Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 44 Fear
Tencent Investment Division.

Large conference room.

Wan Wanggang sat down at the head of the table without saying a word.

On the PPT in the meeting room, there were two lines: one was the estimated number of downloads for the public beta of "Final Front" and the other was the daily active user data.

The other data is the download data for the open beta of "Gun Girls" and its daily active user data.

With Tencent's help, the data for "Gun Girls" on the first day was actually not bad. Or rather, as long as it's a Tencent game, regardless of whether it's popular or not, the opening traffic is basically full.

Gun Girls has nearly 30 million registered users, with a peak of 270,000 concurrent users on its first day and a daily revenue of over 5 million.

This figure is even higher than in the previous life, and it is even close to half of that in "Final Front".

But Wan Wanggang still couldn't accept this data; after all, they were Tencent!

Tencent has extremely high expectations for this launch, because in their internal ratings, if they don't compare it with "Final Frontline", it's highly anticipated.

Compared to other current anime-style games, GunGirls is at least near the passing grade.

Given the game's basic quality and Tencent's promotion, the worst outcome Wanwang can accept is a tie with "Final Front".

But now.
But less than half of them were actually sold.

If a difference of half the data is acceptable, then the difference in popularity between the two games is far more than just half.

That's a world of difference.

Even with Tencent buying trending topics and Baidu search results.

From the second day onwards, "GunGirls" basically made no noise except for its own promotional news.

What's even more disheartening is that, on the second day, the data for "Final Front" rose further, fueled by the positive word-of-mouth from the first day.

Gun Girl's data declined rapidly after the first day, and today, the third day after the server opened, the revenue is less than one million.

Compared to the first day of the server launch, revenue has been halved, and the downward trend in data is alarming.

On the other hand, the daily revenue of "Final Battlefront" has remained at around ten million for three consecutive days, and only started to decline today.

Comparing the two sides only made me feel worse.

The reason for such a stark contrast is, according to Tencent's internal analysis.

The main reason is the game siphon effect, which means that at the same time, the popularity of a certain game will draw everyone's attention to that game.

However, what Wan Wanggang truly couldn't accept, what truly made him have to work overtime and attend meetings on weekends, was...

It's another internal data analysis report from Tencent.

As one of the top companies in China, Tencent is quite fast at collecting player information. On the second day after the game was released, they conducted follow-up calls and surveys.

Wanwanggang quickly received a product analysis report, and the data in the report was simply shocking.

By conducting follow-up interviews with users who had paid for "GunGirls" but had stopped playing, nearly 19% of users directly stated that they stopped playing because "Final Battlefront" was more interesting.

This is a rather alarming figure, considering that 19% of users isn't even a high percentage.

The problem is, these 19% of users are paying customers! Even if they only bought a 6 yuan gift pack, the act of paying indicates that the user approves of some aspect of the game. Even if they don't log in on the second day, the probability of them returning on the third or fourth day is very high.

But now, this data has been NTR'd by "Final Frontline". After following the clues and conducting a thorough investigation, Tencent quickly discovered that, in addition to Tencent's own channels,

The media, Bilibili, Weibo, and even the Tieba forum for Gun Girls and the official QQ group are all filled with discussions about "Final Frontline".

These are all recruitment posts from players of "Final Front".

Community administrators even had to directly ban people from the group.

All I can say is that Chu Chen's move of giving away rings to attract new players was incredibly ruthless. Even though he only needed to recruit one new player, the base number of players in "Final Front" has already increased significantly.

And don't forget, there will be many new players after the open beta, and they will also need to recruit new players to get gacha tickets.

In addition, many players chose to register their own alternate accounts. However, after the public beta of version 1.0, Starcraft has added single real-name authentication to reduce the number of studios that farm initialization data. That is, one ID card can only be authenticated once.

Mobile phone numbers are easy to find, but there are only so many ID cards.

Regular players can certainly register using their parents' or family members' ID cards, but it's still somewhat troublesome.

As a result, many players ignored the referral bonuses after getting the ring, since they could still complete the collection by playing "Final Front" at their own pace without referring new players.

At the same time, many players felt that since everyone else had taken it, they couldn't not take it either.

Even worse, some players aren't in it for the rewards, but rather because they've become addicted to "spreading the word." They think "Final Front" is fun and want to help the developers promote it.

For example, a certain expert on Tieba (a Chinese online forum) only teaches others how to play the game, what team compositions to use, and how to play the Rogue class in PVE.

His strategy is to teach people how to attract new users.
The key point is that quite a few people are watching it. The latest strategy guide is to infiltrate Tencent's "Gun Girl" community, because compared to blindly trying one's luck like a headless fly.

It's easier to succeed by recruiting players of "GunGirls".

Many players of Gun Girls came through Tencent's channels. They might not have been anime fans before, but if they liked Gun Girls, they're likely to like Final Frontline as well.

So it's a sure thing every time you pull, and this expert even provided a whole methodology, saying that you shouldn't pull right away, but first send a few GIF animations of the cutscenes from "Final Front" before sending the invitation link.

Regardless of whether this guide is useful or not, Wan Wanggang was thoroughly disgusted.

In his eyes, this group of people weren't there to poach users of "GunGirls," but to dig up his very foundation.

For a company of Tencent's size, internal competition is sometimes more terrifying than external competition.

If you fail in external competition, at most you'll lose a few projects. But if you lose in internal competition, the loss isn't just about the department's funds, but also its influence.

Coincidentally, among Tencent's many departments, the investment department values ​​the most influence.

An investment manager's vision and track record largely determine his future potential.

Throughout Tencent's investment history, there have been many individuals who, one moment, achieved a stellar acquisition agreement and enjoyed immense prestige, only to be relegated to some obscure corner a couple of years later.
For example, two years ago, Tencent spent $5 million to acquire a 28% stake in the South Korean game company CJ Games. At the time, this acquisition was touted as a positive example.

At the time, CJ Games was performing well in the Asian market with mobile games such as "Monster Slayer" and "Summoners War". The person who led the acquisition believed that it could make up for Tencent's shortcomings in the mobile game field.

However, just one year later, Summoners War suffered a significant drop in revenue, exceeding 60% year-on-year, due to its monotonous gameplay and severe user churn.
By this year, CJ Games' valuation had shrunk by nearly 40% compared to when Tencent acquired it.
Since then, many people have never seen the investment manager who once led the acquisition.

(End of this chapter)