Tokyo: Being coveted by my wife, I just want to play games

Chapter 389 The first clues appear

Although Dongchuan Che has been busy with work recently, basically everything at home is on track.

In early September, he sent Sayuri Sato to Funan Boarding High School in Gunma Prefecture.

To be honest, it is not a big deal for a 16-year-old girl to go to school in another city alone. After all, not to mention going to college in another city after graduating from high school, there are many people who went to big cities to study alone from small counties during high school.

but
Sato Fujiko, who was crying because of worry, still went to Gunma secretly that night accompanied by Fuyukawa Che, and watched the girl walk into the school gate with her luggage.

Of course, Ohara Nanako, a little girl who cares about her best friend, also accompanied them. After the matter of Sayuri Sato was dealt with, Fuyukawa Tetsu became busy again.

For no other reason than this year's summer Tokyo Game Festival is coming.

Normally, the most popular game awards in the world in the past few years were still events like TGA and IGN in the United States, but.
On the one hand, these European and American awards are very ugly. If you want to get high scores, you have to spend a lot of money on public relations. Some works of big companies, even if they are terrible, obviously behind the times, or even full of bugs, can still get good scores as long as the public relations are in place.

Moreover, ZZZQ in Europe and the United States has now extended to the field of games. Any game without black girls or black guys will be given a low score. Any game with a heroine who is too sexy or has a body that is not in line with common sense can be used as a deduction item.

To be honest, these are not the problems.

Whether it's spending money on PR, ZZZQ, or the female characters being too sexy, these are not the key points.

If spending money on public relations can bring huge attention and thus make the game make more money, then after weighing the pros and cons, game manufacturers will not be too resistant to this unspoken rule and will at most accept it with a pinch of their nose.

If ZZZQ such as skin color diversity can gain recognition from players and help the game make more money, game manufacturers will not be too resistant to this idea.

If players really don't like sexy and beautiful female characters, but instead like the heroine in "Extinction 2" who is scarier than the Night Stalker, then most game manufacturers will actually adjust their character images.

But the problem is!

This is just an ideology forced out by those awards!
How many non-colored players would want to control a black character and date a black girl with dreadlocks? This is not a question of ZZ discrimination, it's just a simple difference in aesthetics.

Similarly, how many male players around the world don’t want to see sexy and beautiful female characters in games?

this is the key of the problem!

These awards may be given due to social pressure, may be for the purpose of making money, or may be an ideology forced out to increase control over game companies, but no matter what the reason, doing so is going against the preferences of players!

The key here is that there is a strong conflict between these ideas and players' preferences!
This is a huge pit, but some game companies have actually fallen into it.

Some time ago, French Potato Factory announced that their game, which is set in the Japanese Warring States Period, would use a black man as the male protagonist.

It's funny to say that the French Potato Factory in this life is similar to Ubisoft in the previous life, both of which are very prestigious game companies. Therefore, before they hold a new game press conference, players all over the world pay close attention, especially Japanese players.

When Japanese players heard that the company was going to make a 3A game based on the Japanese Warring States period, they were extremely excited and there were heated discussions in the forums every day.

Some players even came to the GOGO platform to post questions, questioning Dongchuan Che why he didn't make a game on the Warring States theme. Now that the French have taken the lead, the French have made a big splash.

Quite funny.

A bunch of haters were still yelling and cursing crazily the day before, accusing Toru Fuyukawa of not promoting Japan's traditional culture and that he should learn more from the French Potato Factory. But the next day, after the black male protagonist of the French Potato Factory appeared on the Internet, the entire comment section fell silent.

All Japanese players were furious and flocked to various social media to curse the French potato factory, causing the company's stock price to plummet.

Dongchuan Che could actually understand the players' angry emotions. After all, it was like foreigners saying they wanted to make a game based on the Three Kingdoms, but ended up using a Japanese as the protagonist.

However, he could also understand why the French potato factory did this. On the one hand, the skin color and orientation ZZZQ issue is indeed very serious abroad now, and if it is not handled properly, it is easy to be labeled.

On the other hand, many awards are also taking advantage of this opportunity and using the influence of their own awards to influence public opinion on game manufacturers.

For example, before the release of the previous game "Black Monkey", IGN published an article accusing Black Monkey of "sex discrimination".

