Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 82 Identifying Stars Popular Comments
Time flies, and it's already the end of May.

A lot has happened in the gaming industry recently.

Tencent Games has invested in Star Wallpaper, a wallpaper app that currently only has one function. Tencent values ​​Star Wallpaper at 3 million RMB and has invested 6000 million RMB to acquire a 20% stake in the app.

The announcement of this 3 million valuation has sparked a great deal of discussion throughout the gaming industry.

It's worth noting that at that time, Moshow Wallpaper, a leading company in wallpaper application software, was valued at only 3 million RMB.

In other words, Tencent believes that this wallpaper app, which has been online for less than a week, has the same value and influence as the already listed Moxiu Wallpaper.

Considering the idea of ​​investment returns, Tencent may not see this valuation as the upper limit for Star Wallpaper.

This incident also triggered two particularly interesting chain reactions.

Firstly, after Tencent announced its investment in Xingchen Wallpaper, Tencent's stock price immediately rose. Many investors started selling after hearing only half of the news, thinking that Tencent had invested in Xingchen Games.

It's important to know that while these people who play the stock market don't play games, they do read the news.

If you just look at the news, the name Starry Night Games has appeared frequently in the media over the past month, with many media outlets considering it the biggest dark horse in the game market this year.

One minute it's a top-selling item in China, the next it's a hit in the Japanese market, then Korean gamers are begging for it, and then it's all about wallpapers...
The feeling this group of people had was, "I don't understand it, but I'm deeply shocked."

So when Tencent announced its investment in Star Wallpaper, this group of people flocked to Tencent's stock, which actually created a "optimistic sentiment" in the market and pushed Tencent's stock up a bit.
And it started to snowball.
Even after Star Games issued a denial, Tencent's stock price continued to rise.

Meanwhile, Moxiu Wallpaper, which just listed on the A-share market in May, saw its stock price plummet by more than 10%.
Even at this point, Tencent had only made the investment and had not yet rolled out traffic for Star Wallpaper.

All I can say is that Tencent truly lives up to its name. It is now the biggest rogue in China.
Entering any industry can indeed make others "tremble".

Amidst this bustling scene, only a very small number of people noticed.

Besides Tencent's investment in Star Wallpaper, Star Games also acquired Tatap from Xingdong for 1000 million yuan. However, Star Games kept a low profile, and Tatap made no announcements after the acquisition, and didn't even change its name.
Aside from news in the gaming industry.

No new games were released in the latter half of May, so the period was relatively stable.

The popularity of "Final Frontier" has finally begun to slowly decline, while at the same time, news, demos, and previews of various new "auto chess" games are appearing on the internet.

Suddenly, the number has increased significantly. Searching for "auto chess" on Baidu no longer only brings up titles like "Final Battlefront."

Along with it came a whole bunch of strange things.

