Chapter 100
The time has come for August.
In addition to designing new characters for "Star Emperor", Tianba Studio has recruited two new employees to be responsible for media promotion and channel operations.
This has always been a weakness of Tianba Studio.
The game lacks exposure!
Whether it is an old game or a new game, from production to release, there is no professional media promotion and channel operation, and it all depends on word of mouth from players.
Admittedly, word of mouth is good too.
As long as the game is fun enough, it can become popular through word of mouth among players. There is a certain truth in this saying.
But this kind of thing is full of chance.
Chen Ba can't hope that every new game will be promoted spontaneously by players. It might be okay in the short term, but it won't be reliable over time.
There is more than one fun game!
There are actually quite a few good games that have been buried or even ignored. Most of them are caused by lack of money and lack of exposure.
This can also explain why some games originally had less than 1,000 downloads a month, but after being recommended by UP owners like Wang Laoju, their monthly sales reached 100,000 levels...
In the past, Tianba Studio had a lot of trouble, and was always faced with the risk of the game hitting the market and the team disbanding, so it is understandable that it did not pay attention to this aspect.
But Chen Ba is rich now!
As for how rich he is, it's not that big of a deal. At least the studio has moved to Zhonghai now, which may wipe out Brother Ba's family fortune, and he may not be able to afford a luxury house.
But in a second- and third-tier city like Jiangning, combined with the current number of employees in the studio, it is more than enough to maintain daily expenses.
After initially solving the problem of food and clothing, we have to consider how to live a better life.
"Today we mainly discuss two things."
At the internal meeting of the studio, Chen Ba raised two issues, the conversion of "Star Emperor" to a free game, and the follow-up update of "God's Grace Continent"!
The former was premeditated.
Not long after the official version of "Star Emperor" was released, the wise and powerful Brother Ba gave instructions that "Star Emperor" would be turned into a free-to-play game in the future.
"In the past six months, "Star Emperor" has been frequently discounted and promoted, with a record low price of only 8 yuan."
"Based on this premise, I think the current game sales have become saturated, and it is difficult to make any major improvements."
He tapped the table with his index finger, and after thinking for a while, Chen Ba said: "If you continue to sell it, you won't be able to sell a few copies. It's better to switch to a free game to increase the popularity of the game and the number of people online."
The current sales volume of Star Emperor is stuck at around 920,000 copies, and there is not much room and potential for improvement.
If you keep selling, you will definitely be able to sell.
But Chen Ba really didn't care about the monthly sales increase. Instead of relying on time to slowly grind out millions of sales, it is better to switch to free games and make money through in-game purchases.
"I have no opinion……"
Yang Dong was the first to express his opinion: "It is true that it cannot be sold. It is good to switch to free. Anyway, Xianyu Digital's business is stable and can support this game."
Xianyu Digital can make money!
Backed by the strong support of many graphics card manufacturers, Brother Ba also solemnly promised that Xianyu Digital would not be able to sell mining cards or refurbished cards.
Gamers still believe in Brother Ba’s promise, especially since the background of Xianyu Digital is so hard, and no one thinks that they will sell mining cards or refurbished cards, so they can buy it with confidence.
At first glance, the group of gamers does not seem to have many people, but in fact it is quite a lot.
What's more, Xianyu Digital not only sells graphics cards, but also uses the evil trend of "God's Grace Continent" to start a business of hard drives, CPUs, and memory sticks.
Oh yes!
In addition to selling digital hardware, Xianyu Digital also sells some game peripheral derivatives.
For example, figures and mobile phone cases of various characters in "Star Emperor", plush dolls of old scalpers in "Hanchuang Kudu Simulator", poster T-shirts of "God's Grace Continent", etc.
With the store Xianyu Digital, after "Star Emperor" became free, the server pressure it faced was simply a piece of cake.
What is a conscience game?
A truly conscientious game should be something like "Star Emperor". If you like to spend money on skins, then just do it!
Anyway, the game has other channels to make money, and there is no KPI pressure for planning, let alone endless activities and skins for krypton gold...
Laughing to death!
Brother Ba doesn't care about the money spent on skins at all. A new skin every month is considered a mercy, so you can buy it or not.
"Players are so kind..."
Xiao Lu added on the side: "We know that the game does not make money from skins, so new skins come out randomly. They are not satisfied yet, criticizing us for being too lazy and that we should have more skins!"
