Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

After all, Xinghuo has been in talks for a long time, and that's what all those "salespeople" in various regions of the Xinghuo platform do.

They hadn't been able to reach an agreement for so long.

How could a result be reached in just three days?

But in fact, the concept is different, because this concert is about momentum. Take Civilization VI for example, if you want to talk to Firaxis Games about strategic cooperation or exclusivity.

That is indeed very difficult.

But if we're only referring to Civilization VI...

If we could just add Civilization VI, a game that's two years old, to the Spark platform, things would be much easier.

Furthermore, with Heroes of Might and Magic III already gaining popularity at this time, the matter became even simpler.

The only concern is time.

It's really outrageous that they managed to set up the venue and confirm the guests in just 10 days.

But it is not impossible.

The venue is simple; given the current state of Linli, the venue is not a problem.

Guests, it's simpler, because this is a concert.

Unlike anime or movies, game music is mostly instrumental, so hiring a symphony orchestra can solve most of the problems.

The remaining task, naturally, was to issue invitations to many artists, and Xinghuo has collaborated with quite a few of them.

Especially from the Japanese side.

As for the special songs and special surprises, Lin Li will have to put on a show of goodwill for them.

all in all.

Under Han Xiangqiao's organization, everything proceeded in an orderly manner.

That's how the penguin celebration banquet came about.

