Chapter 160: Sandbag

Liu Tianxian looped her arm around Fang Hong's shoulder and sat in the chair beside him: "What are you listening to?"

"Game voice-acting. Have a listen." Fang Hong put the headphones on her head. Liu Tianxian pressed one earcup with each hand, her big eyes darting about, and heard: "The enemy will reach the battlefield in thirty seconds. Crush them."

The voice was very infectious, giving one the feeling of being right there on the scene.

Fang Hong watched her from in front. At this moment her hair was no longer the waves from before, but had become long, straight, and black; her face was fair and smooth, with no makeup at all.

Liu Tianxian without makeup was the most natural and the most beautiful; once made up, she lost some of her fairy-like air.

"That voice sounds so familiar." Liu Tianxian took off the headphones.

"Your old Chinese Paladin 3 TV series — the teacher who did voice-acting for you, Li Ye — do you still remember?" Fang Hong said.

She was one of the Four Dan Actresses of the voice-acting world; in the original timeline, many heroes in Hero Glory were voiced by her.

Now Hero Glory had been online for some time. After launch, the response had been decent; with Tencent's help, it had a hundred thousand-plus players online at the same time.

However, that version of it was far too ancient — ranked play was still in a points format.

Hero Glory had also been in open beta for a while. Its concurrent player count wasn't as high, but it was steadily climbing.

The ranked format used tiers like Black Iron, Silver, Gold... up to King, with the strongest being Strongest King.

So although Fang Hong was copying Hero Glory, he wasn't copying the current Hero Glory — he was copying its later system.

Tencent's Propaganda Department was awesome, so right at launch it could pull in traffic. Jade Rabbit didn't have such strong promotional means, so it could only advance steadily, step by step, and make the experience solid.

Promoters slowly pushed it into internet cafes across the country, and there was also Bilibili as a promotional platform.

As long as it could keep players, it could attract more, and that in turn would bring in more — a game like this was meant for one person to pull along four or five others to play together.

As long as it was run well and players were treated like people, surpassing Tencent would be no problem at all.

Tencent treating players like people? What a joke! "Her!" Liu Tianxian's eyes went wide: "Is that teacher still here?"

"She is. I'll take you to her." Fang Hong took her hand.

The two arrived at the game department, Li Min's office, where two people — one man and one woman — were organizing their lines.

That is, which hero says which line — of course, limited to female voices and child voices; male voices wouldn't be appropriate.

Each hero only had one or two lines.

"Teacher Li."

The moment Liu Tianxian called out, both Li Min and Li Ye looked up at the same time — simply because they both had the surname Li.

But Li Min knew it wasn't him being called, so he lowered his head and went back to his own work, because whenever Liu Tianxian came over, she had never called him "teacher."

"Teacher Li Ye, long time no see." Liu Tianxian called out once more, confirmed the person, walked over and greeted her.

Li Ye was still very young now — short hair, round-framed glasses, looking rather intellectual.

"Yifei, long time no see." She smiled.

The last time she had seen Liu Tianxian was when she was very small — just a teenager, cute and adorable. Looking at her now, she had matured a little, but was still beautiful.

"You look just like before." Liu Tianxian had a sweet tongue; she went off to one side with Li Ye to catch up.

Liu Tianxian was someone who valued old ties; meeting someone she hadn't seen in a long time made her quite happy.

Fang Hong, meanwhile, was chatting with Li Min: "How long does it take players to match right now?"

"There's only one server at the moment. The longest matchmaking time is about two or three minutes." Li Min said.

"Optimize it. Shorten it." Fang Hong said.

"Well..." Li Min was a little embarrassed — without that many players, how could it be shortened?

"Shorten the game time, strengthen the confrontation — wouldn't that work? A match shouldn't be too long; an average of thirty to forty-five minutes is about right." Fang Hong said.

He had played it; right now a match ran about thirty-five to fifty minutes — so this would shorten it by roughly five minutes.

Shortening it by five minutes was equivalent to freeing a lot of people earlier; that was the right fit. If the game time was too long, it easily wore people out.

"Got it." Li Min agreed.

"Also, keep up the pace of releasing a new hero every ten days, and collect player feedback at all times. This game of ours needs to be run for the long haul, not the short term." Fang Hong instructed.

"Understood!" Li Min noted it down.

"You can put up one million US dollars as a prize purse and run a tournament." Fang Hong said.

"One million US dollars?"

Li Min was shocked — that much money scattered to players, what a waste.

Right now no game had ever run a tournament with a million-dollar prize purse — not even overseas; at most it was a hundred thousand, tops.

"Don't be so shallow. Run it once a year — how much could that cost? Some league, some seasonal tournament, some all-star match, and finally the Grand Finals — one round through and that's it. Take the players who play well and turn them into stars, create a star effect, then get streaming going, arrange for them to stream..."