It caused quite a stir at the time, but later we found out that the reporter who wrote the article on "Gender Discrimination" was a member of SweetBaby, a studio that "provides narrative consulting for games during development to promote diversity, fairness, and inclusion in game narratives and studios."

The main reason this reporter wrote this article was because Black Monkey's team rejected the $7 million [hush money] from SweetBaby Studios.

A game extorted 7 million dollars! And according to industry insiders, SweetBaby has been doing this for nearly a decade.
Just think about how much profit is generated from this, and how many powerful people are supporting this interest chain and sucking blood from it.

Some studios even ask game manufacturers to pay them hush money, asking them not to focus on the lack of people of color in games when reviewing games. Some studios even go directly to game companies to collect [diversity guidance fees].

To put it simply, some companies have to hire commentators and journalists to put their names on their companies. It doesn't matter whether there is diversity guidance on skin color and orientation, what matters is that they have to pay wages.

And
These groups are particularly unfriendly to Asian games, or charge extra high fees.

As the saying goes, where there is oppression, there is resistance.

Since last year, the Japanese gaming industry has been planning to support the Tokyo Game Festival and make it a gaming carnival and authoritative gaming award with great influence like TGA.

To achieve this, the Tokyo Game Festival must have very influential games participating in the selection, as well as influential game producers and game companies participating. When it comes to these three points, in today's game industry, Toru Fuyukawa is a name that cannot be avoided.

It's quite troublesome.

To be honest, Dongchuan Che is no longer very interested in TGA or Tokyo Game Festival.

Now that the Holy Light Society’s signboard has been put up, the popularity of the GOGO platform is also rising. It is considered one of the largest game platforms and game exchange communities in the world.

Therefore, even if he does not participate in any game awards, it will have little impact on him. As long as he releases the game and relies on the promotional power of the GOGO platform, players will still flock to it. But this matter is more important to other manufacturers in the Japanese game industry.

After September, people came to visit him almost every day. Not only did acquaintances in the gaming industry come to say good things about him, but many officials from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs also came forward to invite him to attend the Tokyo Game Festival.

Even in the end, Ms. Inuzuka was moved out by these noisy guys.

Ms. Inuzuka is the former managing director of SATE, and can be considered the mentor of Miyano Miyano and Sato Fujiko. When Toru Fuyukawa invited Japanese game manufacturers to join the GOGO platform in the SATE building, it was she who helped to support the event. Her daughter is now working as a secretary for Miyano Miyano.

Ms. Inuzuka not only has a very good reputation in the Japanese gaming industry, but also helped him a lot in the past. So, under her persuasion and lobbying, Toru Fuyukawa finally chose to come forward to help support the Tokyo Game Festival.

but
It's really boring.

Tokyo Game Festival is not some dragon-slaying event.

Although Japanese manufacturers now support the Tokyo Game Festival, it seems that it is because TGA and European and American media such as IGN have cut too much losses, but there has never been any story of a dragon slayer and a dragon in this world. There are only challenges from young dragons to the status and wealth of old dragons.

Before the Tokyo Game Festival even started, SATE's managing director Kuriyama came to the company to find him, Toru Fuyukawa, saying that he hoped to get his support so that SATE could have a bigger voice in the Tokyo Game Festival. The reason for wanting to have a voice is naturally to harvest other manufacturers in the future like TGA and IGN.

Dongchuan Che did not have any resistance to this practice. The capital world was a place where the big fish ate the small fish, or the strong ate the weak. He was just too lazy to get involved. After all, if he had the time, he might as well make a few more games and earn more.

But now Executive Director Kuriyama is going to rush to the front and he doesn't have to work so hard himself. He has also promised him some preferential terms such as [reduced commission for Holy Light Society games logged on to PH console platform] [SATE exclusive games will be unlocked earlier and then logged on to GOGO platform], so naturally, Dongchuan Che has no reason to refuse.

Therefore, as the Tokyo Game Festival approached, Toru Fuyukawa asked Kawaguchi and Ame to start cooperating with the Tokyo Game Festival to promote the game. In addition to works such as "World of Warcraft" and "Pokemon" that were about to release trailers, the main promotional content was "Elden Ring".

In the past, the Tokyo Game Festival was not strictly an awards ceremony, but more like a carnival, mainly for players to have fun and promote games. But now, because it has to compete with European and American awards such as TGA and IGN, this year's Tokyo Game Festival also attaches great importance to the awarding of awards.

