Tokyo Video Game Tycoon.

At this moment, Jimmy felt that video games seemed to have begun to possess a soul similar to that of movies in his mind.

Chapter 1022 The Chain Reaction Under the Influence of Movie Popularity

1022

Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, Ready Player One.

The three films swept through cinemas in multiple countries in just one month.

Ready Player One had the highest box office, while the other two films are expected to gross around $500 million each, which is already quite a success. A film is considered a success if it breaks even and makes a profit.

Ready Player One is the most successful of the three films.

It grossed over $300 million in its opening week and continued its strong run, with an estimated final box office of at least $800 million.

Some exclaimed that this was yet another hugely successful attempt by director Jesse Livermore to explore a new genre.

Of course, some professionals have also begun to analyze the reasons for their success.

They believe there are two main reasons, one of which is the game's Easter eggs, specifically designed to please players.

According to reliable statistics, there are at least 600 Easter eggs in Ready Player One.

Half of them belong to Yuxing Electronic Entertainment, and the rest are Easter eggs added by Jesse through various copyright licenses obtained through his connections.

The sheer number of Easter eggs was initially met with skepticism, with industry insiders believing it would overwhelm audiences and confuse them about the main plot.

But obviously professionals can only analyze things they are good at, while the audience is an unpredictable and unstable entity.

Therefore, none of them anticipated the enormous impact these countless Easter eggs would have on the players.

These game Easter eggs didn't dazzle the players; instead, they gave them a fresh feeling of treasure hunting in a movie.

Or you could treat this movie as a game, a game of finding Easter eggs and treasures.

The main characters in the movie are called Easter egg hunters, and the players watching the movie in the theater are also a different kind of Easter egg hunters.

The second factor in the film's success was Jesse's excellent directing ability.

At over seventy years old, he has reached the pinnacle of filmmaking; no one dares to say that if they were given the opportunity to make such films, they would definitely be able to do it well.

But if you give it to Jesse, it's basically a sure thing.

Tukarev's mouth has been grinning from ear to ear lately. He can even greet his enemies with a smile, and he won't get angry even if they call him a lunatic.

When a person makes money, they stand tall and proud!

Moreover, they not only made money, but also gained great fame.

Uncharted, Metal Gear, Ready Player One.

These three films brought renewed fame to his film company.

Following this, a flood of projects will undoubtedly be made to adapt games into movies.

Even though Takeyusei is cautious and doesn't easily grant licenses for adaptations, there are still a lot of well-known games from other game companies.

Most importantly, several entertainment giants unrelated to gaming approached him to discuss the possibility of integrating major IPs into films.

Ready Player One has generated a very strong reaction online and among gamers.

This kind of format, which encourages viewers to actively seek out novelty and Easter eggs in a film, is truly unprecedented.

Seeing that this movie can make a fortune simply by piling on Easter eggs, other entertainment giants are naturally not going to stay calm either.

They all own IP gold mines, but most of these gold mines were independent and rarely integrated, because they didn't take them seriously at the time.

But at this moment, they suddenly realized that combining countless well-known IPs could actually create such a chemical reaction.

These kinds of movies are essentially a grand party for fans of their own IP cultural products. Anyone can find something they like in them, and they generate a lot of discussion. People will spontaneously and actively seek out the hidden fun in the movies and enjoy it immensely.

The popularity of Ready Player One has not completely ended since the movie's release, and a large number of people are still frantically searching for Easter eggs. They always feel that there are still undiscovered Easter eggs, and in fact, it seems that this is indeed the case. The number of Easter eggs announced by the official sources is not entirely reliable.

To find those hidden Easter eggs first, you have to watch the movie again, which contributes to the movie's box office revenue once more.

At least $100 million of Ready Player One's box office revenue came from these guys who were frantically searching for Easter eggs and repeatedly watching the movie.

However, this type of movie also has its drawbacks, namely that it is difficult to produce sequels.

Players might find the compilation of Easter eggs novel the first time, interesting the second time, but lose interest the third time they see something similar.

This money is generally only enough to earn once or twice. If you want to earn more, you need to have enough well-known IPs in your possession, then there is still a chance of continued success.

But even for Bamboo Star, the amount of culture he can bring to this world is limited; making one Ready Player One movie would be the end of it.

The popularity of these three films has an impact that extends far beyond the film industry.

In the following period, when compiling statistics on the sales of various types of games from Youxing Electronic Entertainment, it was found that the increase was greater than in previous years.

Metal Gear and Uncharted series games sold the most.

Some of the older Metal Gear games have physical copies that have long been discontinued, but they are still available in secondhand stores.

Previously, these physical cartridges were generally priced at around ten dollars, but due to the popularity of the movie, the price of used physical cartridges of the first Metal Gear Solid movie instantly tripled, and then slowly rose to an average price of fifty or sixty dollars per cartridge.

This is already comparable to the price of the latest top-tier AAA games.

Furthermore, if these used game cartridges are in good condition, or even unopened, they can fetch a higher price and become collectibles.

Apart from Metal Gear Solid and Uncharted, other games generally saw a slight increase in sales, which may be due to the influence of Ready Player One or the expansion of the player base.

This is good news, as the player base has shrunk significantly since the global economic downturn.

