This way, both teams would take the game seriously, and the competition would be skilled, competitive, and entertaining to watch.
At the same time, the rules would help to close the gap between all teams’ skill levels and prevent situations where one team would try to defeat the other as quickly as possible and at all costs.
If they could put on a good show, they would earn twice the reward. Thus, stronger teams would think of various ways to perform with the other team and make the games more entertaining for viewers.
Still, that could backfire. A single mistake could cause the weaker team, who would naturally be more serious, to turn the entire game around.
Whether the stronger team wins while performing or the weaker team turns the tides around, the games would still generate many topics for conversation. That’s why those rules resorted to many gimmicks to strike a good balance between entertainment and competition.
Over at the DGE Club, Huang Wang began distributing the program sheet.
If they won without putting on a good show, they would only win fifty thousand yuan. If they won with a good show, they would win a hundred thousand yuan. That was double the reward.
That was why Huang Wang and the others had already prepared a couple of strategies to win while putting on a performance. Once the competition started, they would employ the strategies.
For example:
They would give their lives and never kill a single opponent throughout the game. However, by fighting lanes and stealing resources on the map, they would ensure that both teams had equal resources. During the final stretch, they would split up, lure the opponents in, and go through the backdoor to win the game without killing a single opponent…
The entire team would choose five underdog heroes to win…
One person would not play or even put on headphones throughout the game, so that the team had to play four against five and win…
Four members would protect one throughout the game and win…
They would block off lanes, go back to base, block off all three lanes, and win…
They would make sure that every one of them died at least once and win…
They would invite Coach Ma to join their team and win…
Of course, adding Coach Ma to the team would be too difficult. Thus, everyone decided to play four games and test the waters first. After that, they would decide whether to activate Boss Ma or not.
After all, they could perform all they wanted. However, if they messed up, it would be akin to losing a hundred yuan, and that would be extremely painful.
They had only prepared so many ways to perform with the other party because they were afraid that the audience would get tired of the same old strategy.
Instead, they would intersperse the competition with all kinds of tricks and make the game increasingly interesting as it proceeded. If they could capture the audience’s interest, they would give them high ratings, and they would stand higher chances of winning the hundred thousand yuan.
Team Two was going first. Huang Wang gestured to his teammates to follow the first plan—to win without killing a single opponent.
…
The moment the competition began, the live-stream room flooded with bullet screen comments. It was five minutes into the game.
“DGE Team Two’s foundation is very solid, and they fill up beautifully! They are good at positioning and strong at both laning and zoning. Those in all three lanes are excellent!”
“Huang Wang’s a bit aggressive. The opponent has already been forced home twice. Many soldiers haven’t been killed.”
“It doesn’t seem groundless for Waiwai to praise the DGE Club for being invincible.”
Ten minutes into the game…
“What is DGE doing? How did the score become 0-5? The jungler keeps farming without caring about whether his teammates live or die.”
“Why are the players on all three lanes so bad at ganking? How are they being caught so frequently? Since when was the other team’s jungler so strong?”
“That’s alright. DGE’s team always dies only after they push through. They’re not lagging behind on developments, and they’ve gotten all the resources on the map. Both sides still have equal resources.”
“Are they performing at all? Why do both teams look so serious? Neither one of them looks like they’re fooling around.”
“Is this the invincible DGE? What a joke!”
Twenty minutes into the game…
“How is DGE at 0-12 now? Can’t they kill a single person?”
“Why does the other team always manage to get away while critically injured? They’re so lucky…”
“Wait, is DGE doing it on purpose? Look! They always die one by one, and their team is never extinguished at any given time. Yet, each time both teams battle, all five members of the other team would become critically injured. They would have no choice but to go home. On the other hand, DGE would be able to collect resources from the map.”
“DGE even got the Baron Nashor? If I weren’t looking at the kill ratio, I would think that DGE had the upper hand!”
“The other team got so many kills, but each of their members has fewer resources than DGE’s members. Isn’t that strange?”
Thirty minutes into the game, DGE won by going through the back door.
“Sh*t! They won?!”
“They could win by making zero kills? What did I just watch?!”
“I understand now. DGE has been putting on a show from the beginning! Their goal was to win without killing a single person! I knew that Huang Wang seemed to have given up every time he had the opportunity to kill one or a couple of members. I thought he was just being foolish. Now, I know it was intentional!”
“Holy sh*t, so that’s the case. DGE is too good at acting! Not only did they manage to fool their opponents, but they even managed to fool the audience!”
“Awesome! They could actually win like that? Now I believe that DGE is invincible!”
Many members of the audience were only starting to realize DGE’s plan now. At once, they began to vote maniacally, so that DGE’s performance index shot through the roof!
