Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 56 Why

The next day, Shanghai

A private room in a high-end Japanese restaurant.

Huang Yu, the producer of "Gun Girl", grabbed the almost empty sake bottle in front of him and took a big gulp directly from the spout. The sake burned his throat, but it was nothing compared to the fire burning in his heart.

"Are you crazy?! They're making such a stupid variety show and I have to participate?"

"What am I with?"

"A game producer who doesn't make games is instead playing celebrity role-playing games."

"Does he really think he's a star producer? Pshaw! What a load of rubbish..."

"If you ask me, those investors at Tencent are all idiots. They know absolutely nothing about game operations!"

Huang Yu grumbled as he slammed his wine glass heavily onto the table.

As I put down my glass, Wan Wanggang's impatient face from that afternoon reappeared in my mind, just like once you start humming "Waiting for the lamp" from Journey to the West, you can't stop even if you want to.

The cause of this matter, naturally, stems from "Terminator 3".

Strictly speaking, the fact that the "Don't do the challenge" video uploaded to Bilibili by "Final Battlefront" had nothing to do with him.

But for some reason, the people at Tencent took this very seriously.

What caught Tencent's attention was not the show's popularity, but money.

Since the spin-off show "The Final Front" aired, "The Final Front," which had fallen out of the top 20 on the Apple best-selling list, has returned to number 15 after the show was updated.

You need to know this moment.

Starry Night Games has been placed on Tencent's "key monitoring" list. Its every move is analyzed daily by dedicated operations staff, who then write reports on it.

In the past, this task was not difficult; all you had to do was collect various data, perform a little analysis, and submit it.

But this time it's different.

Tencent Games' operations staff were baffled by the inexplicable rebound in revenue for "Final Frontline".

It's important to know that in the past few days, the game "Final Front" itself has not had any updates, marketing activities, discounts, or even any signs of hiring online trolls.

How come the water flow has rebounded?
Surely it's not some kind of poorly made "variety show"?

Hmm...
That's actually true.

The recent resurgence in revenue for "The Final Front" was indeed caused by this program.

As the show gained popularity, clips of Chu Chen reading comments began circulating in the "Final Front" community, although these interactions did not bring about any substantial changes to the game.

But the player group, as a consumer group, is very interesting.

This group is one of the few that is willing to pay for the future.

Simply put, even if your game doesn't have this feature yet, as long as you convince players that the game will get better and better in the future, then some players will be willing to pay for it now.

A prime example is Star Citizen, which took ten years to develop.

Chu Chen's reading of comments and his refusal to take on challenges, on the surface, seem like just a "funny show" produced by Starry Night Games.

In reality, the appearance of this program did indeed strengthen players' confidence.

Compared to those aloof producers, players are more willing to trust Xiao Chen, who wore the 95-character-print pain-themed shirt on the show, mingled with players, and seriously addressed player complaints and comments by providing solutions.

Even if some people say that the videos are all fake and staged.

However, this perception further reinforced the belief among Final Frontline fans that StarCraft Games is a "conscientious" company.

As a result, some potential paying customers will think, "Since I'm going to spend money anyway, I might as well spend it now and enjoy it sooner."

There was even a prominent figure whose comments were read because of his "criticism" of Starry Night Games. He felt that his opinion was respected and adopted, and he posted a comment directly in the video's comment section.

The message "I'll spend 100,000 to support you" was accompanied by a screenshot.
This comment naturally attracted countless other comments. What truly amplified the popularity of this reply was a response from Chu Chen's personal account.

"I'm bowing down to you, big shot! There's no need for that. Let's consume rationally, rationally!"

This reply itself was then screenshotted and circulated by many people.

It became a minor but significant hot topic.

In addition, after the open beta, Final Frontline actually added many monetization points, such as skins, rings, and the "Great Battlefield" mode in the story, although it was not implemented in PVE or PVP.

But it also gave a player the opportunity to continue developing a second or third team.

In such a situation, doing sit-ups while the water is flowing is actually quite normal.

However, at this point in time, with anime-style games not yet fully popular and the market still dominated by traditional pay-to-win PC games, the industry believes that...

This is the same feeling they had back then when they watched "Warship Girls" and were able to make money without being forced to spend money.

So much so that the people writing the report at Tencent Games ultimately concluded that "based on the unique marketing mechanism of ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) games, the Final Frontline spin-off program had a positive and active effect on the game's revenue."

That's utter nonsense.

Whatever the reason, Starry Night Games seems to have once again demonstrated a strange promotional method, and it has achieved some results.

So, that very evening, the Honor of Kings operations team submitted a similar program proposal.

In addition, Tencent's investment department has also undergone some changes as a result.

For example, Xiang Lixuan proposed a new investment plan for Starry Sky Games.
Although the proposal is still under review for various reasons, Wan Wanggang's sense of crisis suddenly increased.

The internal competition within Tencent is quite fierce.

As long as Xiang Lixuan's plan is approved, regardless of the final outcome, it will essentially be equivalent to the higher-ups' judgment that Wan Wanggang has made a mistake in his approach to "Gun Girl".

The route was wrong, and it was quite terrifying.

So, Tencent's meeting had just ended in the morning, and Wanwang had just arrived at Flashbang in the afternoon.

The two had a “heated” discussion about the future development of “GunGirls”.

Or to put it more directly.

Wan Wanggang unilaterally "output" against Huang Yu, believing that Flash Explosion did not achieve the expected results despite such a large influx of resources.

Therefore, Huang Yu is required to release the auto chess version of "Gun Girls" next week, no matter what.

Wanwanggang couldn't wait, and he really didn't dare to wait any longer.

He needs to take advantage of the current high traffic to launch another series of moves, getting Tencent's anchors to join forces and hype up the auto chess game "Gun Girl".

However, Huang Yu had no idea what Wan Wang had just gone through.

He believed that, so far, although the Gun Girl's stats were somewhat inferior, they weren't to the point of being completely outmatched.

However, during the afternoon discussion, Wanwang started talking about Xingchen and the other party, which made him feel like he was back in elementary school.

And Xingchen is that "other people's child".

So, although Huang Yu agreed, he first released the promotional material for the auto chess mode and tested the most basic demo.

But I'm still unhappy, very unhappy.

If Huang Yu was only a little jealous when "Final Battlefront" was first released, then he was probably just jealous.

But this jealousy actually dissipated after Tencent confirmed its investment.

Like many others in the industry, he once mocked Xingchen, thinking they were foolish for refusing Tencent's investment and wondering if they had become arrogant.
But now, when his own game, backed by Tencent, still couldn't compete, all that previously dissipated jealousy came rushing back.

He really doesn't understand.

Why?
(End of this chapter)