Chapter 240 Merit Whitelist

The Nobug platform has a real-time online user list that shows the real-time online user count for each game on the platform.

The top-ranked one is "Don't Leave After School: Marble Storm", which can break one million from time to time.

The second place is "Cultivation Fantasy".

Although the number of people online at the same time can reach more than 500,000 at around 8 or 9 in the evening.

But everyone who knows the truth will want to laugh when seeing this data. With 500,000 simultaneous online players, it would be great if 100,000 of them were playing "Cultivation Fantasy".

The remaining 400,000 people all had processes running in the background and switched screens to play other games! The third, fourth, and fifth ranked games were "Time and Space Reconnaissance", "Star Emperor", and "Global Evolution" respectively.

Among these three games, "Spacetime Reconnaissance" has risen rapidly in ranking compared to last month, and the number of online users has also increased by two levels.

This is due to the game's no-cheating environment. As the world's first FPS online game that claims to be "100% no-cheating", "Time and Space Reconnaissance" has attracted many FPS game enthusiasts.

Although after playing the game, most people will be speechless by the weird game features such as bullet turning and bullet time, but this does not affect everyone's normal gameplay.

The remaining two games have experienced varying degrees of player loss, especially "Star Emperor".

As a phenomenal online game that was once glorious and broke people's stereotypes about fighting games, "Star Emperor" has actually been doing poorly since the release of the 60 series graphics cards.

His method of transformation into freedom was just a last gasp, it only lasted for a while. The fact that it could last until now with a round of version updates was beyond Chen Ba's expectations.

The emergence of the 70 series graphics cards and the release of the DreamWorks 7 engine directly announced the decline of this game.

There's no way around it. As a game built with the DreamBuilding 5 engine in the 30 series graphics card era, it's already a great compliment that players can still praise its "excellent graphics effects" today.

Haven’t you seen the graphics card crisis back then? It also shocked everyone when it was first released, but after two years it was forgotten by everyone.

Games that focus on graphics and special effects really can't last too long. It's impossible for a game to remain popular for twenty or thirty years like "Fantasy Westward Journey".

"Thinking from another angle, Star Emperor is actually pretty good."

Huang Qing commented: "Games of the same period are now basically unpopular, but Star Emperor is still a relatively mainstream game thanks to the popularity of the GAL League."

“That’s right!”

"Shennong Continent was also very popular at the time, but now almost no one buys the personal version. Only the professional version and the personalized customized version are still bought."

Yang Dong explained: "Back then, the graphics of Shen'en Continent were criticized for being crude, and now it's even worse, so no one plays the regular version anymore."

Games are developing too fast! Take mobile games as an example. In the early years, mobile games generally had simpler graphics, mainly in Q-version cartoon style, with very different lighting, shadow, texture and details.

But now, excellent mobile games can already rival many PC games in terms of lighting and texture details.

Ray tracing?

Mobile devices are also using it! Because the game industry is developing very fast, games from earlier years have been eliminated by players one after another. It’s not a problem with the gameplay mechanism, but the style of painting looks too old and too hot to the eyes.

There was a question post in Tianba Community, which attracted more than 50,000 people to vote and reply.

The problem is simple.

The poster posted two game screenshots, one from "Study Simulator" and one from "Global Evolution" with extreme 4K rendering, and then asked: Which of the following games was made by Brother Ba?

More than 72% of players chose "Global Evolution", and only 13% of players chose the "All" option.

When the correct answer was announced, other players said: I can't believe these two games were made by the same person! The two game screenshots feel like they span a century, they are not games from the same era at all, but they were made by the same person.

This sense of confusion is a bit like someone telling you that Snake and Red Dead Redemption were made by the same game developer.

“The picture is becoming more and more real!”

Chen Ba said with emotion: "When I played games before, although the game producers tried their best to improve the sense of involvement and immersion, the game graphics were still not realistic enough."

"It's different now. It's hard to tell what's real and what's fake when looking at a computer screen. If you play VR games, you may not be able to tell the difference between reality and virtuality."

"Your description is too exaggerated."

Yang Dong shook his head: "No matter what, the boundary between virtual and reality is still very clear, it's not impossible to tell them apart."

"But it's true that the game graphics are becoming more and more refined and delicate. The Dream Building 7 engine is too strong in this regard..."

The Tianba Engine developed by Tianba Studio has now been updated to version 4.0.

However, the strengths of Tianba Engine are not its game graphics and material textures, but its simplicity and automation, so in this regard, there is still a big gap between it and Dream Engine.

"Then let's practice!"

Chen Ba thought that since the Dream 7 engine was so powerful, he could use it for reference.

There is no such thing as a company that has a great engine and therefore looks down on or even disdains other engines.

Three people go together there must be my teacher!

There is no need to deliberately belittle what others do well. You should acknowledge what should be acknowledged and learn from it with an open mind.

The new game will be developed using the DreamBuild 7 engine, with the main focus being on game graphics!

This was the decision Chen Ba made after listening to Yang Dong's report and thinking for a moment.

"The new game is a horror game?"

Thinking of what Brother Ba had said, Yang Dong said thoughtfully: "I agree with this plan in principle, but will the Dream Building 7 engine be used to make horror games..."

What exactly do you want to do?

Dream Building 7 is a horror game, and it's not worth it to scare people to death, right? Do you know how realistic the pictures are when Dream Building 7 is at full power?

"Isn't this great?"

Chen Ba said calmly, "Horror games are all about immersion and a sense of immersion. The more realistic the graphics and the richer the details, the more fun the game will be, right?"

I don’t know if it’s fun or not, but this game is definitely scary!

