Since Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice became a huge hit, there has been no shortage of domestic manufacturers trying to follow suit.
The game developer that touted itself as a Chinese-style Cthulhu Souls-like ARPG has truly left both Souls-like game enthusiasts and those who don't speechless.
Sekiro's UI, Bloodborne's combat system, stiff animations, and obvious stitching are all signs of poor design. These kinds of games are meant for fans of Souls-like games.
By trying to emulate Hidetaka Miyazaki, it has offended its target audience and ruined its reputation.
The judges from Tencent asked a very tricky question: using the same historical background and the same genre makes it easy for players to make associations.
Tencent's reputation wasn't great to begin with, yet it's now known nationwide for its imitations.
The judges on stage continued, "Moreover, the target audience for your game design is clearly console gamers, but Tencent's attempts in console games over the years have proven that our target audience and the console gamer group have very little overlap."
Tencent, as the sole distributor of Nintendo Switch in China, originally thought the Switch would be a huge hit after its release, but it took more than a year for sales to barely break one million.
If we switch to a different distributor, we might sell even more than Tencent.
"More importantly, it cannot pass the censorship, which means it can only be sold on overseas platforms, which will create a certain purchase barrier for domestic players."
Chen Ran was already prepared for the other party's question: "I actually think the poor reputation of other manufacturers' Cthulhu Souls-themed ARPGs set in the Ming Dynasty is a good thing."
"Domestic players are actually very tolerant of domestically produced console games. Even a poorly made game could generate a lot of attention and discussion, which is based on this point."
"If our product is good enough to stand in stark contrast to that game in terms of quality, it will actually pique the players' interest."
"China doesn't lack players, it lacks good games."
"The most important thing is the quality of the game."
"The target audience of Tencent does not match that of console gamers, also because the quality of our games cannot meet the expectations of players."
"In my opinion, as the undisputed number one game company in China, Tencent has very high expectations from players, but the games we make obviously cannot meet those expectations."
"And once our console games meet, or even just come close to, their expectations, they will definitely pique the interest of players."
"As for the game license, it can be released on Steam and downloaded by players."
As for the competition between WeGame and Steam, they both have to give way in the face of brain-computer interface systems.
Tencent had high expectations for WeGame and provided a lot of resources to support it, but the results were not very good.
Because games need a publishing license to be released on WeGame, very few games can be listed on WeGame. The domestic gaming ecosystem has prevented WeGame from taking off.
The ecosystem of the system is far more important than WeGame. For the sake of the VR system, Tencent could proactively seek cooperation with Steam and bring Steam to brain-computer interface VR.
Steam is essentially just a game downloader and launcher, so developing a VR version would be very simple.
One popular type of VR game is horror games. These games are impossible to pass censorship in China, so they can only bypass regulation by going through Steam.
The judges were unimpressed with Chen Ran's answer: "How can you guarantee that your game's quality will satisfy the players?"
"How can you be so confident? You have to understand that brain-computer interface VR is a completely different ecosystem."
"No one knows which type of game will be most popular with players until a specific product is released."
"Even for very mature console or mobile games, no one dares to say that their game will be recognized by players and become a hit before it has been tested by the market."
"I'm curious where your confidence comes from?"
Tencent has always acted this way; it doesn't care about being criticized or ridiculed by players, because the players who mock them are not the same group of people as their target customers.
As long as the criticism doesn't affect their ability to make money, it's fine.
In recent years, NetEase's mobile games have at least come up with some new ideas.
As for Tencent, the most traffic they allocate internally is still to the mobile game League of Legends.
The judges' comments perfectly aligned with Tencent's tradition: we only need to repeat successful experiences that have been proven in the market.
With access to massive amounts of traffic, replicating others' success stories is enough to make a fortune.
Having worked at Tencent for so many years, Chen Ran naturally knew how to achieve high returns with low risk. His original idea was no different from that of this judge.
However, any producer who truly loves games will eventually feel a sense of dissatisfaction and hope to create something different.
Chen Ran was moved by Chen Chi precisely because of their love for the game and their remaining passion.
After organizing his thoughts, he slowly said, "We can't be sure which game will be popular; we can only say that every producer is always confident in their work."
"Before Onmyoji was released, even NetEase itself was not optimistic about it. At that time, there were no Japanese-style monster card collection games. But it became a huge hit that year."
"No one can predict which game will succeed before it is officially launched, and judging from experience is not necessarily correct. I just think we need to do something different."
"As you just mentioned, brain-computer interface VR is a completely new ecosystem. There are no successful experiences for us to learn from, so we need something new to reconstruct Tencent's image in the minds of players."
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