Chapter 252 Hidden Problem
Gu Fan explained: "The game "Mission 3" is actually very cost-effective."
Lilith was a little confused: "Why? After all, this game comes with a group of players. If we make a sudden change and make these players have a lot of negative emotions, wouldn't it be a good deal?"
Gu Fan shook his head slightly: "Mr. Li, you should think so.
“Compared with the following two games, this first game itself has a premium.
"In terms of game mechanics and gameplay, "Mission 3" is similar to "Xiaoyaowenjing" and not as good as "Disputes in the Demon World". But its price is 30 to 40 million higher than the other two games. Why? Of course because Its IP itself has a certain value, and with some players, the game can earn around one million in net revenue every month.
“But if you think about it carefully, you will find that these things are not actually worth the premium of 30 to 40 million.
"Suppose we buy the game and do nothing, and make a net profit of about one million per month, then it will take us seven years to recover the cost of 80 million. Even if it is only 30 to 40 million It will take about three years to recover the premium.
"And this is just an ideal situation. Under real conditions, this old game may explode at any time. It may make a million profits this month, 300,000 next month, and 10 million the next month. Ten thousand.
"The IP of this game is actually not a positive asset. Although many players have heard of the name "Mission", everyone knows that it is a boring and outdated shooter. Class mmorpg.
“The players we want to inherit this IP will naturally inherit other players’ stereotypes about this IP. When we accept these players, it means closing the door to other players.
“Currently, there are not many active players of Mission 3, and even if we make changes to the game and call it a name like Mission 4, it will be difficult to attract enough players.
"Even if all these active players are persuaded to quit, how much negative emotions will it generate? It's hard to say."
Lilith nodded slightly after hearing this: "Yeah, that makes sense!"
If it is "Mission 4", no matter how much money is spent on promotion, there will not be many casual players to play it.
And if it is a brand new IP, with the word-of-mouth support and marketing support of Nitiantian Games, it may attract a large number of passerby players. If you persuade them to retreat, you will gain more negative emotions.
Therefore, it is indeed not cost-effective to spend an additional 30 to 40 million to purchase this premium.
Gu Fan continued his analysis: "I don't think there is much difference between the two games "Xiaoyao Wenjing" and "Disputes in the Demon World".
"But in comparison, "Xiaoyao Wenjing" is a relatively stable framework.
"Although the game has been discontinued and is basically out of date, it has been in operation for three years, so the game will definitely not have too many outrageous bugs. The game experience that players can get is also relatively fixed.
“In terms of content, it’s quite satisfactory, or it can be said to be cliche.
"Comparatively speaking, "Disputes in the Demon Realm" is still a semi-finished product, the content is not very stable, and some vicious bugs may appear, which will affect the player's gaming experience.
“But it is the latest game after all, and many of its mechanisms are relatively new, so it is actually more suitable to package some gimmicks to attract players to play.
"In addition, "Dissension in the Demon Realm" is more suitable for using art materials with a Western fantasy background, which is an advantage for us at Nitiantian Games.
"You can definitely use exquisite art materials to lure more players into the game."
Lilith was confused.
Gu Fan only helped her rule out a wrong answer, but Lilith still needed to make her own decision as to which game she should choose between "Freedom" and "Disputes in the Demon World".
After thinking for a moment, Lilith finally made a decision: "Then it's still "Clash of Demons"! I think this game is the most suitable!"
There was obviously a very important factor that prompted her to make the decision, which was art resources.
After all, "Happy Adventures" is a fairy-tale game, and it would be difficult for Hell to produce similar art resources. Even if it is done, it will still feel weird.
And "Conflict in the Demon Realm" is very suitable.
For Lilith, when there are countless pitfalls in the game content, if she wants to attract players as much as possible, she must make the graphics beautiful enough.
In this regard, "Dark World" does have an advantage.
In terms of game bugs, Lilith also feels that there is not much difference between the two games.
Although "Xiaoyao Wenjing" itself is relatively stable and has no bugs, the problem is that after buying the game, Lilith still needs to make major changes!
If we don’t change it, how can we create enough negative emotions among players?
But once it is changed, all kinds of wonderful bugs will still appear, and the previous negligible advantage of the stability of the game framework will naturally be gone.
In this case, it is better to just buy the semi-finished version of "The Demon Realm".
Moreover, if Lilith wants to change the game, it also costs time.
If Lilith proposes a brand new mechanism and gameplay, then it is very likely that "Xiaoyaowenjing" can only adapt to 30%, while "Disputes in the Demon World" can adapt to 50% or more.
Because the gameplay of "Xiaoyao Wenjing" is relatively old-fashioned, while the gameplay of "Disputes in the Demon World" is relatively new and the mechanism is more complex, so naturally there is more basis for changes.
After much consideration, Lilith finally made the decision.
"Okay, then let's buy "Strife in the Demon Realm"!
“At that time, we will change the name of the game and replace all the art resources, and then I will make certain modifications to the game content.
"The modification is expected to take three months. After three months, we will start to promote Nitiantian's first MMORPG game!"
…
Lilith left happily.
Gu Fan picked up the document on the table again and looked at some details of the game "Disputes in the Demon World" in detail.
This document contains a lot of content, and the investigation is also very detailed. Gu Fan only read it briefly before. Although he grasped the general framework, he actually lacked a deeper understanding of some details.
He directly turned the document to the middle part and focused on the changes before and after the game was overhauled.
The reason why "Clash of the Devils" was difficult to produce and ended up being reduced to a half-finished product that had to be picked up by someone else was mainly because of the unreliable producer.
In the beginning, the producer was clearly ambitious.
He wanted to create an mmorpg game with a high degree of freedom. Different from the relatively fixed combination of occupations and skills in other mmorpg games, he hoped that like some independent games, players could choose their own skill combinations and create their own unique game. Construct.
It can be said that the idea is very advanced, but when it is actually produced, a lot of problems are found.
Not only are there endless bugs, but there is also a balance that can never be adjusted well, and an endless construction period...
Finally, under pressure from investors, he had to give up his original idea and returned to his original path.
The skills and talents of each profession are still fixed.
In this way, the balance problem has been solved, and the BUG problem has been greatly alleviated, but the game has become very mediocre. Compared with other MMORPGs on the market, it has no obvious advantages.
What's more, such a major change still slows down the development progress of the game and eventually leads to difficulties in production.
Of course, strictly speaking, at that juncture, no matter whether the producer chose to go his own way or rein in the situation, this would eventually be the end. It can only be said that from the very beginning, the producer's ability could not match his ideas, so the failure of this game was actually doomed from the very beginning.
It is foreseeable that in the underlying code of this game, there must be a large number of game mechanisms that are not visible on the surface, but will actually still work under certain conditions.
At this time, "Strife in the Demon Realm" is like a huge iceberg, and all the game content that can be seen is the part exposed on the sea level.
The part below the sea level is even larger.
Gu Fan couldn't help but fell into deep thought: If this point could be made good use of, maybe this game would really have a chance to turn around?