Cannon Fodder Genius Game Producer - Chapter 29

Chapter 29: The 29th Day of a Blockbuster

Ever since the account “Teacher Bu Shu” re-emerged after eight years and unlocked the ultimate easter egg hidden by Tracer Studio during a livestream, there had been scattered speculations regarding his identity and whether he was a mere “persona” streamer.

One could say the name “Teacher Bu Shu” had maintained a significant presence since April. Every time someone reviewed the “easter egg” or tested a newly purchased overclockable version of the GM4, it brought fresh discussion to the ID of Teacher Bu Shu.

Gossip-seeking players online assumed that since his comeback—even though he had officially announced the registration of a game studio—he at least shouldn’t abandon his well-established livestreaming account. After all, wouldn’t he need to maintain the account’s popularity to promote his own games later?

Yet, Teacher Bu Shu acted as if he had forgotten he possessed a WG livestreaming account with a substantial fan base, failing to go live for one or even two months.

On the first day of Pei Shu’s return, the staff at the WG platform had only given him a homepage recommendation as an experiment to see if this “ancient” account could take off again in today’s streaming environment.

As it turned out, Pei Shu’s livestream that day not only took off itself but directly helped the WG platform open up a portion of the overseas market. This unexpected result delighted the WG platform staff.

Furthermore, leveraging the global influence spread that day, Pei Shu successfully topped the historical newcomer charts of the WG livestreaming platform.

Unfortunately, this “Teacher Bu Shu,” who sat atop the newcomer charts, vanished once more, forcing the series of follow-up promotions they had prepared to be shelved temporarily.

This hiatus lasted for a full two months.

During these two months, people inevitably began discussing online—what kind of game was Teacher Bu Shu actually making, and was he certain that making games could be more profitable than livestreaming?

After all, someone had calculated the actual value of the gifts received during his single livestream based on his first-day heat. The donations Teacher Bu Shu received were not fake; they were all from real viewers. Based on the gifts received that day, plus his viewer heat and video replay counts, even if the subsequent heat and donation amounts were halved again and again, as long as Teacher Bu Shu maintained a stable monthly schedule, he might not reach the level of a top-tier streamer earning millions, but an income of several hundred thousand a month would be no problem.

Yet he didn’t go for that income, choosing instead to make games…

Someone couldn’t help but raise a question: Isn’t Teacher Bu Shu an independent game developer? After months of hard work, will the money he earns really be more than what he makes from livestreaming?

Unfortunately, before the release of Bu Shu Studio’s first game, no one could answer that question.

At the end of June, after a series of acceptance adjustments, the 1.0 version of Project: Immortal Fate was finally successfully packaged.

This 1.0 version contained the basic gameplay. In Pei Shu’s words, it was: One thought to become an Immortal, one thought to become a Demon—the immortal destiny you see may not be destiny, but perhaps the turning point for your fall into the demonic path.

Wang Fei and Jiang Ziye had no objections to Pei Shu’s words.

As far as their Project: Immortal Fate was concerned, that was exactly how it was played. Or rather, their game was filled from start to finish with an aura that suggested the creators were asking to be beaten to death by the players.

“Version 1.0 is out. What’s the plan next? Open a small-scale invitation test?”

Wang Fei was uncharacteristically uncertain.

He had previously handled projects at Jixing. Aside from Super God, regardless of whether the other projects succeeded or failed, they all gained fame among a segment of players before release thanks to the Jixing brand name.

Those projects differed from Project: Immortal Fate in one aspect: they were grand productions with massive investments, complex gameplay, and a certain level of difficulty in production.

Simply put—even if the core gameplay was exposed during internal testing, given the game’s quality, art, and the Jixing brand, even if other games copied their core mechanics, they wouldn’t have to worry too much about player loss.

But Project: Immortal Fate was different.

They were currently a small-budget production team. Even though they had invested as much as possible in the art and kept quality control as high as possible, you couldn’t say there was no gap between a 600,000 total investment and production costs that often reached millions or tens of millions.