The auto-chess mode of "Gun Girls" has entered the "internal testing" stage, and on various mobile phone apps, there are countless fake versions that look like "Final Front".

~~~
Yufeng Youth Entrepreneurship Industrial Park

The weather in Yufeng at the end of May was a bit strange.

It's only the beginning of summer, but the weather seems to have been turned on like a switch, suddenly becoming hot.

Especially in the afternoon after lunch, it's incredibly hot and humid when you're walking on the street.

The sun hung brightly overhead, and the asphalt road was so hot that it felt soft and sticky underfoot.

The leaves of the roadside trees drooped listlessly, and the cicadas chirped intermittently.

However, these negative effects were quickly overshadowed by a strong sense of coolness after entering the company.

Although I know it's because the company installed new air conditioning, and Chu Chen seems to be very afraid of the heat, so he likes to turn on the air conditioning early, the coolness still gives people a sense of relief and comfort.

"Ah—I'm alive! It's so hot outside..."

"Hey! Yingying! What did you have for lunch?"

As soon as Song Yueying entered the office, she heard a cheerful greeting from behind her.

Turning around, I saw a girl in a white dress.

The girl's name is He Xiaofei, and she is also a newly recruited employee in the art department.

Since the launch of "Final Front" in early March, the biggest change at Starry Sky Games Studio has been the increase in workstations. From the initial fifty or so people, the number has now increased to nearly one hundred, not even counting the staff from the acquired Tatap.

With the continuous influx of new employees, Song Yueying, who had worked there for less than two and a half years, had already become a "veteran" of the company.

However, it's clear that Song Yueying isn't quite used to it yet, especially being called "Sister Yingying".
"I just grabbed some salad from the new place downstairs."

"Hey! Yingying, are you still on a diet?"

Song Yueying smiled.

"It's not really about dieting, it's just that the weather's hot and I don't have much of an appetite..."

The two chatted as they walked inside.

The building where Starry Sky Games is currently located is a U-shaped building.

Like many industrial parks in China, Yufeng Industrial Park may not have much else, but it is huge, extremely huge.

Although Xingchen Games' staff has expanded very rapidly, the entire industrial park is still very empty, especially after Yufeng officials allocated the entire second floor to Xingchen Games.

Coming up the stairs, walk to the far end of the left-hand corridor. That's the R&D department, which includes the art team, planning team, copywriting team, and programming team.

The second large office area, close to the R&D department, is the operations department, mainly consisting of the project management team and the operations team. Further out are the wallpaper software operations team, the voice actor studio, and the Star Tap workspace, which has only been there for a few days.

Thanks to the "unique" design of Yufeng Industrial Park, the entire Xingchen Games building, which you might call an office, is more like a "teaching building," especially with a boss who likes to visit other places.
That would make it even more similar.
Going up the stairs and into the company to the art department also requires a walk, so He Xiaofei and Song Yueying chatted for a while longer.

As they chatted, He Xiaofei suddenly steered the conversation toward Chu Chen.

"Sister Yingying, did you see that video from yesterday? President Chen is trending again!!"

He Xiaofei's "CEO Chen" is trending again. She was referring to an episode of "Starry Sky Hot Comments Appraisal" that Chu Chen filmed a couple of days ago. That's why he made this program.

It's because "Final Battlefront" is so popular that some people have started pretending to be "insiders" for traffic, and some have even posted data mining videos to analyze the new characters to be released in version 1.1 by looking at some names in the data.

This matter just so happens to coincide with Tencent's investment in Star Wallpaper, although Tencent's investment is part of Chu Chen's plan.

However, this move still impacted Xingchen's reputation.

There's no way to have it all in this world.

If you take Tencent's traffic, you have to bear the backlash from Tencent's public opinion.

Fortunately, Tencent only invested in wallpaper software, and Tencent was aware of its poor reputation, so it did not publicize the investment.

unfortunately
Tencent never expected that such an ordinary investment would actually affect the stock price.

So in the end, this news still caused a huge uproar.

As the saying goes, "With fame comes trouble."

Where there's traffic, there will be people doing it. This isn't something you can avoid just because Starry Sky has a good reputation. On the contrary, it's precisely because Starry Sky has a good reputation that there will be even more traffic for smearing Starry Sky.

Besides those who smear StarCraft, there are also a lot of people on the internet who are praising StarCraft games in a completely unfounded way.

What does it mean to exaggerate? It means taking some perfectly normal things and exaggerating them to make the system sound like it's some earth-shattering, groundbreaking creation myth, all for the sake of traffic.

There are also those who are praising Starry Sky Wallpaper, saying that its valuation in just one week has already surpassed that of Moxiu Wallpaper.

"What trash is Mo Xiu? If you really want to see wallpapers, you have to look at Starry Night." "Artists from over twenty countries around the world participated in the wallpaper rendering competition. Can any other domestic manufacturers do that? A bunch of garbage."

