Game development begins with destroying Girls' Frontline.

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To put it simply, when Trump first became President of the United States in 2017, the number of related trending searches on Google was only 140 million.

In other words, if we only look at the numbers, Galaxy Park's influence on Google is equivalent to half of Trump becoming the President of the United States.

Despite not being considered a typical anime/manga game by many, Galaxy Paradise has achieved success in every aspect.

"Spark Games' new game, Galaxy Paradise, shows that the company's legend continues."

Chapter 389 The Tycoon

"It has sparked a new global craze and become a hit worldwide."

"Still playing old-fashioned online games? Then you're really out of touch."

"Galaxy Paradise is a true next-generation online game."

Game review content creators have also gone crazy, updating videos on mainstream video websites in Japan, Europe and America, and China.

If you're a content creator who does game reviews, Galaxy Paradise is definitely a topic you can't avoid.

Even in the United States, even though Sweet Baby continues to invest resources in trying to subdue Spark, this troublemaker, she has managed to keep her out of the mainstream American media's news coverage.

To reiterate, Sweet Baby controlled the media, but not the distribution channels, and certainly not the internet.

Players can feel how popular the game is.

The largest video game forum in the United States immediately set up a discussion section for "Galaxy Paradise", and soon the number of new posts per day had reached 6,000.

Please note that this is a gaming forum, not some kind of social media platform.

Moreover, the players on this forum are generally quite old-fashioned, with accounts often registered ten or even twenty years ago. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call those who can survive on this forum "American old-school players."

Before the release of Galaxy Paradise, the most active section on this forum was World of Warcraft, with only about three thousand comments per day.

Although the Marvel Alliance forum also has a section, it only had some popularity on the first day, and now the number of comments per day has dwindled to just a few dozen posts.

The reason why it has such a high level of activity in this old forum is mainly because "Star River Paradise" is a game that focuses on the adventure game experience.

They exchange game strategies and tips, compare scores, discuss house construction methods, and show off rare items.

As for character acquisition? That doesn't get much attention.

In the current version, besides a few permanent five-star characters, Isha is the official wife designated by Starfire, and everyone has one, plus the gacha resources given away at the start of the game.

This resulted in Su Ying's character ownership rate reaching an astonishing 87%.

The ads from content creators on the internet are not mainly about praising the character's strength, but rather promoting skins. Thanks to these content creators, a lot of players are showing off their skins.

Many game developers believe that to get whales to spend money, they need to consider the strength of the characters; if the characters aren't strong, whales won't spend money, which is indeed true to some extent.

However, this formula is not entirely accurate in the realm of anime-style games. In anime-style games, you only need to do two things to get wealthy players to spend money.

First, the game needs to be popular; second, it needs to provide sufficient emotional value to the big spenders after they've spent their money.

For example, the "All Skins" achievement in Galaxy Paradise includes not only skins, but also individual badges and avatars, as well as a set of golden skins that can be transmogrified.

This golden skin has three styles. Although the equipment is all gold, it's not the kind of dull gold, but a layered gold.

The entire skin is very well-designed, and it also incorporates the special effect of gold particles from the weapon.

In the game, Starfire provides each character with 4 initial skins. Currently, Star River Paradise has a total of 8 4-star characters and 7 5-star characters.

The skin for a 4-star character costs 98, and the skin for a 5-star character costs 168.

A simple calculation reveals that to become a "Gold Saint," one must obtain the Gold Equipment, the ultimate skin unlocked through all skin achievements.

It costs approximately 7800 RMB.

This is a lot of money, and it seems that "Gold Saint" is just a special skin, but for a tycoon, this is enough.

It's worth noting that Galaxy Paradise has a large-scale online multiplayer system. Wearing such equipment in the deep pit would definitely turn heads.

For the super-rich, this is the key point of spending money.

To them, money is just a number; they'll spend it whenever they want, without ever considering whether the character is strong enough. They're not true tycoons...

In particular, during this expansion, Galaxy Paradise attracted many wealthy players who used to play other ordinary games. In their eyes, this amount of money is nothing.

Besides the fact that the skins for the wealthy sell well, thanks to the large number of characters owned, the skins that Xinghuo prepared for Isa and Suying also sold quite well.

Among them, Su Ying has a nurse skin with character interaction, which is the absolute best-selling skin.

Sometimes it's really strange.

Some people enjoy finding gameplay fun in adult games, wanting to experience eroticism in serious games.

In any case, it was precisely because of the explosive sales of these skins and monthly cards that Spark achieved the staggering figure of $3.1 million on its first day.

Keep in mind that at that time, Honor of Kings' daily sales were only around 1 to 2 million RMB, while Xinghuo's sales were in US dollars. When converted to RMB, the difference was several times.

Even considering that most people's monthly cards and skins are one-time purchases, and even considering that this is sales across all platforms including consoles and mobile devices.

