How can you become a star without money?

Chapter 140 Now I'm going to show off my knife skills!
Parody culture originates from deconstruction culture.

Originating from the human nature's innate resistance to absolute authority and singular narratives, this has existed from ancient times to the present.

A typical example in the West is carnival, which breaks down the seriousness of the church and feudal system through a playful mode that subverts class distinctions.

In the East, this is mainly expressed in literary works, which is called "fictionalization". The havoc in the Heavenly Palace in "Journey to the West" is a standard example of satirizing and venting by deconstructing the authority of the Jade Emperor.

Dadaism in the early 20th century further dethroned the sanctity of traditional art, turning it from a lofty throne into an object of ridicule and discussion, directly giving rise to modern cultural trends.

The progress of human civilization relies on this kind of rebellion.

Civilization can only progress if the next generation disobeys the previous generation.

Therefore, the culture of parody is essential, especially as a soft weapon to relieve public emotions.

Yi Xiaoxing is a natural-born prankster.

Wang Yao asked him to be in charge of the game commentary and promotion of "Fruit Assassin". Then, he had a brilliant idea and handed it over the next day. Louis XVI suddenly appeared while cutting fruit. After one cut, the scene changed and was accompanied by a Japanese-style art style with people looking for their heads on the ground.

"Why don't you caption Louis XVI: Fast and accurate, safe and sound, excellent!" Wang Yao remained silent for a long time after reading it.

So this is already the beginnings of a hellish joke?
"Mr. Wang, you understand art. I'm even planning to use Roger's head from 'One Piece' in Japan. 'Want my treasure? Go find me in 'Fruit Assassin'! I've put everything, including my head, in there!'"

"I'm even planning to use the scenario of accidentally cutting someone while slicing fruit to create multiple transition sequences," Yi Xiaoxing said with a smug look on her face.

“Even Satan would have to offer you a cigarette. That’s a good idea, but remember to be careful not to go too far.” Wang Yao agreed to his proposal.

That afternoon, the first draft of "Louis XVI Looking for His Head" was completed. Although it was only 12 seconds long, it was indeed very catchy in terms of visual impact and its satirical core.

Twelve hours before Fruit Assassin was released, global social gaming platforms such as TouchArcade and OpenFeint each posted a promotional message: "Witness the birth of a mobile game that will change the world."

The exaggerated title attracted the attention of many mobile game enthusiasts, and after clicking in, they saw promotional videos from various game bloggers on YouTube, which generated a lot of positive reactions.

The visual impact and sound effects of the fruit bursting with juice, combined with the ink-wash painting style and sword flashes with an oriental mystique, certainly caught the attention of many viewers.

Back when mobile games were dominated by puzzle games like Snake, Sokoban, Zuma Connect, fishing, racing, and Angry Birds.

Fruit Assassin is a unique type of gesture-based cutting game that provides real-time feedback.

In addition, the game's progressively tense atmosphere, which is relaxed at the beginning, gradually increases as the score rises, the speed and number of fruit being thrown, the difficulty of the bombs, and the countdown racing mode all give the audience and players a highly adrenaline-pumping sense of urgency.

Most importantly, the game's visuals are bright and simple, and the rules have zero learning curve, giving anyone the illusion that "I could do that too," greatly reducing the difficulty of the experience and increasing the chances of trying.

In addition, the large screen of the iPad provides a highly compatible finger control experience, so once you open it, it's hard to turn it off without playing for at least an hour.

After the promotional posts were released on various platforms, they quickly sparked discussions among mobile gamers. The total number of views of the videos worldwide exceeded 500 million within 24 hours. For a niche game market that launched on iOS, this means that at least one-tenth of the target audience was reached, considering that there are probably less than 3000 million iOS mobile game players worldwide.

The game was launched simultaneously in China at 10 PM and in North America at around 9 PM, and sold nearly 2 copies within an hour of its launch.

It entered the top 30 of the game sales charts.
Subsequently, players who experienced the game on various forums and social media started a word-of-mouth effect, spontaneously recommending it, especially in the comment sections of some recommendation bloggers, where a large number of recommendations appeared.

'I swear this is the most fun mobile game ever.'

"Angry Birds is nothing compared to it."

'Minecraft isn't even worthy of being compared to it.'

'Only discerning iOS users can enjoy this top-tier game; Android and Symbian users are limited to mindless puzzle games like Sokoban.'

Malicious comments that dragged down other games quickly expanded the discussion from iOS mobile games to the entire mobile game community and even the PC game community, and a war was about to break out.

Gamers are a group that is easily drawn into things, especially PC gamers who are at the top of the social hierarchy. Naturally, they can't tolerate this phenomenon. Many game streamers with hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube have also stepped in to fight back against the disparaging of "Fruit Assassin".