The current advantage of Project: Immortal Fate was its “extremely punchable” core gameplay, as Wang Fei put it.

Wang Fei was worried about whether this gameplay would be plagiarized by competitors. Once this core gameplay was noticed and applied to a product with a higher investment, even if they could file a lawsuit, it would inevitably impact their own operations.

Hearing Wang Fei’s concern, Pei Shu patted his shoulder solemnly: “Old Wang, naive. You’re being naive.”

Wang Fei glared at Pei Shu: “Speak properly!”

Pei Shu smiled and raised the cup in his hand: “Old Wang, as for gameplay plagiarism, that only happens after your game has gained a certain level of fame. Only then will other R&D teams notice you. Think back carefully—when you were at Jixing, would you have noticed the first product of a tiny team like ‘Bu Shu’?”

Wang Fei: …

He wouldn’t have.

But he still rubbed his forehead: “Just because I wouldn’t doesn’t mean others won’t. Don’t forget, the only three members of our studio are all ‘named’ figures.”

Wang Fei wasn’t lying. He was a well-known figure himself, and adding Teacher Bu Shu and Jiang Ziye from the “True and False Producer” incident, the three of them together would certainly attract some attention—but honestly, it was just “some” attention.

Pei Shu looked at Wang Fei with a smile, as if waiting for him to continue.

Catching the smile on Pei Shu’s face, Wang Fei felt this guy was truly asking for a beating—both the person and the gameplay he set for Project: Immortal Fate.

However, he also knew what the smile on Pei Shu’s face meant.

Although the three of them were high-profile, Wang Fei came from a project management background and was skilled in overall project control but lacked a publicly known talent for creative planning. While Teacher Bu Shu and Jiang Ziye had game creation abilities, they both actually came from independent game backgrounds.

Before truly communicating with Pei Shu, even Wang Fei thought Pei Shu intended to start from the independent games he and Jiang Ziye excelled in, following the school of unique creativity and emotional resonance.

Who would expect him to play an unconventional card and dive into mobile online games?

Once word got out that “Teacher Bu Shu isn’t making an indie game, but a mobile game,” those who held expectations for them would likely feel some disappointment.

In that light, it indeed seemed as Pei Shu said—the expectation for their studio’s game wasn’t that high.

Thinking of this, Wang Fei felt a headache again: “Then how do you plan to handle the promotion?”

Pei Shu laughed, asking curiously: “Isn’t the promotion plan also integrated into the gameplay?”

Wang Fei froze, remembering the “punchable” gameplay of Project: Immortal Fate, and was somewhat shocked: “You designed this gameplay specifically to increase player conflict and spark discussion?”

Jiang Ziye, who had been listening quietly, was also startled by Wang Fei’s words: “Teacher Bu Shu, you considered promotion issues while designing the core gameplay?”

Pei Shu rubbed his chin: “It wasn’t exactly deliberate, it’s just that this gameplay happens to make it easy to create hot topics for promotion.”

“…Indeed, not bad.” Wang Fei uncharacteristically withheld his sarcasm.

It was exactly as Pei Shu said; their studio currently had little fame among ordinary players. If they wanted to successfully break into the mass market, the fame of the three of them wouldn’t be enough.

But if the game itself had “discussability”—starting from the gameplay level, Wang Fei could already think of several promotion and marketing plans. This route was indeed feasible.

Wang Fei asked: “Since you think we don’t need to worry about excessive attention, shall we run a first round of testing for version 1.0?”

Pei Shu nodded: “Of course. But let’s slow down; the three of us should test the current version for a few more days. With too few players, many problems can’t truly be detected. We should ensure the basic issues are caught first, then release an invitation test for 1,000 people on the WG dedicated page.”

That day, the WG dedicated game page for Project: Immortal Fate—which had only contained the title since the announcement of the studio’s first game—finally featured new content.

Subject: Bu Shu Studio’s first mobile game “Project: Immortal Fate” Version 1.0 first round limited-access, data-wipe invitation test is about to begin!

Players who had already followed Bu Shu Studio because of Teacher Bu Shu, Wang Fei, and Jiang Ziye immediately received a notification for the page update.

