Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 551 The Greatest Advantage of the Stars
In an old residential area of ​​a third-tier city in Hubei Province, the heating was not working well. Zhang Wei was wrapped in a thick down jacket, his fingers clattering on the keyboard of his laptop.

Outside the window, the sporadic sounds of firecrackers from the neighbor's children could be heard, while inside, the familiar laughter of parents watching a rerun of the Spring Festival Gala could be heard.

The Spring Festival, a sacred holiday, should have been a rare day of leisure for him, but he still had to work overtime, even back in his hometown!
And all of this stems from the stars!

JPMorgan Chase is pessimistic about Tencent, EPIC has made a high-profile announcement of its entry into China, and Steam has partnered with Wanmei. These news items that have emerged because of StarCraft will not be mentioned for now.

Starry Sky itself hasn't been idle either, with both movie collaborations and game updates during the Spring Festival season.

A whole bunch of games on the Starry Night Games platform are also launching special Lunar New Year versions, boasting all sorts of amazing benefits, the best time to jump in, and the hottest new version of the year.
The end result was that the people at Starry Sky happily finished their annual meeting, ate seafood and sang songs on the beach, released the new version, and went home for the New Year.

Meanwhile, these media workers, having stumbled and crawled back to their hometowns, still had to type on their laptops.

This is especially true for Zhang Wei.

He is an editor at a new media company, which sounds more glamorous than traditional media, but in reality, his job is no different from that of a traditional website—he just writes news.

Interestingly, the company Zhang Wei works for actually makes a game accelerator.

Thanks to Xingchen and Tencent, the accelerator market has seen rapid growth in the past two years.

To avoid suspicion, neither StarCraft nor Tencent directly intervened in the accelerator business, although Tencent supported third-party free acceleration platforms.

However, the accelerator market as a whole is still thriving.

Most game accelerators make a profit by providing free acceleration for the two major gaming platforms and charging for game acceleration.

At this point, some players might find it strange that both StarCraft and Tencent's overseas platforms are pseudo-overseas. Once you enter the platform, most of the games on it have Chinese versions.

Who would pay to speed it up?
Oh, there really is.
On the one hand, some players have been misled by these accelerators, believing that the system is more stable after acceleration. On the other hand, the latency of the Chinese server is very low, but there is always a large number of players who are keen to cross-server to the Asian server, Japanese and Korean server to "win glory for the country".

However, as more and more companies enter the accelerator field, this sector has become increasingly competitive.

Zhang Wei's company treated the accelerator as a portal website, offering limited-time free game acceleration and using the accelerator as a traffic-generating portal.

On both mobile and PC, the first page displays various game guides and industry news.

This strategy is indeed quite effective; because the article content is quite good, some players even specifically downloaded it just to read the news.
Of course, the company's success or failure has nothing to do with Zhang Wei.

Even if the company is incredibly successful, it doesn't change the fact that he was working overtime during the Spring Festival holiday. So much so that when Zhang Wei wrote the news, he was somewhat influenced by "personal grudges."

His headline read, "How long can the golden age of stars last?"

This lengthy article begins by affirming StarCraft's past successes, then shifts its focus to discuss the impact of Steam and Epic entering the Chinese market from multiple perspectives, including business models, platform ecosystems, capital strength, and global developer relations.

"The success of the Star Platform is, to some extent, built on information asymmetry and market gaps. When a truly global platform, with its vast game library and mature community ecosystem, sets foot on this land, it's not just a competition of products, but a full-scale war of ecosystems and standards..."

Although from a player's perspective, Zhang Wei himself is also a fan of StarCraft.

His favorite game is "The End of the World Survival Guide," but in the current Chinese game media circle, there are too many people praising StarCraft. On the contrary, articles that take StarCraft's perspective and first put "pressure" on it, and then help StarCraft "make plans" can get more traffic.

These kinds of articles can attract players to click through clickbait titles like "Starry Sky Wants Bao Si!" They can also satisfy Starry Sky's fans by offering advice and strategies. This tactic is a traffic-generating strategy that many game media professionals have figured out.
This incident also reveals the current influence of StarCraft on the Chinese gaming industry.
Zhang Wei was very engrossed in writing, because once he finished the article, he could finally have a real vacation.

"Of course, we must also recognize that StarCraft's greatest strength lies in its exceptional ability to produce first-party content. If, in the new year, StarCraft can strengthen its dual-platform content strategy on both mobile and PC, solidify its core user base with top-tier IPs like 'Final Battlefront,' and supplement it with..."

Zhang Wei's fingers paused on the keyboard, carefully choosing his words.

For a long time, Chinese game media didn't really need to use their brains, but in the last year or two, players have been demanding higher quality articles from the media.

Correspondingly, editors also have new KPIs, which include not only considering click-through rates but also the willingness of players to leave comments.
Therefore, the ending of this article still needs careful consideration. It needs to appear insightful while also providing a satisfactory explanation to the fans of Xingchen.

After much deliberation, Zhang Wei decided to ultimately focus on the timeless truth of "content is king," while also exploring the possibility of Starry Sky using its IP matrix to build a "Starry Sky Universe."

In this way, the article becomes both cautionary and constructive, making it a perfect piece.

He nodded in satisfaction, preparing to finish the last paragraph in one go, when his phone in his pocket vibrated at an inopportune moment, making a buzzing sound.

The caller ID shows a "deadly ghost".

Zhang Wei's heart skipped a beat.

"Hey editor, I've almost finished writing my article, I'll send it to your email now."

"Stop writing!"

A hurried, slightly hoarse voice came from the other end of the phone.

"The manuscript is scrapped! Rewrite it!"

"What do you mean it's ruined? I was almost finished!"

"I said it's scrapped, and it's scrapped!!" The editor-in-chief's voice clearly carried the anxiety of working overtime during the Spring Festival.

"Go to the Starry Sky website right now! Immediately! Right now!"

"What's wrong with the official website? It's just an event for 'Final Battlefront', right? I mentioned it..."

"Who told you about 'Final Frontline'?!" the editor-in-chief practically roared. "It's 'Final Forbidden Zone'! StarCraft has released 'Final Forbidden Zone'! Today! Now! Open beta!"

Zhang Wei stood frozen in place, holding his phone.

The final... forbidden zone?
Public beta?

He slowly turned his head, his gaze falling on the laptop screen. The line of text he had just typed was still flashing with the cursor.

"StarCraft's greatest advantage lies in its exceptional ability to produce first-party content..."

After reading this, Zhang Wei really wanted to yell, "Stars, oh Stars! Are you even human?!"
It's the Lunar New Year, can't people even enjoy the holiday?!

(End of this chapter)