Spark launched its promotional campaign for the game music festival on time.

~~~

Soon, the day of the Spark Game Music Festival arrived.

Magic City Stadium.

One of the largest stadiums in Shanghai.

Tens of thousands of people gathered here.

Zhou Shenlin lined up to enter the stadium, and along the way, there were flashes of mobile phone cameras everywhere.

After finding my seat and sitting down...

The scene was very lively.

Even though there was still half an hour before the show started, the seats were almost full.

People around Zhou Shenlin were taking pictures everywhere with their phones, and the people opposite him were doing the same. The occasional flashes of light created a dazzling display of starlight.

You know what, this was quite a novel experience for Zhou Shenlin.

Take photos and post them on WeChat Moments; shoot videos and post them on Douyin.

Everyone is sharing their experiences.

This is not surprising at all.

As Spark's reputation grew, the ability to participate in Spark's activities brought a strange sense of superiority.

Even Zhou Shenlin couldn't resist taking a few photos and posting them on his WeChat Moments.

I posted it on my WeChat Moments.

After receiving a lot of likes, more than a dozen comments quickly appeared below.

Many people he had never contacted before, but who had added him on WeChat, started replying to his messages. These included graduate school tutors, gym promoters, and even his academic advisor.

"Compared to two years ago, there are definitely more and more people who know about Xinghuo."

"How could I not know? These past few days, I've been scrolling through Bilibili and seeing all the reactions of foreign players to Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It's practically gone viral on Douyin."

Old Wang, who was with Zhou Shenlin, was also very emotional.

There were four people in their dorm, and in the end, only the two of them were lucky enough to snag tickets at the last minute.

This is actually quite outrageous. You should know that the Spark Game Music Concert, like many of Spark's offline events, is aimed at combating scalpers, and the ticket pool is divided according to Spark platform levels.

They managed to eliminate scalpers and even ensured that core users could purchase tickets first. Even so, the ticket pool only lasted for a dozen seconds.

This illustrates one thing: the number of core players in Spark is increasing.

Chapter Fifty-Six: The Real Opportunity

In fact.

In the past year or two, Spark has been active not only abroad.

in the country, it has also broken into new markets very quickly.

More and more people are becoming aware of Xinghuo, and the reason for its widespread popularity is actually quite amazing.

In the realm of anime and manga, Spark has an excellent reputation, even more so than Blizzard, which has never had a major collapse.

Basically, anywhere in the world, whenever anime/manga games are mentioned...

If Xinghuo claims to be second, no one dares to claim to be first.

But beyond the realm of anime and manga, Spark has been able to break into the mainstream of Chinese games.

There's an undercurrent that's been helping Spark's brand awareness spread.

That was the point in time when national pride began to rise in China.

This thing is mysterious, but it does exist.

With the popularization of the internet and the influx of information, people have truly opened their eyes to the world.

The hype surrounding "foreign" products, often touted by "experts" and magazines like "Yilin," has been quickly demystified, and the notion that foreign products are inherently superior has been completely abandoned.

Furthermore, the large number of "brainwashing articles" published domestically has led to a rebellion among the younger generation in China.

At the same time, a large number of so-called "domestic products" and "national trends" emerged in response to new consumption concepts.

Huawei, BYD, and even Xiaomi, and even the former Mihoyo, a large number of domestic companies have actually benefited from this general trend.

In this broader context...

Once your product gains a foothold overseas, like Huawei before the sanctions, which was this year, its market share in Europe and the United States reached second place at its peak, with only a 5% gap from Samsung, the number one company. In Eastern and Central Europe, Huawei even ranked first.

This overseas revenue is one of the reasons why Huawei has been able to successfully break into the high-end market in China, because it is very successful overseas.

Later generations of BYD also benefited from this.

Because BYD sells well overseas, its reputation in the domestic market has also improved.

Why can BYD sell products worth millions? Why can Huawei's flagship phones sell for the price of Apple, or even be more expensive? Setting a high price isn't a skill in itself, but setting a high price and still having people buy it—that's a skill.

Of course, the connection between Huawei and BYD's success and their popularity overseas is rather vague.

But with a little thought, you'll find that...

This is actually quite interesting.

Chinese people feel that the moon is no rounder abroad than it is in China, but when foreigners praise the moon in China as rounder than it is abroad...

The Chinese people will be very happy.

When it comes to specific products, when Americans and Europeans are buying Huawei phones and marveling at Huawei, Huawei gains bargaining power.

When it seems like the whole world is buying BYD, BYD can still sell millions of Yangwang U8s.

Does this count as exploiting the patriotic sentiments of the Chinese people?

Hard to say.

Because relying solely on the overall environment is not enough to achieve this.

To put it bluntly, you need to have a product that can stand firm in the world first.

Moreover, simply gaining a foothold is not enough.

You also need to be innovative and able to continuously launch good products.

Otherwise, like Lenovo back then, as one of the first brands to reap the benefits of patriotism, Lenovo's current situation is not optimistic.

And at this time.

Even when Lin Li was determined to pursue globalization, he never considered this point.

In reality, however.

Spark also benefited from this wave of changes in the overall environment, which objectively helped the ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) game platform further expand its user base.

Because of its essence.

The concept of "anime-style games" is a false proposition.

Do players have to play anime-style games?

negative.

So where do the users of anime-style games come from?

The answer is that ordinary players play a certain game for the second time, and because they get tired of it or lose interest, they start looking for alternatives.

This is similar to the classification of novels.

Because of the emergence of Spark, the market share of anime-style games in this timeline is indeed much larger than in the previous one.

One of the reasons is because of many passersby.

I just felt that the games that foreigners are playing, or even domestic games, seemed to be of decent quality.

We have to come down and give it a try.

The first game that players switch to is "Girls' Frontline". During the downtime of "Girls' Frontline", they will choose another game, or even several games.

After the new second game appears, they will swarm like locusts, regardless of whether they will play it in the end, they will always want to try it out.

This is the increment.

An even better example is Heroes of Might and Magic III.

As of today, prior to this concert.

The Heroes of Might and Magic III remastered version has been downloaded more than 3 million times.

There are also several million players who have participated in at least one match.

What is this concept?

Another major IP from the same period, Age of Empires, had only sold 2500 million copies by 2020.

The Heroes of Might and Magic series, optimistically estimated, has accumulated sales of around ten million units.

This is equivalent to one test of Spark.

It brought more than double the number of official players to the Heroes of Might and Magic IP.

More than half of them were new players who had never played Heroes of Might and Magic III before.

Of course, this is a demo version.

On the other hand, it also shows that the appeal and reach of a celebrity's popularity are still expanding outwards.

Furthermore, just like how many bloggers gain traffic by reposting overseas reviews praising Huawei or overseas car reviewers' evaluations of BYD.

Many people also shared videos of foreigners playing the Spark game.

Moreover, this number is very large.

Because game reviews and player feedback are much easier to get than mobile phones and cars.

You need to have at least one phone to review, right?