Chapter 289: A Wave of New Games
During the New Year’s holiday, while players were immersed in the joy of their time off, a rather explosive piece of news spread through the player community.
Dichao Interactive and Shenhuan Game Platform announced a game submission event. Designers from both domestic and international backgrounds could participate, with no restrictions on game platforms or genres. However, there were two points to note.
First, games must be published on either the Dichao Game Platform or the Shenhuan Game Platform, and an exclusive agency agreement must be signed, meaning they could not be released on other platforms.
Second, the organizers reserved the right of final interpretation. All submitted games would undergo review, and those selected would receive promotional resources.
Of course, the rewards for this submission event were also highly enticing. After review, the outstanding games chosen would receive a full-channel recommendation for one month.
Here, “full-channel” referred to the Dichao Game Platform, the Shenhuan Game Platform, and all the smaller platforms united together, accounting for roughly 70% of domestic channel resources.
No one could imagine the effect of such a full-channel recommendation, as this had never happened before in the domestic gaming circle.
What was certain was that even if a game was complete garbage, after being tagged with this recommendation, it would still rake in mountains of cash.
If the game quality was good? Then it might create the next super blockbuster.
Of course, there would definitely be a limit on the number of so-called “outstanding games.” Most people guessed there would be at most two or three, and no more than that.
After all, “full-channel promotion” essentially consolidated all the previously scattered channel resources, achieved by squeezing out other games on those channels. Such a precious recommendation slot couldn’t possibly be handed out casually.
Naturally, Dichao Interactive would also develop its own games, and even Chanyi Interactive would participate. Most designers were well aware that the so-called full-channel promotion was mostly just a gimmick and wouldn’t actually fall on their heads.
Still, this gimmick was loud enough to stir up quite a commotion.
At the same time, some game companies, including Dichao Interactive and Chanyi Interactive, began to leak information about new games.
Whether this information was accidentally leaked or deliberately released was hard to say, but considering it wasn’t critical confidential data and could help build hype for the event, most people leaned toward the latter possibility.
Internally, Dichao Interactive was developing a key FPS game, temporarily without an official name, codenamed “Project: S.”
This game was essentially bought at a high price by the Shenhuan Game Platform. Since Shenhuan had little R&D capability, they wanted to collaborate with Chanyi Interactive.
As for Chanyi Interactive, they naturally coveted this seemingly delicious full-channel promotion opportunity.
“Project: S” and “Three Realms” had “Sword Legend,” “Oracle of the Moon Goddess,” and “Righteous Slash of the Three Kingdoms.” These were all long-established, high-quality games with proven successful models in the market.
Without major technological innovations, how easy was it to surpass these already successful games?
Thus, “Project: S” and “Three Realms” both tried to take a different path, adapting to this full-channel promotion.
For example:
Sacrificing some quality to lower hardware requirements.
Developing various casual gameplay modes to maximize consideration for non-hardcore players.
An extremely complex yet rewarding social system.
Full support for both VR and PC platforms with data interoperability.
All these changes were aimed at capturing the broadest user base possible, increasing their chances of becoming a super blockbuster.
Especially “Project: S,” as an FPS game, the PC platform had already been heavily squeezed by VR. Making a dual-platform interoperable model was a bit of a stretch, but they forced it through anyway.
After all, “Project: S” had to differentiate itself from “Wolf Soul” and “Blazing Assault,” and dual-platform interoperability was the best gimmick.
Of course, players wouldn’t know about all these twists and turns. They only knew that these big companies were making big moves, and there should be several new games to play next year.
But that wasn’t all.
Not long after, Dichao Interactive revealed that they had reached a partnership with GA to act as the agent for COG.
This was far more buzzworthy than the fragmented information before.
Because whether it was “Project: S” or “Three Realms,” they were just concept drafts, still in the early stages with nothing concrete. But COG was already well-known in the domestic player niche.
Clearly, Dichao Interactive hadn’t prepared just one plan. They intended to bet part of their chips on this new type of game made by foreigners.
Although COG wasn’t extremely popular yet, veteran COG players could vaguely sense the bright future of this new game genre, and their attention to this news far exceeded that of the other two games.
After all, they were already a bit tired of PvP games and needed something fresh.
Of course, reactions to this news varied among players. Some were excited, because with the Dichao Game Platform’s channels as a guarantee, the player count after COG’s official launch would surely be high. Others were worried, fearing that Dichao Interactive might mess up the game with random changes.
But overall, under the barrage of information, players’ anticipation for these new games grew. Even many players who hadn’t heard of COG before were asking around about what kind of game it was.
For Dichao Interactive and the Shenhuan Game Platform, everything was going smoothly.