Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 53 Speak for Me
If someone from the future were to travel back at this very moment, they would immediately understand the core of Chu Chen's program.

The so-called "Don't Do Challenge for Humanoid Girls" is essentially about using a set of rules to repeatedly achieve "expectation violation" and "schadenfreude".

The classic program "Don't 'Do' the Challenge" by "Dean Xiaochao" on Bilibili also utilizes this effect.

Like in this episode, the set looks quite ordinary, with a three-seater sofa on the left, a separate sofa on the right, and a table in the middle.

The background had some decorations, and the lighting was a bit more professional. The rest of the budget was basically spent on the makeup and outfits of the three girls.

The rules of the show are very simple, just the four words "Final Battle Line". It feels like as long as you pay a little attention, you can avoid making mistakes.

But in reality, that's not the case at all. You should know that this rule is just a setting of the show, and the show itself has a lot of content.

Take the "read comments" section, for example.

Voice actors not only have to read the comments from players on platforms such as Bilibili and Weibo, but they also have to pay close attention while reading. If they encounter any of the four words "end," "final," "war," or "line," they must find a way to replace them with another word.

This ability to accurately identify and avoid obstacles during rapid reading is an excellent mechanism for creating memorable moments.

Aside from Jiang Yue's innovative way of pronouncing "final battlefront" as the cute "uh-huh" sounds, there's more to it.

The others were equally impressive. It was Chu Chen who initiated the attack, coaxing them into saying those lines.

Soon, the girls realized this and started to turn the tables on Chu Chen. Eventually, the girls began to set traps for each other.

The show's impact was steadily increasing, and since it was pre-recorded, with nearly two hours of recording taking place that day, the final half-hour edited out was simply the essence of the essence.

At first, when editing the program and making program plans, some people had concerns.

Is this kind of "humor" too one-dimensional? In fact, this is completely unnecessary. Judging from the comments, Jiang Yue saw that this group of people laughed from beginning to end.

"White stockings are justice! Step on me!"

"The 'uh-huh' battle line is hilarious!"

"Mosingana, my Mosingana!!"

After watching the video, I continued reading the comments.

As Jiang Yue read through the comments, her cheeks began to burn again.

During the recording of the show, she was so focused on being nervous and not making any mistakes that she didn't realize how her reactions would affect the audience.

"This is amazing!"

Jiang Yue was completely stunned as she stared at the barrage of comments and the ever-refreshing messages.

This experience was so novel! In fact, it wasn't just her; the other voice actors who appeared on the show had similar thoughts.

Before signing the contract, most of them, like Jiang Yue, were doing voice acting work as individuals. Although they had some experience, their work was unstable.

The reason they signed with Xingchen was simply to get a base salary and have a stable project.

As for other things like "more promotional resources" or "help recommend other voice-over jobs," many people, including Jiang Yue, didn't have any particular expectations.

But never expected.

The other party was actually serious.

Although the recording of this show looks a bit rudimentary, the viewership is real, and for voice actors, popularity is just like a resume.

The higher your popularity, the easier it is to get a job.

Jiang Yue looked at the bright red "99+" notification in the upper right corner of the follower information bar, and for some reason, her eyes welled up with tears. She felt as if she had finally embarked on the right path.

"Yes! Right, we should send President Chen a thank-you message now, shouldn't we?"

