Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

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"Success or death!!!"

Suzuki Sane didn't quite understand, so she whispered to Ma Jiayi what it meant.

Zhuang Qi overheard this phrase about culture.

"What I mean is, this project must succeed! Our goal is to complete the first demo before Sony's press conference in April!!"

Zhuang Qi was very excited.

She worked at Ubisoft before joining Starfire. She joined Starfire two years ago and was active in several project teams, eventually joining after the new project initiation meeting.

He became the head of Project Ark through an election process.

For Xinghuo's employees, becoming the head of a studio is basically the end of their career, and that's what she originally thought too.

But this morning, Lin Li announced the work group plan.

The plan has been established, but it hasn't been confirmed who will be in charge of each working group yet. The competition among the working groups is really intense, as exemplified by the Battlefront Girls.

This IP working group seems to be overseen by the person in charge of the Current Frontline Girls, but in fact, the person in charge of the Current Frontline Girls is Su Shanshan.

It's obvious that Su Shanshan won't be competing for this position. In fact, Su Shanshan herself said that she would relinquish her role as the head of the Frontline Girls after this studio reshuffle.

One can imagine what the heads of the several studios covered by the "Frontline Girls" must be feeling at this moment.

Zhuang Qi heard that even the Frontline Girls' Siege Studio, located in the United States, was excited upon hearing this news. They weren't vying for first place, but it was said that the second-in-command of this work group was already in their plans.

Besides the battlefront girls.

The two major studios under the Destiny Trails IP, Destiny Trails and FGO, needless to say.

Zhuang Qi didn't mean to mock them. After all, she was also very excited after hearing it. Even if you put aside a lot of IP work groups, there are still quite a few legitimate studios in China.

The Song of the Saintess, the City of Seven Days, the Unending Lost Path, and her Ark Project—among this large group of studios, who can take the lead?

Zhuang Qi didn't know.

At least get a deputy position, right?

Although the management team of this work group seems to be managing a lot but getting little reward, the salary is actually not much higher than doing a good project, it is a job that is purely hard work.

But she felt that it was worth it to suffer for the company.

In order to get the opportunity to endure hardship, Zhuang Qi becomes incredibly energetic whenever she returns to her studio. There is still time, and there are many things to finalize between the initial proposal and the final implementation of this studio group idea.

And she can use this time to showcase herself.

In fact, Zhuang Qi wasn't the only one who was working hard; many people were doing the same.

Chapter 483 The Core of Simulation Games

Time comes the next day.

Discussions about TGA have been gradually increasing online for the past few days.

At this point in time, Chinese gamers are still relatively unfamiliar with TGA. Most of them only know that it is a game awards ceremony, and that's about it.

Even fewer people know that TGA is an awards ceremony.

The reason? The reason is very simple. Before Spark, the domestic game industry was dominated by online games for more than ten years. Not to mention winning TGA awards, there were very few TGA nominations.

The game TGA truly became familiar to most players in its previous life when Black Myth broke into the mainstream.

The timeline is similar. As Spark Games continues to gain immense popularity, discussions have begun about which awards Spark Games could win at this year's TGA.

Initially, these discussions were limited to Spark fans in Europe and America, because compared to domestic players, they were more interested in and familiar with TGA.

And so their discussion continued.

Unsurprisingly, this incident became another classic case of exporting and then reselling domestically.

The media also started hyping it up, making predictions about how many awards Spark could win at this year's TGA, which immediately aroused the interest of Chinese people, and many Chinese players were also looking forward to it.

Lin Li, however, did not care about this. As the end of the month approached, Xinghuo's own awards ceremony and New Year's Eve party were being prepared in full swing.

Moreover, towards the end of the year, he still needs to communicate with many partners about various activities for next year.

Although Galaxy Park was nominated for Best Game at The Game Awards, it was clearly just a nomination, especially considering that Spark Entertainment didn't bribe the TGA this year.

Under such circumstances, Lin Li naturally could not attend the TGA; he simply sent Xinghuo America to represent him.

Of course, Lin Li also prepared acceptance speeches for other awards.

After all, they have no chance of winning Best Game, but they should still win one or two other awards. If they do win an award, the person representing Spark can just read from the prepared speech.

This draft wasn't written much; it was all clichés and perfunctory.

While writing the article, Lin Zongxue was also preparing a demo of a game.

As mentioned before, Lin Li prepared many surprises for this year's New Year's Eve program, including the Spark Strategy 2.0 and the Spark New User Acquisition Campaign.

The Spark handheld game console will also make its debut at the New Year's Eve event.

In fact, he currently has two StarCore handheld consoles on his desk.

The development of Steam Starcore is much faster in comparison.

This is partly due to the mature domestic mobile phone industry chain, and partly because the StarCore development team is several times larger than Steam's.

When AMD was designing the chip, StarCore Studio had already begun working on the related hardware. With AMD completing the handover of the custom chip in November, all the related hardware was in place in just one month.

By December, which is this month.

The first version of Starcore's system has also been debugged. The UI of this system is very similar to the logic of the previous Spark TV box. This is achieved through research on Spark TV box users and continuous feedback.

The first version of the Star Core system had a very mature UI.

There are still many bugs in the underlying logic. Lin Li played a few rounds himself, about an hour, or sometimes less than an hour, and a bug would appear.

Fortunately, no matter how many bugs occurred, the hardware process of this machine was successfully completed.

Once the process is running smoothly, the rest is time for optimization, which is a relatively controllable step given the scale of Starcore Studio.

Xu Dengke, the head of Starcore Studio, told Lin Li with certainty that a stable version would be available by the end of the Spring Festival at the latest, and by then hardware production should also be stable.

If all goes well, pre-orders will be available after the Lunar New Year, and the first batch of machines should be delivered to users in June.

