Xu Meng's grievance was by no means groundless.
Just as his decision to transform Frost Snow Project and pivot hard into a sexy style was not something he had dreamed up on a whim either.
If the macro environment in Xia State had still been like before, he would never have done this.
Back then, censorship on all fronts was extremely strict, and cultural and entertainment games... everything was quite restrained. The moment anything was a bit out-of-bounds, it was very likely to touch the censorship red line and get hammered.
However, after economic growth slowed down, that invisible red line quietly retreated.
--And it retreated by a very obvious, massive margin.
The boundaries of cultural and entertainment creation were soon greatly relaxed.
As a sign of this, in past video live streams, let alone exposing cleavage, even wearing shorts that were too tight and showed the shape of one's buttocks could result in a warning, or even getting temporarily banned from broadcasting.
But now...
Heh, from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere, and from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere, you could bare whichever side you liked.
As long as it wasn't completely exposed, the censors simply pretended not to see it.
Different platforms might differ slightly in their specific rules, but without exception, they had all relaxed tremendously.
Bilibili naturally proved no exception either.
This piece of original artwork for He Yin couldn't even be considered particularly high in exposure, especially compared to the illustrations posted by users on their own platform.
Even real-life cosplayers over here showed off more than half their bare asses without anyone caring--he had carefully researched the operator's environment while browsing on his phone before bed.
Therefore, Xu Meng completely failed to understand why his post got blocked by the censors.
He was using the official Frost Snow Project account after all, and he was somewhat of a partner, right?
Getting flagged over posting a single image was laughable just to talk about!
"Meng Ling! Meng Ling!" Xu Meng began calling for Little Assistant, "Get Song Zhicheng over here for me!"
As the dignified boss of Dream Builder, there was obviously no way he would go crawling to customer service to appeal--for this kind of thing, he had to make his subordinates go directly to their contacts in the game agency department.
They needed to spell it out clearly to save themselves from running into the same problem over and over again in the future.
--After all, he would inevitably have to post more similar, or even lewder pictures down the road.
After spending a few minutes dispatching Song Zhicheng to resolve the issue, Xu Meng shifted his gaze back to the screen and switched over to the Weiguang homepage.
He watched with satisfaction as the image had already stirred up a small sensation.
Frost Snow Project was, after all, a game that had made it all the way to the open beta stage; as the saying goes, a starved camel is still bigger than a horse, and no matter how down and out it was, it still commanded one million fans on Weiguang and two million on Bilibili.
Coupled with the fact that it was already standing at the forefront of the storm, it didn't lack for hype at the moment.
The moment this piece of original artwork was released, it attracted a massive crowd of netizens to come and rubberneck.
At first, the majority of people simply intended to come and trash-talk the moment they saw that Frost Snow Project had some movement.
Yet the instant they clicked on the full-sized image, those foul words all got stuck in their throats.
Facing the sultry yet cool curly-haired beautiful girl, the pure bystanders immediately defected.
The professional astroturfing groups reported to their team leaders, requesting the new version of the copywriting.
As for actual Frost Snow Project players, looking at a character they once knew reappearing in a highly stylized, brand-new image, the impact they felt far exceeded that of passersby who didn't know He Yin.
They were the ones who truly blew up on the spot--
"What the fuck! Is this He Yin? The He Yin from that game who calls me big bro?!"
"Little sis has grown up!"
"No way, little sis, how can you come out dressed like this! You should only wear that at home for me to see!"
"This is way too lewding hot! /nosebleed"
"I don't give a damn about all that! Today you're the one!"
"Did Dream Builder change their art staff? The effect is immediate! This is way too awesome!"
"Is this the power of a mainstream artist? Quick, tell me her name! I want to see the master's previous works!"
"This is actually a character in the permanent pool?! Fuck! I'm going to whale through the regular pool right now to fish her out!"
"Are you out of your mind, bro? She hasn't even been officially implemented yet!"
"Not bad, not bad." Xu Meng couldn't help but feel happy for Ding Nian.
Although she had drawn the original art and character portraits for several characters previously, no players had ever wanted to inquire about who drew those characters.
It just went to show that drawing a multitude of mediocre characters couldn't compare to drawing a single outstanding character that was sufficiently stylized and unforgettable at a glance.
