Chapter 21 Art is not cost-effective

Xuefu Book Garden, Building A, Room 302.

Zhang Xiaojuan pushed open the door of the studio carrying a bag of snacks and Coke.

As soon as she entered the room, she saw Chen Ba sitting in front of the computer screen with lifeless eyes.

"What happened to Brother Ba?"

"His expression of despair... could it be that he has been heartbroken?"

"You think too much!"

Reaching out and taking a bag of potato chips from the bag Zhang Xiaojuan was carrying, Yang Dong denied her guess: "How can a person without a partner fall out of love?"

"Yes!" Zhang Xiaojuan nodded.

The room was so small that even though they tried to lower their voices while talking, Chen Ba still heard it.

But he didn't care.

Because at this time, he was looking at the system panel in his mind and fell into deep thought.

[Game Name: Living under Someone Else’s Fence Simulator]

[Planning: 88 (can be improved)]

[Program: 91 (upgradable)]

[Art: 78 (can be improved)]

【…Comprehensive score: 72】

The art score is much higher than that of "Study Simulator", which is within Chen Ba's expectations, after all, he spent money on it.

If you can’t become stronger even if you spend money, what’s the point of spending money? The programming score has also increased, but the planning score has remained the same, with almost no improvement compared to the previous game.

This also makes sense.

After all, the creativity of "Living Under Someone Else's House Simulator", including the core gameplay mechanism and even the numerical framework, are all Plus versions of its predecessor "Studying Simulator".

But why...

While the scores of all items increased, the overall score decreased?

Chen Ba couldn't figure it out.

"Living with a Wife" is clearly superior to its predecessor in every aspect, but its overall score is so much lower. What went wrong?

The higher the score, the lower the score? You are just standing there TP! "Maybe the overall score is not the higher the better, but the lower the better?"

Chen Ba thought of a possibility, but then shook his head and denied this obviously unreasonable guess.

If you can’t figure it out, just stop thinking about it.

Whether it's 91 points or 72 points, in his opinion they are all the same. The key lies in the core scores of planning, programming, art and music.

“The art score is a bit low, but if you want to improve it, you have to spend money. After all, the studio doesn’t have the ability to do independent art design right now…”

Chen Ba scratched his head.

In the system toolbar, there are auxiliary functions that can optimize art design and generate specific art resources, but they are in an "unlocked" state and cannot be used at all.

If you want to upgrade, you can only spend money.

But after thinking about it, he felt that it was not cost-effective to continue spending money to increase the art score. After all, the higher the score of the original painting in the game, the more expensive it became.

Let me give you a simple example.

Suppose game original paintings are scored from 1 to 100, and works below 50 points are worthless.

The market situation is that only works that score around 70-80 points can barely meet commercial standards.

For scores above 80, 85 is one price, and 90 is another price...

When the score is above 90, the difference of every point may cause the price of the work to differ by several times. Even the difference of one point may result in the price differing by a single digit.

Therefore, Chen Ba believes that spending money to increase art scores is a very unprofitable thing, especially for Tianba Game Studio which is just starting out and has limited funds.

"Then raise the planning points!"

"It's a good opportunity for me to see what areas of game planning can be improved..."

In addition to automatically generating core code and reducing development pressure, Chen Ba believes that "checking for omissions and filling them" is also a key benefit of the system.

Through the system, he can clearly see the shortcomings of the game and then make targeted modifications and debugging.

This is simply amazing!

You know, many game producers will fall into the dilemma of "being confused by the situation".

Others may be able to point out the problem, but the person developing the game may not be able to make the most correct judgment and detect the problem with the game at the same time.

“It feels like writing a novel and being able to consult a professional editor at any time.”

"If there is anything wrong with your writing, he will point it out immediately and tell you how to revise it so that readers will like it..."

Chen Ba called up the secondary page.

The above shows that the freedom score of "Living under Someone Else's Roof Simulator" is very high, with a full score of 94 points, which is considered to be a leader among similar "strong storyline" games.

