The Best New Game's Player Killer List

After deciding to leave Atlantis, the group submitted their resignations to their team boss.

They then arranged a time to meet at a restaurant outside.

"Do you regret making this decision?" Chen Ziyu, the team captain, looked at everyone and asked.

Wang Damang said, "Captain, we've played games together for so many years. We've got a keen sense for the gaming market. We left Atlantis without hesitation because we think Battle Online has huge potential. I don't see anything to regret. Besides, as the first batch of Players, we have a massive advantage. Would we be worried about not making money later on?"

Xueli, who had been secretly eating at the side, raised her head. "Exactly. You might not believe it, but I even wanted to spend some money. But I couldn't find a top-up channel. It's so depressing~"

Xueli's words struck a chord with everyone.

It was not just Xueli. Almost everyone present had considered topping up in the game to get a better set of equipment.

Yet just as the introduction said, there was no payment interface at all, leaving them utterly speechless.

Still, in their eyes, if the game wanted to develop and the game company wanted to make money, that function would appear sooner or later.

Moreover, Soul Coins were extremely scarce in this game. They could stockpile a batch of Soul Coins and sell them later, so they did not need to worry about making no money at all.

"So everyone means we should form a guild in this new game and keep playing together?" A smile appeared on Chen Ziyu's face.

"Of course. We already have a system for dividing loot after killing monsters, so that's not a problem. But what puzzles me is that I searched plenty of gaming platforms and couldn't find a single promotional advertisement for this game. What is this company even thinking?"

"Right? If I hadn't clicked on it by accident, I wouldn't have believed that an epic game like this was sitting on the homepage of some little game site." Wang Damang immediately picked up after Wang Chao, his face full of confusion.

Maybe the boss who made this game really did not lack money. That was the only guess they could make.

Meanwhile, Lu Wu and Bei Li sat indoors, each with a bowl of instant noodles, wolfing them down.

"Lu Wu, you're really poor~" Bei Li said miserably after taking another bite of noodles.

Lu Wu's face reddened, and he gave an embarrassed smile. "Once we have more Players, there'll be plenty of ways to make money. Then I'll take you out for all kinds of delicacies and fatten you up nice and healthy."

Bei Li nodded adorably, stirred her chopsticks around twice, picked up a strand of noodles, and slurped it up. "Sluuurp~ sluuurp!"

"By the way, why do you need to eat too?" Lu Wu asked curiously as he ate his noodles.

"The underworld has both physical and incorporeal beings. I'm a materialized life-form, so of course I need to eat." Bei Li answered as if it were obvious.

Lu Wu was stunned. Only then did he remember that Bei Li had always been physical. He could touch her.

After finishing their noodles, Lu Wu and Bei Li began discussing how to promote the game again.

If they relied only on a little game website, the traffic would be too low. Hardly any Players would click in.

But promotion required a huge amount of money upfront.

Take the short-video platform, for example. It had enormous traffic, but if someone wanted to promote something on that site, they first had to deposit money into a promotion account.

Only then would the platform display their advertisement and link.

Every time a visitor clicked the link, the platform deducted one yuan in advertising fees from the promotion account. Even if the visitor clicked it by accident, lost interest, and closed it immediately, the fee would still be deducted.

By that calculation, with the traffic of such a major platform, promotion would be impossible to sustain without spending at least a million a day.

And Battle Online had no paid features right now. With huge expenses and no income, Lu Wu decisively gave up on that kind of promotion.

So the two could only look for another method. They began browsing several gaming platforms, hoping to find some platform-run events.

After searching through dozens of platforms, Lu Wu actually found a free promotional event hosted by a major gaming platform.

The Best New Game's Player Killer List

In order to find this year's best new game, Platform173 had launched a game promotion voting event. All certified and registered game websites could select one self-developed game from their site to participate in Platform173's Best New Game Player Killer List. During the event, every participating game would be scored by the platform's game reviewers, out of a total of 10 points.

Any game that scored above 8 points would receive one day of homepage promotion from the platform, after which Players would begin the voting stage.