How do you say that?
Those who can't get it are always in commotion, and those who are favored are confident!
Players of other games complained that the planners were crazy about making money. They just released a few skins last week, and a batch of new skins were released this week. There is no bottom line in making money, ah!
When it comes to "Star Emperor", a lot of rich guys are complaining. Brother Ba is simply lazy to the extreme. He only releases a new skin in a month. Who are you looking down on?
Bro, I bought both 4090 and RX7900. What’s the difference between you and me?
Hurry up and get the new one!
If you can't come up with new skins, then you just look down on me. People are getting new skins one after another, so can't you just learn from them?
Chen Ba: "..."
He also discovered this.
The players of "Star Emperor" are indeed a little sick. They don't produce enough skins and they don't produce them diligently enough. Who would believe it?
"Maybe it's because the proportion of players in "Star Emperor" is relatively rich."
Zhong Shengwei explained with a smile: "For these rich guys, it is really uncomfortable to have little skin and no place to spend their money."
This is also why the anchors of "Star Emperor" generally eat well, and their gift income directly exceeds the equally popular anchors of other games.
"correct!"
After talking about the arrangement of "Star Emperor" becoming free-to-play, Chen Ba added: "After the game becomes free-to-play, there should be a lot of monsters and ghosts appearing. Please pay more attention."
He is not worried about cheats.
No matter how powerful the plug-in script is, it will be a piece of shit when it comes to the road to immortality. Only strong hardware is really strong.
And there is a high probability that there will be no plug-ins. After all, Chicken Blood Optimization is also an anti-cheating program in a sense.
Are you okay if you cheat in front of the system?
However, in addition to plug-ins and scripts, there are also behaviors such as verbal abuse and power leveling that damage the game environment. These require special attention.
"Acting training..."
Yang Dong and Xiao Lu just wanted to say it was impossible. For power leveling in "Star Emperor", should the graphics card used be 4090 or 4080?
You are already using a graphics card of this level. I can tell you that there is nothing wrong with Brother Fu, but what about the power leveling fee?
But then they thought about it.
In the power leveling industry, you don’t necessarily have to use your own computer. It is also possible to be hired by Fu Ge and use the equipment provided by Fu Ge.
For example, a big anchor who claims to have a mermaid line often hires several power-trainers to play games and lives and eats in his own villa.
This does exist.
Moreover, except for Chengxian Road, "Extreme Sublimation" is disabled in normal ranking and entertainment modes, and the configuration requirements are not as demanding as Chengxian Road.
If a player has really good skills, then with a mid-to-upper-level graphics card, he can basically take orders for power leveling.
"It's impossible to completely eliminate it."
Yang Dong thought for a moment and then said: "This kind of behavior, no matter what the game, no matter when, can't kill everyone."
“All we can do is create a mechanism to change the matching queue for a player when it is detected that his winning rate suddenly soars.”
simply put.
If the matching system thinks that you are a power leveler, it will be put into the matching pool of power leveling, allowing the junior generation to beat the junior generation, and finally create a Tongtian generation.
Normal players may encounter junior players, but after losing a few times, they will enter a better matching pool and be matched with several opponents with lower winning rates to make up for the frustration of encountering junior players.
"Can!"
Chen Ba nodded.
What Brother Dong said makes sense. There is no way to prevent power leveling, even if you check the IP, it will be useless.
For example, a college student who lives in a school dormitory needs to go to the toilet urgently, so he asks his more skilled roommate to help him play a game, and later treats him to roast duck...
Is this considered "power training"?
If so, how do the game officials investigate this kind of behavior?
The IPs are all the same, the computer is the same, and the game is online all the time. This is the only way to detect power leveling behavior.
Therefore, in essence, power-training behavior cannot be eliminated at all, and can only be suppressed to the maximum extent.
It is a good idea to divide different matching pools and let power players compete with power players. This reminded Chen Ba of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds".
During the period when "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" was most popular, cheats were emerging in endlessly, and the developer, Blue Hole, was only a small workshop at the time and did not have the ability to control the proliferation of cheats.
So, Blue Hole got a "fairy suit".
Let the cheats match the cheats, and the abnormal players match the abnormal players, so as to ensure the gaming experience of normal players.
Of course, this is just a rumor.
As for whether the "fairy clothes" are true or false, Chen Ba thinks that there is a high probability that they are true, otherwise it would not be widely spread.
