Chu Chen did not stop to explain.
Instead, he went straight to the whiteboard and began to explain the core gameplay of the game.
"Our time is not ample. The money from selling the house cannot support us for too long, so we need a quick monetization channel to normalize the company's operations."
He did not deliberately avoid the company's problems.
What Chu Chen needed to do now was to make this group of people believe in him first, believe that he could complete a game within half a year.
As he spoke, he drew a chessboard on the whiteboard.
"I call the core gameplay of this game 'auto chess'…"
After speaking, Chu Chen scanned the conference room and found that everyone looked at him blankly. So, he drew a few circles on the chessboard.
"In our Final Battlefront, aren't there many humanoids based on firearms? Everyone can treat different humanoids as chess pieces…"
The prototype of auto chess gameplay can be traced back to the 'Pokemon Defense' RPG map in 'Warcraft III' in 2013, which was then continuously iterated through maps like 'Battle of Three Kingdoms' and 'Touhou Fu-mu Sai'.
Finally, in November 2018, it became an overnight sensation with 'Dota Auto Chess'.
From its release in November 2018 to January 2019, 'Dota Auto Chess' had already reached millions of subscribers in two months, with peak concurrent users exceeding 100,000.
The internet was full of people discussing this game. Many Dota2 streamers abandoned their 'old profession' and switched to streaming 'Dota Auto Chess'. Douyu even created a dedicated search term for it.
After auto chess became popular, a large number of manufacturers began to flood into this track.
League of Legends also experienced a second spring with auto chess gameplay, and its 'Teamfight Tactics' even spawned its own independent work, 'Battle of the Golden Spatula'.
This series of successes all indicated the excellence of the auto chess gameplay.
However.
The reason Chu Chen chose auto chess gameplay was not entirely due to its success in later generations.
It was because auto chess is actually very suitable for the current Xingchen Games.
Why say that?
This goes back to the gameplay of auto chess.
Why is auto chess fun?
The answer to this question is actually very simple: because the core of auto chess is the most enduring 'board game' globally, which is Mahjong.
Taking Teamfight Tactics as an example.
There are three core pleasures in auto chess: leveling up stars, synergies, and combat.
These correspond to arranging tiles, building a hand, and winning a hand in Mahjong.
First, arranging tiles.
After players enter the game, they will have their own chess pieces. Killing monsters will also grant chess pieces. After each round, players can obtain gold, which can be used to purchase chess pieces.
There are various ways to obtain chess pieces, but ultimately, it's essentially drawing tiles.
However, for strategic depth, when players buy chess pieces with gold, they can choose from multiple options in the shop.
This is somewhat similar to playing Mahjong, where you are allowed to draw 4 tiles at once, and then you decide whether you want them. The purpose of this method is to make it easier for players to 'build a hand' in the second stage, which is forming a lineup, thereby lowering the barrier and increasing the strategic depth of building a hand.
But it's important to note that the chess pieces appearing in the shop are also random.
If you're not satisfied, you can only spend gold to 'reroll'.
So, essentially, the biggest attribute of 'drawing tiles,' which is luck, is still present.
After the 'drawing tiles' stage, auto chess enters the combat stage. This stage can be understood as the 'arranging tiles' stage.
First, leveling up stars.
Three one-star chess pieces of the same name can be promoted to two-star, and three two-star chess pieces of the same name can be promoted to three-star. The higher the star level, the higher the combat power. Some powerful characters can even dominate the battlefield when promoted to three-star.
Therefore, leveling up stars can bring extremely strong positive feedback.
But the problem is, leveling up stars isn't something you can do whenever you want; it also depends on luck, on whether you can roll the characters you want.
This is similar to Mahjong, where you want to draw the tiles you need.
It's just that in Mahjong, you draw three tiles to form a 'straight' or a 'triplet,' while in auto chess, you collect three identical characters.
Another core pleasure is synergy.
This can also be rephrased as forming a lineup. Simply put, characters from the same faction get bonuses when placed together. Getting two characters from the same lineup on the field grants one type of buff, and getting four grants another type of buff.
This core pleasure is like equipment sets in MMORPGs, and in Mahjong, it's essentially building a hand.
Do you want to aim for a 'Pure Suit' or a 'Thirteen Orphans'?
In fact, in any auto chess game, players feel the most satisfaction when they have built their ideal lineup and then sweep the board.
Essentially, this thrill is the same as forming a 'Pure Suit' or other big hands in Mahjong and then winning.
Auto chess merely adds intuitive feedback on top of the 'Mahjong' gameplay, as you can't see the battles between Mahjong tiles.
Moreover, there is combat before each 'arranging tiles' round, which also continuously provides feedback to players.
So, after understanding the core logic of auto chess.
The reason why the framework of 'Final Battlefront' described by Chu Chen is very suitable for the logic of auto chess naturally emerges.
Because, in addition to the gameplay mentioned above, auto chess has another core element.
This core element is the chess pieces.
In its previous life, why did 'Dota Auto Chess,' the original, gradually disappear in a market where a large number of 'copycat' auto chess games like 'Teamfight Tactics,' 'Hearthstone Battlegrounds,' and 'onmyoji Auto Chess' became wildly popular?
Why couldn't auto chess gameplay incubate a game of its own?
Why was the most successful auto chess game 'Teamfight Tactics' and not some other auto chess?
The answer is actually the chess pieces.
Taking Teamfight Tactics as an example again, for League of Legends players, Teamfight Tactics is incredibly easy to pick up; they are familiar with all the heroes.
Players can also easily accept the lineups in 'Teamfight Tactics'.
They understand it at a glance and enjoy it instantly.
However, just as low as the barrier to entry for League of Legends players is for Teamfight Tactics, it is equally high for players who do not play League of Legends.
This is also why Tencent decided to separate 'Teamfight Tactics' and push 'Battle of the Golden Spatula'.
Unfortunately, although 'Battle of the Golden Spatula' became independent, the chess pieces within it are still very unfamiliar to casual players.
Therefore, the largest user base for 'Battle of the Golden Spatula' is still League of Legends players, followed by users Tencent forcefully pushed through traffic.
This also explains why only 'Battle of the Golden Spatula' ultimately became popular among auto chess games.
After all, for other manufacturers, it is very difficult to erode the barrier of chess pieces through traffic, except by integrating similar gameplay into their own IP.
