Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 88 The Future vs. the Present

However..
Full of confidence, Chu Chen soon discovered that things were not as simple as he had imagined.

After confirming Chu Chen's conditions again, Takashi Takeuchi did not continue the discussion. Instead, he sighed and started talking about the success of "Final Battlefront".

They discussed the plot of Final Frontline and the way the animation was presented.

Both of them had smiles on their faces, and Li Suhao and Yan Chuan chimed in, creating a relaxed atmosphere for their conversation. However, Chu Chen, who was as shrewd as a shrew, immediately felt a jolt in his heart.

That's it. The other party probably didn't meet with me because they were interested, but because they wanted to use me as a bargaining chip. It's very likely that DEW is already discussing changing the revenue sharing with them at this time.

In fact.

Chu Chen's intuition was quite accurate.

Takashi Takeuchi had indeed received Shoji's request by this time, although Shoji was not as generous as Chu Chen.
If we directly compare the conditions of both sides...

Clearly, Chu Chen's offer is more attractive.

On the other hand, personally, Takashi Takeuchi still prefers to cooperate with Japanese companies, even though the revenue share offered by DEW is still less than what he expected.

However, Takeuchi Takashi felt that as long as he told Shoji about the process of negotiating with Hoshino today, there was still room for discussion.

This is also why he was willing to see Chu Chen today.

After meeting Chu Chen, Takeuchi Takashi will present the conditions Chu Chen gave him that day to Shoji in order to gain a good bargaining chip.

The reason he made this decision.

The main reason is FGO. Although the current operation of FGO is not very optimistic, Takashi Takeuchi is still confident that as long as Kinoko Nasu takes charge, the situation will definitely change.

Fortunately, Chu Chen was well-prepared. Seeing Takeuchi Takashi's expression, he immediately understood and quickly took out a proposal from his pocket.

"Oh? You brought the project proposal with you?"

"Yes, some ideas..."

Takeuchi Takashi hesitated for a moment, but still accepted Chu Chen's proposal.

Although today's discussion is a formality, Takashi Takeuchi has a good impression of Chu Chen, and this impression is not solely due to the success of "Final Battlefront".

It also stemmed from this brief communication of ten or twenty minutes.

Chu Chen's knowledge of the gaming industry and his analysis of certain matters far exceeded Takashi Takeuchi's initial expectations.

Some people are like that; after just a few words, you can tell their true character.

Chu Chen did not deliberately exaggerate Type-Moon's past glory, nor did he excessively belittle FGO's current predicament.

He simply addressed the issue at hand, analyzing the current trends in the mobile game market in a calm yet highly insightful tone.

Chu Chen also discussed the balance between long-term IP operation and short-term revenue, as well as the differences in payment habits among players in different regions, especially the Chinese player group.

You can sense that the other person is emphasizing their own strengths without making you feel offended.

