Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 604 Tencent Submerged
The massive wave created by the Starry Sky launch event relentlessly crashed down on every subsequent manufacturer.

EPIC's pre-show press conference was the first to be overwhelmed.

Aside from announcing a partnership with Bethesda, releasing a few Bethesda trailers, announcing Fallout 76's exclusivity on its platform, and showcasing a technical demo of the upgraded Unreal Engine 4, these two announcements have only made a few waves on the surface.

The entire press conference barely made a ripple.

Even this small commotion quickly dissipated amidst a deluge of news from major manufacturers, generating little response. Only within the Unreal Engine developer community did the technical demonstration receive some due feedback.

In contrast, STEAM's launch event was much more successful.

When a familiar orange "λ" symbol appeared on the big screen, the scene was initially deathly silent, then erupted into a deafening roar of cheers.

Valve kept its promise; Half-Life is really back.

When the trailer showed players using their hands to push aside obstacles, retrieve items from a distance, and outwit the headcrab, the entire audience stood up.

A VR exclusive, the official sequel to Half-Life, coupled with unparalleled nostalgia and astonishing details showcased in the demo, the Half-Life: Alyx trailer alone reignited the entire gaming world.

Following this, Gabe Newell (GabeN) personally stated that he would consider remastering classic games in the future, and at the same time, sequels to highly acclaimed classic titles have begun to be evaluated and approved.

This statement caused a global media frenzy, as if it were a holiday.

Following that, a half-hour montage of new games made no attempt to conceal STEAM's absolute dominance among small and medium-sized game developers.

Valve went all out to regain attention from E3.

In the latter half of the press conference, Valve shifted its focus to "STEAM 2.0".

The company unveiled a brand-new UI, announced the establishment of the "STEAM Industry Alliance," organized a global STEAM game competition, and even proclaimed its goal of supporting 100 independent game studios to succeed on the platform in the 2.0 era.

This series of moves, though described by some media as "crossing the river by feeling the stars," is indeed something that Xingchen has already done in the past, strictly speaking.

Overall, however, the media praised this year's Steam pre-show, although in East Asia, Steam's showcase still couldn't outshine StarCraft.

However, in Europe and America, it did put up a good fight against StarCraft, and many European and American media outlets believe that this is the most substantial edition in recent years.

At the same time, many media outlets have also dug up the PPTs that Chu Chen used in his monologues.

At first, many people thought Chu Chen's rapid-fire PPT was just a joke, but then Chu Chen's one or two-minute video went viral across the internet.

Many media outlets actually took screenshots of Chu Chen's "rapid-fire" video frame by frame and tried to deduce something from them.

This idea originated from a YouTuber with fewer than 100,000 subscribers who came up with it in an attempt to gain popularity.

After the press conference, he made a video titled "[Slow Down 100 Times! I Want to See What the CEO of StarCraft Actually Said!]".

At the beginning of the video, the content creator jokingly remarked, "Guys, I bet 90% of this is nonsense."

This video itself was actually a way to capitalize on the popularity of Chu Chen's short video from the E3 pre-show press conference. But then again, that's just how online traffic works.

To put it bluntly, when you have a lot of attention, whatever you do will attract a lot of people to watch.

In fact, this YouTube blogger did gain some traffic.

The first half of the video, the initial few slides, were definitely designed to be entertaining, with captions like, "This page isn't important, the next page isn't important either." There was also a slide with a simple line drawing of a person and the caption, "My self-portrait; I wonder if anyone would buy it as merchandise."

And so on. But starting from page five, the art style changes abruptly.

What is a next-generation gaming platform?

Definition 1: Platform as a Service.

[Completely move away from the single "game store" model, providing players with a comprehensive community integrating social interaction, content creation, live streaming, and news.]

As the video was released and its views began to rise, many media outlets also reposted it.

In fact, by this point, Chu Chen had already achieved his goal.

He didn't expect that in those short two minutes at the press conference, anyone would be able to hear what he said.

What he wanted was a gimmick. When everyone was watching his super-fast "rapid-fire" speech, curiosity would drive people to investigate what he actually said.

So even without this video blogger, Xingchen had other "kind-hearted people" prepared to solve the "mystery."

To some extent, this can be considered a form of reverse thinking in marketing.

Essentially, it's the same principle as those short videos that start with "Top 10 most fun games, you'll never guess the number one," though it's simple.

However, it is very effective when you first start using it. The more you try to hide it, the more people want to see it.

This is not.

Following the Steam pre-show presentation, many media outlets compared Steam's presentation with Chu Chen's PowerPoint presentation, discussing which platform truly deserves to be the next generation.

To be honest, when I saw these news reports...

Chu Chen's face was practically contorted with laughter.

After all, comparing them like this means that at this moment, many media outlets and even players have already placed Steam and StarCraft on the same level.

This is certainly a great thing for the stars.

Hmm... You asked how Tencent's pre-exhibition press conference went on the last day?

Well... to be honest, it's not bad.

The stage lighting, process control, and the aesthetics of the PPT all demonstrate the professionalism expected of a Fortune 500 company.

The main content of the press conference was the latest trailer for the PC version of Monster Hunter: World. Capcom also sent a producer to the event, which was quite a show of respect.

Following that, the trailer for "Magic Racing," adapted from QQ Speed, was released, featuring exquisite visuals and exhilarating drifting.

Then came the Naruto spin-off single-player game from Mill Studios, and the global premiere of King of Ruined King and Hextech Strike from Riot Games—each a major IP.

Finally, the grand finale featured a series of mobile game adaptations of classic IPs: *Red Alert*, *Heroes of Might and Magic*, *Dungeon Keeper 2*, and *Populous Must Be Crazy 2*.

The entire press conference was packed with substantial content and kept pace with the audience.
If this press conference were taken out of context and held in China, it might have garnered some attention. But the problem is, this is E3.

(End of this chapter)