Operating Model

First came the question of profitability, a task and goal that nearly every game had to face.

After all, this was such a large company with quite a few employees waiting for the game to turn a profit.

As long as Soul Knight accomplished this task, it would be of significant help to Huangtu Game Company's future development!!!

Then there was the long-term development that Wang Chuan valued more.

Wang Chuan had decided that before experiencing Soul Knight, players would need to register an account and complete their personal information.

What was the purpose of doing this??

Naturally, it was for the sake of future distribution channels.

Without its own channels, it would ultimately be like duckweed without water. Survival would not be a problem, but rising to prominence would be difficult.

Wanting to build a user base as large as the Three Factories' was truly, truly difficult.

But without accumulating small steps, one could not travel a thousand miles; without gathering small streams, one could not form rivers and seas.

Wang Chuan had never expected a single game to amass a huge number of users. That was not very realistic!!

But every extra user gained was still an extra user.

Given enough time, quantitative change would eventually lead to qualitative change!!!

"Still, should Soul Knight really be operated the same way it was in my previous life?"

Wang Chuan hesitated, pinching his chin as he pondered it over and over.

Since Soul Knight had succeeded in his previous life, its monetization model was worth studying and drawing from.

Soul Knight in his previous life had used a free-to-play model with in-app purchases.

The game itself was free, but it included in-app purchases.

For example, characters, skills, and skins in the game.

All of them had paid purchase points.

Of course, this monetization model had been perfectly normal in his previous life.

Oh, right, the game also had advertisements.

If players died and wanted to revive, or wanted to double the resources earned from clearing a stage, they had to watch ads.

Looking at it this way, did everyone think Soul Knight made a lot of money???

The answer was no!!!

Although Soul Knight appeared to have plenty of paid features, like a hodgepodge of monetization methods,

it actually relied on low margins and high volume.

And its revenue was very, very low~~~

The reasons lay in its operations and third-party issues.

Soul Knight itself had no encryption, allowing cheat tools to run rampant.

It could be said that any cheat tool on the market could modify player resources. Almost everyone had hacks.

Moreover, the game had no cloud save function, which caused problems whenever players spent money.

They would top up but the payment would not arrive, buy a character only for their save data to disappear, and so on.

Such situations happened often.

However, these issues were no longer problems for Wang Chuan!!

With the lessons of his previous life, he had prepared remedial measures from the start.

No cloud saves?

Fine, then he would add cloud saves and make sure they would never malfunction again.

Hacks and cracked versions?

No need to worry. Given this world's unique circumstances, no one would dare make hacks or cracked versions. Anyone who did would be caught, one after another. Those who wanted free room and board could give it some thought~~

"Uh, then I'll ditch the ads and go with free-to-play plus in-app purchases!!"

After thinking for a long time, Wang Chuan finally made up his mind.

Taking the payment model from his previous life as reference, the game itself would be free, but some special classes would still require payment.

Taking into account the loyal players and hardcore grinders found in every game,

Wang Chuan also set up many characters that could be unlocked through grinding.

As for ads, Wang Chuan abandoned them.

He had once been a player himself, so he directly passed on advertisements that harmed the experience.

The reason he adopted this monetization method was partly because he had the game from his previous life as a reference.

But more importantly, it was the model he knew best.

Because Soul Knight's profitability task was extremely important, and there could not be the slightest carelessness.

The core gameplay of Roguelike games was randomness.

Every death could bring players a new sense of novelty.

What items would they get this time, what boss would they encounter, and what skills would they have?

This anticipation for the unknown future was the very core of the game.

And this core was also the game's monetization point.

Could players enjoy Soul Knight without spending money? Could they clear the game?

Of course they could. There was no doubt about it.

But they would eventually grow tired of the original stages, characters, skills, and classes.

At that point, if they wanted to continue experiencing that freshness,

then naturally, they would need to spend money!!

Unlike other mobile games, players would not need to spend money at every stage just to experience the game's content.

Soul Knight would be like a DLC, with different ways to play.

It was just that the pricing would need careful consideration.

From the player's perspective, Wang Chuan cut all the settings in Soul Knight that required payment to unlock second class skills.

They would instead be unlocked with in-game gold.

Naturally, this killed two birds with one stone.

After all, the initial version of Soul Knight lacked progression content, making it difficult to retain players for long.

Having players grind for gold to unlock second skills also counted as another form of progression content.

After finalizing the game's monetization method, Wang Chuan continued refining its framework.

Since Soul Knight was going to be free-to-play with in-app purchases, player retention would be extremely important.

It could even be said that the game's profits were closely tied to it.

Therefore, Soul Knight also needed some progression content.

Soul Knight in his previous life had done the same.

For example, character leveling, equipment crafting, and a garden system.

However, Wang Chuan could not add all of that content at once.

After all, the game's strength was that it was easy to pick up. If he added everything in one go, the barrier to entry would become too high.

Although some progression content needed to be added, that should only happen once the game had reached a certain number of players

and they had grown bored with the existing gameplay. That would be the best time to add it.

Therefore, Wang Chuan decided to turn all of that progression-focused content into DLC.

When the time came, he could use it as a foundation to update new versions and new content.

Aside from that, there were also some details he was uncertain about. But instead of using the Memory Searcher, he worked on refining them himself.

After preparing everything, Wang Chuan thought of Huang Shanshan.

Uh, the Art Assets Huang Shanshan had brought over.

"That little girl~~"

Thinking of how Huang Shanshan had fled in embarrassment just now, Wang Chuan could not help smiling.

Shaking his head, Wang Chuan opened the Pangu Editor and began checking the Art Assets.