Chapter 1 Losing Money in Games: September 17th

Shang Yang Games.

The mobile version of "Battle Song of Hot Blood: Power Enhanced Edition" has been officially developed and completed. It shares data with the micro-client version, and players can log in directly with their accounts.

The changes to the game's operation are much smaller than expected. After all, the original operation mode was just point and click.

Now that the scattered UI of the web game has been changed into large UI blocks for mobile, Wang Xiaobin and Ye Zhizhou tried it and found that the game felt pretty good.

From the gameplay and function perspective, the mobile version's experience is not much different from the original micro-client, and may even be more convenient due to the carrier.

Purely from the game experience, it can be said that the mobile version has been successfully modified. Of course, the specific effect depends on the feedback from players after it goes online.

While others were busy with the final debugging, Lin Wan had already contacted the person in charge of Shenhua Mobile's app store and arranged the highest quality recommendation resources for "Battle Song of Hot Blood: Power Enhanced Edition."

Currently, Shenhua Group's main focus is still on the mobile phone business, and it does not pay so much attention to mobile phone software. This app store revision is just an exploration and a test.

After all, mobile games are booming now, and every company with a bit of user base is considering how to become a game channel and monetize users as much as possible.

It is a basic operation that any normal person would think of for Shenhua to engage in app stores and game markets.

Because it is an exploration and a test, Shenhua Mobile's app store is not yet so perfect, but even so, Shenhua Mobile has a large number of high-net-worth users, making every recommendation slot in the app store seem extremely precious.

All recommendation slots are clearly marked, and some particularly good recommendation slots cannot be obtained just with money. The specific data also matters.

After all, the more money a game makes, the more the platform gets. When game developers and publishers spend about the same amount of money, naturally games with better data can get on.

"Battle Song of Hot Blood: Power Enhanced Edition" has Lin Wan's special relationship, so all kinds of reviews are naturally a green light all the way.

Lin Yu didn't need to come forward personally. She just told the small leader in charge of the app store, and someone naturally ran around to take care of this matter.

In Lin Yu's view, this arrangement of recommendation slots was merely a thank you to President Pei and a limited show of goodwill to Lin Wan.

The meaning was "I'll arrange a recommendation slot for you to coax you," and not "I fully support you to continue making games and pursuing your ideal."

Lin Wan naturally knew this very well.

Therefore, she was even more looking forward to "Battle Song of Hot Blood: Power Enhanced Edition" achieving good results on the mobile platform.

First of all, completing this task well would live up to President Pei's trust.

Secondly, taking charge of and launching a successful project would be the first step towards realizing her game dream.

Finally, Lin Wan also hoped to take this opportunity to prove to Grandpa Lin and Lin Yu that her choice of the game industry was not a rash decision, but that she was fully capable of making a name for herself in this field.

Lin Wan made the decision to turn "Battle Song of Hot Blood: Power Enhanced Edition" into a mobile game. If it really flopped too badly, it would be a triple blow to Lin Wan.

At that time, maybe she would really consider resigning.

The recommendation slot has been arranged. Success or failure depends on tomorrow's launch.

...

Ye Zhizhou just ran the game again, and now he is looking at the game's chat group.

The guild chat group of old players of "Battle Song of Hot Blood" has always been there, and the players in the group have been following the recent developments of the game.

In the beginning, these old players had no expectations for this game.

After Lao Liu's wave of operations, the web game "Battle Song of Hot Blood" was basically in a state of semi-death. Even if it was suddenly announced that the server would be shut down one day, the players would not be surprised at all.

But slowly, this game that looked like it would die at any time, unexpectedly recovered its vitality step by step!

First, the game content was greatly changed, and the Chosen One system was updated. Suddenly, from a traditional web game that sold hatred and frantically tricked players into spending money, it became a conscientious game where everyone was equal. Not spending money was okay; spending a little money allowed players to have a great time.

After that, the official invested a lot of resources to create "Battle Song of Hot Blood: Power Enhanced Edition." The art resources were completely updated, and so many celebrities were found to endorse it.

All the signs showed that Shang Yang Games, the company developing this game, suddenly had money!

Although everyone was not sure where Shang Yang Games' money came from, having money was a good thing after all.

Having money meant that the official could temporarily withstand losses, make a lot of changes to the game, spend money on publicity...

In short, all the omens foreshadowed that this game was heading towards an infinitely bright future!

And recently, rumors that a data-sharing mobile version was about to be launched made the old players in the group feel excited.

This way, they could log in to the game anytime, anywhere.

They could play on the way to work, lie in bed and play when they got home from work, and if they wanted better picture quality, they could turn on their computers and play the micro-client version.

