yang, Li Rui, and a group of staff members at the Star Station subconsciously looked over.

A group of people were walking towards them.

(End of this chapter)