Chapter 616: Release

Ps. While typing, I'm also watching the EDG match; they are already trailing 2:1. Come on, National Power, the last hope of LPL.

Main text:

That night, Gao Liang posted a tweet to explain:

"This time, I am playing a virtual character in 'Frozen,' a snowman created by Queen Elsa, and also a good partner who adventures with the two heroines."

"So if you want to see me appear in the play, you might be disappointed."

Below the text, there was also a photo of Olaf.

Regarding this, Gao Liang's fans were certainly somewhat disappointed.

What they wanted to see was the handsome Gao Liang playing a prince in a fairy tale, not a buck-toothed snowman.

Although this snowman looked quite stupid and cute at first glance, with a bit of humor, they still preferred Gao Liang himself to appear.

But thinking about it carefully, the princess and queen in this movie were already played by the Luo Quan and Angela sisters; Gao Liang certainly wasn't suitable to play a prince or anything, and even the male lead or second lead wasn't suitable.

What was suitable for him was only such a character similar to a mascot.

Gao Liang could be considered to have informed the fans in advance; those who couldn't accept it could also know in advance, so it wasn't deceiving the fans.

In short, this certainly wasn't a work for Gao Liang's fans, and like "The Silence of the Lambs" before, it belonged to a performance that subverted his image.

After the Olaf matter came to an end, Gao Liang's fans began to ask about his next work.

The few movies he had appeared in recently weren't big male leads, and to be honest, there was a feeling of deliberately acting ugly.

For Gao Liang's fans, what attracted them first was certainly that face that was tragically handsome.

It was actually the same reason men liked Luo Quan.

But Gao Liang seemed to dislike using his strengths; although "Titanic" was enough for them to lick his face until the end of time, licking one movie wasn't enough.

So the fans also took this opportunity to let Gao Liang take on a few more big male lead movies, the kind that must show his face.

Gao Liang replied quickly: there would be such a movie released in the first half of next year, the only male lead, and there wouldn't be any strange styling.

He was talking about the movie Luo Quan asked him to appear in, but the specific details weren't revealed.

However, hearing the definite promise, a group of fans finally felt at ease.

On this side, "Frozen" was being promoted loudly, and on the other side, the release date of "Final Fantasy" was also approaching.

After the game was submitted for review, it did encounter some small trouble, mainly regarding the scale of the female characters' clothing in the game.

The review side felt that some scenes were slightly exposed and had sexual implications.

Of course, it hadn't reached the point of being sent back for modification; after all, Luo Quan had already checked and modified it before submitting it for review, and she had a good grasp of the scale in the country.

In addition, the bureau also considered her identity as a patriotic entrepreneur and gave her a convenience, letting her set a 15+ reminder at the beginning of the game.

But to be honest, in the country, there was little difference between having a rating system and not having one; some games were labeled 9+, but the characters' dress and appearance were comparable to 18+.

Similar soft pornography was actually the norm for domestic two-dimensional games; after all, these weren't originally aimed at underage users but were played by adult two-dimensional users, and only these people could afford to pay.

However, because the platform didn't have restrictions in this regard, it led to underage users being able to download these games just the same, and reports from the parents of these users often caused these games to be directly rectified.

Similar situations happened often in the country; if one were to rank the groups that game players hated the most, the department that reviewed games would rank first, and these troublesome parents would absolutely rank second!

The former was due to duty, while the latter was completely making a mountain out of a molehill; if a game character was slightly exposed, they would cry out about poisoning children, and if they disagreed, they would report it—the degree of absurdity was comparable to fan circles.

Therefore, the review department letting Luo Quan add a 15+ to the game could also be considered a kind of protection for her.

After all, once the game became popular in the future, the group of people contacting the game would certainly not just be players over 15.

If parents really reported it by then, Luo Quan would have a way to explain it; after all, my game was already labeled 15+, so that was your and your children's own problem.

It was normal for children not to be able to control themselves, but if you as a parent couldn't control your children, that was dereliction of duty; reflect on yourself first.

Having obtained such a golden medal, Luo Quan's uneasy heart was completely settled.