Evaluation period: Thirty days

Prize for first place by votes:

Ten days of homepage promotion resources on Platform173, plus a five-minute CG production for the game.

Prize for second place by votes:

Five days of homepage promotion resources on Platform173.

Prize for third place by votes:

Two days of homepage promotion resources on Platform173.

Platform173 reserved all rights of interpretation for this event.

Lu Wu and Bei Li exchanged a glance upon seeing the information, and both looked extremely excited.

If they could truly get homepage promotion on a major gaming platform like Platform173, the traffic would definitely be considerable.

More importantly, it was actually a free event.

Of course, the prerequisite was that the game had to score at least 8 points, the minimum threshold for promotion.

But Lu Wu was not worried about that at all.

A game with one hundred percent realism simply did not exist in the current market. He was fully confident of placing in the top three, perhaps even taking first place!

Seeing that there were still three days left to register, Lu Wu decisively clicked to enter. He then sent over his little game website's information and certification documents and waited for a reply.

Platform173's customer service was highly efficient. A moment later, Lu Wu received a message with an audit link for participating games.

After opening the link, Lu Wu filled in his website information again, registered an account, and uploaded Battle Online to the website's review page.

A prompt then popped up on the webpage:

Under review. Please wait patiently. You will receive your review results within three to five days.

After finishing all that, Lu Wu began discussing game optimization with Bei Li.

After three hours of discussion, Lu Wu and Bei Li held a draft sketch and began planning the game's main questline.

A main questline naturally had to be developed and expanded around the theme of Conquest.

Thinking of the ambitions his ancestor once held, Lu Wu's heart swelled with pride. As long as the game became popular enough, he would have endless immortal Players serving him. As the Players grew stronger, what would a mere Bei Qi Great Domain amount to? What he wanted was the entire underworld!

Bei Li, who was extremely familiar with all of Bei Qi's terrain, acted as a strategist at his side and pointed out several forces in Bei Qi that Lu Wu needed to watch out for.

According to Bei Li, King of Beiqi had three Ghost Kings and ten Ghost Generals under his command. After King of Beiqi died, those forces had divided the whole of Bei Qi into thirteen regions.

The region where the Netherworld Mansion was located lay to the east and was occupied by a Ghost General named Shana.

How to seize the territory back from Shana was the initial main quest Lu Wu needed to consider.

Lu Wu set the main quest to unlock at level 15. After all, Players at too low a level could not even handle a Ghost Soldier, much less form combat power on any meaningful scale.

At the same time, the two began considering NPC template designs.

These NPCs, which would increase the game's playability, were easy to create. They only needed to use the Battle Artifact to condense a body. The important part was how to give the NPCs intelligence.

If the game was to stand out, NPCs would be extremely important. The key was making them possess independent awareness.

Lu Wu had no way to solve that problem, so he could only throw it to Bei Li, the game developer.

But what Lu Wu did not expect was for Bei Li to confidently pat her chest.

"Leave it to me. This isn't actually difficult. The underworld is the destination of all living beings. We can look for Initial Souls that have just been born in the underworld and have not yet developed intelligence. Then we can use the artifact to carry out Soul Recombination, giving them new memories and missions."

"But where are we supposed to find souls like that?" Lu Wu asked in surprise.

"After death, living beings are randomly reborn in the underworld. They could appear anywhere. We can simply release a task and have the Players find newborn souls for us to make into NPCs!"

"Good!"

Lu Wu nodded and released a new task in the game with his consciousness:

Permanent Task: Soul Collector:

Search for Initial Souls randomly born across the underworld. Once discovered, they can be sold in the shop. Each Initial Soul is worth 100 Soul Coins.

At the same time, to help Players understand what newborn souls were, Lu Wu had Bei Li create an image and place it in the task list so Players could identify them more easily.

The reward for this task could be said to be the highest of all tasks. At the same time, this entirely luck-based task added more fun to the game.

Whether you were a European Emperor or one of the African Losers, finding one depended entirely on your luck.