mousepad-d2 Chapter 55 In short—dopamine secretion!
Chapter 55 In short—dopamine secretion!
From a visual perspective, both games feature a simple and unadorned pixel art style, making it difficult to attract casual players at first glance. Their total sales on the first day of release did not even exceed 100,000.
Of these few sales, the majority came from customers who bought Yang Yi and the Beehive brand because of their reputation.
These casual games, which rely on gameplay, atmosphere, and fun to win over players, are not the type that become an instant hit upon release. Their real popularity and buzz depend on word-of-mouth from players to slowly build up and gradually develop.
But that's how independent studios operate. What does that have to do with Yang Yi? He has money and connections.
It still has considerable popularity, while the original work needs several months to ferment, but Yang Yi can even shorten it to a few days.
He managed to recruit nearly a thousand livestreamers and outstanding video creators worldwide in one go.
Even if a significant portion of their fans overlap, it's enough to demonstrate to tens of millions of ordinary players how excellent these two mini-games from Hive are.
The level of buzz generated by 10,000 people is vastly different from the level of buzz generated by 10 million people.
In just two days, the highlights and fun of the two games were widely known, and more and more players appreciated their unique features.
The previously sluggish sales curve rebounded and steadily increased.
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Today I'd like to recommend a game to everyone.
This might be the most enjoyable game you can play at the 28 yuan price point to date – Vampire Survivor.
The main feature begins.
The little character stands in the center, and monsters swarm in from all directions. All you can do is press the directional keys to dodge the monsters.
There are no other operations required. It features automatic attack, automatic aiming, and automatic pickup, and can be played with one hand.
At this point, the audience might ask: Is this even considered a game?
Calculate!
Moreover, this game is one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played.
It vividly illustrates that "products from bee colonies are guaranteed to be of the highest quality."
This game is full of pixelation; characters, props, monsters—everything is pixelated.
At first glance, you definitely won't be interested in opening it, but once you do, your body will continuously release dopamine, and you'll enjoy it for the entire game.
In the early stages of the game, your weapons are very difficult to use, and you need to use various movement techniques to kill even a small monster.
Surviving for 30 minutes is your only goal.
Fortunately, this situation won't last long; killing monsters will drop experience gems.
Walk to the side and it will automatically pick up items. When the experience bar is full, you will level up. The level-up reward is a random weapon or a passive skill that you can choose from three options.
Now, dopamine is being released in your body, and you're immersed in an endless cycle of killing monsters, leveling up, and killing monsters again.
As time goes by, your weapons become more abundant, and your monster-killing efficiency gradually increases. At this time, a sense of growth and exhilaration surges within you.
A stronger version of yourself is steadily growing, and you now have greater confidence that you can last for 30 minutes.
As the game progresses, elite monsters will begin to appear around you. They are faster, have more health, deal more damage, and are much harder to defeat than regular monsters.
Fortunately, defeating them will drop treasure chests, which can be used to upgrade your existing weapons and passive abilities.
(Here's a little bonus: the unboxing effect and sound were inspired by slot machines.)
Similarly, there are big prizes like in a slot machine—with a very small probability, you can draw three or even five weapon passives.
In terms of the anticipation of unboxing, Swarm has undoubtedly learned the essence of slot machines.
As you grow stronger, so do the monsters. When elite monsters gather in large numbers, you start to feel overwhelmed.
Then you suddenly discover that different weapons and passive abilities can be combined to create a super weapon, and you experience a qualitative change.
The power of the super weapon finally allowed you to mow down enemies, with countless elite monsters falling in droves before you, and the dopamine in your body finally reaching its peak.
Right now, the whole game is simple, mindless, fun, and pure for you.
There are no deeply moving stories or profound truths, only the ultimate pleasure gained from simple operations.
Just when you thought you were invincible, 30 minutes were up, and a grim reaper came flying at you. You turned into bones in less than a second.
Just then, you discover that two new achievements have appeared on your homepage that you haven't unlocked yet—survive to 31 minutes and kill the God of War.
Okay, now you know, even Death can die.
You can hardly appreciate the charm of Vampire Survivors without playing it yourself.
After playing for a few days, I even wondered, is this game really only 28? Isn't that too cheap?
Alright, that concludes this video...
This single video garnered three million views on the LiBi video website.
This generated tremendous buzz for the game, which in turn led to more people buying and playing it. And once people played it, enthusiastic players would write reviews and share their experiences.
Excellent word-of-mouth continues to radiate outwards, attracting more casual viewers to join the fandom, creating a snowball-like positive cycle.
Popularity, sales, and reputation have all contributed to the momentum, making it unstoppable.
The first week's statistics were a pleasant surprise for Yang Yi, with Stardew Valley selling 220 million copies and Vampire Survivors selling 180 million copies.
At first glance, the two games seem to have poor sales, with sales combined only slightly more than half that of Plants vs. Zombies.
However, this is in comparison to Plants vs. Zombies, which has long been considered a top-tier casual game globally for the past five years.
Even if we add "Evil Engraving" to the mix, the three games combined might not surpass 720 million.
Yang Yi had anticipated this outcome and remained calm.
He knew that the two games were not going to become wildly popular and reach the top, but rather to gradually penetrate the market through word of mouth and develop in the long term.
But the outside world doesn't see it that way; the number of bees that have died in the past few days is obvious to all.
Despite such strenuous promotion, the combined first-week sales of the two games barely reached 400 million, proving that Hive Games is already on a downward trend.
[Bad news—the combined sales of Hive's two new games barely reached 400 million in their first week!]
[Despite spending tens of millions on Game for Good (GG) marketing, *Vampire Survivors* only sold less than 200 million copies in its first week, indicating the game's decline is underway!]
[Yang Yi falls from grace; new game suffers a major setback, potentially marking the first failure for the entire bee industry!]
[The fallen genius game designer—Yang Yi, are his two consecutive pixel-style games just another way to rip off players?]
Even Sun Shan from Pig Farm's Guangyao Studio took the opportunity to speak out, his words laced with sarcasm.
He bluntly stated that Yang Yi was using the popularity accumulated by "Overwatch" to release a game with graphics that were as bad as those from ten years ago, clearly just trying to appease the players.
However, what surprised many in the industry was that Xunteng, the sworn enemy of the bee colony, did not come out to kick them while they were down this time.
No one can say for sure whether XunTeng is wary of the current strength of the Beehive, or whether it is secretly plotting and preparing to make an even bigger move.
With the elder brother no longer leading the way, many insiders feel that his sarcastic and unassuming demeanor has lost its momentum, which is quite unsettling.
As for why XunTeng was absent from this round of criticism?
Li Xiaoguang put down the controller with a complicated expression. He felt embarrassed to bark like a dog after playing the two games for a while.
Even if you gave those sarcastic people ten years, they still wouldn't be able to develop those two mosaic games that they look down on!