Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

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It tells the story of a boy who can see fragments of the next day, and the series of events that follow.

When Huang Wenfeng first saw this concept, he thought it was pretty good. Although it was a very common concept, it was indeed an attractive one in the field of interactive animation.

Especially at the very beginning of the game, when the main character gains abilities, there is a first-person perspective effect.

The main character covers his eyes with his hands and then gently waves them forward, creating a mirage-like scene floating in the air.

The scene where a superpower is brought to life through special effects animation is actually quite impressive.

After all, although the concept is cliché, it feels quite different when translated into visual information.

Just as Huang Wenfeng was about to praise the penguin, the next plot development completely baffled him.

The protagonist's ability to see glimpses of the future appears in front of the player about two or three minutes after entering the game. Huang Wenfeng was originally looking forward to seeing how this feature would play a role in the later storyline.

However, this setting didn't appear even once during the next hour or so of the story.

The whole plot is also very strange.

The opening of Tencent's "Tomorrow" focuses on the protagonist's school life, in addition to showcasing his abilities.

Needless to say, it's clearly a design intended to allow players to quickly immerse themselves in the game.

This animation is actually very well done. Whether it's waking up, revealing the next day's scenes to the player, eating breakfast, or even the actions of eating, it's all very well done.

It also allows you to control the perspective changes. After going out, the protagonist starts going to school. As the background on both sides of the street keeps changing, you have to admit, it really feels like you've stepped into an animation. This whole scene is a trick that the penguin came up with to show off its skills.

However, even the most advanced technology serves the plot.

On the way to school, several new characters appear, and each of them immediately starts chatting and raving with the protagonist. By this time, the player has already developed a sense of identification with the protagonist, but they are completely unfamiliar with these characters.

The end result was that each of these characters was saying something that seemed very important, but Huang Wenfeng couldn't understand what they were saying at all!

What left Huang Wenfeng speechless was that at the end of the last part of the plot, just as the protagonist was about to cross the road to reach the school, a girl standing on the other side of the road waved to him.

Then, he was hit by a motorcycle and thrown into the air!?

???

What the heck? Let's not even talk about how this development actually goes.

When Huang Wenfeng saw the protagonist running over to check on the girl's injuries with a look of surprise, he really wanted to say something.

"No! What about your abilities?! You can see the footage from the next day, right? You didn't see this?"

Well known.

In literary and artistic works, if a gun is shown at the beginning, then that gun will definitely be pulled before the end; this is the simplest creative logic.

In "Tomorrow," the opening episodes spent a considerable amount of time introducing the protagonist's abilities, yet almost an hour of that has passed and they haven't been used at all!?

What the hell!!!

Huang Wenfeng was speechless.

Because of the commercial order, he didn't directly start cursing. He just sighed and said he didn't understand. Anyway, he didn't want to play anymore, so he turned off the game after playing for the required amount of time.

After closing the game, Huang Wenfeng thought about it for a long time and still felt a bit confused. He chatted with the players in the live chat and decided to see what other people on the internet were saying.

After all, he can't say bad things about penguins, but if there are sharp comments on the internet, he can read them aloud.

However, Huang Wenfeng was soon stunned, because after searching for a while, he was surprised to find that the entire internet was full of positive reviews for "Tomorrow"!

Could there be some unexpected plot twist later? I searched for the plot again and found that there was no twist. The content of the first chapter is that the protagonist goes to school and stays at school for a day.

There were some small games during the period, such as attending classes and eating in the cafeteria.

It looked boring, but while searching for the plot, Huang Wenfeng realized that the people who posted and discussed the game were either media or people like him who had taken on commercial contracts.

There are hardly any ordinary players providing feedback on the game content.

No wonder Tencent is conducting a closed beta test this time. I guess those who will receive the qualification are mostly commercial clients. While I won't praise traffic-driven clients like Huang Wenfeng, I won't criticize them either.

Those who have accepted advertising contracts have already touted Penguin's "Tomorrow" as a masterpiece.

On Bilibili, someone even posted a video.

The video title is "After this work, will anyone still dare to say that Tencent doesn't understand anime?"

This video also purchased promotion on Bilibili and got quite a few views. The video creator took some of the most exciting moments from the game and edited them together.

What about classes, seeing glimpses of the future, eating in the cafeteria...?

At first glance, you know what, you really don't know.

It actually looks quite convincing.

Chapter 466 Intercepting the Spoils

The comments under the video, whether from genuine Penguin shills or uninformed passersby, actually included praise for Penguin.

For most ordinary gamers, they generally won't give a bad review to a game they haven't played before; at most, they might say something like, "It looks a bit boring."

This gives the media the opportunity to control public opinion.

Whether in China or abroad, this is a set pattern. 2077 abroad and District Zero in China are typical examples of games that received rave reviews during the testing phase, but faced a reputation crisis once they were released.

Tencent's "Tomorrow" clearly follows the same formula, although Huang Wenfeng felt that many things in the game were not right.

For example, the pacing is off, and as an interactive animated game, there is too little interaction, and all the options given are pseudo-options, meaning that no matter what the player chooses, they will ultimately follow the main storyline.

This is a completely different approach from Xinghuo's previous "Perfect Strategy".

The game features more interactive elements, and if you make the wrong choice, you may have to wait until the next playthrough.

Of course, it's possible that Huang Wenfeng didn't have enough time to play, but an hour is already quite a long time, and most players wouldn't have the patience to play for an hour.