However, as a game with strong plot and weak operation, focusing on a sense of immersion, the plot score and numerical score are a bit lacking.

"Brother Dong!"

After seeing this, Chen Ba immediately closed the system page and asked Yang Dong, who was crunching potato chips beside him, "Where is the plot text?"

"Let me take a look... As for the plot text, according to the current development progress, it should be written until the first semester of senior year."

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

"You wrote so much?"

Chen Ba frowned.

He thought he hadn't written much, so it would be easier to revise it. But now he had already written to the first semester of his senior year, so it would be more difficult to revise it.

Opening the plot text shared by Yang Dong, Chen Ba glanced at the main events: his uncle was fired from the company due to work problems, he became depressed and drank all day, his temper became more and more violent, and he would beat and scold the protagonist at any time.

My aunt, on the other hand, was promoted to the head of the marketing department because of the great success of the new lipstick marketing plan she planned. She spent less and less time at home...

My uncle suspected that my aunt was having an affair with the handsome CEO of a cosmetics company. Coupled with the fact that my aunt came home less and less frequently, conflicts between the couple gradually emerged.

As someone brought by his aunt, the protagonist can only be caught in the middle and act as an emotional trash can for his uncle...

"Will the relationship between the uncle and aunt break down, and the protagonist will be homeless and not want to worry his parents, so he has to stay at the restaurant owner's house where he works?"

"Yes! This is the outline."

Seeing Chen Ba's serious look, Yang Dong put down the bag of potato chips in his hand and asked, "Why, do you think something is wrong?"

"The conflict isn't intense enough, and the emotions aren't quite there..."

After pondering for a moment, Chen Ba held his chin and said, "Aunt and uncle quarreled and went into a cold war, and no one paid attention to the protagonist. I think this part can be portrayed in depth."

Yang Dong straightened his posture: "How to portray it in depth?"

"Arrange a few special events, such as the protagonist wandering the streets and seeing that others have homes to return to, but he doesn't know where to go at night."

"Or maybe the classmates are all complaining about their parents being too strict and controlling, and they envy the protagonist's freedom..."

When it comes to designing plots, Chen Ba is not a professional, but he knows how to incite players' emotions.

A good plot is one that can resonate with players' emotions! The plot of "Living with Others" has many subplots, and because there are so many options, the creation and portrayal of the emotional resonance of the main plot is neglected.

No wonder the score is low! There are so many routes to choose from, but none of them resonate with the players emotionally. What’s the point of having so many routes to choose from? “And the numbers…”

Chen Ba did not forget that the numerical score displayed on the system's secondary page was also very low.

The problem is obvious: it is too easy to increase self-esteem! There are many events and items that can increase self-esteem, and the self-esteem increased by the items is too "supermodel".

After searching through trash cans for a semester, my self-esteem has almost hit rock bottom. But after using the money from selling scraps to buy a pair of sneakers, my self-esteem has soared. Is this reasonable? "The self-esteem value granted by the props needs to be adjusted down a bit, so that players can't have it too easy."

Chen Ba warned: "Self-esteem is the core value of the game. If players don't take it seriously and think that losing a little bit is insignificant and they can just work and buy some props to get it back, then it's meaningless."

Yang Dong nodded.

It's true, it's such an easy way to restore your self-esteem.

This makes many players, not only because they have no money in the beginning and therefore play with fear, but also, as the game progresses to the later stages, they care less about their "self-esteem".

It's so lazy!

In the early stages, you are worried about all kinds of things, fearing that a wrong choice will cause your self-esteem to plummet. There is no need to change this.

But in the later stages, after players have some extra money in their pockets through "self-reliance", their self-esteem becomes too cheap.

This needs to be adjusted! There are two ways. The first is to modify the "prices" in the game, making the props for restoring self-esteem more difficult to obtain and more expensive.

The second is to directly adjust the value. An item that originally restored 20 points of self-esteem can now only restore 10 points or even 5 points...

In this way, even in the late stages of the game, players will not dare to act too recklessly and will be more cautious when making key choices.

Perfect numerical balance! (End of this chapter)