The game was directly pressed and sent to Sony, ready for sale.

"Pressing" was a term in single-player games, because besides being able to download games online, PS4 could also read discs to install games like old-fashioned computers.

And recording a game onto a disc was called pressing.

Generally, when game production reached this stage, it was only a few days away from listing and sale.

Sony had been marketing for so long, and it was time to harvest.

Before the game was officially released, there was also a media trial session.

The most well-known game evaluation media was IGN, which was also the first group besides Sony to get "Final Fantasy."

It was worth mentioning that Tencent, which liked to cooperate with Luo Quan, didn't have much movement this time.

The relationship between the two was good, so Tencent didn't use any water army to smear the game, but it also appeared very flat.

If she released a new song or a new movie, it was estimated that Tencent would have already come to buy the copyright.

But games, especially single-player games, had almost become Tencent's heartache.

As the most profitable game company in the world, Tencent had never relied on its own research and development to produce any high-quality games.

Coupled with the fact that its online games and mobile games often "borrowed" from others, Tencent's reputation in the domestic game player group was extremely poor.

Tencent hadn't thought about reversing this situation; for this reason, it spent a lot of money to buy the domestic release copyright of a Japanese 3A masterpiece and put it on its own game platform, wanting to earn a wave of player reputation.

On the first day of the game's release, it naturally sold out, and everyone praised Tencent for finally making progress.

As a result, on the second day, it received news that the game was sold in violation of regulations and had to be taken down.

It turned out that in order to preempt the player market before Steam, Tencent put the game on the shelves in advance without obtaining a version number.

In China, a version number was equivalent to a game's ID card; with this, you could put it on the shelves for sale; otherwise, it was a black household, and whoever was seen would be dealt with, absolutely leaving no room for mercy.

However, with Tencent's energy, getting a game version number wasn't too difficult, and the game introduced this time had no scale issues.

But it was precisely because of this that Tencent was negligent, thinking that putting it on the shelves a few days in advance wouldn't be a big problem, but it was reported the next day.

Selling without a version number—even for Tencent, there was no reason for mercy; the relevant departments struck hard, ordered the game to be taken down, and refunded all players' payments.

The news of the game being taken down caused a huge uproar in the domestic single-player game circle.

The first reporting target suspected by players was NetEase, which occupied the other small half of China's online game market.

However, Boss Ding of NetEase quickly posted on Weibo to clarify, claiming that he would absolutely not do such a thing that lost the popularity of passersby and had no class; all along, he and his company advocated healthy competition and common development.

In short, the words were quite sincere, fearing to be associated with this matter in the slightest.

But whether it was done by them, that was unknown; in short, NetEase was definitely the biggest winner in this kind of thing.

As for the players, it was just wasting a little time to go to Steam to download again; only Tencent was the only one injured.

From then on, Tencent basically didn't pay much attention to the single-player game market; saying it was heartbroken wasn't inappropriate.

Although this matter was ultimately Tencent's own stupidity for wanting to earn more money, Tencent also understood a truth from this matter.

That was, making single-player games was a dead end.

It sounded extreme, but from the current situation of those single-player game companies struggling on the line of life and death in the country, it wasn't unreasonable.

At this time last year, there were still three single-player games releasing new works, but this year, one had already gone bankrupt and disbanded, and the remaining two were in no better situation, just eating their old capital.

In such a big environment, Tencent, which wouldn't get up early without profit, certainly wouldn't get involved.

Although Luo Quan brought "Final Fantasy," a cross-era masterpiece, to strike strongly, Tencent, having suffered a big loss once, certainly wouldn't make a move easily; no matter what, it had to let Luo Quan test the depth of the water first.

On the night of November 12th, just after Double 11, the wallets of girls and boys were a bit empty.

Luo Quan chose a time that didn't look very good to release "Final Fantasy."

On the night of the 9th, "Final Fantasy" had already opened for full-platform pre-download.

At the same time, the reviews of major media had also come out; the well-known game media website IGN gave a high score of 9.8 and wrote a short article evaluating:

"Exquisite graphics beyond the era, male and female leads with quite high beauty, cool and gorgeous fighting scenes, and a main storyline with depth."

