When I write a bug it becomes the core gameplay.

Chapter 664 Role Selection and Paid Services

In addition, the default perspective of "Prison Force" is third-person following, and the player can always see the character's back. It will only change to first-person perspective when releasing a few skills.

This further increases the psychological trauma caused by the character image to the players.

There are more than twenty basic characters, each of which has different basic skills and talents, and will have different skill trees and talent trees after upgrading.

There are also many skills and talents that can be learned at will, as well as equipment with unique characteristics, which players can freely match within a certain range.

The combat system in this game has quite a bit of depth.

After looking at all the characters, Su Tong finally chose the blue-skinned orc with a red head.

This character is called "Star Fist" and his background is set as an underground boxer. His various skills are mainly based on charge skills, boxing skills and throwing skills.

Although there are some defensive, life-saving and shooting skills, they are relatively not very strong.

Especially in terms of shooting skills, he only has a small pistol for self-defense. Judging from the gun data, although the damage is very good, the accuracy is too poor. The spread of the crosshairs is simply unbearable, and the firing rate is also slow.

Lilith was a little curious: "Why choose him?"

Su Tong sighed silently: "He is already the most normal-looking character here.

“And judging by the skill set, it feels like it’s going to be very strong.”

It is worth mentioning that in the character introduction interface, the game also very considerately provides the gender and orientation of each character.

For example, this red-headed, blue-skinned orc Star Fist, his gender is male (orc) and his orientation is female (orc).

It seems to be perfectly normal, even a bit redundant, but if you look at other characters, you will find that Star Fist's situation is a minority.

Among the other characters, there are women, transgender people, and non-binary people. As for their orientations, they are even more varied, making it feel like reading a book in a foreign language. For example, the term "gender/sexual orientation questioner" gives people a headache just by reading these few words.

There are no armed helicopters, so this is a bad review.

Obviously, this honest red-headed orc benefited from the racial dividend.

If he wasn't of the noble orc race, he wouldn't be qualified to play this game based on his gender and sexual orientation.

After selecting the character, the game finally officially begins.

What surprised everyone was that although this game was an MMORPG, it was quite fashionable. In the early stages of the game, it was basically running in a pure stand-alone mode.

Moreover, the expressiveness of the game's plot is surprisingly good.

Star Fist is a basic character and a specific NPC in the game, so in the plot, Star Fist is a celebrity who has made a name for himself in the underground boxing ring, was successfully selected for the pre-prison special attack, and became famous for fighting demons.

The player plays a character with a similar background to Star Fist.

He is also a blue-skinned orc in the underground boxing ring, but he has not yet made a name for himself and can only hang around in the slums.

He regards Xingquan as his idol, and hopes that one day he can win the underground boxing championship like Xingquan, and become a member of the prison special force to fight those dangerous demons from hell.

The initial plot content is relatively simple, which is to fight with various gangsters underground, do some petty theft commissions, go to underground boxing matches, etc.

During this process, some combat tutorials are also interspersed to allow players to get started better.

As the plot progresses, the multiplayer role-playing part of the game is gradually unlocked, and other players gradually appear in the event venue.

"Hey, there are more people playing this game than I thought." Feng Hui was a little surprised.

He thought that this game would be killed as soon as it was launched.

Gu Fan stroked his chin and thought for a moment, then said, "It may be due to the MMORPG game type. Of course, the free nature of the game and its large-scale promotion also have a certain impact."

Lilith also nodded: “It seems that Azazel really put some effort into designing this game.

"Just looking at the three male characters wearing very little clothing, it shows that he is not completely a puppet of IED, but has added some of his own ideas."

For Azazel, making the game unable to make money is of course the first priority, but collecting negative emotions is equally important.

If you don't make any money, but the server dies suddenly after three or five days of opening, and no one comes to play, and you don't collect any negative emotions, then isn't that a waste of time?
Although he was not fleeced by Lilith, he still wasted these three years.

Therefore, we still have to lure players in as much as possible.

To achieve this goal, Azazel apparently used three different methods:

The first is that the game is free to play, and a huge amount of money has been invested in publicity, so both positive and negative attention are accepted.

In this way, at least the popularity of the game will be hyped up. Even if many players think that this is history, they will still want to go in and try it out.

The second is the type of game, which is not a multiplayer cooperative competitive game, but a massively multiplayer role-playing game.

There is still a difference between these two game types in terms of player retention.

If it is a multiplayer cooperative competitive game, the game actually doesn't have much depth. It's nothing more than choosing a map, entering and shooting.

