Chapter 81: Flourishing and Prospering

"Rest assured, I will definitely prepare a professional team for you; you can take a look at my proposal first."

Xu Heng placed a thin booklet printed on A4 paper on the table, and Tang Zhi frowned as he took it.

After about ten minutes, Tang Zhi, having roughly finished reading the tens of thousands of words in the proposal, opened his eyes wide as if enlightened.

"Brilliant!"

He couldn't help but look at Xu Heng: "Did you make this yourself, Boss?"

"More or less, there is also a bit of input from another one of my employees," Xu Heng said calmly, taking a sip of his coffee.

That other employee was Huang Kai; he had provided many useful suggestions regarding the gameplay for the Ultraman series cards. Xu Heng had written all his suggestions into the proposal, allowing the cards derived from the Ultraman IP to be further refined and the product image to become more three-dimensional.

"If I didn't have one hundred percent confidence before, with your proposal, Boss, I can say for sure that I can absolutely make a successful Ultraman trading card game!" Tang Zhi said.

"And a professional team!" Xu Heng patted him on the shoulder, "And a salary."

"The salary is easy to discuss; my previous employer paid an annual salary of 150,000, and it would be no problem even if you only gave half that amount, Boss."

At this moment, Tang Zhi's eyes were filled with nothing but passion for the Ultraman series; compared to creating a card game that would shock the country, the salary was not that important to him.

After all, if this card game really became a hit, would he have to worry about Xu Heng paying him a low salary?

The two hit it off immediately. With the lead designer on board, they successfully found suitable candidates for the subsequent positions of assistant designers and illustrators.

For the front desk, they found two vocational school girls; their academic qualifications weren't high, but they were eye-catching. As for programmers, they were a dime a dozen to recruit in the Tech City; no matter the year, the easiest position to fill was that of a programmer.

Finally, they had planned to recruit thirty people, but in reality, a total of thirty-two people, including Xu Heng, gathered at the Xianwan Company headquarters.

At the meeting, Xu Heng briefly introduced the company's main business to them and clarified the general plan with the core members in one-on-one interviews after the meeting.

Several illustrators harbored doubts when they heard they had been hired just to draw for cards.

Even if some of them hadn't watched Ultraman, they had heard of its great name; it was considered a very high-profile IP. Usually, such big IPs required authorization to be used. Could their boss be a pirate manufacturer?

Xu Heng's explanation quickly dispelled their doubts.

He personally stated that their company possessed the Ancient authorization for Xinhua Chuang to act as the domestic agent for Ultraman IP merchandise rights, and he produced the copyright contract as proof.

This powerful clarification made the employees below suddenly feel that their boss was no simple person.

To be able to secure the Ultraman IP rights at such a young age, his family must have the strength to make it happen.

"The Ultraman series cards are our department's main business. Actually, I won't hide it from everyone, our company also has a branch in Modu that is developing a card game. Their progress is faster than ours, and it will be launched by the end of November at the latest. Although what they are developing is not a trading card game, it can still serve as a reference for everyone."

"And the responsibility I require of you is not high; you don't need to design the facial textures of the cards to be overly intricate, nor do you need to design the card rarity to be overly high-end."

Having said this, Xu Heng paused.

"Children collecting cards won't pursue how beautiful the cards are; what they need are cards that are powerful enough and rare enough to show off and flaunt among friends. If you start from this psychology to design and develop Ultraman cards, there will absolutely be no problems."

Tang Zhi, as the lead designer appointed by Xu Heng, added at his left hand: "This 'Ultraman Duel' we are developing is the first trading card game in the country. There are no successful cases in the country for us to learn from, so there is a certain difficulty in achieving success. However, the Boss has given us very complete settings. If we make slight modifications and adjustments based on the Boss's settings, what we produce will be exactly what the Boss requires of us."

The first Ultraman series card game was named "Ultraman Duel" by Xu Heng.

The gameplay is generally similar to PTCG: 1v1 battles where both sides can use Ultra Warrior cards, Monster cards, and various weapon and skill cards.

Before the battle begins, both sides place five plot cards face down in the back row. Each time you defeat the opponent's Monster or Ultra Warrior, you can take one plot card. The player who collects all five plot cards first wins the match.

This set of rules is relatively simple and easy to understand, and it doesn't have much of a learning curve for elementary school students and children, making it very accessible.

Next is the rarity design for the first set of "Ultraman Duel" cards.

Xu Heng does not intend to roll out many rarities at the beginning; "leek-cutting" is a matter of accumulation over time. If you want to build a good card ecosystem, the increase in rarity should change as the number of released sets grows.

For the first set of "Ultraman Duel," Xu Heng currently only plans to release five types of card rarities.

R cards, meaning the card name font is silver; SR cards, the card face has a Flash; SSR cards, the entire card art has a Flash; UR, the card face has a gold Flash; LGR, the entire card face has a dark gold Flash.

Each box of cards has thirty packs, each pack has five cards. One pack is guaranteed to have one SR card, and one box is guaranteed to have one SSR or UR, with a probability of getting an LGR.

The higher the rarity of the card, the more powerful the effect, but each deck can only contain a maximum of three cards with a rarity above UR. While tempting elementary school students to open card packs, it also prevents it from becoming a duel mode that simply compares attack power like other card games.

Of course, the most troublesome step in a card game is the effect design for each card.

Designers must be able to weigh the power of each card's effect, as well as the composition of various decks. They cannot let the cards become scattered sand; they must make the effects of some cards complement each other, and then subconsciously guide children to build these cards into decks.

Yu-Gi-Oh! adopts a keyword-based design in this direction; cards with a certain name form a series, which is equivalent to the official pre-building it for you. As long as you add a few extra-axis cards, you can use it.

And although Xu Heng and his team are "borrowing," they cannot "borrow" too thoroughly.

Therefore, in this regard, Tang Zhi and the others need to integrate the Ultraman IP for secondary innovation.

Xu Heng gave them some reference opinions, saying they could take the villain bosses from the various Ultraman series and make them into decks, or make Ultraman from different eras into decks.

For example, an Ultra Brothers deck, a Heisei Trio deck, a Zetton deck, a Dark Zagi deck, and so on.

Several designers suddenly realized, preparing to cram the Ultraman series episodes overnight to improve their card creation ability.

For subsequent research and development, Xu Heng intends to hand over the design leadership to these employees. After all, if he, as a boss, had to personally step in and teach everything, then why spend money to hire these people?