Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

Mark became more and more excited as he talked, which also energized Pevin, and the two quickly struck up a conversation.

As for Ubisoft?

What Ubisoft?

Chapter 537 Slud

"Ubisoft? What Ubisoft! I'm not talking to you about Heroes of Might and Magic III Remastered right now."

"I wasn't talking to you about Spark, nor was I talking about any remake game festival that Spark was planning. I was talking to you about our own game!"

"Bilibili's own game!"

"It's Thrud!!"

Bilibili Games Center.

Chai Gao slammed his fist on the table and shouted loudly. His voice echoed in the conference room, causing the documents on the table to tremble slightly.

The others in the meeting room looked at each other, none of them daring to interrupt at that moment.

Pang Liwei, the head of the Bilibili FGO operations team, was the only one who was somewhat unhappy.

This man named Chai Gao is the newly appointed president of Bilibili's game business.

Over the past two or three years, Bilibili's gaming business has not been entirely smooth sailing, but it has certainly been less than satisfactory.

FGO, fueled by the sparks of hope.

Bilibili has had a stable income for several years.

A few days ago, Bleach: Thousand Years of Night was released. Although it was made by a relatively unknown studio under Spark, it was a fighting game that was not highly regarded by everyone before.

However, after its release, the game received very positive reviews.

The revenue has stabilized at around 60 million per month.

If Bleach: Thousand Years of Night was just a minor flop, then One Piece: Grand Line, also from Spark Studios, was a complete blockbuster.

The gameplay of the game "Grand Line" is very simple: players follow the anime's storyline to progress through the plot.

However, its most distinctive feature is that players become immersed in the story as they progress through it.

You can actually change some of the plots in anime through your own choices.

Although this change is actually a pseudo-change, meaning that no matter what choices players make, they will eventually return to the original work, the good thing is that the original anime's story is also presented in chapters.

With the added benefit of the IP, the game is very fan-oriented, and its revenue has remained stable at around 100 million.

Bilibili, as the Chinese distributor for these two games, is actually doing quite well. While Xinghuo (the game's publisher) is getting the lion's share, Bilibili isn't just getting the soup; they're getting the meat too.

The success of these three games in a row has made the story of Bilibili and Xinghuo acquiring the copyright from Bandai Namco a legendary tale.

Many people say that Bilibili is really lucky.

However, Bilibili Games, which is often said to be very lucky, has actually put in a lot of effort in the past few years.

After all, with the largest number of ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) users in China, it's impossible for them not to have any ideas.

Especially in recent years, Spark has been promoting the development of the domestic ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) market, and Bilibili has been watching from the sidelines.

Hey~ Holy crap! Manju did it!

Hey~ Kuro! He's done too.

Hey!! Holy crap, miHoYo has become one too (in Chen Rui's opinion).

In the end, it seems that NetEase is about to succeed!

It's like in a class where everyone was failing, and that's fine, but suddenly everyone starts passing!

As a result, I remained stagnant for several years.

How can Bilibili not be anxious?

Of course it's urgent.

In addition, the trend of staying at home during this year's Spring Festival, although it seems to have passed now, the country is still advocating for less travel, wearing masks, taking precautions, and washing hands frequently.

Moreover, many experts have said that home quarantine may be reinstated in China at any time.

Under these circumstances, Chen Rui really couldn't hold back anymore.

They hired a game market expert at a high salary, who was said to be a senior executive who had returned from Sony in Japan, to serve as the head of bilibili's game business.

This person is Chai Gao.

"Do you know what Slud is? She's a Valkyrie from Norse mythology! A symbol of courage and glory! What we're going to do isn't follow trends or ride the wave, but create our own IP! A game that players will remember, a game that belongs to bilibili!"

Chai Gao suddenly stood up and slammed his fingers heavily on his laptop screen.

The screen displays concept art for "Slud," featuring a Valkyrie clad in silver armor, wielding a spear, with enormous wings spread behind her, and a shattered battlefield and burning flames beneath her feet.

"Look at this! This is what we should be doing! Not organizing some kind of game remake festival, not following the trend of Spark! What we should be doing is originality! Innovation! Letting players feel our sincerity and ambition!"

The conference room was silent, with only Chai Gaozhuo's breathing clearly audible.

In fact, the bilibili game operation and development team, including Pang Liwei, initially welcomed Chai Gao's arrival.

After all, Bilibili hasn't really achieved anything significant over the years; all its successes are related to Spark.

This has resulted in Bilibili making money from games, but its reputation among both players and industry peers being generally poor.

It's somewhere in the middle, not the best but not the worst either.

However, after Chai Gao joined the company at the end of 19, his reputation within Bilibili quickly became polarized.

The biggest point of contention is this Slud.

The current version of Slud is developed by Duoqi Studio, a subsidiary of Bilibili.

This studio is a game development studio in which Bilibili holds more than 70% of the shares. The reason Bilibili acquired and held shares was for the Slud IP under this studio.

However, in mid-19, Chen Rui invited Lin Li to Bilibili to investigate the games on Bilibili, during which Slud was mentioned.

Lin Li's advice at the time was actually quite pertinent.

