Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 78 Reputation (3K)

The internal competition within Tencent was even more intense than Chu Chen had imagined. Ever since the test data for "Azure Wars" failed to meet the standards in April, the "Azure Wars" project team had been cut off from funding.

All previous plans were halted, hiring almost stopped, bonuses and incentives were canceled, and the big boss above also spoke up, telling them to focus all their efforts on improving the project.

But the problem is
To improve, you first need to know what "good" is before you can know how to improve, right?
The leader gave the final approval to make the changes.

But no one knows exactly how to change it or what it should look like.

Under such circumstances, the entire Azure Wars studio was essentially like a headless fly, from top to bottom, from producer Jiao Xiaofei to the employees below.

Nobody knows how to change it.

They wanted to change the monetization strategy, but as soon as they released even a little information, they were bombarded with criticism by a small number of players.

If they want to change the game content, they don't know how to do it, since "Azure Wars" is a 1:1 imitation of the Kantai Collection arcade game, and it's not their own project at all.

Because the framework is copied 1:1, many frameworks in the game are created, but the reason for doing so is not investigated at all.

Is this good or bad for the player experience?

After all, what the higher-ups want is a 1:1 replica; if you don't replicate it, they won't be able to understand it.

Given this situation, is it still necessary to improve the project?
That would be really difficult for someone.
So what can you do if your boss wants to change things?
So after the first test failed, the people at Azure War Studio worked like monks ringing a bell every day, changing some unimportant things over and over again, putting together an optimization log, and then handing it over to their superiors.

Interestingly, even the higher-ups didn't know how to make the changes.

As long as you submit optimization logs every day, they still think there's hope for the game.

It was under these circumstances that Chu Chen began to contact the "Azure War" studio. At first, the leaders of Tencent Games were very supportive, thinking that Chu Chen had achieved some results after all.

It's a good thing that people are willing to communicate and exchange ideas.

Therefore, it was not stopped.

However, what Chu Chen is going to do is unclear to those above, but surely those who are actually doing the work know it?

Jiao Xiaofei was the first to react.

He could tell at a glance that the other party was there to poach his talent. If it were anyone else, it wouldn't matter, but it was Chu Chen. Starry Sky Games was gaining momentum, and Chu Chen's leadership skills and demeanor were more than a hundred times better than those of Tencent's leaders.

This combination of factors has led to the current situation where "the man is interested and the woman is interested."

Otherwise, no matter how outrageous a Tencent studio is, it's impossible for them to help "outsiders" make demos during work hours, especially with almost all of them participating.

To put it simply, everyone knows what this DEMO is.

Now that the demo is finished, it's natural to ask the other party if they are willing to "take responsibility".

And then Chu Chen confirmed it again.

Everyone on site breathed a sigh of relief, and they tacitly refrained from discussing the details further, since at this point, "Azure Wars" was not yet preparing for its next test in June.

However, this time, when Chu Chen was about to leave, he didn't just leave as easily as before.

Instead, he took the opportunity to thank the team for resolving the demo and treated the members of the Azure Wars studio to dinner.