"Everything is so impeccable; the only drawback is probably that the game plot is not complete. What is made now is the first part of the game trilogy, and there is still a lot of plot that has not been completed."

"However, although it is only one-third, in terms of volume, it is already enough to be on par with other RPGs; just the main storyline play is about thirty hours, absolutely not cutting corners."

"Such excellent quality combined with its 259 starting price is absolutely a masterpiece of the year that single-player game lovers should not miss!"

IGN's article was almost praising it throughout, and the limited few bad evaluations felt like they were praising it in the guise of criticism.

Besides IGN, other media basically held a similar attitude.

That was, this game had the potential to become a masterpiece.

Getting this evaluation, a group of players who had already pre-ordered breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that this time 259 wouldn't be thrown into the water.

Time came to the night of the game's release; the moment the hour hand jumped to 24:00, the world's largest game platform, STEAM, froze for a few seconds.

More than a million players at home and abroad entered a game at the same time, entering the world of "Final Fantasy."

At the same time, the users live-streaming the game on Bilibili also broke 99+ early, and the top three hot searches were all "Final Fantasy."

After half a year of warm-up, domestic single-player players were looking forward to it, Sony poured a lot of effort into promotion, and major media didn't stint on praise.

Under the concerted efforts of these parties, "Final Fantasy" burst out with unimaginable huge heat.

Not just Bilibili, Douyin, Constable, Douyu, Huya, Tieba, Weibo, Zhihu, YouTube, Twitch…………

Almost as long as it was a place where one could live-stream, one could see the figure of "Final Fantasy."

On Steam, the number of online players for the game had already exceeded two million, more than the sum of the other few games in the top ten; such a grand occasion was truly the first time it had appeared.

This didn't just mean that the game had sold two million copies on Steam; it meant heat, it meant unprecedented huge heat in the game.

It was said that good wine wasn't afraid of deep alleys, but if there hadn't been the overwhelming advertising and saturated news bombardment for more than half a year, "Final Fantasy" would absolutely not have been able to have such heat.

Of course, how many people could be retained would depend on the specific quality of the game; after all, Steam had a "white-piao" (crossed out)…… refund option.

If the game didn't meet the players' psychological expectations, they could refund it within two hours of playing.

So far, the refund rate of "Final Fantasy" had been kept quite well and wasn't high.

As for the evaluation, it would have to wait a while before it appeared; most people were still in the game and had no time to come out for evaluation.

The feast of Bilibili cloud players had already begun; countless UP hosts had already pre-downloaded "Final Fantasy" and entered it the moment the game was unbanned.

The one with the most viewers was the well-known UP host in the Bilibili game area, Xi Hongshi, and the configuration used was also the top-tier 9900k+2080ti.

After Xi Hongshi finished adjusting the initial options such as lighting, language, keys, difficulty, etc., the game officially started.

Like the first screen that appeared during the PV promotion, the male lead Cloud, controlled by the player, crouched on the speeding train; above his head was a skyscraper with bright lights, and around him was a red furnace flashing with industrial atmosphere.

The flowing light and phantom flashed in front of everyone; this movie-like image quality, in the ultimate configuration and screen, brought an incomparably shocking experience to all viewers.

This was the unique advantage of electronic games; they could allow people to seek reality in the virtual and obtain an immersive experience.

Following the guidance of the task, Xi Hongshi controlled Cloud to converge with one partner after another.

Immediately after was the fighting scene praised by the media; although there weren't many skills at present, just the flashing, turning, and moving were cool enough to make a group of viewers dumbfounded.

Regarding this, Luo Quan expressed that this was very normal.

Because her action design for "Final Fantasy" didn't refer to the original work but copied another action 3A—Devil May Cry 5!

This series was recognized as the coolest and most refreshing in Japanese action games!

Combined, the game experience brought was completely incomparable to any single-player game now.

ps. Scout's Zoe is too strong; it's going to the fifth game. Come on, National Power! ===== CHAPTER 617 =====