Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 458 Starry Sky 48-Hour Game Creation Competition
In such a highly competitive market environment.

In addition to continuously producing first-party games to attract players to the Starry Sky Games platform, Starry Sky also aims to attract more game developers, especially small and medium-sized game developers, to the Starry Sky Games platform.

This is actually very important.

Although Project Star has a large number of domestically produced games in its pipeline, it must be admitted that in the past two years, small and medium-sized games worldwide have mainly come from Europe and America.

Without the support of these manufacturers, the globalization slogan of the Star Platform will be nothing but empty talk.

To eliminate the threat of Steam's "marketing" tactics, StarCraft's proposed solution is a comprehensive plan called "StarCraft Marketing 2.0".

This plan can be summed up in one sentence.

The marketing and promotion that Steam can provide, StarCraft can also provide.

What Steam can't provide in terms of marketing and promotion, StarCraft can.

The promotional services that Steam can provide are essentially the referral mechanism of the StarCraft Games platform, which uses algorithms and human editors to recommend suitable games to players.

StarCraft has become very proficient with this system. In fact, because the total number of games on the platform is far less than that on Steam, theoretically, each small and medium-sized developer's game can get a higher exposure rate on StarCraft.

The essence of this plan lies in the marketing and promotion that Steam cannot provide.

That is the external publicity channel under the Star System.

The two top channels are naturally Titok and Bilibili.

The user profiles of these two platforms highly overlap with those of gamers. One is a short video giant, and the other is a long video leader. Together, they can cover almost all young users in China.

However, these two channels are, after all, "cooperative" channels, rather than Starry Sky's "own" channels.

No matter how good the relationship is between Xingchen and the two companies, it's impossible for them to treat these two national-level apps as their own backyard, pushing whatever they want to them.

This level of "nuclear weaponry" can only be used where it's most needed, such as protecting StarCraft's own works. It's unrealistic to expect to use such resources to support games from third-party small and medium-sized manufacturers.

In this situation, channels that some stars can fully control and continuously produce content to attract players become crucial.

For example, Star Tap, Star Wallpaper, and variety shows produced by Star itself.

Let's talk about the former first.

In the past, StarTap's promotional slots were only for Android games, but after StarTap's Marketing 2.0, StarTap will also start promoting PC games.

In other words, games that are logged into the Starry Sky Games platform can also appear on Starry Sky Tap. This instantly increased the reach of the promotion from tens of millions on the Starry Sky Games platform to hundreds of millions on Starry Sky Tap.

There are also star wallpapers.

With the upcoming release of the results of the second Star Wallpaper Rendering Conference, Star Wallpaper's global influence will be even greater. In the past, Star Wallpaper only promoted first-party and licensed games.

In the 【Starry Sky Promotion 2.0】 plan, some resources will also be allocated for intelligent push notifications.

In other words, among the tens of millions of Starry Wallpaper users today, some may be able to receive a "mystery bonus wallpaper".

Finally, there's Xingchen's variety show.

In fact, before the so-called "Publicity and Promotion 2.0", the "Torture the Planner" program was already carrying out game publicity and promotion work. However, this program, like other programs, was mostly aimed at the domestic market, or at most covered a portion of Japanese manufacturers.

In Europe and America, Xingchen's videos don't get many views either.

It naturally lacks appeal to European and American manufacturers. Therefore, the "Starry Sky 48-Hour Game Development Competition" that Chu Chen personally approved this time is less a development competition and more a variety show disguised as a development competition.

The ultimate goal of this variety show is to complement the launch of Starry Sky Promotion 2.0, allowing more people to directly experience Starry Sky's promotional capabilities.

This is why Ma Yuanyao is under so much pressure. As a "large-scale global advertisement," Starry Night will heavily promote the program on YouTube, Google, and Twitter.

There is also a lot of promotional content to go with it.

On a smaller scale, this is a new attempt by Starry Night Games.

On a larger scale, this is also a tactic used by StarCraft Games to compete with Steam and other gaming platforms. After all, any marketing war boils down to one thing: what I have, you don't.

For Ma Yuanyao personally, this was a battle she could only win, not lose.

~~~
Time flies, and it's already mid-November.

Suzhou and Hangzhou.

The autumn air was already tinged with a chill. Sebastián Bernard left the hotel and boarded the van that Star Games had prepared for him.

He and his team, the core members of the Dead Cells studio, lead artist Adam and lead programmer Thomas, along with two other programmers, all looked somewhat tired.

Even though they had already rested at the hotel for a night yesterday.

But after getting in the car, Benna still felt sleepy and quickly lay down again.

Just as he was dozing off, he suddenly heard a startled cry that had gone off in a different tone.

"Bena!!!"

It was Adam's voice. Bernard opened his eyes impatiently, about to speak, but before he could, he saw Adam pointing out the window.

Normally, the venue for a 48-hour game development competition like this is usually a university or an open-plan office area.

But what appeared before them now was a colossal, modern film studio base, with a huge curved glass curtain wall reflecting the sky, and an electronic screen at the entrance displaying scrolling content.

The logo of the "Starry Sky 48-Hour Game Creation Competition" is next to the joint live broadcast logos of several well-known video websites, some of which I don't recognize.

But Benner does recognize logos like Sony, Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch.

"Is this some kind of game development competition?"

Although the group had a vague sense of Xingchen's wealth after their registration was approved, they also thought that the competition might be held in a relatively spacious place.

Who would have thought it would be in such a huge film studio?
This surprise became even more pronounced after the staff led the group inside; the huge studio was filled with staff.

In addition, after getting off the bus.

Several cameras then started recording them.

The staff member who greeted the group, speaking fluent French, confidently told them that this was the venue for the Starry Sky 48-Hour Game Making Competition.
Otherwise, they would really think they've gone down the wrong path.

Led by staff, they walked through a long corridor, seeing all sorts of filming equipment along the way, from track cameras hanging from the ceiling to cranes waiting in the corners.

Everything indicated that the level of "professionalism" here far exceeded their expectations.

(End of this chapter)