This expansion has also boosted the confidence of many game companies, prompting them to consider increasing investment in game development and creating better games.

As the biggest beneficiary, namely Youxing Electronic Entertainment, they certainly couldn't miss this opportunity.

In fact, they had already made ample preparations for this opportunity.

After Ready Player One was released and its popularity grew for about a month, Yuxing Electronics Entertainment announced its upcoming game releases. One of these games is GTA 5, a sequel to GTA, and the other is Cyberpunk 2077, a game that had been in development for a long time and was finally released when the time was right.

Chapter 1023 An animated film

1023

"Mr. Takeyu, this is Shinji Asami, our production department's most outstanding animation director."

Inside TV Tokyo, Takeyusei is meeting with an animation producer in one of the best meeting rooms.

Not long ago, around the time when the three movies Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, and Ready Player One were showing in theaters, Takeyusei took the initiative to contact people at TV Tokyo, asking them to help him find an animation director. Takeyusei required that the animation director be someone with sufficient seniority in the animation field and who was good at creating works with a science fiction and dystopian style.

TV Tokyo is now considered a mecca by many animators.

Even though TV Tokyo in this world is doing quite well, it has not given up on the animation industry. While vigorously developing live-action dramas and various variety shows, it also schedules several fixed time slots each day to broadcast some excellent animated films.

Other TV stations initially looked down on the revenue generated by animation. They believed that animation didn't make much money, and few people were willing to pay for commercials inserted into animation. Moreover, the commercials inserted into animation were very limited, and advertisers didn't like them.

However, they did not expect that TV Tokyo would take its own path. They first vigorously developed the animation industry, and then, just like Yusei Electronics Entertainment created the game industry system, they created their own animation industry factory.

A large number of well-known animation IPs were born from this factory. Instead of inserting advertisements into these animations, they licensed various IPs from the animations to make toys, trading cards and all kinds of peripheral products.

These things may seem like only children like them, but children are desperate to buy them. However, these children don't have the purchasing power themselves, so they can only turn to their parents. And parents are generally not stingy when it comes to their children's spending.

Without much advertising, the derivative revenue generated by animation far exceeds that of a typical well-known TV series.

When other television stations tried to follow suit, they found it was too late. TV Tokyo had already established its own mature industrial system. If others wanted to build one, they would have to start from scratch or poach staff with huge sums of money. In short, it would definitely not be that easy.

Therefore, if Takeyusei wants to find a sufficiently excellent animation director, only TV Tokyo can help him.

The current president of TV Tokyo personally received Takeyusei, since Takeyusei also holds shares in TV Tokyo and is considered one of the shareholders. The president himself relies on Takeyusei's support.

He naturally cooperated fully with Zhu Youxing's request and quickly found what he considered the most suitable candidate.

'Asami Nobuyuki'

Having worked in the animation industry for over twenty years, he is a highly experienced professional in the field.

He has created countless outstanding animated films, and he holds a very special position in the animation industry.

He didn't really want to come, but the person who contacted him was the director of TV Tokyo, and he had to give the director face.

Takeyusei took out a document, placed it on the coffee table, and pushed it in front of Asami Shinji, saying, "Mr. Asami, it's a pleasure to meet you. Let's cut to the chase. This is a rough script for a science fiction story that I've prepared. The details will definitely need some refinement, but with your expertise, refining it will be a piece of cake."

Shinji Asami glanced at the script on the coffee table and asked curiously, "Can I ask you first if you're planning to just shoot it casually or if you're planning to shoot it seriously?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Takeyu, but Asami-sensei has always been rather outspoken. I hope you don't mind," the current president of TV Tokyo quickly explained to Takeyu.

Zhu Youxing smiled and waved his hand, saying, "It's okay. What I want to say is that I definitely intend to seriously film this animated film. Although the investment budget certainly won't reach the level of a top-tier movie, I can still come up with 50 million US dollars to fund the filming."

"Pfft!!! How much?"

Asami Shinji was just about to take a sip of water when he was suddenly startled by the amount of money Takeyusei mentioned.

He spent $50 million to make an animated film, which was the largest single investment he had ever made in animation.

This gave him the illusion that he had misheard. Was it fifty million yen?

But 50 million yen is probably only enough to make a short drama of two or three episodes.

"Fifty million US dollars is not a huge sum of money. Judging from your past achievements and reputation, you are capable of handling an animation with such a large investment."

It's not a lot of money...

Asami Shinji felt he should change his attitude towards Takeyusei.

Zhu Youxing is a big spender.

Even though he has a high opinion of himself, he is still powerless against money.

No one dislikes money; that's perfectly normal.

Even if Zhu Youxing asked him to film a bunch of seemingly meaningless trash, he would definitely take the job.

Of course, he certainly wouldn't easily become trash.

Unless you pay more...

Hearing that Zhu Youxing was willing to offer so much money, another thought came to his mind: what if the script written by this bigwig in the game industry wasn't very good, and if he refused to use it, would the other party be unhappy?

Well, for the sake of the money, even if it's terrible, it's acceptable.

Asami Shinji's attitude was noticeably more serious than before.

He asked, "Mr. Zhuyou, how many episodes of the animated series do you plan to film, and what is the average length?"