To be honest, because last year was a big year for games, with SATE and NICO releasing many blockbusters, this year's Tokyo Game Festival was actually quite entangled in terms of awards. However, there was no controversy about the "Game of the Year" award.

The original work of "Elden Ring" is already of very high quality, but due to the company's financial constraints and the size of the development team of FS, the original work of "Elden Ring" still lacks certain polishing in some aspects, and the experience will decline in the later stages of the game.

In fact, the same is true for "Black Myth: Wukong" in this regard.

Even though these 3A masterpieces take four to five years to develop, with a team of hundreds of people, the time is still very tight.

Because once the development cycle is too long, or a large number of staff are added, these small and medium-sized game manufacturers will face pressure from investors, and the company will also face problems with the capital chain.

Therefore, unless you have no shortage of money and want to be a top-notch company with a good reputation to develop games, even if the development team is very talented, problems are likely to occur in the later stages due to the pressure of time and funds. But Dongchuan Che does not have this problem. On the one hand, he has money and connections, and on the other hand, he knows that these games will be popular, so he can completely calm down and carry out super-detailed polishing and improvements.

He made a lot of optimizations to the later maps such as the Snowfield, Sky City, Underground World, Holy Tree, etc. Not only did the types of monsters increase, but the plot content also increased, rather than simply stacking numbers in the previous life.

The sales of the improved "Elden Ring" exceeded 30 million in less than two months after its release. With the summer promotion activities of the GOGO platform during this summer vacation, the sales of "Elden Ring" reached 40 million!

Sales of 40 million!
Even though this sales volume is not as good as that of "Stardew Valley", "Stardew Valley" is a low-cost work. Not only is the cost low, but the unit price is also low. Selling six or seven copies of "Stardew Valley" will allow the sales volume to catch up with selling one set of "Elden Ring"!
"Elden Ring" is the most popular Japanese 3A masterpiece in the world in recent years, or even in the past five years!

It can even be said that "Elden Ring" is now a signboard of the Japanese game industry! If you want to make the awards of the Tokyo Game Festival more valuable, the "Game of the Year" award should naturally be given to "Elden Ring".
It would be best if "Elden Ring" does not go to TGA to receive the award.

Many players have a misconception that the level of gaming achievement is defined by the awards won.

This is true for ordinary games, but for phenomenal games, the cause and effect relationship is reversed.

It should be said that some awards are valuable because they are recognized by certain phenomenal games.

To be honest, if he didn't go to TGA to receive the award, it would be a bit offensive. However, Dongchuan Che didn't care, and even felt a sense of revenge.

The year before last, he made Sekiro at NTsoft, which won the TGA Game of the Year award. At that time, he was about to leave NTsoft and wanted to use "I will not go to the TGA awards ceremony, and I will give all my fame to NTsoft, but you NTsoft must terminate the non-compete agreement with Miyano Mitsuko" as an exchange.

But in the end, under the financial offensive of NTsoft Asai, TGA unilaterally reached an agreement with NTsoft. Not only was Fuyukawa Tetsu not invited, his name did not appear at the entire award ceremony. If he had not rushed directly to Asai's office to show his cards, saying that if he did not release the people, he would expose them to the media and fight to the death, otherwise he would not be able to take the group of people from Kotori away.

In the end, although Mitsutori's group followed him out, Miyano Mitsuwa had to pay a huge penalty for breach of contract and lost all her savings from working for more than ten years before she was able to get out of NTsoft.

Although Dongchuan Che is not the kind of person who thinks about revenge every day after being cheated once, he thinks that life is too tiring. But he is not a saint who will say "understand others" and "think from others' perspective" after being cheated.

Tooth for tooth, eye for eye!
What’s more, this is a great promotion opportunity!
After Toru Fuyukawa and Miyano Mion's discussion, the marketing operations department of the Holy Light Society also began to operate quietly.

Of course, the company cannot officially say that it will not participate in TGA, but it is okay to set the tone in the public opinion field.

No suspense.

