Chapter 96: On the Shelves, Second Update
On Earth, in a famous game development company, level designer Ding Ran pushed open the door and walked into his superior's office.
"Mr. Liu, there's new information about Star Sea."
From the day Ye Xing started live streaming, this company defined Star Sea as a "quite capable" competitor.
And after watching the Red Iron Town defense battle, the top management issued a death order.
Slander it!
Spend money to hire internet trolls and slander it to death!
More than one game company did this, so although the atmosphere in the player community was relatively harmonious, outside, Star Sea was quite controversial, with polarized reviews.
Negative comments mainly included "lack of sincerity, unfinished product, severely incomplete economic system," "too few cultivation elements, no fashion, neglecting female players," "looks good but not necessarily fun," "copying star citizen," and so on.
Of course, in the eyes of a professional like Ding Ran, these comments were either exaggerated or complete nonsense.
"What is it?"
The man called Mr. Liu looked away from the revenue and retention rate data.
"The game updated its content, and players found an enormous industrial ship in synchronous orbit! Videos have already been uploaded."
Ding Ran was quite excited. He was also a user of the Star Sea player community, posting almost every day, hoping to be noticed by customer service and receive an internal test invitation.
"Oh."
Mr. Liu nodded indifferently.
"I haven't paid much attention to the game's story. Anyway, they just opened a new scene, right?"
"No, it's not just as simple as opening a scene! This time, Star Sea has expanded a lot of its world view and background settings through the storyline of recovering the industrial ship, and its industrial potential has soared a hundredfold. I think their next step—"
"None of that is important."
Mr. Liu interrupted Ding Ran.
"Although the previous action of hiring internet trolls wasn't very successful, my view on Star Sea hasn't changed."
"You mean..."
"I mean, at this stage, all its NPCs are played by humans behind the scenes, and all internal test players are specially hired actors, achieving ultra-high quality character animations through real-time motion capture. All seemingly free plot options actually have scripts, and the graphics are optimized by some laboratory-stage advanced AI for real-time rendering, achieving a lifelike effect."
"But..."
Ding Ran wanted to refute, but what Mr. Liu said did indeed conform more to current technical conditions.
"But what? Do you really think there's a fully immersive brain-computer interface game? Come on, that's just a concept.
"Wait and see. Star Sea's carefully polished plot scenes are only the novice village from the internal test phase, meant to generate discussion and boost the number of reservations for the official version.
"Then, on the day it truly launches, hmph, players will find that what they get is completely different. The graphics are downgraded, the plot is fixed with no freedom, there's no real-time motion capture, and certainly no brain-nerve connection. It's just a regular shooting game."
Ding Ran was speechless.
Mr. Liu had excellent grades since childhood, graduated from a 985 university, was a student union cadre in college, and had a very impressive resume. His ability to give PPT presentations was even more outstanding.
However, he didn't play games.
"But Star Sea looks very appealing and fun, we have to admit that, right?"
"Xiao Ding, we make games not for fun, but to make a profit for the shareholders! Only then can we earn money to buy cars and houses!"
Mr. Liu said earnestly.
"There's no need to make the game too fun. The energy should still be focused on numerical cultivation, making players grind for equipment attributes over and over again, leaving them no time to play new games from other companies. Xiao Ding, you've been working for more than three years, you can't always look at a game from a player's perspective, only thinking about playing."
"So, according to you, we shouldn't learn from Star Sea?"
"Learn what? That's just a staged fraudulent farce. In the past, we had promotional PV fraud; now, someone is even doing internal test live streaming fraud. Don't tell me, this is something very new, something we can learn from in the future!"
"But—"
"No more 'buts'! In ten days, we'll also release a real gameplay demo of our new work, a light sci-fi element two-dimensional open world, which will definitely suppress Star Sea's popularity!"
"That's not appropriate, Mr. Liu—" Ding Ran felt that ten days was an absolutely terrible time point. "At that time, Star Sea's new plot will have just unfolded, releasing a lot of new content, and the combat perspective will truly enter space. We'd better start promoting a few weeks later and try to avoid the sharp edge."
"Alas, Xiao Ding, you—"
Mr. Liu rubbed his temples hard.
This child cannot be taught!
"Didn't I say? What we see is fraud, or you can call it exaggerated promotion. In essence, the future Star Sea is just a shooting game with an equipment system. Players board a spaceship, then load, and are instantly teleported to the battlefield map to start shooting. The so-called outer space elements are just background settings."
What a stupid boss.
The game clearly shows the entire process of cosmic development, and all you see is shooting!
Shooting, shooting, that's called first-person shooting, okay?
It's truly chaotic!
Ding Ran returned to his workstation in frustration.
He opened the Star Sea player community, calmed down, and posted a thread, attaching the video he had just finished making during his downtime.
This crappy job, whoever wants it can have it.
《Big Company Game Designer Takes You to Interpret the Cangyuan industrial ship!》
This was the seventh episode of his 《Game Designer Takes You to See Star Sea》 series. Although the video was flow limited on a certain website for some well-known reasons, it had a good reputation among cloud gamers, serving as a luxurious substitute that could quench their thirst.
Closing the post editor, Ding Ran saw that the Navigator had just released an announcement.
【Version Update Announcement】
It's finally here!
【Greetings to all colleagues dedicated to human revival! Our programmers and artists have been working overtime every night until they cough up three liters of blood, finally pushing the game to version 0.3a!】
【This is a major version update. The indoor part of Oasis City has been completely finished, with thousands of houses, all having complete interiors and accessible.】
【Two new scenes, Synchronous Orbit & Moon Surface, are open. I believe players who have been following Star Sea can already guess their names. The Navigator little brother can give a spoiler here: one of them will be the battlefield for the future first alien landing battle.】
【Air combat gameplay is fully unlocked. In the future, all professions can pilot flying vehicles, but pilots will be prioritized for selection into aviation squadrons, gaining the privilege of using fighters for free to complete missions during peacetime.】
【Economic system added. In the future, Cangyuan will issue its own electronic currency.】
【As official employees of Cangyuan, players have a stable source of income, paid daily. Completing daily tasks allows you to claim basic wages. Staying online for at least 8 hours and responding to the Executive Officer's call of the day will grant an online subsidy. Additionally, some randomly refreshed tasks may offer high bonuses. Please keep an eye on purple and gold tasks; they might be your first pot of gold!】
【Special token system launched. Participating in dungeon raids will earn "Pioneer Medals," which can be used to exchange for equipment that cannot be bought with money!】
【Player achievements and special titles are under urgent production! Rare titles among them can multiply your wages by a certain rate, don't miss out.】
【Player skill system is under urgent production and is expected to meet everyone soon through the 0.31a patch! Players will gain their first skill at level 5, and thereafter receive one skill point for every 5 levels gained.】