Although the idea sounded abstract, about half of the people, including Jiao Xiaofei, readily accepted the invitation and added Xingchen Games' HR personnel on WeChat during the dinner.
Yes, that's the WeChat account I added.
Using Tencent's software to poach people from Tencent always feels...
~~~
Two things were resolved in one go.

Chu Chen let out a rare long sigh of relief, but his journey was not yet over.

Three days later, on May 20th

The newly expanded office area on the second floor of Xingchen Games still has desks and chairs provided by Yufeng Youth Entrepreneurship Industrial Park.

Since everything was new and there was no clutter, coupled with the sunlight shining through the blinds, the whole environment had a refreshing feel, like being in a game-rendered scene.

At this moment, right in front of the long table in this "model office area".

Several men wearing plaid shirts were flipping through the business plans in front of them.

The scene was very quiet, with only the rustling sound of papers turning.

About ten minutes passed.

The middle-aged man sitting in the center finally closed the notebook in front of him.

Then they looked at each other, and in disbelief, they saw it in each other's eyes.

To be honest, Li Yifeng couldn't remember the last time he was so surprised, even after nearly ten years in the gaming industry.

From joining Shengda in 07 to operate Ragnarok Online, to switching to Wanmei due to ideological differences, participating in the operation of Jade Dynasty in 09, and then switching to Xingdong Games in 13.

In 16, he joined the TaTap planning team and became the head of Tap planning. Li Yifeng has probably seen more operational planning proposals than he has used tissues.

Even he himself had just recently written a proposal for Tap.
The Tap project was originally quite ambitious.

In Li Yifeng's and Xingdong's senior management's plan, when they shouted the slogan "0%", it should be like the Yellow Turbans in the Three Kingdoms shouting the slogan "Heaven is dead".

One call and a hundred responses.
However... the reality was quite the opposite; after the slogans were shouted out, not a single person paid any attention to them.

Tap has made many efforts in the past month, such as introducing a payment mechanism for Android single-player games and introducing several genuine Android single-player games that players can pay for on the Tap platform.
The problem is, with free pirated software rampant, who would buy the legitimate version? Moreover, Tap already had no users at that time. It's fair to say that the entire Tap team went from initial ambitious goals to utter despair in just one month.
Until three days ago, the owner of Xingchen Games approached Xingdong and offered 1000 million to acquire the Tap project.

At first, Xingdong's boss was a bit conflicted. Although he had wanted to sell the project, he hesitated when someone actually made an offer.

As it turned out, Chu Chen didn't play by the rules at all. After quoting the price, he sensed that Xingdong was hesitating, so he turned around and was about to leave.

They even said if they weren't going to sell, then fine, Xingchen would handle it themselves.

This completely threw Xingdong into a panic.

Tap already had a tough start on this track, and now they haven't even found their way. If Starry Sky comes along as a competitor, wouldn't that just make things even more complicated?
Moreover, Xingchen is more influential than Xingdong now, and their initial traffic is definitely higher than ours.

Ever since.
That evening, Xingdong's boss took the initiative to call Chu Chen and agreed to the quote.

The transaction was incredibly fast. Then, Li Yifeng met Chu Chen, and the two talked for about half a day. He was impressed by Chu Chen's confidence and his judgment of the game market.

Of course, there's also Chu Chen's generosity.

"10% of the operating revenue?"

"Yes, Startap has high potential for future profitability."

Chu Chen established Xingchen Tap for two other core purposes besides building his own distribution channels.

One approach is to attract small and medium-sized game developers.

In Chu Chen's plan, once Xingchen Tap has established itself, the next step for game developers is to entrust Xingchen Games with the agency rights, with a commission rate of 20%, which is much lower than that of other current agency developers.

StarCenter can provide full-process services from server setup to operation.

Secondly, it lays the foundation for the PC platform.

Of course, Chu Chen didn't explain these things in such detail to Li Yifeng, after all, even he himself was only building a very vague framework.

The only thing he could tell Li Yifeng right now was that Star Tap was very important.

Li Yifeng also sensed this.

Although the revenue sharing for joining Xingchen Tap is 0, manufacturers naturally have to pay for recommendations or additional traffic.

Once StarTap takes off, a 10% share of the profits is no small amount.

Previously, although Li Yifeng was in charge of Tatap at Xingdong, to be honest, he only received the salary of an executive. But when he joined Xingchen, Chu Chen directly gave him a share of the profits.

They are quite sincere.

In addition, since Star Wallpaper was already a phenomenal application at this time, and Chu Chen's initial cooperation intention with Tencent was basically finalized, he revealed the entire Star TapTap launch chain to Li Yifeng.

Where does traffic come from? How to retain users? How to operate the platform?

These three core issues, like three mountains, once weighed heavily on him, making it hard for him to breathe.

Let's not even talk about the last two questions; he couldn't answer the first one.

In his excitement, he thought he had figured things out.

Zero revenue sharing attracts developers, developers bring good games, and good games naturally attract players—what a perfect closed loop! But reality slapped him awake: without users, without traffic, everything is just a castle in the air.

His subsequent ideas about word-of-mouth marketing, platform operation, manufacturer interaction, and organic growth appear pale and powerless in the face of cold, hard data.

But Chu Chen is different.

Or rather, the current Starry Night game is very different.

Before learning about Starry Sky Games, Li Yifeng, like many others in the industry, simply regarded it as a dark horse in the gaming world.

Even now, many people still believe that the success of "Final Battlefront" was due to luck.

After meeting Chu Chen and learning about some of the internal data of the Starry Sky Game, Li Yifeng realized how terrifying Starry Sky truly was.

The most powerful aspect of the saying "small profits but quick turnover" is not the small profit margin, but the quick turnover.

Looking at the current gaming industry, before the release of "Final Frontline," it was the era of super pay-to-win games. Changing your name cost money, equipment had durability, inventory and storage space needed to be purchased, resurrection cost money, and using skills required materials.

Even if you don't buy the exorbitantly priced equipment protection voucher, your equipment will still break. After you've enhanced it, there's still a chance to successfully amplify it; if you fail, its attributes will drop.

After washing the equipment, you need to enchant it, and you can also drill holes in the equipment. After drilling holes, you need to put gems in it. Gems need to be synthesized, and synthesis can fail. In some games, there is no limit to the level of gems.

Fashion items also have attributes, and pets also need to wear equipment and have gems added. Free-to-play pets are always a step below paid pets. If you don't spend money, you're just a living NPC.

Such games occupy more than 90% of the Chinese game market.

After the release of "Final Frontline", some people ridiculed it for having "millions of daily active users but such low revenue". However, the fact that such a game has millions of daily active users is more than just millions of daily active users.

With the same million daily active users, Starry Sky's appeal among players is several times that of other similarly tiered players.

(End of this chapter)