Information flows rapidly within this small circle, and in less than two hours, the name "Fruit Assassin" had spread among gamers across all sectors of the global gaming community.

Following this, a tabloid in the United States published a post titled "Sister addicted to mobile games scalds her brother while boiling water for his bath and is sent to the hospital," which quickly sparked even greater public discussion.

It even topped the trending lists on major social media platforms.

The idea that gaming is harmful is not unique to China; it has been circulating globally for a long time. Moreover, news of personal injury caused by gaming addiction is prone to sparking controversy.

Even if it's a news story that can't stand scrutiny and is obviously fake.

But what the public cares about is never the facts, but rather having an opportunity to vent their emotions.

Fruit Assassin was originally a topic of discussion within the gaming community, but it quickly spread across social media and was met with a lot of negative comments.

However, sales figures continue to grow.

Wang Yao had already arrived at the Hong Kong branch, since it was more convenient to do anything there.

"These foreigners are no different in intelligence from my second aunt, are they?" Jin Quan couldn't help but sigh as he watched his fabricated news cause such a sensation on the foreign internet.

He is now based in the Hong Kong branch, where he is responsible for the entire overseas business.

"On the contrary, your second aunt might be even smarter." Wang Yao chuckled and shook his head. "This trending topic was worth it. It cost less than 50,000 yuan, and now it's almost reached 100 million views."

"But they're all negative reviews. Won't this affect the game's rating, Mr. Wang?" Jin Quan asked, frowning.

"Most of those who pay attention to this kind of news are middle-aged parents, who are not gamers to begin with. But when these people see this kind of dangerous news, they will turn around and warn their children not to become addicted to games."
"Now here's the question: did you listen to your parents when you were a child?" Wang Yao asked rhetorically.

"No, I'm even curious about what kind of game is so fun. Like when my parents told me that people who went to internet cafes were hooligans and would get beaten up, I still couldn't resist going when I was in junior high school." Jin Quan smiled.

He has always relied on clickbait headlines to attract traffic and generate revenue, and this is his first time trying a marketing model that links products, so he is still a little unaccustomed to it.

"So it doesn't matter who discusses the topic; what matters is whether it can be indirectly or directly conveyed to your target audience." Wang Yao glanced at the game's download count.

In just over four hours, it garnered over 50,000 subscriptions and downloads, and the number continues to increase every hour.

If this growth rate can be maintained, and sales exceed 20 on the first day, it will break the first-day sales record of "Angry Birds". If it exceeds one million in the first month, it will top the mobile game charts.

Besides the Western market, the number of mobile game players in the Korean and Japanese markets is also considerable.

Kim Beom-joo, the owner of Kakao, a company invested in by Wang Yao, is considered the pioneer of the entire Korean game portal website. With him involved, the promotion effect of "Fruit Assassin" in Korea can be guaranteed.

Kakao Talk has been online in Korea for a month now. Because it's free to download, it has already reached 10 registered users in its first month without much promotion. The main users are high school and college students.

This group is the most suitable as the first batch of users to experience the product.

But just as he was considering how to increase user engagement and achieve stable expansion, Wang Yao gave him a big gift.

As an entrepreneur who started his business in the gaming industry, Kim Bum-joo considers himself to have a very high sensitivity to games. After experiencing "Fruit Assassin," he was quite amazed.

This is a game perfectly adapted for smart mobile devices! It may even become a benchmark game.

He was involved in writing the game analysis and review section of the "Witness" post on the external forum, which indeed sparked heated discussions.

But he really didn't expect that Wang Yao could use this post to generate so much public discussion and even become a trending topic.

This was also the first time he had personally experienced Wang Yao's operational methods.

The seasoned ones are even a bit cunning.

It is indeed very useful. After hearing that the number of paying users for the game had exceeded 5, Jin Fanzhu was a little embarrassed. He had previously boasted that he would help drive traffic to the Myspace platform after Kakao Talk users exceeded one million. Now, Wang Yao could release a game and the number of users would soon surpass his. Moreover, it was a paid download and he had already started to make a profit.

After receiving Wang Yao's request to help promote the game in Korea, Kim Beom-joo suddenly had a flash of inspiration: "Mr. Wang, do you think it's possible to link the game with KT for mutual traffic generation?"

After listening, Wang Yao pondered for a moment and said, "Theoretically, it's possible. 'Water Assassin' has a built-in ranking system, which is based on the rankings of major regions and the world, but it only shows the top ten. If KT can create a built-in secondary page, the points rankings of all friends can be synchronized after logging in, which may generate some interactivity."

Wang Yao was referring to a mini-program similar to WeChat's step counter. KT pioneered this mini-program redirection model. Jin Fanzhu will develop a mini-program coupon in the second half of the year, which will be used in cooperation with offline coffee shops and flower shops, creating KT's first monetization path other than advertising.