But the sales figures are still ridiculously high.

~~~

As the controversy surrounding "Star Trek" continues to escalate over the past two days, and the reputation of "Marvel Alliance" continues to decline, Western media outlets have begun to enter a strange period of silence.

Apart from one or two media outlets like PCGAME that started as internet forums, most Western gaming media outlets seem to be oblivious to the success of Galaxy Paradise.

This time, however, they pretended not to see it.

Players have many questions: Why aren't major media outlets like IGN talking about Galaxy Park anymore?

Many players have also dug up the low score IGN gave to Galaxy Park and kept asking in IGN's new review whether IGN is planning to change the score.

In addition to these, many players also expressed dissatisfaction with the ratings given to Marvel Comics by these traditional media outlets.

What kind of game do you dare to give a score of 95?

Isn't this a rip-off?!

Although these complaints have not yet formed a storm, they have already begun to have some impact.

North America, Los Angeles.

As usual, MAX sat down on the sofa with a cup of coffee in his hand.

I checked the time; it was 8 p.m. that evening.

Normally, he should have started the live stream by now, but this time, he didn't.

After the announcement confirming the delayed start of the live stream was sent out, he turned on his phone and looked at the call log, which showed an international call from China.

Max was familiar with this phone number.

After all, Spark is a major sponsor for many gaming bloggers on YouTube.

Chapter 390 Top 100 Evaluation

Spark not only promotes its own games, but also acts as an intermediary to help many manufacturers on the Spark platform promote their games.

This also means that although Xinghuo doesn't provide a particularly large amount of money, it can provide a steady and consistent amount, and it's not so strict about publicity and promotion.

In most cases, Spark's requirements are simply to complete the required playback time or post a game on a specific theme. As for your evaluation, Spark doesn't really care.

Moreover, Spark's payment system is quite interesting. They give a sum of money when you invite someone to participate, and then after a month of the video being broadcast, they will conduct another tiered settlement based on the number of views.

This is actually a way of indirectly requiring the streamers who accept orders to take the videos seriously.

You don't have to advertise as much, but your videos need to be interesting and reach a wider audience. This is Spark's promotional strategy on YouTube and across social media.

Because of this strategy, MAX likes Spark's advertisements the most.

On the one hand, advertising doesn't have many requirements.

MAX once received an advertisement from a Chinese manufacturer. That advertisement was ridiculous. It included all the data of a character in the game, including how to introduce the skills, how to introduce the gameplay of the character, and how to emphasize the numerical values.

And it was emphasized that it could not be changed.

Ultimately, MAX rejected the ad altogether because it was a pain to make and offered no benefit to the players.

On the contrary, Spark has low requirements and a lot of creative space. If the video quality is reliable, coupled with Spark Games' extensive promotion, the number of fans will not decrease because of your sponsored content.

On the contrary, it is very likely to become even higher.

Therefore, MAX was no stranger to this phone call from Xinghuo, but he was still a little hesitant about what was said on the phone.

The matter discussed over the phone was not complicated; someone from Xinghuo had already communicated with him last weekend.

It was to ask him if he was interested in becoming one of Spark's top 100 reviewers.

The so-called Top 100 review was a plan that Xinghuo had already prepared before IGN and other media outlets severed ties with it.

The overall plan is not complicated: Spark will select 100 game bloggers from major video bloggers around the world to do game reviews.

MAX was a little confused when he first heard about the plan, but Chinese players would understand immediately.

Spark's approach is inspired by Bilibili's Top 100 Project.

Of course, although both are called the Top 100, the Top 100 of Xinghuo is quite different from the Top 100 of Bilibili. The 100 people selected by Xinghuo are not just simple honors.

Rather, it's an identity; they are responsible for reviewing games, and of course, their reviews aren't done for nothing.

For every game reviewed, regardless of whether the review result is good or bad, as long as the review is not a random one, Spark will pay you.

Max was very excited when he first heard about the plan.

Because he plays a lot of games every month, to put it bluntly, playing games is a job for these game video bloggers.

For those who become one of Spark's top 100 reviewers, the amount of money they receive is secondary.

This honor is actually quite tempting to him, and the thought of his reviews being featured in the "Top 100 Reviews" section of every game is very appealing to him.

The temptation becomes even greater.

However, there are reasons why he has not made up his mind until today.

"After launching the Top 100 Reviews program, we will remove media comments from the current platform and replace them with the Top 100 Reviews."

For Spark, inviting IGN and other gaming media was simply because Spark needed their support at the time.

However, as these media outlets began to explicitly tell Xinghuo that if Xinghuo was not on the right track, they would be unable to provide assistance to the Xinghuo platform.

They believed that Spark needed them, but Lin Li didn't see it that way.

For gamers, there are many criteria for deciding whether to play a game.

Marketing, developer reputation, personal taste, buzz, media coverage, and game reviews are all important references.

These reviews may come from ordinary gamers or commercial media.

Their emergence is a natural market choice; for ordinary players, they don't have time to play hundreds or thousands of games every year.

Therefore, it was only natural that reviewers came into being.

This link is a natural selection of the market, a "position" born from the needs of players. Whether it's Spark or Linli, it cannot change this basic logic.

But what Spark can change is who will meet the players' needs.

During this simultaneous update of "Galaxy Paradise", media reviews were deleted, but media outlets that collaborated with Spark also received recognition as one of the top 100 reviewers.

For them, nothing has changed.

The only difference is that I used to do reviews in the media section, but now I do reviews in the top 100 review section. The money is the same, so I'm working with 1717, GamerSky, and some Japanese media outlets.

We don't reject Spark's model. Compared to individuals, they have a larger scale, can evaluate more games, and naturally can earn more revenue.

For MAX, being included in the top 100 is certainly a good thing, but Xinghuo also made it clear that if media reviews, including those from IGN, are removed, there may be public opinion risks for a certain period of time.

What kind of public opinion risks? Just look at what Xinghuo is facing now, and you'll know.

The conflict between Spark and IGN, ostensibly triggered by Sweet Baby, actually stems from a power struggle.

So, Xinghuo stopped pretending. Of course, even though they stopped pretending, Xinghuo clearly explained the risks when recruiting top 100 bloggers, especially to bloggers from Europe and America.

The risk of public opinion is not non-existent for them, and not everyone is willing to take sides, so Xinghuo will naturally not force them to take sides.

Lin Li clearly understands the simple truth that forced relationships are never sweet.

In fact, MAX hesitated after receiving the invitation, and during this time, traditional media, led by IGN, did not remain completely silent.

They criticized Spark's "Top 100 Evaluation" almost immediately.

They said their reviews were "subjective," "paid for," and "unprofessional."