Chapter 759 - 415: Little Moments of Happiness (Part 2)

Although Souls-like games easily garner attention and become a hot topic, from a market perspective, it’s not an exceptionally lucrative genre. Only a minority of players are willing to spend money on this challenge, especially for a buyout mobile game, which is even rarer.

In this market context, a mobile game produced by a domestic team with no big brand backing, no IP support, and that solely focuses on the Souls-like genre, amazingly achieved sales of over a million.

In two words, kick-ass.

However, all this glory was attributed to Yang Le, the producer and studio owner, and the benefits brought by Pascal’s Contract’s success had little to do with Wang Lianzong, his assistant.

The salary increase and bonuses couldn’t satisfy Wang Lianzong’s appetite; he also wanted to develop a game himself and wanted more.

Coincidentally, he heard about Sword and Magic’s adaptation into a mobile game and its urgent need for a lead producer. Wang Lianzong felt it was a rare opportunity. After a few discussions with He Yimeng to confirm the terms, he decisively switched jobs.

"Teacher Li, nice to meet you."

"Teacher Wang, please have a seat."

Li Peifeng highly valued the development of Sword and Magic into a mobile game because it indeed had the potential to make big money.

As the saying goes, a mirror and a wallet can answer many of life’s whys and what for’s.

Li Peifeng thought that if he could earn a few billion dollars, even if the parents of the four girls learned of his crimes one day, he might not be completely beyond redemption...

And to achieve long-term profits from the Sword and Magic mobile game without making it a one-time deal that kills the goose that lays the golden eggs, he devoted himself to the game’s development, reducing his writing time for the next two weeks and clocking in at the company daily.

Either discussing the core gameplay and operation concept of Sword and Magic with Wang Lianzong or brainstorming with heads of programming, art, level design, etc., to determine the narrative perspective and visual style.

Creating an open-world adventure RPG is quite challenging, but fortunately, the book’s construction of the Otherworld is rigorous and clear, with the author himself adding details, precise down to the economic system of each faction, the character image of each important role, even the flora and different sceneries of the Otherworld.

This highlights the advantage of adapting a mature novel into a game. Creating a story from scratch requires a lot of time and energy, taking months or even years.

The existing story avoids this hassle. Sword and Magic has already been market-tested, greatly improving the project’s success rate, reducing costs, and lessening the development team’s burden. This way, they can focus more on how to faithfully recreate the world of Sword and Magic while ensuring high playability.

What is playability? Exquisite graphics?

Sure, but it not only needs to be beautiful; it also has to match the temperament of Sword and Magic.

Overly slim and cute characters, with faces leaning toward the feminized, refreshing second-dimensional style, are evidently unsuitable. The game graphics should lean toward realism to attract a broader audience.

Elegant, ethereal, some maps could be a bit more mysterious and eerie, merging Eastern and Western aesthetics, emphasizing the use of colors, using large swathes of splash-ink style, like impressionist oil paintings...

"Or like my watercolor paintings."

Li Peifeng, somewhat narcissistically, thought that if the mobile game’s final visual presentation matched his watercolor paintings, it would be even more popular.

On this point, the team was quite agreeable, so the artistic direction of Sword and Magic was unanimously decided.

But playability involves more than just graphics; it encompasses all aspects.

Such as levels, puzzles, quests, social interaction, growth, and the combat system. Wang Lianzong excels in combat design, and with him came a bunch of programmers, promising to deliver a perfect result.

Aside from these, the most crucial aspect of playability is immersion, or rather, the storyline.

According to the pattern of domestic novel adaptations into games, the original work usually serves as a background setting at most, with a few quest chains related to the novel’s grand world view and main plot, but the primary gameplay differs little from other online games.

This is called putting a sheep’s head up to sell dog meat, something Li Peifeng refuses to do. Yet, truly replicating the entire storyline from the Sword and Magic novel into the game and turning Wang Chi, Qiu Qing, Lin Shang Huayue, Jito Aiwei, and other main characters into NPCs, to interact with players, to let the novel’s characters adventure alongside players, might just ruin readers’ expectations of those characters...

If it’s too close, it won’t be interesting!

This is actually a drawback of novel adaptations into games, because there is an inherent barrier between a novel’s storytelling and a game’s, which can sometimes result in a conflict between content and gameplay.

Therefore, facing a fixed novel, transforming it into a game expression requires more effort in plot reconstruction and gameplay design, or mutual compromise.

Simply put, if the plot isn’t changed, those who read the novel will find nothing new when playing the game, like reading the novel over again.

If the plot is altered, the original fans will criticize the game developers for ruining the original work.

Balancing this scale left even Li Peifeng in a bit of a dilemma.

A week passed, and West Continent Technology expanded from 130 to 150 people, including several foreign employees. Li Peifeng absorbed talents from all over, gathering a wealth of brilliance... basically holding relentless meetings, absorbing their ideas, and after careful consideration, coming up with a great idea.