Moreover, Jin Fanzhu came from a background in game portal rankings, so he naturally understood Wang Yao's meaning immediately.

"Mr. Wang, you're a genius! This will not only increase the social interaction of KT users, but also bring a continuous stream of viral spread to the game," Jin Fanzhu exclaimed.

Comparison is one of the core driving forces of human effort, and rankings are the most effective way to stimulate this competitive mentality.

“But Mr. Kim, there’s a problem. Although I’m a shareholder of KT, I’m also the owner of Xingyou. This collaboration is clearly not on equal footing. Water Spinner’s player base in Korea will eventually surpass KT’s, and those will all be paying users.” Wang Yao smiled. “Of course, KT will be the absolute beneficiary of this collaboration. I will pay the market price for promotion costs, $2 per user, how about that?” Kim Bum-joo wasn’t stupid; he naturally understood the implication.

“This price is acceptable. In addition, I’ve almost finished developing the mobile version of Myspace. If Mr. Jin is willing, we can open a login port for KT, so that users can log in to Ms directly with their KT accounts,” Wang Yao said.

Third-party login?
Jin Fanzhu's heart skipped a beat.

The technology itself is not difficult to implement; the challenge lies in finding partners willing to open up their platforms and jointly build the ecosystem.

Although Ms has made a small splash in Korea recently, it has certainly sparked some interest. After all, it was once a global platform with tens of millions of users. If it could really open up a third-party login port with KT, that would be a good thing.

Integrating the KT account system into more apps and websites to create a convenient "one-stop login, multiple uses" effect, thereby strengthening users' reliance on the platform, is absolutely a great thing.

"How many users does Ms have now?" Jin Fanzhu asked curiously.

This also reminded Jin Fanzhu that regarding the ranking of "Water Spinner," it could be directly linked to certain game websites in the future. This way, users could log in with KT and the data from various games could be automatically captured, increasing user activity and social attributes, which would be a win-win situation for the game portal.

"The number of active users in the Goryeo region is in the tens of thousands, which should be similar to KT. However, this may change after the mobile app is launched in a few months," Wang Yao chuckled.

Jin Fanzhu pondered that the MS mobile app would inevitably be promoted next. If he could reach a third-party port agreement with KT, it would be equivalent to giving KT an additional free source of public domain traffic, but he felt that the cost would not be low.

“MS is public domain traffic, so although the user cost is low, the volume is large. KT users are precise, but they only have private domain social functions, so the price may be different. So I was thinking, how about we cooperate based on the number of users logging in to each portal each month, at $0.01 per user per day?” Wang Yao said.

Kim Bum-joo did the math: assuming one million users log into MS through KT every day, that's $10,000. That's over $300,000 a month for a stable million-user stickiness—it's an incredibly worthwhile deal.

Over time, users will become more and more accustomed to using KT, and their stickiness will increase, giving it a natural advantage when competing with similar software.

At his level, he's not qualified to build an ecosystem with international social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Although Ms is barely surviving, he believes in Wang Yao's abilities.

“I have no problem with that. It all depends on whether President Wang can persuade the company. If he can, it will be a huge help,” Jin Fanzhu said quickly.

“KT is also my company, so it’s a win-win situation. I’ll have to trouble President Kim a lot more with the promotion of ‘Water Spine’ in Korea,” Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Don't worry, I'll definitely help Mr. Wang connect with the most cost-effective channels," Jin Fanzhu said with a smile.

Facebook and Twitter have already started using third-party login technology, as long as the toolchain and system are compatible. This is a natural advantage for iOS mobile devices, but Android will probably need a long time to build.

However, the current mainstream active high-quality users are basically all iOS users. Although Android has a large user base, most of them are not very valuable. In the early stages, relying on iOS is enough.

Kim Bum-joo was quite efficient; about three hours later, he secured top placement on almost all of Korea's gaming portals and forums for "Water Spikes," at a cost of less than $5.

Wang Yao didn't use the promotional materials he used in the West; instead, he used a new batch of materials.

I used a mod to turn the fruit images in "Water Slingshot" into human figures. Although the fruit still bursts out as fruit juice after being cut open, it still looks a bit strange at first glance, especially when cutting a watermelon.

However, when accompanied by accompanying text, the video becomes much more sacred.

"I'm so fed up with these idiot bosses and clients in the workplace! I'll chop you all up!"

All the portraits in this material were replaced with photos of the poster's boss and the client. After the poster replaced the fruit with photos of the boss using a photo editing tool, the whole scene had an indescribable sense of satisfaction.

After the video was posted on the gaming forum, it quickly resonated with many Korean netizens.

