Last life Xu Meng had seen a 2D waifu shooting game.
However, that game ultimately met a rather poor end: after a brief spell of popularity, it quickly cooled down again.
The reasons were naturally multifaceted, but Xu Meng believed one of the main reasons was--
The misalignment between target users and core gameplay.
Their promotional direction and overall art style both welcomed ACG otakus to play.
Yet the core gameplay heavily emphasized competitiveness.
The end result was luring the otakus in, only to be slaughtered by veteran first-person shooter players.
--Of course there were otakus who were great at gunfighting games, but their overall proportion was quite low.
When the game's main target users found out that their sole outcome upon entering the game was to act as targets for the old-timers, handing over dozens of heads per match, the game's cooling down became inevitable.
Crossing the river by feeling the stones, Xu Meng could naturally avoid this point.
Frost Snow Project had a massive amount of PVE gameplay, giving players plenty of opportunities to get close and personal with their favorite characters, so otakus didn't have to worry about having nothing to do if they didn't want to battle.
Moreover, PVP would also be a light-competitive mode.
As long as players weren't beaten into mincemeat by experts, allowing both sides to kill each other and letting novices feel the fun, the entire mode could survive.
And "surviving" was all Xu Meng asked of this gameplay.
After leaving the level design department, he headed separately to the programming and numerical balancing departments to brief them on this new task.
Both groups of people were thrilled.
Especially Peng Linmu, who was practically burning with hot-blooded passion.
Even though their task was the most complex--
It required making characters able to switch back and forth between 3D modeling and 2D waifus, and once turned into 2D waifus, they had to be able to stick to walls and move, and when jumping from high places, they had to slowly drift down like a kite, flying very far away.
Every single one of these three tasks consumed a huge amount of brain cells, taxing both mind and labor.
Yet Peng Linmu patted his chest with resounding thumps, almost ready to sign a military pledge.
Clearly, compared to making character breasts and hips jiggle attractively, he preferred studying "real technology."
Even though the former was far more lucrative than the latter.
At this point, Xu Meng had also completed his daily quota of exercise, leisurely strolling back to his office.
Upon returning, he checked Social Network again to inspect the operations team's work results.
During the past half month, he had completely immersed himself in software development, leaving the work of maintaining Frost Snow Project's hype back in the hands of the operations team.
The method to maintain the hype was also very simple--releasing some materials every two or three days.
Sometimes it was a new character original artwork, sometimes a few GIFs, and from time to time answering a few questions players cared about most.
Thanks to Konjac Games constantly topping up funds for internet trolls and leading a bunch of clueless trolls to charge into battle every day, Frost Snow Project's hype had remained pretty good.
Although Song Zhicheng acted somewhat conservatively, he always steadily completed any tasks handed to him.
After negotiating with Bilibili, he obtained broader review conditions that very day, and afterwards, when releasing slightly lewdsy original art, the reviews were never stuck again.
Of course, Bilibili did not grant many privileges.
The video review standards were still the same as ordinary accounts.
But that wasn't a problem; when the time came, they would just put water mist on the sensitive areas.
Underage user refunds, Virtual YouTuber collaboration commercial orders, and other tasks were also completed methodically one by one.
Half a month passed, and Xu Meng slowly got the hang of the sense of security brought by this "controllability."
Song Zhicheng's rating in his heart also changed from "unremarkable" to "trustworthy."
The reason Song Zhicheng couldn't fully display his skills right now was still caused by the magical circle of ACG games.
Once Dream Builder's next game stopped making ACG games and he pulled him over, he should be able to showcase his talents fully.
After reviewing his own situation, Xu Meng searched for Konjac Games again.
Strangely enough, their new game, which formed a direct competition with the Frost Snow Project remastered edition, still hadn't started its promotion.
Not even a tiny bit of material had leaked out.
Aside from trading sarcastic barbs with Four-Dimensional Games once more over the past half month, there was zero movement.
That shouldn't be right... Xu Meng muttered quietly.
How could anyone already start spending money to snipe a rival, yet keep their own product from bubbling up with any promotion for half a month? What were they plotting? Did they have too much money to burn? "Boss, time to take your medicine!"
"What medicine, it's a supplement!" Xu Meng corrected.
The medicine he was prescribed initially had long since run out, and after seeing the doctor once more, the doctor didn't prescribe more medicine, only supplements, accompanied by dime-a-dozen golden nuggets of advice like "regulate your schedule, don't stay up late."
"Oh, oh, Boss, drink your supplement!" Little Assistant obediently followed along.
Watching Xu Meng obediently drink his medicine, Little Assistant felt much more relieved.
Half a month passed, and the boss finally stopped looking like a haggard mess on the verge of sudden death.
Once his mood relaxed, her lively and unfettered nature quickly returned: "Boss, want to hear some gossip?"
"Gossip? What gossip?"
"Word is that Ding Nian single-handedly destroyed eight headhunting companies whose business covers the game industry!"
"?" Little Assistant's sentence was a bit long, and Xu Meng didn't react for a moment.
After thinking for a few seconds, he understood what she meant: "Huh?"
"Today I received a call from a headhunting company." Little Assistant dropped a bombshell.
"I thought they came to poach me, but it turned out they were asking for Ding Nian's contact info."
Xu Meng was startled. Were headhunting companies this bold nowadays? Calling the company's general assistant directly to poach people?
But the surprise Little Assistant brought him had only just begun.
"When I casually mentioned it in a small group chat later, I found out many people had received this kind of call."
"It seemed that ever since He Yin's new original art was published, headhunting companies kept inquiring about Ding Nian, but her interpersonal relationships were relatively simple, so headhunting companies often inquired through our employees."
"Slowly, everyone found out."
"But Ding Nian has never shown any sign of leaving, so she must have rejected them all."
"After the number of times piled up, everyone's focus changed, and they started tallying up which companies she had rejected, casually placing bets on whether she could reject more than ten."
Little Assistant felt that since Ding Nian was dead set on not leaving, this matter automatically fell under the category of "gossipy fun."
Yet Xu Meng vaguely sensed that this matter might be faintly connected to the problem he was currently scratching his head over.
With so many headhunting companies converging to poach Ding Nian, chances were that Konjac Games had spent a huge amount of money trying to poach her! Were they unsatisfied with the content created by their own artists, so they wanted to poach Dream Builder's artist? This was simply too shameless.
So infuriating! Why did this company only use underhanded tricks?
Couldn't they fight a fair and square match? He really wanted to use the same tactic to tick off the other side! But he didn't quite think much of the other side's artists...
Konjac's current most profitable game was called Divine Bird, a typical ACG gacha game where the biggest feature of the characters was that they all had various colored wings.
They were quite cute, but they didn't give Xu Meng that feeling of so fucking awesome, I must poach them over.
In the end, he could only make another entry in his little notebook: [May 16th, poached by Konjac Games!] When the opportunity arose in the future, he had to take heavy revenge!
After finishing writing, Xu Meng, whose exercise quota was already met and who had originally intended to laze around in the office until quitting time, agilely stood up and headed to the Art Department to comfort his capable subordinate.
To the current Dream Builder and Frost Snow Project, every artist capable of producing high-quality original art was extremely important.
Talent like Ding Nian, who also possessed leadership skills and could stimulate team potential, was even more indispensable.
Although he found out a bit late, he couldn't be blamed for this.
It was all the headhunting companies' fault! Wasn't it just Ding Nian's contact info they wanted?
I have it too!
Why didn't they call me?
Before you continue