Maybe after half an hour, I'll get bored and leave.

However, no matter what, it still comes down to the saying, "He who eats another's food is bound to him, and he who takes another's money is bound to him." Since he had already accepted Tencent's traffic sponsorship deal, he couldn't very well release a video to criticize them.

Moreover, during the search, he also saw things like...

"Penguin Spark Program explodes in popularity; test access codes are extremely scarce."

What makes players willing to spend thousands of yuan to buy a test code?

After years of waiting, Tencent's anime community has finally blossomed! Leave a comment for a chance to win an activation code.

At first glance, Huang Wenfeng thought he had traveled through time when he saw these news reports.

In his memory, the hype surrounding activation codes happened several years, even more than a decade ago.

Back then, domestic online game developers could even recoup their costs by selling activation codes.

But even now, penguins are still doing this?

This...this...

Huang Wenfeng then actually searched on Xianyu (a Chinese online marketplace) and found that the activation code for "Tomorrow" was indeed being sold for over a thousand yuan, which was outrageous.

A whole host of things I wanted to say were stuck in my throat.

In the end, he only made one complaint.

"I should have just sold the activation code instead of playing it. Goodness, will anyone actually buy it?"

"Over a thousand... to buy an activation code?"

As Huang Wenfeng complained, the comments section was filled with them.

Huang Wenfeng sighed and thought for a long time.

In the end, I simply quit WEGAEM, reopened the Spark platform, and planned to find some Spark games to cleanse my eyes.

At that moment, the chat in his live stream suddenly exploded, refreshing like crazy.

Watching the barrage of comments flood the screen like a waterfall.

Huang Wenfeng was startled at first, thinking he had just said something he shouldn't have.

Upon closer inspection, I was also suddenly shocked!

"What?! The Perfect Strategy Guide for Spark is now available?!"

"Huh!? I didn't receive any message before!!"

"Really?! We can play this already?!"

"what??"

~~~

The sudden release of Xinghuo's "My Perfect Strategy Guide" caused a sensation in the gaming community.

It's all too obvious who this is targeting.

Oh, Tencent's "Tomorrow" just released a demo for its first test, and you're already releasing the official version?!

This isn't just a slap in the face, it's like riding on someone's neck.

Almost instantly, Xinghuo's company phone was bombarded with calls from the media, and Xinghuo's senior management and the media team also received greetings from media friends.

Even Lin Li received many messages from old acquaintances, including a reporter from Xinhua News Agency asking him if Spark was planning to take action against Tencent.

This left Lin Li somewhat at a loss for words.

Actually, this round of raids on penguins was not orchestrated by Lin Li.

The entire raid was initiated by the development team of "My Perfect Strategy".

Their goal is simple: it's not targeting Tencent as some outsiders claim, but simply that they think doing this will allow them to leverage Tencent's domestic traffic and publicity.

As for the motive?

"What kind of motive would that be? Do you even know how many studios Spark has? If I don't ride the coattails of Tencent's traffic now, what are you going to do to generate that buzz for me when the game is released?"

Just as the development team of "Perfect Strategy" said, the spark is really too big.

There are a dozen or so studios scattered around.

There are already nearly twenty projects in operation and under development.

When these projects are launched, the company will carry out corresponding publicity and promotion processes, but these processes and promotional resources are fixed.

The number depends on the game's scale and internal rating system.

Not one point too much, not one point too little.

Therefore, before their games are officially released, each studio often comes up with a lot of tricks and gimmicks internally, in addition to the official promotional resources from Spark.

For established studios, such as Spark Games Studio, which has already published or is currently operating, they can use their profits for promotion.

The so-called surplus is the money left over after independent accounting of the finances, excluding the money handed over to the company and the bonuses paid to the studio employees.

This money can be used to develop the next generation of games or for marketing and promotion.

For example, Touhou Fantasy World has been using its surplus to organize Touhou music concerts and Touhou Gensokyo cultural festivals around the world recently.

Such activities generally don't generate much profit, and may even result in losses. Capital decisions would never approve such activities.

However, for the Touhou Project development team, fandom is everything, and besides, most of the Touhou Project development team are from the Japanese branch.

There's a saying that goes something like this: "Returning home in wealth and honor is like wearing brocade at night."

Now that they had a surplus in their accounts, they wanted to show it off. These two events started in August and went to many cities, mainly Japan, and were basically always fully booked.

This has, in turn, significantly increased the game's stickiness in the Eastern fantasy world.

The current producer of Touhou Fantasy World is truly practicing the philosophy of treating users as friends.

Every now and then, the Touhou Project development team would gather all the co-creators together for a meal to discuss current events and conduct internal gameplay trials of the new version.

The production team also invested a lot of money in voice actor activities.

In any case, in every financial statement, Oriental Fantasy World is the one that spends the least in the entire company. Sometimes they even have to ask the company for IOUs to advance the next month's surplus.

Lin Li shook his head at the sight, but did not stop the behavior. He treated it as a social experiment to see if this method could retain more players.

Chapter 467 The Wind of Youth

Besides the Eastern fantasy world, Gundam Battlegrounds has also been frequently organizing online and offline competitions, as well as paint scheme voting, since the summer of sparks.

The profits of Touhou Fantasy World came from the huge sales of the game after its release, while the profits of Gundam Battlegrounds came from model sales.