But similar games are not uncommon. If the game's combat is not novel, players will keep dying, which is very frustrating, and if they don't like the character settings, they will quickly quit the game.

After all, there are so many other excellent competing games on the market that it is difficult to find a reason to continue playing this game.

But MMORPG games are different. In the early stages, players can be kept for a longer period of time through plot and numerical growth.

Even if the battle system and characters are not very pleasing, at least there are basic numerical upgrades, equipment upgrades and plot advancement.

The amount of time players are willing to spend appreciating this history will also increase.

The third is the character setting. Although there are many immortals, three handsome and even a little yin-like male characters are specially made to attract female players.

This is quite helpful in expanding the player base.

Obviously Azazel also knows that these characters are too ugly. In order to create negative emotions for players and to cooperate with IED's propaganda, these ugly characters must be present, but there cannot be only ugly characters.

Being a beauty is absolutely not allowed, this is the red line of IED.

But being a handsome guy, relatively speaking, does not have such strict rules and regulations.

All these factors combined will ensure that "Prison Force" will not die suddenly upon launch, and will be able to survive for a while at least.

You can even use the false enthusiasm created in the early stages to attract a large number of players who are curious about history and reap a wave of negative emotions.

As long as the profit is big enough, it will be very cost-effective.

After playing for a while, Su Tong had completely mastered the combat of this game.

I have to say that the character Xingquan is really strong. With various charge skills and boxing skills, he can easily beat the NPC into a state of confusion.

Of course, the character's strong stats are one thing, but the player's operation is also very important.

"Take a look at the game's mall charging system." Gu Fan pointed out a key problem.

Su Tong opened the game's store interface and took a quick look.

Everyone had a solemn expression on their face.

Well, the situation is as bad as expected, no, it should be said that it is worse!
This game does have a lot of paid appearance services, such as character skins, equipment transmogrifications, gun textures, etc.

But what’s outrageous is that the more bizarre the character skin is, the more expensive it is.

Moreover, these expensive skins are not even as good as the transmogrifiable items that can be obtained for free in the game.

On the contrary, the skins of the three handsome characters are basically given away for free. Only a few high-precision skins that should obviously sell for 200+ are directly discounted to 10% and sold for only yuan.

This obviously cannot recover the costs.

In addition, there are also some paid props in the game, such as shouting props, hiring props, bounty props, etc.

However, these paid props are basically some common basic functions in the game, and many of them are dispensable and can be used or not, so it should be difficult for players to buy them in large quantities.

After thinking seriously for a moment, Gu Fan asked, "So...how do you calculate the R&D investment for this game?
“How much money is considered a profit?”

Of course, Lilith had also investigated the specific investment and profit conditions of this game, and in the signed contract, Azazel was supposed to share this information with Lilith and could not hide it.

Otherwise, Azazel would have fooled Lilith with just a random number, and that would have been disastrous.

“The money from Prison Break can be roughly divided into two parts.

"One part was taken from the IED organization. This part of the money has nothing to do with us. How to report it to the IED is Azazel's business.

“Even if they can’t make back the money, IED won’t mind. After all, what they want is publicity. The initial popularity of Prison Force was high, so even if they don’t make money, it’s acceptable to them.

“We mainly consider the research and development costs invested by Hell Frontline itself.

“The total R&D budget for this game is about 1.2 million, but Hellfront’s own investment is about 5000 million.

"In other words, as long as we can find a way to make this game earn more than 5000 million, we will be successful."

Feng Hui looked embarrassed: "Let this kind of game earn 5000 million? This is a bit outrageous.

"Assuming we want to achieve this goal within half a year, the net profit per month will be about 800 million, which, after deducting the commission, would be around 2000 million per month to be safe.

"What in this game can sell 2000 million per month? I can't even think about it."

If those good-looking skins were priced a little higher, it might be possible, but those skins are too cheap, and even considering the factor of small profits but quick turnover, it would not be possible to make that much money.

Moreover, considering the historical characteristics of "Prison Break", most of the revenue must have been earned in the early stages of the game. The longer it is delayed, the more serious the player loss will be, and the revenue will definitely drop off a cliff.

Taking all factors into consideration, it may be safe to reach a turnover of 50 or 60 million in the first two months.

At first glance, this is not an outrageous number. After all, for many mobile games, monthly revenue of over 100 million is as easy as eating and drinking. However, "Prison Break" is a surprisingly powerful game after all. Comparing its revenue with those pay-to-win mobile games, it is overestimating its capabilities.

(End of this chapter)