Chapter 292: Pure and innocent Kodick, enthusiastic netizen Pei Yunteng

Bobby Cordick, this guy's exposure is neither high nor low.

On the one hand, as one of the heavyweights in the gaming industry, he does accept interviews on a regular basis, and the number is not small.

However, in this life, his identity is not the boss of any gaming company, but a rather delicate position, the president of the World Electronic Sports Association.

The reason why he can call the shots in the gaming industry is because of the influence of the family chaebol behind him, as well as some small tricks that are not worthy of being shown on the stage.

Because of this layer of cover-up, although the outside world knows that there is a person like Cotick, their impression of him is just that he is the head of a third-party organization, nothing more.

So after the Honor incident, no one thought of this guy at the first time.

Until Sun Xiang, the leaker, let the cat out of the bag.

The moment the name Kodick came out of Sun Xiang's mouth, angry fans dug up all the information they could about Kodick.

But I must say that this guy is indeed a dandy young man with a strong background, and he is really good at protecting his personal information.

The only information that netizens can find about him is that he is the president of the World Electronic Sports Association.

This subtle result made many people wonder:

Can the boss of the World Electronic Sports Association control the overall planning direction of Honor Company?

Aren't they supposed to be the support unit that helps contact venues, find sponsors, and obtain event permits?
As for Cotick himself, all the information that appears on the Internet proves that he seems to be just an ordinary person in the industry, with no highlights and no black history.

For a moment, this clue that was finally uncovered seemed to be broken again.

……

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

A valuable porcelain cup drew a graceful arc in the air, and slammed heavily onto the floor made of valuable wood, turning into pieces.

Accompanied by the hysterical roar of an old, white, fat man and the unpleasant noise produced by banging the table.

When the outside world was in chaos, the situation in Codick's office was naturally not much better.

"Why? Why has the popularity dropped so drastically?" Codick's red eyes shot out a fierce look that seemed to want to devour anyone, and he wished he could tear the report in his hand into pieces.

He was not concerned about the outside world's uproar or even the disclosure of some of his own information.

All he cares about is the popularity of the league under his control and the wealth that can be converted into it for him.

Just now, he received the ratings and popularity reports of major Honor Leagues around the world after their rematches.

The data for the first day was indeed good. Offline tickets were hard to come by, and the online live broadcast room was very busy.

Even the various TV game channels, which had basically nothing to broadcast in the past year or two, causing a sharp drop in popularity, have seen a surge in ratings, and seem to be making a comeback.

At that time, Cotick even opened a bottle of champagne, believing that the new league had great potential.

As for the traffic trend that appeared online about the home-changing flow affecting the viewing experience, he defined it as a harmless bug.

Anyway, it’s not difficult to fix it. How much impact can it have if the programmers can fix it by working overtime for one day?

But starting from the next day, the data no longer made him laugh.

Taking the Glory of China Division as an example, a total of three games were scheduled for the second day. The most popular one was between another league powerhouse, Weicao, and Wind Howl, a strong playoff team with the most luxurious lineup in the new season.

Although there are many internal conflicts in Howling, there are constant intrigues and tricks among the core members.

But from the outside, this is a top team with two All-Stars and two quasi-All-Stars.

The battle between them and the powerful team Vici Gaming should have been the most eye-catching.

What surprised Kotick was that even though the official had announced that the game would urgently fix the content related to the home-changing flow to ensure the viewing quality of the game,
The popularity of this focus battle, which they also had high hopes for, was also halved.

Ah, not just beheading, to be precise, beheading at the ankle.

Abolishing the home-swapping trend does not seem to have won back the fans. Even in the most hyped pre-match interviews and player appearances, the popularity of the Hucao War was only one-third of that of the opening game.

Moreover, this one-third of the popularity was declining at a fairly fast rate during the competition.

That’s right, without the home-swapping flow, the start of the game really doesn’t seem like the two teams are arresting each other anymore.

But looking at Tiny Herb and Wind Howl, those best professional players were rolling around and scraping in front of the bosses...

Except that everyone had a good time at the beginning,

The part where the professional players fight the boss doesn't seem as interesting as everyone imagined...

I used to enjoy watching it on various video software...

The audience is not Pei Yunteng, so they cannot understand the connection between the two.

But they know that if the game is not good, they won’t watch it.

Therefore, whether it was the TV stations or the live broadcast rooms, the popularity of the Glory League began to drop at a cliff-like speed shortly after the start of the game.

As for the scene...

The director of Tencent Esports didn't dare to turn the camera towards the audience and could only keep the camera fixed on the stage.

The auditorium was empty, and the few audience members there mostly had confused or drowsy looks on their faces.

Although there are some reasons why the popularity of the Howling home court is far less than that of the Magic City's Samsara home court;
But just from this perspective, it is indeed horrible.

Even with such popularity, this is a focus battle that can be considered top-level in the China Glory Professional League, which is currently the best-running league in the world.

You know, globally, only Xianyu, owned by Tencent, has given enough respect to the Honor League, which has been half-dead for more than a year, and has given it the highest level of publicity from the beginning.

The live streaming platforms and self-media platforms in other countries do not have this respect. They only care about whether broadcasting Glory can bring them just the right amount of popularity.

After seeing the popularity drop and word-of-mouth collapse on the first day, they will not continue to give such a high publicity priority like Tenghai did.

After all, we have always been a "fair, just and open" alliance!
Everyone is waiting to watch LEC/LCS/LCK, how can we deprive them of the traffic that originally belongs to them?
Then, on the third day, the fourth day...

After a week, the popularity of the Honor Professional League has been slashed from its peak level, which was able to challenge the League of Legends, to its current level.

