"Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate."
"This might be the most relaxing game I've ever played, though I haven't played that many games."
"Just before bed, while brushing my teeth, I saw three toothbrushes of the same color. I stared at them for a long time, and all I could think about was, 'Why aren't they disappearing yet?'"
"Another hit game from Earth Games!"
…
It had been a long time since they got reviews like this.
As more positive reviews came in, the progress on the Ninth Art mission finally started moving. If they offered rewards for good reviews, the mission might be finished in an instant.
But that was the move of a third-rate game company, and William had no interest in doing that.
Maybe by tomorrow morning, "Happy Match Mania" would pass 100 million downloads. Cynthia kept watching the company's account, and money from player top-ups was coming in every now and then.
The next day.
"You didn't sleep all night?"
Seeing Cynthia's heavy dark circles, William couldn't help but laugh.
"I slept a bit, but couldn't really fall asleep," Cynthia yawned.
"How's the game doing?"
"Over 50 million downloads, and more than 80 million players using the widget."
"That's it?"
William was a little disappointed. Last night, downloads were going up by five million a minute, but after a whole night it didn't grow that much. Not quite what he expected.
"What, you think that's bad? You expect everyone to skip sleep?"
"True. How about the revenue? Are a lot of players paying?"
At the mention of money, Cynthia perked up. "The total is higher than Happy Mahjong, but the average spend per player is pretty low. No one's spending thousands or tens of thousands."
"Wouldn't it be weird if they did?"
William couldn't imagine anyone spending that much on "Happy Match Mania." There wasn't even much to buy, unless they planned to clear the game entirely with paid items.
"Have WeChat Games add a stage ranking today."
The in-game leaderboard didn't launch at the same time as the game, because William didn't want WeChat Games to know how "Happy Match Mania" worked ahead of time.
If they wanted to put it on their servers, they'd need the dev version of the game. William didn't want to bother setting up his own server, so he just put it off until today.
Now that "Happy Match Mania" was live, William only had two projects left. "Journey" was about 20% done, and "Honor of Kings" wasn't even at 1%. Neither would be ready anytime soon.
Start a new project?
William thought about Chris's engine upgrade plan. They had the source code and full art assets for "The Sims," ready to turn into a game right away. But because of the engine upgrade, some functions would need code changes, and the character models would have to be rebuilt. Maybe he could help Chris finish this project together.
When William first got the "Sims" developer manual as a reward, he planned to use it as a practice project for the studio. Since everything was already prepared, it would help everyone get familiar with the full dev process. This wasn't mobile game development — this was a real big game.
But now, it seemed the first "Sims" was better suited as Chris's solo practice project, mainly for studying the engine. Still, in other areas, Chris would need William's help.
That settled it.
William's focus from now on would be designing "Journey"'s environments and helping Chris remake the first "Sims."
As for "Honor of Kings," they'd have to wait until Leon finished drawing all 20 character concept arts. Then Tina would handle the modeling. The battle system and skill design could be "borrowed" from the original. William didn't have the skills to make his own from scratch, and he wasn't going to push himself on that.
Saturday was still busy as ever.
Around noon, the total active users passed 100 million, downloads passed 70 million, and total revenue passed three million. Most importantly, positive reviews topped 100,000, completing the Ninth Art mission.
Reputation Points +100.
[Ninth Art] (Series Mission 2)
[Mission Goal: Develop a game and get a total of 200,000 positive reviews from users]
[Mission Reward: Reputation Points +200]
William now had two choices: use his Reputation Points to download a new engine, or upgrade the two engines he already had.
Engine upgrades could be previewed.
Cocos2dx had been upgraded once before, unlocking commercial use for the engine. Upgrading it again could cut development time by 20%, though William wasn't sure exactly how. The upgrade cost 50 reputation points.
Spending 50 points for a 20% boost in development efficiency wasn't a bad deal, but William knew he would rely less and less on cocos2dx in the future. He also didn't know if the upgrade would only apply to him or if all users would benefit.
By comparison, Unity needed 100 reputation points just to unlock commercial use. Its commercial potential was unquestionable. William was fine letting people use cocos2dx for free, but if it were Unity, he would definitely charge for it—after all, that was a gold mine.
The only problem was that Unity's technology was way ahead of cocos2dx. Dropping two top-tier programs at once, plus his young age, would easily cause trouble. Better to stay low-key, at least until Chris could handle things on his own.
That left only one choice.
With over 200 reputation points, he had enough to download a custom game engine. The problem was deciding which game to pick.
Should it be the first Assassin's Creed, the first Infamous: Second Son, or maybe the first Forza Horizon? All of them were classics.
It didn't have to be a first game—second entries were fine too. But the latest titles had the best engine tech, and that meant a very high reputation cost. At best, William could afford the first game's engine.
People underestimated first-generation engines. Most series engines were built from the earliest version, updated little by little. That meant a first-gen engine was like a base mold—if your skills were good enough, you didn't need to spend points on new engines, you could just upgrade it yourself.
After thinking for a long time, William decided to put the new engine aside for now. Even if he downloaded it, there was no team ready to make a new game. Better to focus on finishing the current work.
On the WeChat game side, after working overtime, they finally finished the challenge leaderboard along with a new feature—Friend Assist.
Before, if a player couldn't pass a stage, they had two options: wait for their stamina to slowly recover and try again, or pay to skip it.
With the Friend Assist feature, friends could give you a random boost at key moments.
It might be a potion that turned a normal block into a special one.
It might be extra moves, like three or five more steps, making the level easier.
It might be a reset item or other small tools—it was all up to luck.
The main point of Friend Assist was for unlocking new stages later. While it might annoy players, from a developer's point of view, it was a great way to promote the game.
In other news, William learned that WeChat Games had dropped support for The Pianist, meaning there would be no new updates. Before long, it might not even show up in the widget search.
"Why would they do that?" William asked Cynthia in confusion.
In his eyes, The Pianist was definitely better in quality than Piano Tiles. Right now it was just temporarily beaten by Piano Tiles' new mode. Once they figured out the new mode's mechanics, Piano Tiles would lose its edge, and The Pianist could take over the market again.
"According to Vince, their bosses now care more about the 'Happy Universe' concept, so they want the team to make more games like that."
"I see."
It made sense. From a revenue standpoint, The Pianist was more about gaining attention than making money. Real profits came from in-game purchases, and the Happy Universe fit that model perfectly.
"So what do they want?"
Vince telling Cynthia all this definitely wasn't just because he still had feelings for her.
Besides, after William went with Cynthia that one time, Vince should have already given up. It wasn't like he'd keep pestering her just to get attention.
If he really did, that would mean he was just hopelessly playing the role of a desperate admirer.
"They want full development rights."
The original plan was for the next project to be co-developed by both studios. Now that Earth Games had no manpower, there was no development plan at all. They could wait, but WeChat Games couldn't, so Vince wanted full rights to push the project forward.
"Sure."
William had no objections to that.
"But tell him we won't agree to any deal that hurts our interests."
WeChat Games might not know how big the profits were yet, but once they realized, they'd regret it. This gap in information was exactly what William could use to make money.
Either he earned the money, or someone else did. Business was like war—no permanent friends, only permanent rivals, and there was no need to show mercy to rivals.
"Of course."
Cynthia's miserly side showed without hiding.