Fang Hong said a great deal, leaving Li Min stunned, and roughly laid out the esports stage system for him.

Anyway, those who didn't go pro could be arranged to do streaming — they'd never have to worry about food or drink. Netizens in the future would only keep growing.

This would not only boost popularity, but also build name recognition and shape the brand. Conveniently, wasn't there Bilibili? There was still room to work with that.

Slowly building up the entire ecosystem of Hero Glory like this, the whole economic chain would rise along with it.

Of course, right now this was losing money, because no skins were being sold — skins were all try-on, purely to draw in popularity. Once popularity was up, try-on would be off the table.

Right now the goal was just to shape playability! Fang Hong was only putting forward a concept; the rest would be refined by his subordinates.

At present there was no head-on clash with Tencent either — Tencent's focus was on those money-making games: CrossFire, Dungeon & Fighter, QQ Speed, QQ Dance...

Not on Hero Glory.

The two chatted for a while. Liu Tianxian's side had also finished catching up; after saying goodbye, she and Fang Hong walked out of the game department together and went to take a look at the Best Special Effects department.

The Best Special Effects department now had over a hundred people, mainly because a lot of fresh graduates had been recruited earlier.

Now the effects artists were working on all kinds of models and CG effects — some for games, some for films.

The game one was Fortnite; the film one was Big Shot, doing its visual effects.

Fang Hong and Liu Tianxian stood in front of a computer monitor, watching the vehicles crashing wildly on screen; the surrounding background had been made very realistic.

At the time, the vehicle crashes were filmed on a green screen; the background was added in post-production, modeled after the backdrop of this Shanghai metropolis.

With a real-life reference to work from, it's much simpler.

The hard part is imagining it out of thin air — the art designers have to design it first, and only then can they render it as CG on the computer.

"You did a great job — you can't even tell it's fake," Liu Tianxian praised.

"Of course, it cost a fortune."

Fang Hong said a word, then turned to Yao Qi: "Can this be finished before the New Year Slot?"

"Yes, about a month should do it!" Yao Qi said.

That would be November — finished just before the New Year Slot, and by then the Best Special Effects department would have nothing left to do.

They still had to find them more work.

Only with a constant stream of work could Best Special Effects gain experience and train the team — they couldn't keep serving just the games division alone.

They had to develop on multiple fronts and make all-round progress.

The two wandered around for a bit, then left Jade Rabbit — it had only been a casual visit, and now Jade Rabbit changed day by day.

After getting in the car, Liu Tianxian sat in the passenger seat as usual: "So from now on, when you make films, you're going to lean into special effects."

"Right, I'm planning to shoot one for you first," Fang Hong said casually while driving.

"Huh? I'm not even stable yet — aren't you afraid your film won't get a theatrical release?" Liu Tianxian said with a smile.

"If it doesn't get released, I'll spank you," Fang Hong said, then reached out one hand as if to grope her bottom.

"Get lost!" Liu Tianxian swatted his hand: "Give you an inch and you open a dye shop!"

Actually, Fang Hong's hand was only going through the motions — it couldn't reach at all. The distance from the driver's seat to the passenger seat was too far; no one's arm was that long.

"Hey, what's the one you're going to shoot for me called?" Liu Tianxian asked, straightening up.

"An action-thriller with sci-fi elements. You play an amnesiac female lead who, after genetic modification, has both intelligence and combat power off the charts," Fang Hong gave a rough outline of the plot.

Liu Tianxian listened attentively: "Another big female-lead film?"

"Right — it depends on whether you can fight. But it doesn't matter, since it's sci-fi, the action doesn't need to be too difficult. As long as you have that kind of power — one punch can blow through a wall — that's enough. I believe you can do it," Fang Hong said.

Usually Liu Tianxian packed quite a punch — he had experienced it firsthand.

Liu Tianxian showed a fist like a "sandbag": "Just like when I hit you normally."

"Hey, if you're going to talk, talk — why compare me?" Fang Hong was speechless.

"Hehehe."

Liu Tianxian laughed out loud, then said seriously: "I can do it. Actually, I really like shooting action scenes — there are just fewer of them now."

"Action scenes with sci-fi are what look good — keeping up with the times. Just go straight to Bao Jinjin or Jiao Huajing for the script," Fang Hong said.

"Without going through you, would they give it to me?" Liu Tianxian looked at her.

"Why go through me? Who doesn't know you by now!" Fang Hong said, as if it were the most natural thing.

Liu Tianxian nodded, said nothing — she felt a sense of being trusted.

The car arrived at a Taigong Whole Fish Restaurant. From the outside it looked very rustic, like an ancient building.

"The fish here is really good — you'll know once you try it." Led by the server, Liu Tianxian said softly to Fang Hong.

When it came to dining, it was usually Liu Tianxian who took Fang Hong along, because her standing was higher and she was more particular about food.

(End of chapter)