They came to look—good lord, that title is long enough!

1L: First

3L: It’s here, it’s here. Waited two months for the first post. Teacher Bu Shu’s studio is a bit lazy, aren’t they? Don’t they maintain the page updates?

4L: LMAO, looks like not many people follow the studio. After so long, I still snagged 4th place. To the friend above: I checked earlier, Teacher Bu Shu’s studio registration is ≤ 5 people. I bet the total count is just Pei Shu, Wang Fei, and Jiang Ziye. For just three people, getting a 1.0 version out in two months is already terrifyingly efficient. Don’t even think about page maintenance.

8L: Actually got a 1.0 version out in two months? The efficiency is indeed good. But this post is a bit too simple—it just says it’s an idle card-battle exploration game with two paths, Immortal and Demon, and that’s it?

10L: The description makes it look like a pay-to-win game. With Teacher Bu Shu and Jiang Ziye together, they’re actually making a pay-to-win mobile game instead of an indie game… Honestly, a bit disappointed.

11L: I think it’s fine. Both indie and commercial games are valid choices. No need to say you’re disappointed so early. Let’s look at the game quality first. This round of internal testing supposedly has 1,000 slots. I’ve already signed up for one. I’ll experience the content first before deciding if I’m disappointed.

The heat for the post announcing the upcoming invitation test seemed decent.

Pei Shu checked the 24-hour view count from the backend; it was around 5,000. This included data from players clicking back into the thread during discussions. The actual number of views, converted to player IPs, should be around 3,000.

Because of the previous livestream incident, Bu Shu Studio’s fresh WG dedicated account had roughly 30,000 followers. For a new studio account without any works, this was already a considerable number of followers.

The current ratio of views to followers for this thread was quite good, indicating that those who followed the studio account were indeed die-hard fans of Teacher Bu Shu. The conversion rate between followers and effective interaction was excellent.

This respectable view count brought equally good player registration data—in less than 48 hours, the number of sign-ups for version 1.0 (where everything was still unknown to players) had exceeded the baseline goal of 1,000.

After confirming that the application numbers could meet the initial testing needs, Pei Shu refrained from using his “Teacher Bu Shu” account for large-scale promotion.

Thus, about 10 days later, the initial test of Project: Immortal Fate version 1.0 kicked off in an extremely low-profile manner.

At the moment the servers were opened, Pei Shu made a joke: “I hope our programmer was worth the money and we don’t have an internal testing accident where the servers crash upon launch.”

Wang Fei rolled his eyes irritably—it was an internal test for a mere 1,000 people, and they had already performed what stress testing they could with bots. Why talk about his own game like that?

Amidst the banter between Pei Shu and Wang Fei, Jiang Ziye stood by with a tense, combat-ready expression. Setting aside Crazy Graduation Season and The Stolen Life, to him, the Project: Immortal Fate about to enter testing was the true first game he had poured all his heart into.

How would the players react to Project: Immortal Fate?

In the midst of Pei Shu and Wang Fei’s relative relaxation and Jiang Ziye’s nervous anticipation, Project: Immortal Fate version 1.0 finally welcomed its first batch of players.

Chen Xiaopang was the WG streamer who had “picked up” Teacher Bu Shu on the WG livestreaming platform. Due to the previous comeback incident, Chen Xiaopang, as one of the first streamers to discover Teacher Bu Shu, had also gained some heat. Teacher Bu Shu’s livestream back then had left a deep impression on him.

Previously, based on his habit of “picking up newcomers,” Chen Xiaopang had followed the Bu Shu Studio account from the start, wanting to see how the studio would ultimately develop.

Upon discovering that “Bu Shu Studio” had released an internal testing invitation for a new game, Chen Xiaopang naturally wouldn’t miss the chance. He applied immediately and successfully obtained a slot for the first test.

On the first day of the game’s first round of internal testing, Chen Xiaopang started a livestream and happily clicked on the freshly downloaded game.

“It’s here, it’s here! Let me see the true face of this Project: Immortal Fate!”

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