Holy crap, if you were talking about cutting fruit, I probably wouldn't find it interesting.

But you want me to slice up the idiots I encounter in the workplace and in life? Well then I'll have to show off my knife skills.

After all, Goryeo is the place with the most severe workplace and class oppression, even more so than Japan. If the Evil Sword Immortal were in Goryeo, he would have unified the six realms long ago.

As soon as the post was published, many people started asking for photo editing methods in the comments.

The poster readily shared the modified strategy, which instantly sparked heated discussion.

Although Water Slingshot was released less than 10 hours ago, it was released exclusively on iOS and was quickly cracked into various versions by other tech gurus and circulated on forums.

In theory, such cracking is an infringement, but most developers will not pursue legal action in order to facilitate better initial dissemination, unless it causes significant impact.

iOS users had just begun to enjoy the fun of slicing fruit, but Android users have already started playing it as a stress-relieving game.

Soon, major Korean social media platforms, especially Myspace, began sharing videos and content about various modified versions of "Water Spinner," with the most popular content using photos of Korean characters from recent years that were considered obscene or lewd.

It quickly became a trending topic and sparked heated discussions.

At the same time, Western social media also witnessed the "Louis XVI praise" incident, which was seen as a sign of the abstract king.

The incident started when an unknown blogger posted a review video of "Water Spine," claiming that he had discovered a hidden Easter egg: after achieving a combo of 40 or more, he triggered a scene where Louis XVI was searching for his head on the ground.

It instantly caused an uproar on Twitter and Facebook.

These kinds of pranks and everyday amusement events are exactly the kind of topics that the public enjoys.

In a short time, all sorts of outrageous hidden Easter eggs and jokes about "Water Spinner" emerged one after another.

Even when the official account of "Water Spine" announced the record of 21 RMB in sales on the first day, it specifically emphasized that it was a clarification and that there are currently no Easter eggs or storylines in the game.

But netizens still expressed their opinions.

'I've already cut it all.'

'Don't I know whether it's true or not?'

"You're just a game company, what do you know about water-based head-cutting techniques?"

Meanwhile, all social media platforms are sharing screenshots of Aqua Spine's score to compete and show off, and the app has a high rating of 9.0.
Its popularity once overshadowed the recent high-profile 'return to the moon' plan.

But without a doubt, Water Slingshot overtook Angry Birds overnight to become the dark horse of the mobile game industry, gaining the attention of the entire industry and even Apple.

This game was practically made for iPad and touchscreen gaming!

But across the ocean, a small game company's creators were deep in thought as they looked at "Water Spikes" on a tablet, a game that was different from the others except for its art style, the sense of cuts, and the background music.

If it weren't for the fact that their game's overall gameplay and details were more refined, while their own game was only 70% complete, they would almost certainly have suspected that there was a mole within their own team who had leaked the source code.

Meanwhile, in the Star Game Studio, even after working through the night, all the participants were still incredibly excited. After all, the 21 downloads and over 40 US dollars in sales on the first day were enough to give these IT guys who had just graduated from school a huge sense of satisfaction.

Cai Haoyu knew that "Water Spinner" would be successful, but its success was really beyond his expectations. It directly surpassed "Angry Birds," which was backed by the mobile game giant Rovio, and also stirred up so much public opinion storm on the foreign internet.

Even many Western celebrities are participating in the discussion and sharing their ratings.

It feels like a dream.

"Xiaoyu, President Wang faxed over two new projects, saying that if you have the energy, you can give them a try." Liu Wei handed over two documents.

Cai Haoyu opened it, glanced at it, and frowned.

The parkour mobile game 'Great Wall Escape', the puzzle game 'Happy Match', and the fantasy-themed web game 'Immortal Tao'.

"I looked at the framework and it doesn't seem difficult, but I feel like they should all be quite profitable," Liu Wei said, scratching his head.

The success of "Water Slingshot" has left the main creators with little taste of its own accomplishments, but their admiration for Wang Yao is now unwavering.

Although everyone initially came together to realize their gaming dreams, the fact that "Water Spinner" could potentially sell for a million dollars a month still made them hesitate.

Dreams are important, but making money is also quite important.

"Let's get the project approved first. The company has enough funds to push forward several projects at the same time." Cai Haoyu hesitated for a moment, then decided to follow Wang Yao's suggestion first.

Seeing Cai Haoyu make his judgment, Liu Wei breathed a sigh of relief and grinned, "Water Assassin is estimated to bring in a million US dollars in revenue every month. If we add skins, resurrection coins and the like later, it might even exceed a few million. At that time, we can acquire a few foreign game companies first, so that we don't have to start from scratch."

With a budget in hand, everyone's ideas started to flow freely.

"I'll communicate with President Wang." Cai Haoyu smiled.

(End of this chapter)