Chapter 616 - The Truest Publicity Proposal for Struggle
The people of the DGE Club might have decided to follow the script from the onset, but they could not make it too obvious.
The opponents were not stupid either; if they found out that DGE Club was deliberating not killing them, then they would do their best as well. In that case, the DGE Club would not be able to complete this performance task.
If someone did not kill the opponents who came to them with low HP and kill when the enemies were here to kill them, then it wouldn’t be a performance.
Therefore, someone must first have good acting skills to complete this task, to make the other party think that DGE was also playing to its maximum strength so that they would think that they were lucky to escape.
Their acting was too good that it not only deceived the opponents but also the vast majority of the audience. The direction of the bullet screen comments reversed several times. Some said that DGE Club was the most noob club around; the next minute, someone would say that DGE was invincible. They were all shown in the face, and the program effect was full!
After the game, Huang Wang high-fived his teammates in celebration.
Perfect! That’s a 100,000-yuan reward!
That quick money felt pretty good.
Zhang Yuan watched silently, feeling relieved for the players. In fact, playing such entertainment games occasionally could relax their mind and also adjust their mentality.
Moreover, Huang Wang and the DGE Club’s popularity were soaring rapidly!
Jiang Huan’s Team One was also warming up, silently choosing their performance plan. They must not lose to Team Two, if not they would have to undergo more physical training!
…
…
August 15th, Monday…
Pei Qian came to his own offic
e as usual. During the weekend, Pei Qian had been watching the live-stream of ZZ Live-Stream and the performance of the DGE Club.
The situation was not great!
Pei Qian only realized that the strength of these two teams had reached such a level after watching the competition!
Both teams returned rather depressed after coming back from mock competitions. Pei Qian thought that it was a terrible loss. Now, it seemed like either he understood wrongly, or the two teams improved by leaps and bounds during this time.
Thinking about it carefully, it seemed like the former would be more likely.
However, Pei Qian was baffled; why would these two teams be so strong?
Didn’t I even arrange for fitness training for you?
Their fitness training should be completed with quality judging from the state of their muscles. In fact, shouldn’t their results be at the bottom now that they had less time to train for their games and that their energy was scattered?
However, it turned out that those veteran clubs were beaten. They could even win when it came to performance matches. That was enough to show the difference in strength for both sides!
Pei Qian, therefore, realized that the situation with DGE was not right so he had to hurry to think of countermeasures!
Continue fighting like this and Huang Wang’s popularity would probably take off, bringing his team members along with him…
They might become too popular again.
It did not matter if these people signed individual live-streamers contracts. However, looking from another perspective, wouldn’t the DGE Club’s reputation take off on the spot if they had five or six popular live-streamers?
What would happen if some very rich sponsors were to come knocking on their door?
The more Pei Qian thought about it, the more sorrowful he was.
Someone knocked on his door while he pondered.
He looked up; it was Hu Xianbin.
“Boss Pei, the development of Struggle had basically come to an end. Can we start formulating a publicity plan? Can you give me a general direction? Or do not publicize, and we wait for the players to find out themselves?”
Hu Xianbin had no idea about the game’s publicity works. He had to confirm with Boss Pei.
Boss Pei was a well-deserving publicity master when promoting a game.
“Publicity proposal…”
Pei Qian fell into deep thoughts.
To some independent game designers, not propagating was basically tantamount to hitting rock bottom. However, Tengda Games no longer had such good things happening to them.
Tengda Games had a reputation now as their successes increased. Any new game would definitely be on hot search by the players, and the media would be rushing to report it. Everyone would shout ‘I will f*cking buy until it’s out of stock!’
It was futile to hope that ‘no one would notice as long as I don’t publicize’.
However, if they were to publicize… wouldn’t that be more popular and would earn more? This was disastrous.
However, Pei Qian was no longer the same man he was in the past. He had theoretical reserves now!
Teacher He once mentioned an important theory: all aspects of the game must match. Especially publicity works must be consistent with the characteristics of the game itself. There should be no misalignment between publicity and the actual product.
Pei Qian’s publicity plans only succeeded previously because he was lucky.
Strictly speaking, fake publicity was definitely a minefield for good quality standalone games. It would definitely cripple the game! At that point in time, Pei Qian was already considering if he could make losses with Struggle from his previous experiences.
Pei Qian decided to abandon illusion and start the struggle.
Don’t just think that no publicity was good enough. It would never be. He had to publicize in the opposite direction before he could convince the players otherwise!
However, differentiated marketing to make a product publicize in the opposite way was a huge task.