"This wallpaper is simply revolutionary! A detailed explanation in 10,000 words! What new technologies does the Starry Sky Wallpaper use?!"

There are also those who praise Chu Chen himself.

He said he was incredibly awesome in college, and even his professors were amazing to him.

To be honest, these people who chase traffic may seem harmless now and even helpful to Xingchen, but that's not actually the case. One fan is worth ten haters, that's what they're talking about.

Various rumors, praises, smears, and insider information about Starry Night Games have begun to circulate online.

The impact doesn't seem to be that great yet, and the fans of "Final Battlefront" are still on the same page as Starry Sky, but this kind of thing can't be ignored.

However, if you really want to get involved in this kind of thing, it's actually quite difficult to get started.

After all, many people were just waiting for him to argue with them. After thinking it over, Chu Chen came up with a solution: he recorded himself a segment titled "Identifying Popular Comments on Starry Sky."

The first thing they said was, "Let's assess the popular comments on Starry Night Games."

Chu Chen used the same framework that Wuqiong Xiaoliang used in his previous life for "Identifying Popular Internet Creatures" in the game.

Let's look at the first comment.

[Final Battlefront version 1.1 was actually completed a long time ago, and even version 1.2 was finished, but the development team deliberately didn't release it.]

"What! I didn't even know about this!"

In the video, Chu Chen exclaimed in surprise, then stood up, turned the camera around, and pointed it at Xiong Rui, who was at his workstation.

"Xiong Rui!! Get over here right now, have you finished version 1.1 yet?"

"No, boss!"

Chu Chen then flipped the camera back to himself.

"No, that's fake news. There's also version 1.2."

After he finished speaking, a new folder appeared on the screen, and Chu Chen typed a line of text in a flash.

"Okay, version 1.2 is indeed under development now. Let's move on to the next news item."

[StarCraft took money from Tencent; players still playing Final Frontline are "lucky"]

"Ah? Yueying!"

"what happened?"

Song Yueying's beautiful figure appeared in the camera.

Did we take money from Tencent?

"Take it."

When did you take it?

"Just a few days ago, Starry Wallpaper sold 20% of its shares and received 60 million..."

"How many?"

"Sixty million? What's wrong?"

"Oh, only 60 million? Hey, what was our estimated revenue for this month?"

"It seems to be around one hundred million."

"Oh, let me ask you this: if your family earns 100 million a month, and I give you 60 million, could you let me take over your family business?"

Song Yueying didn't answer, she just rolled her eyes.

The camera cut back to Chu Chen, who scratched his head, seemingly saying nothing, yet also seemingly saying everything.

"Tencent invested in Starry Wallpaper. The reason we took the investment is because if we hadn't, Tencent would have created its own version called 'Tencent Wallpaper'."

At that moment, someone from the operations department exclaimed in surprise off-screen!
"Huh? What... can't I say this?"

"Okay, okay, we can't say this, brothers."

After a few more attempts at creating a dramatic effect, Chu Chen finally put on a more serious expression.

"Um, I'd like to clarify something: the reason we accepted Tencent's investment was due to some cooperation on traffic, and it won't change our later operational strategy."

Chu Chen wasn't afraid of the rumors; what he feared was the negative impact these rumors would have on the Starry Night Games brand. So his approach was quite simple.

The solution is to respond to these messages with humor.

After all, entertainment content spreads more widely, and as long as his videos spread more widely than rumors, to some extent, it can not only alleviate the "one fan is worth ten haters" phenomenon, but also expand his influence.

As for the fact that this practice would reduce the amount of "crystallized powder" in the stars, that was exactly what Chu Chen wanted to see.

He hopes his game will be popular because of its quality, not because it was made by StarCraft.

"That's all for this episode. If you see anything outrageous, unconfirmed, or unsure of its authenticity, feel free to leave a comment in the Starry Night Games news section."

See you next time!

However, although the initial intention was to alleviate the rumors.

But this short video, which is less than 4 minutes long, became even more popular than the previous spin-off program of Endless Girls, and its popularity was somewhat inexplicable.

Modern gamers have never seen a producer like this before.

This kind of producer can make games and also likes to create interesting content.

In addition to Chu Chen, the video also features Xiong Rui, who looks like a mountain, and Song Yueying, who is gentle and elegant, and is also very eye-catching.

Especially Song Yueying's eye-rolling expression.

A screenshot was taken directly and instantly turned into an emoji, which began to circulate among Starry Night Games fans.

What's most interesting is that at the same time the video was released, some "researchers" found some interesting things from the fleeting glimpse of Chu Chen's office.

That afternoon, some sharp-eyed viewers paused at 1 minute and 23 seconds into the video and noticed that there were many cats in different poses drawn on the large whiteboard behind the office.

One of them is an illustration of a cat causing trouble, and a cute pose after being caught.

New game? Or new system?

This whiteboard was indeed a little Easter egg prepared by Chu Chen, and the players started discussing it again, providing some material for Chu Chen's next video.

In short, while alleviating external pressure on public opinion, this video did indeed make Chu Chen a little more popular.

(End of this chapter)