Today was Angela's first day at work. According to her, she had loved Earth Games' titles ever since the company appeared. Before Happy Match Mania came out, her favorite had been Classical Poetry Crossword, especially after the new mode was added, which made the game even more fun.
Since there was no empty desk in the office area, William set up her workspace in his own office. This made game development easier, as every scene and detail needed constant communication between them.
Journey had a total of seven chapters. William had finished the scenes for the first four, which contained a lot of animations. In fact, since deciding to hire an animator, William hadn't made any animations himself. This meant Angela not only had to handle all story-related animations but also small interactive animations for the scenes.
It was a big workload.
With their current team size, game production took months—two or three for shorter projects, seven or eight for longer ones. While their two existing games could keep the studio afloat until then, the gap in between could easily be taken advantage of by competitors, which was exactly what William wanted to avoid.
The current stage of the market was perfect for building popularity. In fact, the market share they gained now could determine their position for years to come. That's why this period was critical. If they disappeared from the public eye for too long, people would simply forget them.
Even though Earth Games had already released several massive hits and wouldn't be forgotten easily, who could guarantee that no other company would release hit after hit while they were busy? Competing at that point would mean losing the early advantage.
In short, William had to make sure that during the development cycles of Honor of Kings and Happy Match Mania, they released small games from time to time to fill the gap.
The other option was to hire a lot more people to speed up development, but that was risky. If a game flopped or they ran into cash flow problems, the whole company could collapse, and he'd have to start all over again. By then, the market would be far less forgiving.
It was all a headache.
William realized that as the company's goals grew, so did the weight on his shoulders. It was nothing like the carefree days when he made games alone.
I worked all morning, and at noon we had a small lunch gathering. Unless something unexpected happens, the people here now will be the core team of Earth Games. Anyone we hire in the future won't have the same standing.
The reason is simple — William is training them to be leaders. In the future, each of them will run their own studio or lead a department. Any new managers later on might not be personally trained by him.
If the boss has to handle everything himself, it's just too much trouble. William still wants to spend most of his time making games, not training people.
At the table, the topic was always games. Just in the past couple of days, a new game had popped up. The new competitor comes from the film industry. After realizing how easy it is to develop "restart simulator" games, they chose this direction too. Compared to Life Restart Simulator and Immortal Rebirth Simulator, their Martial Arts Rebirth Simulator stands out for its animation.
Yes, they added a lot of animation.
So much that some players got annoyed.
William checked the comments section. Most people said the theme and story were great, but the excessive animations made progress painfully slow. Worse, the animations couldn't be skipped or fast-forwarded, even the boring ones. And the most frustrating part — in the second or third playthrough, players had to watch the same animations all over again. That was just unacceptable.
The game's devs responded quickly. They promised to add a "fast-forward/skip" option in a future update and also made it clear they were committed to adding new story content — something their competitors hadn't done.
Marcus asked excitedly, "So boss, are we going to update our game too?"
Everyone else looked at William as if they'd start working the moment he gave the word.
But William just shook his head calmly. "Life Restart Simulator has already fulfilled its purpose."
It's the same point as before — Life Restart Simulator has lost its competitive edge. Even if they added new storylines, the current framework limits it. Unless they completely rewrote everything from scratch, it would be better to make a sequel. Updating it now simply isn't worth it.
In the end, it was William's poor writing skills that held it back. Games like Piano Tiles or 2048, which don't rely on text at all, aren't affected by this and remain strong in their genres. 2048 still has no real rival, and even if one shows up, it's unlikely they'll surpass it.
2048 is a distilled, perfected form of its gameplay type — pretty much the final answer for that genre.
As for Jump Jump and Classical Poetry Crossword — Jump Jump's popularity mainly came from its niche as a "time-killer." People could open it during small breaks and jump a few times, which made it appealing. But its decline was obvious — after a few plays, most people got bored. The game's total lifetime active users reached over three billion, but its concurrent active users were under one million.
In contrast, the most successful game of all is still Classical Poetry Crossword. In the past few days, William has uploaded all their games to WeChat mini-apps. It was just a matter of submitting a version — basically no work at all.
The success of Classical Poetry Crossword is almost impossible to replicate. It's not only a great learning tool but also genuinely fun. Even if someone made a copy, you could pretty much guess what it would look like. If William had to choose one old game to update, it would be this one without hesitation.
The reason is simple — it still has a huge number of downloads and lifetime active users. While neither number is the absolute highest among Earth Games' titles, its player retention rate is the undisputed best. Retention is like how many people turn back to look at you when you walk by — and Classical Poetry Crossword is that top-tier beauty who makes you look back three times before you've even taken two steps.
William had already decided on the update direction—improving the UI.
The previous UI design was pretty basic, basically just black text on a white background. After seeing the UI designs of several competitors, William started to feel some pressure. While minimalism is a design style too, being "too" minimal can easily get outshined.
The reason this update was delayed until now was because they were waiting for the animator to be ready. Even though it's not exactly her specialty, Angela is still capable of polishing the UI.
There was no choice—right now the studio is short on staff, and it's completely normal for everyone to have one or two extra jobs on their plate.