Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 480 A Matter of Life and Death?

Contrary to many people's impression, Steam "never advertises".

Although in the past few years, Steam has basically not carried out regular advertising and promotion in China due to policy constraints and channel limitations.

In other words, you will basically not see Steam in website ads, headers, pop-ups, or other similar places.

But this doesn't mean Steam won't promote it.

In Europe and America, Steam's annual marketing and promotion expenses are also considerable.

However, in China, Steam has always maintained a "monopoly," so there is no need for promotion or marketing.

But when it comes to a real "battle," Steam can unleash a lot of energy. In 16, Steam's annual revenue was $35 billion, so it's not short of money.

Therefore, they acted rashly, and for a time, there was a sense of impending doom.

The front page of most major gaming news websites is basically all about it.

[A three-way standoff! Gabe Newell launches a powerful Christmas sale, igniting the fierce battle for PC gaming platforms in China!]

Is winter coming? How will StarCraft and Tencent respond to Steam's aggressive marketing campaign?

[Exclusive Interview with a Veteran Industry Expert: Steam's Move Intended to Curb StarCraft's Rise; Chinese Game Market May Be About to Undergo a Reshuffle!]

By comparing Steam with competing products, we can attract players to learn about it.

This combination of punches was truly beautifully executed.

If you look closely, Steam's promotional strategy this time exudes a pragmatic and insightful air from beginning to end.

For example, the videos of content creators on Bilibili often start like this:

"Perhaps your first encounter with PC single-player games was through PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or perhaps it was the StarCraft Games platform that opened the door to a new world for you. But you might not know that there is such a platform."

In core propaganda.

Steam primarily emphasizes its history and heritage.

The goal is to establish Steam as a global service platform, and StarCraft has defined itself as a leader in "Chinese games".

The cleverness of this marketing strategy lies in the fact that once you accept this premise, you implicitly accept Steam's narrative logic and assume that StarCraft is inferior to Steam.

~~~
June 9, afternoon.

The door to Chu Chen's office was pushed open, and Li Yifeng barged in without even knocking.

"President Chen!"

"What's going on?"

To be honest, this was the first time Chu Chen had seen Li Yifeng like this.

As the head of the Starry Sky Games platform, Li Yifeng is considered a veteran of Starry Sky. He had always been able to handle Tencent's WEGAME's encirclement and suppression with ease.

In front of his subordinates, he always presented himself as a master strategist.

But this time, it's not hard to tell from the way he pushed the door open that he was genuinely a little flustered.

However, Chu Chen showed no sign of tension at this moment. When Li Yifeng came in, he didn't even put down his water glass. Li Yifeng, who came to report on his work, saw his relaxed appearance and his anxious heart inexplicably calmed down.

"President Chu, this is a critical situation! Steam is attacking our home base, what are you still doing..."

Chu Chen raised her eyelids, glanced at him, then put down her water glass and asked a question in a slow and unhurried manner.

"A fire burning your eyebrows? What fire burning your eyebrows?"

"Didn't you see Steam's promotional activities?"

"We saw it, isn't that a good thing for us?"

"Good thing?"

Li Yifeng was stunned. However, Chu Chen nodded.

Two years ago, when StarCraft was just starting out, if anyone had told him that StarCraft Games and Steam would be engaged in a marketing war in China, Steam would actually be the challenger.

He'd probably laugh himself awake even in his sleep.

Therefore, Chu Chen's views on the same matter are often completely different from those of people in this world. Li Yifeng sees that the great momentum of Xingchen may be interrupted.

What Chu Chen saw was that Steam's fortune had been largely stolen by StarCraft, and now that Steam had entered China, StarCraft actually had the upper hand. Where could anyone reason with that?

"How long have we been doing this? Only two years, Brother Feng."

"Sony and Microsoft have been fighting over the console market for years. They've gone through several rounds of lawsuits, and mutual sabotage is commonplace. This is nothing compared to what's to come."

These few words sound strange.

But the burning desire in Li Yifeng's heart subsided immediately.

“Competition is normal, and the PC single-player market in China is still on the rise. Steam’s entry into the fray is much more attractive than us competing with Tencent.”

"Our fight against Tencent is an internal war, but our fight against Steam is an external war."

"Since competition is inevitable, we still need to find a way to leverage it. Steam is going to have a Christmas sale on our turf, so why don't we take advantage of that and have a Christmas sale in Europe and America too?"

"what?"

Steam wants to ride on Chu Chen's popularity, but Chu Chen also wants to ride on Steam's popularity.

Moreover, within China, it's not the first time that the top two have fought and killed the third. Compared to fighting each other in low-ranked matches with WEGAME, going head-to-head with Steam is obviously more sensational.

You're running a China-wide special sale? Let's do a Christmas special for Europe and America instead.

Steam has money, and StarCraft also has a lot of cash reserves. Moreover, compared to August, the number of games on the StarCraft gaming platform has increased significantly.

"Besides, we still have both the king and the queen in our hands, don't we?"

The "Big King" and "Little King" that Chu Chen mentioned are actually things that the two Starry Sky gaming platforms are doing.

The first one is the "Starlight Reboot" plan.

After Fate/Grand Order and Final Frontier were released on the PS4 platform in early November and achieved revenues far exceeding Sony's expectations, the console giant finally relented.

They agreed to Chu Chen's proposal, made several months ago, to have some older PS platform exclusive games remastered for PC by Xingchen.

For many game studios, remaking old games is actually a thankless and arduous task.

Most classic old games, despite being hailed as 'masterpieces,' bear the distinct mark of their era in both their gameplay and design philosophy.

If the graphics are simply upgraded to HD without changing the core gameplay, it will be difficult to attract new players, except for raking in the wallets of nostalgic fans.

However, if the gameplay is drastically modified, it is easy to lose the essence of the original work, resulting in a lose-lose situation.

In addition, while these older games may not have high "sales expectations," their development costs are by no means low.

The term "remaster" often essentially means creating a completely new game that is exactly the same as the original.

If you do a sloppy job, like Blizzard's disastrous Warcraft 3: Reforged in the past, you will ultimately destroy the brand you have built up over many years.

However, if a huge amount of manpower and resources are invested in a thorough "cyber archaeology" project, the cost may not even be recovered in the end.

Therefore, in the gaming industry...

Many companies, let alone refactoring, would rather let their well-known intellectual property rot in their hands than develop it.

However, regarding resetting the game.

Chu Chen, however, had a completely different opinion.

From a game developer's perspective, this thing is useless, but from the perspective of game platform competition, it's a completely different story.

(End of this chapter)