However, Lin Li anticipated that something unexpected was bound to happen, so even though the hardware design was already finalized, he had already placed orders with the two largest contract manufacturers in China last month.

While the contract manufacturers can still operate at full capacity, produce as much as possible.

This put a lot of pressure on Xu Dengke. Last month, he and his team lived in the OEM factory for the entire month, repeatedly conducting trial production, and finally completed the mass production of the machine at the beginning of this month.

The systems in this batch of mass-produced machines are the most streamlined systems. The first thing players do after getting their hands on them is to upgrade the system, but these are minor details.

It is precisely because the hardware has already entered the mass production stage that Lin Licai plans to make this machine a surprise appearance at the New Year's Eve event.

After all, publicity and preparation take time.

With a game console, naturally, you also need games to play with it.

Although Linli's handheld console doesn't follow the exclusive route, it still needs a gimmick. Linli had some ideas beforehand and handed them over to the production team at Galaxy Paradise to develop. The accompanying game is called...

Barbecue and Adventure

The gameplay is incredibly simple, with an overall logic somewhat similar to the previous game, "Diver Dave," where you go out to collect ingredients during the day and then run a barbecue restaurant at night.

This type of management game already has a large user base, and its core gameplay is clear and straightforward.

Just like scrambled eggs with tomatoes, if the method is not right, the taste will always be a little off. This is why there are many similar management games on the market, but very few can become truly popular.

They either go completely ignored or become an overnight sensation.

For example, The Legend of Shawarma.

Many people can't understand why Shawima Legends is so popular. It's actually quite simple: it's a food simulation management game, and the key element is simulation.

It's not really about making players tediously cook.

Instead, it should be fun and provide positive feedback. The Legend of Shawima has many little surprises to create encounters, allowing players to solve problems caused by troublesome guests and thus gain enjoyment.

This may sound a bit abstract, but a typical example can be given: the "lock-picking" videos that were popular on TikTok for a period of time in the past.

These types of videos show locksmiths helping customers unlock doors.

We can think of it as a "lock-picking simulator." If the video content is designed around the locksmith's unlocking skills, then no matter how you design it, it will at most change from a "lock-picking simulator" to a "lock-deciphering" video.

So how did these lock-picking videos become so popular on TikTok?

Well, it's just an unexpected addition.

Unlocking is boring, but imagine a beautiful woman getting locked out while taking a shower. The locksmith has to unlock her, and then he'll find her completely naked.

Which type of video gets more views: a simple video or a video that doesn't generate much traffic?

Chapter 484 What is TGA trying to do?

Of course, later on, a large number of scripts flooded this track, quickly ruining it, but the core logic remains unchanged: it's a simulation game, but it doesn't actually let you simulate.

For example, the core fun of Kairosoft's famous game "Game Dev Story" lies in the fact that through various random data and combinations of different themes, players can get different results every time they "make" a new game.

Similarly, "Barbecue and Adventure" has also put a lot of effort into this aspect.

The entire game uses a top-down perspective reminiscent of Touhou Project.

The store's displays, decorations, and furniture are all adapted from the Eastern fantasy world, and players can design everything themselves, which gives them a sense of immersion.

Secondly, these furniture pieces and their arrangement are linked to the game's economic and quest systems.

In addition, to add hype and to showcase the two touchpads and linear triggers on the StarCore handheld console, the game incorporates many fun mini-games.

For example, there is a catgirl in the store. After the player unlocks the affection level, they can use the touchpad to stroke the catgirl's head and interact with her.

The solution to the unexpected events in the "simulation game" is achieved through two systems.

The first is the acquisition of ingredients.

The main source of ingredients is through adventure. This system adopts a semi-idle gameplay style. After players select their initial equipment and location, they can embark on an adventure.

During the adventure, in addition to various monster meats, you will also encounter many different mini-games for obtaining ingredients, such as fishing, hunting, traps, and so on.

Players can even grow vegetables in the backyard of their shop.

Besides acquiring ingredients, the second gameplay element is food preparation.

During the dish development phase, the system requires players to manually operate the equipment, such as chopping vegetables and meat, mixing, frying, and stir-frying. Linli has incorporated many gameplay elements that are integrated with the game hardware in this part.

The corresponding mini-games either use a touchpad or a linear trigger.

Lin Li also shamelessly added a large number of Spark characters to the game's diners. Players can encounter many different Spark game mascots during the process of opening a shop.

In the future, he also plans to collaborate with other IPs.

In short, this is a game that is simple to play but actually quite deep.

Its depth is mainly reflected in two aspects: one is that different ingredients can make different dishes, and different dishes have different basic scores.

Secondly, there are the diners. In addition to eating, the diners also chat in the shop. At the same time, players need to serve tea and carry plates for the diners in the early stages.

Only after unlocking the staff system later can you completely let go and become a hands-off manager.

Of course, these things are still in the initial stages of development, and the actual game is estimated to be completed in a few months. So what Lin Li is currently focusing on is the PV they are working on.

Promising something but releasing a PV first is already a traditional practice of Xinghuo.

At such a busy time.

Lin Li naturally had no interest in paying attention to TGA.

However, while Lin Li paid no attention, Chinese players were very interested. In addition, Bilibili and Xinghuo platform broadcast TGA for the first time.

Xinghuo even put a live stream link for TGA on its homepage. The reason for doing so was to give way to the good cooperation between the two parties in the past.

~~~

"I'm coming!"

"The live broadcast has begun!"

This year's TGA has indeed attracted a lot of attention from Chinese players. Even in Huang Wenfeng's live stream, there were many people watching with Huang Wenfeng.

How many awards do you think Xinghuo can win?

"I think at least two."