After all, it is well known that the quality of the game determines the degree of scariness of a horror game. Which one do you prefer, the pixel mosaic Sadako or the 8K extreme light and shadow color Sadako? "Horror games are very plot-oriented, right?"

Huang Qing, who had been listening without interrupting, couldn't help but ask, "What are your plans for the plot?"

"Be prepared to customize a script!"

"We'll talk about who to find and how to customize it later." Chen Ba waved his hand.

"Xiu Zhen Fantasy" has just been launched in public beta, and there are still a lot of problems that have not been solved. The customized script for the new game will definitely be arranged after the Chinese New Year.

Speaking of this, Chen Ba suddenly became curious about something.

As a conscientious MMO online game, which has been in public beta for nearly half a month, how much is the recharge flow of "Xiuzhen Fantasy"? Can it support eight servers?

"The water flow is quite normal."

Yang Dong smiled bitterly and said, "Because we have to operate the game conscientiously and not discourage players from playing, the game's krypton degree is very low. The experience of zero-krypton players is not much different from that of heavy-krypton players, so not many people recharge."

This is not surprising.

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

After all, it was a plan drawn up by Chen Ba himself, and it was operated conscientiously in the first half of the year. There must not be many people recharging, so it is normal that the turnover is low.

But how low is it? "Let's put it this way, this game is operating at a loss! Hundreds of thousands of people play the game every day, and the cost of maintaining the server is higher than the recharge turnover of players."

Yang Dong said this with great helplessness: "If we want to maintain it for half a year, the cost is still quite high, and we may not be able to recover the initial investment after half a year."

"So I suggest opening up new sources of income to at least ensure that the game is not operating at a loss."

New sources of income? Chen Ba agreed with Yang Dong's proposal. Although "Xiu Zhen Fantasy" is operated conscientiously, it cannot be a loss-making business no matter how conscientious it is! Therefore, it is imperative to expand new sources of income. The question is where to start?

Add new krypton gold activities?

This is not good, it will easily expose the greed and scare away players. Now the game has just been publicly tested and is still in the fattening stage, so we can't scare players away.

If we don’t take money from players, we can only find other ways to make money from other places.

"If it doesn't work, just advertise!"

Seeing that Brother Ba was lost in thought for a long time without saying anything, Yang Dong suggested, "Don't Leave After School makes a fortune from advertising, so it shouldn't be a problem for us to insert a few ads."

“No, no, no, it’s not an ad.”

“The environment of “Cultivation Fantasy” is different from that of “Don’t Leave After School”, so we can’t use the same solution.”

Chen Ba shook his head, and suddenly an idea flashed through his mind. He said thoughtfully: "What do you think... how about we start with merit?"

“Merit?!”

Yang Dong and Huang Qing looked at each other, and saw the shock in each other's eyes. Yang Dong was the first to ask, "Are you going to start selling merits?"

This is not appropriate!

Merit is the core system of "Xiuzhen Fantasy". If it can be purchased by spending real money, then the game will be completely distorted and deteriorated.

Yang Dong didn't understand. Brother Ba had just said that he wanted to operate the business conscientiously and retain players instead of scaring them away, but why did he turn around and start selling merits?

"You misunderstood!"

Chen Ba explained: "It's not that the mall sells merits, I mean to find a way to make some money through the way to obtain merits."

"Xiuzhen Fantasy" is a magical game. The magic lies in the fact that the players of this game usually don't play this game, but go play other games.

Why is this happening?

Because playing other games not only brings happiness, but also rewards you with merits, which is killing two birds with one stone! This is also the reason why competitors are basically not hostile to "Xiu Zhen Fantasy".

Why are you hostile to it? "Xiu Zhen Fantasy" will not steal your players, and even encourages players to play your game. It is so noble and selfless, and I like it so much, how can I be hostile to it? Chen Ba decided to start from this direction.

The hundreds of thousands of players of "Xiuzhen Fantasy", especially the merit players who account for a large proportion, are the chips in his hands.

As we all know, players follow merit! Since they follow merit, then if he does a little trick to guide players to play XX game, wouldn’t that be a very easy thing? Anyway, they all brush merit. If you can brush five points in an hour playing game A, it’s good. If you can brush 20 points in an hour playing game B, then why don’t I play game B? Expand it further! When players find that they can get merit rewards normally by playing game A, but they can’t get merit rewards by playing game B even if they try their best or even kill the plug-in, then which game will they play? "Protection money?"

Huang Qing immediately figured out the trick, and his eyes lit up as he said, "Use merit to guide the whereabouts of the hundreds of thousands of players of "Xiu Zhen Fantasy" and make money from friendly companies?"

"What protection fee? Can you please stop speaking so harshly?"

Chen Ba was speechless and said, "We are decent people. Why would we collect protection fees? This is called a white list. Do you understand what a white list is?"

"Ah yes, yes, whitelist!"

Huang Qing smiled and said, "So how do you plan to operate this whitelist?"

“Does it require any action?”

Chen Ba turned his head and looked at him, thinking that Huang Qing had lived in vain to such an old age and could actually ask such a stupid question.

With 500,000 concurrent online players and millions of active players, what a rich resource!

With this confidence, what else is needed? Just knock on the door and ask: Brother Pig/Goose, do you want players? Who can refuse so many player resources? If someone can refuse, then Chen Bajing is a man. Anyway, ask yourself, he can't refuse such a thing.

If the other party agrees, then it’s easy!

The other party gained the players, Chen Ba gained money, and the players gained merit and happiness. Three birds with one stone were achieved, and a world where no one was hurt was built.

As for whether players will be attracted to the game and whether the attracting effect is good? Don’t worry!

Don't underestimate the obsession of "Xiuzhen Fantasy" players with merit. In order to become immortal, these people dare to do anything...

(End of this chapter)