When [Shocking secret! Japan's famous game producer Mr. Fuyukawa Tetsu refused to attend the TGA awards ceremony at the end of the year! ]

[Shocked! The value of TGA has begun to decline sharply! The Holy Light Society has decided in an internal meeting that it will only participate in the Tokyo Game Festival awards ceremony this year! ]

[Who gave Toru Fuyukawa the courage? According to gossip, Toru Fuyukawa privately told his friends that he would not invite IGN to rate his future new games World of Warcraft, Pokémon, and Minecraft, and would not attend the TGA awards ceremony even if he won an award! ]

[Secret Files! Dongchuan Che boycotted TGA for the following reason (click to expand)]

[Top secret news! The Holy Light Club handheld game console will be released early next year! Two super escort masterpieces, at the same time, the handheld game console will use a chip that is one generation older than the NICO handheld game console and the WS handheld game console! It can ensure that all games can run at a stable 720 frames at 60P quality, and the Holy Light Club's self-developed games can run at a stable 1080P 60 frames! ]

It must be said that although the R&D department has the best welfare benefits and the highest status within Shengguangshe, the two top executives, Miyano Miyano and Sato Fujiko, are both from the marketing operations department, and Ohara Chika and Akiyama Kaori are only responsible for their own sections.

Therefore, the marketing operation department of Shengguang Society is also particularly valued, and at the same time, it is one of the best in the industry in terms of capabilities.

With the operation of Miyano Miyano and Sato Fujiko, all kinds of news began to spread wildly on the Internet, attracting the attention of gamers around the world.

However, it is obvious that the main focus of Miyano Miyano and Sato Fujiko is not to discredit TGA, but to take advantage of this opportunity to further publicize and promote "World of Warcraft", "Pokemon", "Minecraft", and the handheld game console that the company will release early next year!
To be honest, these three games don’t really need any further promotion.

The development cost of "World of Warcraft" was 300 million US dollars, which caused a sensation in the entire online gaming industry when the project was launched. The animation of "Pokemon" has become a huge hit and has a huge fan base all over the world. Although "Minecraft" has a small reputation, it is a low-cost work of Toru Fuyukawa, and those who understand it will understand it.

However, the promotion of handheld game consoles is not so easy.

In the past six years, Nintendo sold 1.4 million Switches. If we include the number of players who bought second-hand machines, the number may increase significantly. According to conservative estimates, there are about 1.8 million players who have used Switch.

This number is very exaggerated because the number of Steam users worldwide was only about 1.2 million at the time.

This phenomenon is the same in this world. For example, OTTO is still the world's largest PC game platform, with 100 million users worldwide, but the number of users of NICO's handheld game consoles and WS's handheld game consoles combined exceeds 200 million.

What does this mean?
This means that many handheld game console users are not PC or console stand-alone game users. At the same time, it also means that Fukawa Che’s personal influence on the handheld game console industry is relatively small.

For works like "World of Warcraft", as long as the production cost is announced and the name of Dongchuan Che is added, the publicity effect will explode directly, but in the field of handheld game consoles, the effect of doing so will not be too strong.

To be honest, Miyano Mitsuha and her colleagues had a headache before, as they had been adjusting the promotional plan for the GO handheld console, but they didn't expect that someone would send them a pillow when they fell asleep.

The battle between the Tokyo Game Festival and TGA has attracted much attention from players around the world and has a huge influence. It has also put the release of the handheld game console of the Holy Light Society early next year in the spotlight.

This is a rare opportunity, so Dongchuan Che, who had not taken the Tokyo Game Festival too seriously, also started to make an effort this time.

As time came to the end of September, with the opening of the Tokyo Game Festival in the Tokyo metropolitan area, at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba Prefecture, which can accommodate nearly 200,000 spectators and provide 2,000 booths, amid the thunderous cheers of countless players, Fuyukawa Che, who has rarely made public appearances now, also took the initiative to appear at the exhibition to give explanations.

Needless to say, as the clips of "World of Warcraft" and "Pokemon" appeared on the big screen, the whole scene was filled with exclamations of surprise at the extremely delicate game graphics and extremely rich content explanations. Especially when they learned that "Pokemon" would be a buyout game and "World of Warcraft" would be a point card-based game, the game players from all over the world in the audience were completely excited!
"Hou Lixie! Has the Holy Light Society finally returned to the buyout system? They are indeed a company with a conscience!"

"In fact, FGO is not that expensive. As long as you don't pursue those boring skins and play a little bit every day, you can basically collect all the characters without spending any money."