"If you really want to do it, my advice is to launch it as soon as possible, preferably no more than 20 years, otherwise the novelty of this subject matter will quickly fade."

"You can also conduct a test. If the data is too poor, you might as well cancel it and invest the resources in a new game."

This was the definition Lin Li gave to the game at the time.

As an anime-style aerial combat game, it would be incorrect to say that Slud has no innovation whatsoever.

After all, aerial combat is actually a very interesting and not too crowded track in anime games.

Furthermore, the air combat anime genre itself includes popular works such as Strike Witches, as well as many anime works that anthropomorphize military weapons.

So the subject matter itself is not problematic.

The problem is that the Slud development team itself doesn't quite understand what they want.

Whether in the past life or in the present.

The production team of Slud can be considered a typical negative example.

Therefore, game development time is getting longer and longer. The longer the development time, the higher the cost. The higher the cost, the less dare to fail. The less dare to fail, the more afraid of bad data.

If the test results are unsatisfactory, we immediately rework the data.

Ultimately, in her previous life, Bilibili invested a lot of money in Slud, but the game only got worse and worse.

Chapter 538 Misunderstanding

Towards the end, I simply couldn't hold it in any longer.

After exhausting the confidence of players and investors, they were practically forced to launch the game.

Even before the server opened, they were still only thinking about lowering the barrier to entry, adopting the same strategy as the original "Heavy Gear Girls" game, cutting the core gameplay to lower the barrier to entry.

An air combat game that has completely removed the vertical axis; players can only move left and right, and the vertical axis is actually an invisible wall.

This is a trick of cutting off one's feet to fit the shoes.

After failing once in Heavy Gear Girls, you can try a second time.

It's fair to say that there's a reason why Bilibili's mobile games are so bad.

In this timeline, Lin Li had actually given Bilibili a heads-up. Bilibili had been following this line of thought and conducted a black-box test on the Xinghuo platform in the second half of 19.

Subsequently, the test data was a complete mess.

This project then entered the rectification phase, and Bilibili stopped investing much money in it, only asking the production team to make some changes, and then launch it in 20 to see how it goes.

And that is the situation.

After Chai Gao arrived, the first thing he did was to acquire the entire Silude Studio, take it back to Bilibili, and start over.

This is completely contrary to Lin Li's opinion.

And as the head of the Bilibili FGO operations team.

Pang Liwei is considered a natural spark in the company.

Of course, the label "Spark Faction" does not mean that Pang Liwei is a traitor.

Because within Bilibili, there are actually quite a few people like him. Their main logic is to enable Bilibili to reap more benefits from the Spark program.

For example, in terms of game investment, we should prioritize seeking game investments from the Candlelight Project.

Bilibili had already been on this path back in 19, investing in several games that seemed to be doing well.

But these things were almost completely overturned after Chai Gao came to power.

Chai Gao doesn't like investing in other companies; he prefers Bilibili to operate its own platform.

He looked down on the "Spark Faction" within the company, and even disagreed with Lin Li's suggestions regarding Bilibili.

This attitude naturally made Pang Liwei somewhat dissatisfied.

It wasn't simply a matter of supporting or opposing anyone; Pang Liwei watched as Chai Gao, seemingly on steroids, explained Slud's "grand blueprint" in front of the projection screen.

After hesitating for a long time, I couldn't help but speak up.

"Mr. Chai, we've already invested a lot of resources in the Slud project, but the previous test data wasn't ideal. Wouldn't it be too risky to start all over again now?"

Putting aside Lin Li's attitude towards the Silude project, Pang Liwei himself also felt that the project was unreliable.

Chai Gao turned his head.

He glanced at Pang Liwei.

"I know what you're worried about. But you have to understand, Slud isn't just a game; it's the future of bilibili games. We can't give up on it because of a temporary setback. Instead, we need to use this rework to make it a true masterpiece!"

Pang Liwei was not convinced, and his tone still carried a hint of hesitation.

"But, Mr. Chai, Mr. Lin also mentioned this before..."

"Mr. Lin?"

Chai Gao gave a cold laugh, interrupting Pang Liwei.

"Lin Li is from Xinghuo, so his suggestions are naturally from Xinghuo's perspective. But we at Bilibili Games can't always follow in Xinghuo's footsteps! We need to have our own path, our own IP! Slud is our best opportunity!"

"And you probably don't know this, but Spark also has an air combat game."

"I discussed this with General Manager Chen. The reason Lin Li asked us to give up is because they are afraid of competition."

Upon hearing this, a murmur of discussion broke out in the conference room.

First, everyone was surprised by the news that Spark was going to make an air combat game.

Secondly, I always felt that there was something strange about what Chai Gao said.

Pang Liwei also fell silent.

He didn't think Chai Gao's words made sense, but rather that Chai Gao's attitude was already very clear, and there was no point in arguing further.

Seeing that no one objected anymore, Chai Gao nodded in satisfaction and continued.

"Next, we will conduct a complete redesign of Slud."

"From the world-building and gameplay to the art style and technology, everything needs to be completely revamped. We want players to see that bilibili games are not just a distribution platform; we also have the ability to create our own high-quality games!"