Based on the previous conversation, Takashi Takeuchi still came with a bit of anticipation when he received the proposal.

~~~
What comes to mind when you think of FATE?
Is the Holy Grail War coming to mind?

Thinking of SBAER? Thinking of Rin Tohsaka? Thinking of Sakura Matou?

Or what?
Perhaps everyone thinks of different things when they talk about Fate.

For core FATE fans, the mention of FATE likely evokes the world created by Kinoko Nasu and its numerous stories.

For casual fans, when talking about Fate, they might think more about Rin Tohsaka's black stockings, Saber's cool EX Excalibur, Jeanne d'Arc, and the classic anime "Fate/Zero".

But whatever you like or whatever comes to mind.

The FATE IP does indeed enjoy extremely high popularity worldwide.

One of the main reasons why Fate was able to grow and thrive is that Kinoko Nasu, the original creator of Fate, truly allowed others to write the Fate story.

And they are willing to endorse these stories as the original authors.

For example, Fate/Zero is entirely the creation of Gen Urobuchi, the warrior of love. In fact, Urobuchi did a really good job, and Fate/Zero is the entry point for many Fate fans.
This open creative philosophy has given FATE a strong vitality.

However, Chu Chen felt that a large part was missing from the overall IP landscape of FATE.

This is about "attracting new users," or rather, the lack of a true "get-in" game.

Did FGO make money in its previous life?

You make money, but whose money are you making?

It's about making money off core fans. Even Shiokawa himself has said that he wants to abandon players who don't like FGO.

This statement can be interpreted as focusing on serving the existing player base. FGO has been doing this for a long time, which is why the revenue of the Japanese version of FGO has remained relatively stable over time.

But at the same time, what are the costs of doing so?

It's a lack of ability to attract new customers.

This refers to the global collapse of FGO servers, except for the Japanese server.

This is especially evident in China, where the total number of players is nearly ten times that of Japan, and the Chinese version of FGO had a very strong start.

However, compared to the stable performance of the Japanese server, FGO has been declining in China, even after Shiokawa's reforms and Nasu Kinoko's return. Therefore, FGO's biggest problem is its inability to attract casual players.

It has virtually no appeal to users outside the FATE community. Players who don't know FATE and are only playing FGO because of its reputation will almost certainly leave.

For an IP of Fate's caliber, Chu Chen felt it was actually quite a pity.

He has two major regrets about FATE. One is that he didn't get to see an action-type FATE. After all, while the story of FATE is good, Chu Chen would rather experience a thrilling Holy Grail War.

The second regret is that there isn't a single Fate game that got me hooked.

Chu Chen only had one idea at the time and had not yet developed a complete plan.

Chu Chen, on the other hand, was already prepared. Based on the idea of ​​"entry-level work", the core logic of the project proposal he wrote was aimed at attracting new players.

Just like the "golden three chapters" in online novels, for a game, especially a story-driven game, to attract viewers, it's essential to focus on three core elements.

What is a crisis? What can the protagonist do in a crisis? How should the protagonist act? If the opening of the story can explain this well, then the player will be attracted.

Chu Chen's script, on the other hand, immediately grabbed Takeuchi Takashi's attention from the very first sentence.

"The world has been turned into a blank sheet of paper."

To be honest, the script Chu Chen gave was not complicated; in fact, it was quite simple compared to the entire Type-Moon universe.

Players familiar with FGO should have noticed when the phrase "blank slate" appeared that Chu Chen had actually taken the original FGO 2.0 script, made some minor modifications, and used it as the beginning of the project.

The original FGO has two story versions: 1.0 and 2.0.

The first part is about an instrument that observes the Earth and discovers that after 2016, humanity's future and past have mysteriously disappeared.

This is equivalent to the complete erasure of more than three thousand years of human history from the planet Earth. The Chaldea organization, a human observation organization, decided to resolve this event.

Soon, they discovered that human history had been completely burned away by a man who called himself the "Magic King" (a process known as the "Incineration of Humanity"), and that seven Holy Grails had been left behind in seven different periods of history.
These seven Holy Grails caused seven major historical turning points, known as "Singularities." So what players have to do is travel to the seven Singularities to retrieve the seven Holy Grails and stop the Magic King and his plan to burn humanity.

It has now reached the 2.0 era.

The plot tells the story of how, after defeating the first boss, the entire Earth was suddenly attacked by an unknown force, erasing all traces of the planet and leaving it like a blank sheet of paper.

At the same time, seven enormous "trees" from space appeared on Earth, along with "Roguezones" forming around them.

If a "singularity" is a "point" formed by a certain erroneous historical period, then a "retrograde" is a "belt" formed by the continued existence of this erroneous history that should have been deleted and cut off by Earth.

The Chaldean group, who were also attacked but escaped, decided to investigate the reason for Earth's blanking and to restore the correct history to Earth.

Actually, if you only look at the settings of these two stories...

Both the 1.0 and 2.0 eras are quite interesting.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem with FGO has never been its setting, but rather the developer's inhumanity, which is the core issue.

The problem is that FGO does not have a content censorship mechanism.

Because there is no review system, players who are unfamiliar with FGO may feel that FGO doesn't look like a normal game at all.

First, there's the issue of the card art being poorly designed. The character illustrations in FGO were drawn by artists commissioned by the development team, who opted to outsource the card art to these artists.

Originally, this wasn't a big deal; many game developers of anime-style mobile games from 15 and 16 adopted this model of outsourcing character illustrations.

The problem is that after choosing to outsource character illustrations, the developers almost completely failed to establish a character illustration review and acceptance system.

All outsourced work was created by the artists themselves.

With virtually no restrictions, the entire FGO card art project was a complete mess, with all sorts of bizarre and grotesque illustrations appearing one after another.

To be honest... if you were an artist, you wouldn't care much about the character illustrations in FGO either.

After all, they pay you as long as you submit your work, right?
The same problem also appears in the text. Like the character illustrations, the text for FGO was also "crowdfunded" by Gen Urobuchi, Higashide, Sakurai, and Minase.

It's not that crowdfunding is bad.

The problem is that scripts are not subject to review, just like online novels are bought outright. No matter how great a writer is, you can't just tell them to buy it out.

He can also write garbage for you.

The fact that FGO's storyline could be written in this way, given that its setting is already quite good, is partly due to the scriptwriters, but also partly due to its completely unrestrained mechanics.

Let's not even talk about recruiting a player script review panel to screen scripts. Even just adding a mechanism where players rate the scripts after the game's story ends, and then increase the bonus based on the players' ratings, would be good.

But, no
There's nothing included; you just get paid as soon as you finish writing, good or bad... you get paid anyway.
Although there are many FGO fans, you can say, "Hey, just skip the beginning, the later parts are written by Kinoko Nasu."

However, that statement itself is utter nonsense.

Furthermore, even the copywriting by Mushroom, strictly speaking, exists in two quadrants: the divine and the demonic.

Ultimately, this is the biggest problem with FGO.

This is also the problem that Chu Chen wants to solve.

However, there's a prerequisite for solving this problem: you need to acquire the copyright first. Without the copyright, nothing you say will make a difference.

Therefore, Chu Chen simply extracted the storyline of FGO 2.0 and included it in the project proposal.

"Use your future self to beat your present self..."

(End of this chapter)