Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 544 Successful People
"Nagano-san, why are you standing here all alone?"

A cheerful voice with a Kansai accent rang out. Although it was a Kansai accent, the person who came was a Korean man of about 280cm tall.

The visitor's name was Kim Hee-hui, a Korean who had studied in Japan.

He is currently the second-in-command at Star Korea, a title that sounds impressive, but within Star Korea, he is not quite as high-ranking as the executives of other branches.

The positioning of StarCraft's Korean branch in the global business landscape is rather ambiguous.

While it may seem unimportant, it handles the localization of all of StarCraft's products in the Korean market, and its performance is excellent. For example, "Final Battlefront" has consistently topped the bestseller list in Korea for many years.

It's not that important, but it also doesn't seem that important.

For most employees at StarCraft Korea, the company is currently divided into two "factions".

One of them is the South Korean representative, Park Tae-jung.

He advocates for down-to-earth operations. In his view, with the Huaxia headquarters continuously producing blockbuster products, they only need to do the work of "porting" and "localizing".

However, in the eyes of Kim Hee-hwi, a "younger generation" member, Park Tae-jung was too conservative.

In his view, compared to Japan, South Korea's game industry is much more competitive. As long as Starry Sky is willing to spend money, he can assemble a studio with considerable immediate combat power.

As long as they can get a good development framework and produce one or two hit products, the Korean branch will take off.

Although the probability of a new studio producing a hit product is actually not high, if it can get Chu Chen's support, that probability will increase dramatically.

Because Starry Sky Korea branch frequently airs Chu Chen's personal advertisements in Korea.

Let alone Korean players, many Korean game developers also have a blind confidence in Chu Chen, including the employees within StarCraft Korea.

Although Jin Xihui could send emails to Chu Chen normally, they rarely had the opportunity to actually communicate face-to-face.

Chu Chen rarely goes to South Korea.

Therefore, tonight is one of the few opportunities he can bypass Park Tae-jung and directly explain his plan to Chu Chen.

~~~
Cheng Chenyu, Jin Xihui, Nagano Takuyu.

One is a local elite who resolutely left a major domestic company, another is an ambitious young overseas entrepreneur, and the third is a seasoned Japanese professional who crossed over from another industry.

Their resumes are three perfect slices of Starry Sky's crazy expansion path over the past two years.

These three people have different goals today, but they all share the same objective.

All three of them were waiting, waiting for the right opportunity, waiting for a chance to speak with Chu Chen alone.

This would have been unimaginable at any company they had worked for before.

Whether it's Tencent's clear hierarchy or Sony's seniority-based system, a mid-level manager who wants to speak directly with the top decision-maker has to go through at least three or five leaders and countless procedures.

But in the stars, this path is shortened to an extreme degree.

Chu Chen is the only destination.

This seemingly obvious thing is actually unbelievable in many companies.

In most companies, many bosses are either afraid or unable to make decisions, especially in the gaming industry. In China, there are bosses who know absolutely nothing about games.

A boss who doesn't understand games can't even comprehend a game design proposal. For him, the game's profitability depends entirely on the market, so all decisions are made based on experience, and staff promotions are based solely on seniority.
But Chu Chen is different. He is the top product manager of Starry Sky Games.

Although more than a decade of experience couldn't allow Chu Chen to see a person's character clearly, it could at least let him know whether the person had ability.

Moreover, because he was given a second chance at life.

Often, Chu Chen himself didn't realize that he was quite confident in many things, and this confidence stemming from the future gave him extraordinary personal charm within the company.

This kind of personal charisma enables many people, even those with personality flaws, to give full play to their abilities in their positions.

This model, while giving StarCraft terrifying execution efficiency, also brings enormous pressure to all the "ambitious individuals" within it.

Because all the executives at StarCraft need Chu Chen's approval to advance their careers.

The good news is that you don't need to wait for seniority or be subservient to others; you only need to convince one person to rise to the top.

The bad news is, the person you need to persuade is Chu Chen.
Cheng Chenyu still remembers that during the development of PUBG Mobile, there was a time when the entire project team argued about a core issue: the shooting feel.

At the time, the team split into two factions. One faction, led by Cheng Chenyu, was the "PC game remake faction," which advocated for the maximum possible reproduction of the recoil and bullet spread of the PC version.

Another group is the "mobile game optimization faction," which believes that the operation logic of swiping the glass on a mobile phone is completely different from that of a keyboard and mouse, and must be greatly simplified by adding powerful aiming assistance to lower the learning curve.

Neither side could convince the other, and the matter eventually reached Chu Chen, who was then the project producer.

When Chu Chen arrived at the office, after listening to the disagreements, he picked up two test phones, played with them for a while, and without saying a word, started making a decision.

"What is the core enjoyment for mobile gamers? It's not spending dozens of hours practicing recoil control, but being able to quickly start a game on the subway or during lunch break and get the thrill of a kill in a short time."

He pointed to Cheng Chenyu's proposal.

“PC players might think your plan is good, but a newbie who has never played a shooting game before, who can’t even hit anyone after landing for three minutes, will uninstall the game immediately.”

Immediately afterwards, Chu Chen switched to another faction.

"Your solution solves the problem of getting started, but it's too simplistic. It doesn't differentiate between experts and novices, and people get bored after three days. It can't retain core users."

At the time, Cheng Chenyu was actually a little unconvinced, because Chu Chen's words were basically a double-edged sword. How could you have both when making a game?

But Chu Chen actually offered a solution that both wanted and wanted: the auxiliary shoulder buttons after the huge success of PUBG Mobile.

This is Chu Chen.

The solution is quite unconventional, but upon closer examination, it is almost the optimal solution.

This feeling wasn't unique to Cheng Chenyu.

Anyone who has had contact with Chu Chen will have this feeling: ultimately, the reason why Xingchen's employees admire Chu Chen is not blind worship.

Rather, it is based on Chu Chen's incredible success over the past two years, which has overturned their understanding of the industry.

He's like a player with a full-map cheat code, always able to predict market trends and accurately time every opportunity.

This is why Cheng Chenyu was nervous. No matter how much you prepare, you will still feel pressure when facing someone like that.

(End of this chapter)