"Won't it seem pretentious...?"

~~~
For Jiang Yue, this program made her feel that her voice acting career had finally embarked on the right path.

For Chu Chen, however, this program has an even more important meaning.

He wants to use this program to solve a problem, a problem that seems fine now but will affect countless ACG game developers in the future.

That's a community issue, or more accurately, a communication mechanism between manufacturers and players.

Having experienced it all firsthand, I've witnessed the evolution of the anime and manga community from everyone calling each other "waifu," licking white stockings, and chanting "Long live the white-haired guy," to a chaotic and toxic community characterized by factionalism and infighting.

Chu Chen was actually quite emotional, after all, all of this could have been resolved, and it really wasn't difficult to resolve, especially for the manufacturers.

If you observe carefully, you'll easily discover an interesting point: in traditional game communities, a large number of players criticize game developers primarily for their pay-to-win systems.

In the second game, in addition to the issue of spending money, a large number of problems unrelated to spending money frequently occurred.

Moreover, the way problems often arise is that at first everyone thinks it's not a big deal, and that fixing the problem, apologizing, and giving some compensation will make it go away.

Uh... for some inexplicable reason, the company decided to give it the cold shoulder. Then the players started to get dissatisfied, and the situation escalated, forcing the company to reluctantly apologize.

Players became even more dissatisfied, and the incident escalated again. At this point, the company either simply ignored the criticism and didn't respond, or, if they couldn't handle the backlash, they would issue another apology.

However, regardless of the manufacturer's final decision, the end result is that every time a "problem" occurs, it will cause a group of players to leave.

The reason for this situation is that the manufacturers' decision-makers have not established an effective channel for direct communication with players.

Chu Chen knew very well that if you, as a project producer, were to be lazy and not listen to the players' voices, then not only would the lower and middle levels below you not listen to them, but they would also prevent you from listening.

Anyone with work experience should be able to understand this principle.

When middle and lower-level employees encounter problems, their first instinct is never to report them to their superiors.

Not reporting, concealing, and lying about reports are the norm.

This is why Chu Chen included a segment in the program where he reads comments.

On the one hand, during the segment where Chu Chen reads the comments, he actually pulls the main creative team together to read the comments and select the interesting ones and the complaints.

Don't assume that just because "Final Battlefront" is popular now, no one is complaining.

In fact, there are quite a few people complaining online. Currently, the main complaints are about the monotonous gameplay, the fact that the new version only updated the storyline without updating the gameplay, and the fact that some lineups are either too strong or too weak.

Chu Chen read these contents directly onto the show.

And they also made some responses.

Some responses were very serious, while others were more relaxed. For example, when asked about content with simple gameplay, Chu Chen earnestly explained the content that was currently under development.

As for the lineup issue, Chu Chen accessed data from the game's backend.

"No way... this lineup already has a 47% win rate in individual games. It's still strong... If I nerf it again, I feel like I'll be getting hammered by WA2000's fans the next day..."

Chu Chen knew very well that the reason why players complained was that they wanted the developers to hear their complaints.

This is similar to arguing in a relationship. The reason you argue is that you hope the other person can sense your emotions and react. If at this time the other person just acts like they don't want to listen and is just rambling on and on, it's a different story.

They resort to passive-aggressive tactics, ignoring you, or even slamming the door and walking away.
This doesn't really constitute establishing effective communication.

Then why spend so much manpower and resources, hiring voice actors and creating program effects?
The answer is that Chu Chen not only needs to establish this communication channel, but also needs to let more people see the communication process, and let more people see it.

As the saying goes, "If you don't occupy the high ground of public opinion, someone else will."

In its previous form, the anime and manga community was a complete mess. Besides the lack of communication channels between manufacturers and distributors, a large number of so-called "opinion leaders" were also major contributors to this chaos.

Whether it's the "opinion leader" who gets paid by the developers and says, "This character is a must-have!", or the "opinion leader" who uses negative traffic to rant and rave about developers, saying, "Those who play XX are XX,"...

They are essentially the same.

Do they really love this game? Do they really hate this game?
Maybe...
As far as Chu Chen is concerned, the people who are truly helpful to manufacturers are the fan-made bloggers who can create works like "Funingna eats the ring" and "Tuanzi Jinxi". These are the people that manufacturers should give "commercial orders" and creative incentives to.

Instead of certain "opinion leaders" who only know how to blindly praise manufacturers.

Because this group of people cannot help the game break out of its niche.

Conversely, they also exploit the divisions within player communities, using "exclusivity" rhetoric to gain traffic.

Moreover, strictly speaking, even these "opinion leaders" who lead manufacturer orders are not community channels controlled by the manufacturers themselves.

Because they also can't help manufacturers cover the target audience they actually need to cover.

In other words, the people who are already dissatisfied with the game but are still playing it are the group that manufacturers should focus their efforts on.

If you don't understand this point and still believe that "opinion leaders" represent the community, you can easily fall into the strange phenomenon where everything seems to be thriving, but the total number of players is getting smaller and smaller, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract new users.

Therefore, Chu Chen was very clear about this.

What I need is a channel that allows me to "truly speak out for myself".

This is why Chu Chen wanted to create dynamic wallpapers, and why he wanted to package this program, which is essentially about "reading comments," into a variety show.

Only in this way can this channel reach enough users.

Only in this way can users hear the voice of producer Chu Chen as soon as possible, and Chu Chen can also hear the voices of more players.

In a way, this can be seen as the beginning of his reshaping of the anime and manga market.
Even though others might see this as another "waste of money," Chu Chen felt that this money had to be spent.

As for whether other manufacturers follow suit after he did this, that's their business.

Chu Chen believes that joining this community would be a good thing, as it fosters a positive community atmosphere and benefits everyone, including the emerging ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) market.

If they don't follow suit, that's even better. In the past, no manufacturers did this, so it was fine for everyone to just sit idly by. But now that I'm doing it and you're not, Chu Chen thinks that players will definitely vote with their feet.

(End of this chapter)