Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 488: Chain Set

The "Hall of Stars" event was launched in the second hour.

The appeal of these older games themselves, coupled with advertising from multiple channels pushed by Starry Sky, including Bilibili, YouTube, Twitter, Starry Sky Tap, and Starry Sky Wallpapers.

It quickly attracted a huge amount of traffic.

And this traffic, like a piece of meat falling into a shark tank, has attracted media attention.

The fastest to react were the domestic media, followed by several mainstream media outlets in Europe and America. Ever since IGN clashed with StarCraft last time, their sales of paid services have increased significantly.

They gave it a front-page headline: "The Revival of the Old Temple: The Stars Are Awakening an Era."

Following this, GameSpot published "Do We Really Need a Remaster? Yes, We Do!", and subsequently, countless game media outlets, independent media, and video bloggers flocked to the discussion.

Its popularity quickly spread beyond the gaming community; in Europe, some fast-reacting betting websites even opened betting odds overnight.

In addition to the standard win/loss odds, there are also a wide variety of interesting odds.

Will the remake of "Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2" include "Yuri's Revenge"?

"Can StarCraft Games complete the remake of at least one of its games in 2018?"

In the last betting line, the odds for "can" were as high as 1 to 10.

Of course, not all media coverage is positive. For example, a British gaming media outlet pointed out this in a very sharp way.

“Emotional appeal is a good card, but consumers need to be wary when it is used to leverage the market.”

"Is StarCraft's move truly aimed at reviving a classic, or simply attracting new users to its platform? When players vote and share the link, only to discover it's just an empty promise, who will compensate for this exploited nostalgia?"

Regardless, these various voices—surprise, doubt, analysis, prediction—mixed together, quickly pushed the popularity of the "Hall of Fame" to an unprecedented peak.

~~~
That afternoon, at Valford headquarters.

Jason, the head of Steam's operations in China, and Mark, the head of Steam's global operations, were sitting together drinking coffee. Normally, they would have already left work by this time.

Villefort may not have much else, but its welfare benefits are indeed very good.

But now, the two of them are drinking coffee and looking at each other in bewilderment.

Actually, when Xingchen suddenly launched the event, the two of them were indeed startled, but they didn't take it to heart.

"It's just a voting event, how much impact can it have?"

Jason even made a joke at the time.

"At worst, we can also release a news report that Half-Life 3 has been greenlit. This remake looks impressive, but the hype comes and goes quickly, so we don't need to pay attention to it."

Actually, do you think Jason's statement makes sense?
That makes sense.

The problem is that Jason didn't expect that Starry Sky's move would be so powerful, and he also didn't expect that Starry Sky would have a follow-up move.

~~~
Let's rewind a few hours.

After voting for Red Alert 2, Frank expected a "Thank you for participating" message to pop up, or he would simply be redirected back to the platform's homepage.

However, after casting the vote, a screen popped up on the store page asking you to claim the game.

These games were divided into three areas.

On the far left, which is also the most conspicuous area, it says "Limited-time free addition to the library," and below it is a line of small print: "Each voting player can choose any three items to be permanently added to the library."

The middle section is the "Great Value Selection," a limited-time offer of €1.99.

The one on the far right is the "Rare Collection," a limited-time offer of €2.99. Frank barely hesitated, his cursor flying across the icons for *Red Alert 2*, *Homeworld*, and *Heroes of Might and Magic III* in that order.

These three games would cost at least several euros on GOG, but here you can get them for free.

As he clicked, the gray icons of the three games instantly lit up, but the story didn't end there.

Just when he thought that was all the benefits, the page refreshed again, and a task list titled "Historical Explorer" popped up.

[Task 1: Share the Joy. Share the "Hall of Fame" event to any social media platform.]

[Task Two: Footprints of Time. Play any classic game you have added to your library for a total of 30 minutes.]

Mission 3: The War That Never Ends. In Red Alert 2, win an encounter against an easy AI opponent.

[Task 3: Recruit your first hero in Heroes of Might and Magic III.]

The rewards for these tasks are classic game vouchers, which can be used to redeem extra free games.

"That's interesting."

Organizing events is somewhat like making games; it really tests a game planner's ability. If you make every game require players to complete tasks to claim rewards, players might get annoyed.

But if all games are free to claim, that will cause problems. Many players will claim them and then cancel, which means there will be an invalid data entry.

On the contrary, they give you three options first, and let you choose them yourself! This immediately captures the player's desire to "get a good deal" and shows them full respect.

You got what you wanted most, and you're happy.

Then, they released a task system. These tasks were so simple they had almost no barrier to entry; just share a link, play the game for half an hour, and you could claim another one. At this point, the player's mindset changed. It shifted from "the platform is giving this to me" to "I earned this with just a few taps."

Especially the "play classic games" mission.

This is absolutely a treacherous scheme.

What can a veteran player do in 30 minutes? It's probably just enough time to finish the opening cinematic of Red Alert 2, build your base, and produce your first American soldier.

It might just be enough for you to explore a small part of the map in Heroes of Might and Magic III and collect a few resource piles.

But it was those 30 minutes.

It's enough to let veteran players reminisce about the past and let new players experience the charm of old games.

Even if this new player eventually leaves.

However, there is also a certain probability that players will feel the charm of old games, or even just have the impression that they are interesting but the graphics are too bad to play.

This is enough to make players pay attention to the future remake.

Like Frank, after casting his vote and receiving the game, his initial excitement had worn off, but now he was itching to play a round again.

Just do it.

The advantage of older games is that their installation packages are pitifully small compared to the tens or hundreds of gigabytes of size that are common in modern games.

Almost in the blink of an eye.

The game installation is now complete, and the "Starry Night Old Games Special Optimization" feature has been activated.

Frank didn't notice that the old game, which was automatically selected by default, had been specially optimized; he simply clicked on it after the "Start Game" option lit up.

(End of this chapter)