"What's the point of playing mobile games without seductiveness! But to be honest, the female characters made by Holy Light Society are really full of seductiveness! Did you draw from the Black Jeanne card pool a while ago? That milky white Yukiko is really exaggerated!"

"I've already drawn the lottery, okay? I've taken my Black Jane to the amusement park several times, and now we can kiss each other anytime! But, fuck! That summer swimsuit has to be drawn by lottery, and I spent nearly two hundred dollars to get it."

"HAHAHA, you are so unlucky. I got it in 720 draws. The summer swimsuit is really nice, especially with my wife, Black Jeanne. But speaking of which, I heard that "FGO" will also be playable on their new handheld, and it is said that if you open the 60P resolution, you can have a stable 85 frames, and experience % of the content on the PC."

"720P, wouldn't that be really blurry?"

"You are too unprofessional. The display screen of a handheld game console is so small. 720P is already very detailed on a display screen of that size. Anyway, I plan to buy one directly when the time comes!"

"According to the configuration they announced, this handheld is indeed very cost-effective. However, I don't play FGO, so I'll wait and see how the quality of the Pokémon game is. If it's not just a fan game, I'll consider it."

"It should be fine. Although Dongchuan always likes to make some knife-like plots, he is a rare person with conscience in the game industry. And if you get tired of playing the handheld, you can sell it second-hand."

“What you said makes sense.”

The tourists in the audience were talking about this, and Dongchuan Che, who was giving a lecture on the stage under the scorching sun at noon in September, was also keeping the tourists' reactions and discussions in mind.

The most important thing for him at this Tokyo Game Festival is to promote handheld game consoles. But for handheld game consoles, although he has lowered the price of his own game console to just over 3,000 RMB, and there is almost no profit, he even subsidized some money to seize the market, but.
The player group is mainly composed of students and young people. This group is either still studying without a job or is just entering the society and their career is still in the starting stage. Basically, they do not have much money on hand.

They have to pay 3,000 RMB to buy a game console, which indeed requires a lot of consideration. At this time, we need to give them more temptations, but.
Dongchuan Che just mentioned it briefly and did not further promote the fact that [PC and handheld devices are interoperable, and a game can be played on both ends after purchased on either side], nor did he vigorously promote the configuration of the machine. He even hid some things!
This is not the saying “Good wine needs no bush”. Which big wealthy company would not open a store at the entrance of the alley with the heaviest traffic, but would instead open a store deep inside the alley?
The saying "Good wine needs no bush" is more often a self-consoling statement. There is only one reason why Dongchuan Che is not promoting the game vigorously now - there is still half a year before the handheld game console is released next year.

It's like masturbating, the process is so pleasurable and you can't stop at all, but when the emotion reaches its peak, it will start to subside.

If excessive promotion is carried out at this stage, it may prematurely overdraw players' expectations, causing them to cool down when the console is actually released due to the loss of novelty.

To put it simply, the hot news should be released bit by bit, and it is best to do it in the week before the handheld is released. However, such things that keep people in suspense will always be criticized by players.

The development of the matter was pretty much as Dongchuan Che had expected. When he stopped explaining at the most crucial point, the tourists and players in the audience were stunned for a moment.

Then, the itching players started to clamor, but it was obvious that Dong Chuan Che had a plan for today's events. Shortly after he stepped down, although the players were still clamoring, the attention of the beasts was quickly diverted when the sweet girl group Sistar came on stage.

For men, games are important, but beauties are obviously more important. And it should be said that because Shengguang Club has a lot of resources now, whether it is traffic resources, endorsement advertising, or even film shooting, there are a lot of resources in these aspects, so there are many girls willing to come to Shengguang Club as trainees and artists.

There are so many people applying for the job, so naturally the best will be selected. Although the girl group that is on stage now is only the second-tier girl group of the Holy Light Society, and not the main group, even if these girls are taken out and placed in major colleges and universities, they are all class beauties and school beauties.

As Sistar's sweet girl group jumped on the stage and sang some sweet songs, some girls in miniskirts even went to the side of the stage to interact enthusiastically with the tourists. Although there was no seduction technique, this kind of close contact still made many Japanese otakus fall in love with them.

As for Dongchuan Che.
Who is Dongchuan Che?
These Japanese otakus who were watching the sweet girl dancing said that they were not familiar with Toru Fuyukawa at all.

Well, at least not now.

(End of this chapter)