At least this time, thanks to this artwork of He Yin, Ding Nian would definitely be remembered by many players.
The day her name was made public, her follower count would surely skyward! Looking further down, the comments from passerby netizens also started popping up one after another: "Is she going in a vacuum with nothing underneath??!"
"Was Frost Snow Project always this hardcore?"
"Looks like I have no choice but to play this!"
"The boss of Dream Builder has vision! A promising future!"
"Promising future, my foot; this has practically broken open a whole new scale for ACG games. A saint, I swear."
"I have a hunch that Game Observer might fail its prophecy this time."
"Don't celebrate too early; there's still a million miles between original art and the real-time machine rendering. God knows what she'll end up being modeled like."
"Let's just hope it doesn't turn out to be original art fraud in the end."
Xu Meng nodded as he read.
The reactions of the passerby netizens left him quite satisfied.
Although there were doubts regarding Dream Builder's modeling and programming capabilities, the underlying intention was also out of a desire not to ruin this piece of original art.
From this, it was evident that they genuinely liked this new image of He Yin and approved of the path Frost Snow Project was about to take.
For the employees of Dream Builder, this was undoubtedly fantastic news.
Xu Meng's confidence received a further boost as well.
This move of his had been the right one!
The hype for Frost Snow Project was sustained, and a portion of the negative traffic was successfully converted into beneficial traffic.
At least those scoldings hadn't been endured in vain.
Even better, the netizens had indeed slapped the label of "pioneering a new scale for ACG games" onto Dream Builder.
Though it wasn't praise like "pioneering a new field"--"new scale" at best counted as a neutral term, with praise or criticism depending on the specific context--it still proved useful.
Especially when competitors also intended to make these kinds of games.
To start with nothing else, the flame war was inherently set in an undefeatable position.
By then, their own players could righteously trash the opposite side: "You guys are so slow you can't even get to eat the hot shit!"
"The boss of Konjac must be in a terrible mood right now!"
Taking advantage of the astroturfers' preparation of new copywriting before it could form any scale, Xu Meng nimbly closed the page to avoid letting the internet trolls ruin his mood later, then plunged back into the scorching-hot work of writing code.
Just as Xu Meng had guessed.
The boss of Konjac Games was indeed in a terrible mood.
Yet it wasn't because they had lost the initiative in future flame wars, but rather because of some more realistic issues.
Displayed before him were two images: one was the vacuum-cheongsam He Yin just released by Dream Builder, and the other was a cheongsam-wearing character from their own new game.
--That character wore hair buns, with multiple cutouts on her cheongsam that exposed the skin and lingerie underneath.
She was also a cute young girl.
Compared to similar ACG game characters in the industry, she appeared quite bold.
Yet compared to Dream Builder's character, she seemed a bit too conservative.
Moreover, the style of the clothing showed a slight lack of coordination with her body movements and expression.
--The art staff had been accustomed to drawing cute and lively characters, and suddenly being asked to draw them "a bit sexier" had subconsciously led them to add bold clothing on top of the cute character base.
However, a character's cuteness and an outfit's boldness were two separate things, and they hadn't fused together all that well.
After all, Konjac Games was also a gaming company with many years of establishment and sound operational status. When testing out a new theme--even one more boundary-pushing than before--they had to consider the company's reputation and public image so as not to implicate the games currently in operation.
In other words, they had to play it safe.
They couldn't just open their mouths like Xu Meng and say directly, "Draw me sexy characters, the sexier the better!"
The starting points of the two were simply different.
One was to "add a few more sexy elements to the character," while the other was to "get sexy characters past censorship."
This difference in philosophy, manifested in the final finished product, created a massive gap.
Without a comparison, it might not have been quite so obvious.
Yet now that the two pieces of art were placed side by side, the disparity turned out rather cruel!
Konjac Games' original artwork was completely crushed in terms of appeal.
"Falling behind on a single piece of original art is nothing."
Fei Zhiyuan, the boss of Konjac Games, told his subordinates gathered before him.
"But falling behind on a single character's card pool is a huge problem."
"If five characters all fall behind like this, the game's overall revenue will be a difference of heaven and earth!"
"We've been preparing for over half a year, but how long did they prepare?"
"A day? Or two?"
"Can anyone explain to me--"
"What on earth have you all been doing for the past half year?!"
Before you continue