A serious game-studio management sim. Only the title is a joke.
It's 2013. Shen Zhixing has just graduated from a top university, and he turns down an offer from a big tech company. Instead he talks his roommate Zhou Yuan and his senior from the anime club, Xu Tang, into building a first demo in a rented flat on a second-hand monitor. Later, Lin Yining, the girl who tore their story apart on an online forum, becomes the fourth founder.
Back then, if you said you wanted to make anime games, your relatives thought something was wrong with you. Ten years later, twenty-odd big titles a year fight for the same release windows, streamers double their rates, and players argue about gacha banners in every comment section. Do you still remember why you wanted to make games?
■ Make games: from a rented flat to your own campus · Mix themes and genres freely: school life, xianxia fantasy, warships, cyberpunk... paired with card battlers, rhythm games, ARPGs and open worlds. Find the perfect match · Three project sizes: small, mid-size and blockbuster. Blockbusters need a proper office before you can greenlight one · At closed beta, decide: delay and polish, stay on schedule, or crunch to hit the release window · Watch the release calendar, dodge the big launches, book streamers for launch day. Every year has a hot theme, and last year's hot theme is already old news · At year's end, see whether you or your old rival takes Game of the Year
■ Run live service: the daily life of a gacha game · Pick each update's focus: a new character banner, main story chapters, or an event collab · Set pull prices and decide on pity. Characters too strong or pulls too pricey, and players will start a fight · After about two years, newer games take over: keep yours alive with a major update, or shut it down and make a sequel · Online backlash, streamers stirring up drama, licensing freezes, drop-rate disclosure rules, anti-addiction limits, rarity going from SSR to five stars... a decade of industry change in one playthrough
■ Be the boss: money, people and your conscience · Pay salaries and read the report every month. Work out how many months of runway you have left · Raises, pay cuts, project bonuses, year-end bonuses, 996 overtime, poaching and being poached · Upgrade your gameplay, art, writing and engine teams, build a mocap studio... push your stats ever higher · Twenty-plus achievements to unlock
■ People: the loves and grudges of a small circle of otaku · Your early teammates are all people the hero talked into joining one by one: an internet café admin, a video uploader, a doujin artist, a web-game sales guy... · Each has their own skills. Some stay with you all the way. Some jump to a rival. Some go solo and have a rough time of it · The friend you shared a doujin booth with at a convention ends up running a rival studio. You compete fiercely, yet team up when winter comes · A gentle romance line. Relatives nag you when you go home for Spring Festival, and your parents' attitude rises and falls with the company · No real villains. Every conflict comes from the times. In the end, you'll have to answer one question: why do we make games?
All companies, games and characters in this game are fictional and do not represent any real company or event.