The system did not allow him to create fake publicity. Pei Qian could not intentionally give out fake news to trick players in the process of publicity.
However, Pei Qian had his way. He could not give falsehoods, but he could just speak partial truths! It might be true, but it could mislead players all the same if he were to hide a part of the information.
Pei Qian knew very well that the reason why differentiated marketing had great lethality on the product itself was ultimately due to the dislocation of the player community.
For example, the game might be a casual game, but not only did it not conjure the interest of the casual gamers but a bunch of Liver Emperor. That would be awkward.
The people who liked this sort of game did not play it; those that did not like the game played it but abandoned it in no time and gave bad reviews. Wouldn’t that be GG[1]?
Therefore, Pei Qian felt that he should also create such a differentiation.
Pei Qian considered it silently. Let’s start a comprehensive analysis based on Teacher He’s theory.
Which group of people should be the target audience of Struggle? Um, they should overlap more with the players from Game Designer. Both are games that did not need much operation and with its focus on exploring and analyzing the content of the game.
Therefore, I should go down a totally different path for publicity. Let this group of people become disinterested in it from its slogan and let those who liked to do more hands-on operations to walk in and walk away cursing it.
Everyone will be good if this can be done!
“Note down the following key points for publicity,” Pei Qian said to Hu Xianbin with a script in his mind. “We will only use the English translation of Struggle and not use its Chinese name during the publicity period.
“Let the players know that the game has the following unique points:
“Diverse choices, rich strategies…”
“Exquisite pictures with all movements made with real-life action…”
“Complicated and exciting plot…”
“Moreover, we innovatively used a dual protagonist model.”
Hu Xianbin noted down in top speed as Pei Qian spoke. Hu Xianbin looked up at Boss Pei after recording it and looked down at the notebook in his hand, his face filled with confusion.
Is this our game?
He read it again carefully. Every point seemed to be right. However, no one would be able to link Struggle with these contents when put together!
Hu Xianbin tried to fill in the gaps here. The first thing he would think of if he saw this slogan would be a large-scale action game with a moving plot.
Look at these unique points!
All movements were made with real-life actions. That was mostly an action-based game…
Diversified choices and rich strategies seemed to indicate that the combat system was complex and highly playable…
Exciting plot obviously emphasized the action-packed plot…
Dual protagonist models would make people think of action game plots where two protagonists with different fighting styles switch between each other.
Hu Xianbin was a little hesitant. “Boss Pei, erm… isn’t this not very accurate? Shouldn’t we state that this isn’t an action-based game?”
Pei Qian smiled. “Don’t ask so much; just do the publicity this way.”
I told no falsehood!
Struggle was indeed its English name, but it had multiple meanings such as fight, snatch, free yourself, etc. Everyone would think about realistic subjects when you talk about Struggle in its Chinese name.
But ‘Struggle’ combined with the introduction and the features of the game would be associated with action themes!
As for the other points, I wasn’t wrong either.
Struggle did possess a variety of choices and rich strategies. The only thing was that no matter how you chose, there was only one ending. You could not change your destiny
no matter how much you tried.
It was true that the pictures were beautiful, and most of them used some sort of motion capture. However, I did not say that these images were fighting scenes.
The dual protagonist mode was even better; it was indeed a very innovative dual protagonist mode.
The dual protagonists of other games were based on the dual protagonists under the same plot framework. The fighting styles were different, but there would be intersections that were mainly used to adjust the player’s game emotions.
My dual protagonists were amazing. A poor protagonist and a rich protagonist with the same gameplay. They were not in the same plot framework since they were not even in the same game. The poor and rich versions were sold separately.
I did not lie; neither did I spread any falsehoods. There was no helping it if you understood it as an action-based game!
Pei Qian felt that he should be successful this time looking at Hu Xianbin leave with a blank face.
It was worthwhile asking Teacher He to teach him!
Teacher He might have made me vomit blood often, but many lessons could still be used, couldn’t they?
Pei Qian became very light-hearted now that he fixed the problems with Struggle’s publicity.
[1] This refers to ‘Good Game’ in gaming terms.
Chapter 617 - Selection of Outstanding Employee
Another knock came five minutes later…
“Boss Pei, the person-in-charge of every department, has arrived. We’re about to start the selection for outstanding employees,” Assistant Xin reminded him.
Pei Qian nodded. “Alright, I’ll be right there!”
It was already August; it was time for the biannual selection of outstanding employees.
It was originally at the beginning of the month, but Boss Pei was really too busy with work and exams week. He nearly exploded with what happened with IOI. He did not have the time to care about it so it was pushed to the middle of the month.
What a good thing it was to have it pushed down two weeks.
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