Yang Dong's proposal is actually to create a "power leveling matching pool" based on the "Fairy Server". In a short period of time, players with abnormal winning rates will enter the matching pool and compete with a group of agents.
"But……"
Xiao Lu raised a question. If this was done, wouldn't the target of punishment in this matching pool become the "account owner" himself?
After all, after a few rounds of boosting, the account enters the matching pool, and the person who suffers is not the booster, but the account owner who hired the booster.
"That's right!"
Chen Ba said with a smile: "Why did the power leveling industry appear? Isn't it created by these vain account owners?"
"Punish account owners and let them know that seeking power boosting will harm themselves. This is an effective way to put an end to power boosting in the game."
The ranking mechanism and rewards of "Star Emperor" are still very good. Many well-made skins, source stones, and avatar frames are obtained through ranking rewards.
After the game switches to free-to-play mode, there will definitely be people who love vanity and seek out boosters for rewards.
What Chen Ba wants to punish are these players who are "submissive during the day and punch hard at night" so that they don't dare to seek out power coaches to increase their points, and still have a smooth ranking.
As for the Road to Immortality...
It doesn’t matter, just practice as a proxy! If you have spare money to find a power leveler, why not go to Xianyu Digital and buy a 4090?
Isn’t that much better than power training?
After talking about a series of issues regarding the transition of "Star Emperor" to free-to-play, Chen Ba explained the compensation standards for old players.
The compensation will be distributed uniformly. Anyway, there is no such thing as a gold version or a deluxe version of "Star Emperor".
Any player who spends money to purchase the game can receive game-limited titles, limited skins, and Origin Stone compensation worth 580 yuan after the game is free.
It’s an old practice in the industry.
A large number of paid-to-free games such as Eternal Calamity, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Fall Guys all have similar compensation methods to Star Emperor.
Perhaps the only difference is that Brother Ba is more conscientious than others and feels that this kind of "game virtual item" compensation is not enough.
Therefore, in addition to the compensation for virtual items, Tianba Studio will also give away an additional Cdkey of "Leaning under the Fence Simulator" and a "20 off a purchase of 200 yuan or more" coupon from Fairyland Digital.
It can be said that sincerity is full.
It can be said that besides refunding the original price, this is the most reasonable compensation method that Chen Ba can come up with.
Refunds are not possible.
After all, I have been playing the game for so long, and if I am told to get a refund, how can there be such a reason in the world?
"fine."
After discussing with Xiao Lu and others, Yang Dong also felt that the compensation plan was very reasonable.
Everything that should be given was given.
The free compensation of "Star Emperor" can be said to be more sincere than 99% of competitors. If players are not satisfied yet, there is nothing they can do.
Thanks to "God's Grace Continent", Brother Ba made a fortune. Otherwise, the compensation standard might not even be half of what it is now.
"Then let's release it according to this plan!" Chen Ba said decisively.
"Starting from this Friday, "Star Emperor" will be free to play on all platforms, with multiple new servers..."
The European server, Asian server, etc. that were not built before due to lack of money can now be built.
Chen Ba, who has a lot of money in his pocket, is even planning to take this opportunity to hold an offline competition of "Star Emperor".
Offline, not online!
Online competitions have been held twice before and the results were very good. But there is no excitement like offline, and the delay in different regions is also high.
"If we hold an offline competition, can we ask Lao Huang Su's mother to sponsor it? It will be a great improvement after the ban is lifted?" Xiao Lu said excitedly.
"The ultimate sublimation of lifting the ban?"
When Chen Ba heard this, he immediately felt that it made sense.
For offline competitions, the equipment is provided by the official, and with the sponsorship of Lao Huang and Su Ma, the configuration must be top-of-the-line.
Thus……
Extreme sublimation can really be used!
"When the time comes, rent a venue, set up a large-screen projection, and set up a few live broadcast rooms. The ultimate master showdown will have a strong visual impact!"
The more Chen Ba thought about it, the cooler he thought it was.
Everyone has always heard that "Star Emperor" has extremely sublime graphics. But few people have seen it with their own eyes.
If an offline competition is held and masters from all over the world use 4090 or RX7900 to start a fierce battle on Chengxian Road, it will definitely bring excitement to the whole audience.
After all, this kind of famous scene where the Supreme Emperor is extremely sublime and full of firepower is not something you can see casually...