In short, not having a computer by their side during national battles used to be a very painful thing, but now, this problem was solved!

At the same time, the popularity of the "Battle Song of Hot Blood: Power Enhanced Edition" commercial also gave these old players a kind of illusion.

It seemed that the whole world knew about this game.

Zhang Zuting and his four good brothers' commercial set off a craze all over the Internet. Just a collection of commercials alone had more than two million views on Aili Island.

The "fried pig trotters" meme could be seen everywhere on the Internet, and there were even more humorous videos about this commercial and the game itself.

If this wasn't hot, what was?

Therefore, the players were naturally waiting for the launch of the mobile version with gongs and drums.

But Ye Zhizhou, who had been lurking in the player group, was very clear that these were just illusions...

This game was thriving on the surface, but in reality, Shang Yang Games had been burning President Pei's money. Up to now, including research and development and promotion, ten million had been burned.

Ten million was not a small number.

Spending a little less money would be enough to make a small-scale PC game or a decent independent game.

If the mobile version continued to maintain its current state of seeming hot but actually being lukewarm after its launch, it would probably be a very heavy blow to everyone.

...

September 18th.

On this day, everyone at Shang Yang Games came to the company early, waiting nervously.

Everyone downloaded the Shenhua App Store on their phones and checked it every once in a while.

10:00 AM.

Ye Zhizhou habitually refreshed the app store again and said with surprise: "It's here! It's here!"

The people next to him immediately gathered around.

The Shenhua App Store can also be downloaded on mobile phones of other brands (except Pineapple), and Shenhua mobile phones come pre-installed with the Shenhua App Store when they leave the factory.

Everyone immediately began the "find it" game, looking for the recommendation slot for the mobile version of "Battle Song of Hot Blood."

After searching all over, everyone couldn't help but take a deep breath.

This was simply treatment like a beloved daughter!

It was completely beyond everyone's expectations!

On the homepage of the app store, the top four were cover promotions, and the first one was "Battle Song of Hot Blood."

Zhang Zuting was holding a large knife, posing as if he was about to chop.

Below were five horizontal category tabs, and below that were five popular recommended applications, including online shopping software, video software, and other popular software.

And among these five programs, there was actually "Battle Song of Hot Blood."

The icon was Zhang Zuting's prop cosplay avatar, and the title was: Battle Song of Hot Blood (servers open at 10:00 AM on the 18th).

Below was the installation package size: 370m, a four-and-a-half star rating, and an advertising slogan: Zhang Zuting endorses, absolutely fair and green national war game!

Clicking on it directly jumped to the game details page of "Battle Song of Hot Blood."

This was the homepage of the app store, and every recommendation slot could be said to be worth its weight in gold.

And "Battle Song of Hot Blood" directly occupied two such important positions!

And it didn't just stop there. On the "Game Mall" main tab, the first recommendation slot in the "Editor's Choice" at the top of the page was still "Battle Song of Hot Blood"!

Clicking on the "Online Games" category, the "Heavy Recommendation for New Games This Month" at the top still had "Battle Song of Hot Blood"!

The third main tab was the leaderboard, which ranked all the software and games on the market according to a certain algorithm, comprehensively considering recent and long-term downloads, ratings, popularity, profitability and other factors.

Ranked 7th was still "Battle Song of Hot Blood"!

It was also marked below: 350,000 installations, a rating of 4.7 stars, and the most amazing thing was that there was a very eye-catching red label after the title: Selected Recommendation!

This recommendation was made by the official personnel of the Shenhua App Store, who would regularly screen some high-quality, good-looking games to grant.

Having this label was almost equivalent to telling all Shenhua Mall users: This is a good game that has been officially screened!

With such a wide variety of recommendation slots, it was no wonder that everyone was sincerely sighing.

How hard must the relationship be to get this!

Those scattered recommendation slots, such as the small recommendation slots in some sub-tabs, were just things that could be bought with money.

But these heavy recommendations on the homepage not only had to compete with other popular games, but also had to compete with some hot apps. Not spending enough money was impossible!

Of course, these recommendation slots on the homepage were not the most excessive.

The most excessive thing was that "Battle Song of Hot Blood" had secretly been put in seventh place on the leaderboard!

On the phone screen, seventh place was just at the bottom, and you could see it without turning the page.

This leaderboard was largely calculated according to an algorithm, and the ranking was basically fair.

After all, if the entire leaderboard was maintained by faking it, it would be too obvious, and it would be easily seen by users.

So the conventional practice was to secretly stuff in one or two projects to be promoted, and then slightly falsify the data a little bit. Anyway, most users would not know the specific ranking rules of this leaderboard.

It was like buying trending searches on Weibo.