If we change to a game with a normal player composition and healthy game operations, such as a certain parallel world OW, even if it is controversial, its popularity will not drop so quickly.

But Glory does not have this ability.

The high threshold itself, as well as the crazy cutting of old players in the previous public opinion war, have made the fan base of this not-so-phenomenal game highly hollow.

It is simply a pipe dream to rely on the popularity of the game itself to feed back to the league.

Seeing such a report on Codick's desk almost made him die of anger.

He may not care about anything else, but not the revenue.

The popularity and revenue of the league not only affects how much money he can make in the future, but also whether the forces behind him will continue to support his actions.

The lack of money can break the defenses of this old squid more than anything else.

"Waste, complete waste!" Codick's almost resentful gaze was fixed on Tao Dapao, who was shrinking his head like an ostrich.

The latter suddenly felt a chill, but dared not say a word.

There's no way, they were the ones responsible for changing the game, and they also worked together to formulate the rules of the game.

Now that a big problem has arisen, naturally they have to take the blame.

But Todd himself also felt wronged.

They didn't start out as competitive game designers, so they were forced to make competitive games.

During this period, time was tight and the task was heavy, and because of Kotick's persistent urging, we had to skip some details.

It is a miracle that there are no problems with this game, which was made in a hurry by a group of designers with seriously inexperienced designers.

Moreover, Todd had consulted Cotick before and he knew that the current competitive mode might not be mature, so it was very suitable to continue to develop MMORPG.

Or simply specialize in BOSS battles and make a new type of online game that focuses on BOSS hunting.

By making some appropriate in-app purchases that do not affect the balance of the game, wouldn't it be a matter of minutes to make money?
In the end, isn't it that Codick, who is bent on making a fortune from the new e-sports market created by Tencent and Hai, forces them to put this immature new model on the shelves as the official league rules?

It succeeded because of your foresight, and all the credit is yours.

We failed because we designers are useless, while you are pure and non-stick.

For a moment, Todd wanted to quit his job. It was not worth it to work for this bastard. But he held back.

Of course, Kotick himself is just a fat guy with little evidence, but what is truly important is the capital he represents.

Those jackals have long since gained decisive control of the European and American game markets through various means.

Otherwise, there would be no way to force this group of meritorious producers together to create Battleship.

If they want to, they have a hundred ways to make a game company fail.

Public opinion offensive, financial strikes, various sanctions...

Most of the studios where these designers work have to act according to the moods of these people.

Therefore, no matter how dissatisfied Todd was with Cordick, he could only swallow his anger and let it go.

"I don't care what method you use, just find a way to come up with a game mode that can increase attention again!" Codick was completely unaware of Todd's resentment and was still banging the table.

He himself knew nothing about game development, and had no idea how difficult it was to conceive a new game mode.

He only knew how to squeeze his employees to get this done, even though Todd was not his employee in essence.

Todd, who was very angry, left Codick's office with a resentful look on his face and returned to the studio.

As soon as I entered the door, I saw Aonuma and a few other guys gathered together, whispering to something.

Seeing Todd coming back, Qing Nu immediately went to meet him and asked, "How's it going?"

Todd sighed helplessly: "What else can we do? We are required to come up with a game mode that the audience will like to watch as quickly as possible."

Aonuma spat disdainfully: "That's easy for you to say!"

Todd spread his hands and saluted the executive deputy goat: "There is nothing we can do. We have to execute what we have to do."

At this point, he also had a headache: "It's really strange. After the addition of the BOSS mode, the community has been quite enthusiastic. Why don't people like to watch the competition?"

Although it is indeed the result of rushing to get the game on the shelves, this model is indeed one of the optimal solutions arrived at by a group of designers after discussion and reference to games such as League of Legends.

Why did it suffer such a disastrous defeat as soon as it went online?

Of course, he was just sighing and didn't expect to get an answer from them.

But Aonuma answered without hesitation: "Because our thinking was wrong from the beginning!"

"...what the hell?" Todd was stunned, thinking he had heard it wrong.

But Aonuma continued to talk nonstop:

"We initially added BOSS to the map because Pei Sang's League of Legends designed a large number of resource points in the map."

"But we just mechanically did the work of 'adding resource points' and ignored the most fundamental problem:"

“Resources are most interesting when they are fought over by players!”

At first, Todd thought that Aonuma was simply out of his mind because of the excessive stress during this period.

But listening to him talking incessantly, he actually fell into deep thought.

Then, an epiphany struck!
Fighting for resources, yes, fighting for resources!

This isn't even exclusive to competitive games, but something that all multiplayer online games have in common.

Resources are meant to be fought for.

In League of Legends, jungle clearing never attracts anyone's attention, even if it's a Baron, if one side has given up the fight, they won't get any screen time;
In the interstellar journey, the popularity of maps with poor ore is generally much higher than that of maps with rich ore, because only the process of competing with the opponent for resources is the most exciting.

Not to mention battle royale games like Naraka: Bladepoint, where the only purpose is to grab more resources and survive in the cruel survival game.

It doesn’t matter whether the resource itself is a monster, a boss, or simply a treasure chest. Different forms of resources have different ways of fighting.

But once resources appear, both sides must fight for them!

However, whether it is Todd, Aonuma, or other designers such as Miyazaki, almost all of them are from the production of stand-alone games.

The joy of single-player games often lies in the utilization of resources themselves and the joy of killing monsters.

So much so that they subconsciously deviated from the direction when dealing with this fundamental contradiction.

After thinking it through, Todd suddenly realized where he had gone wrong.

But at the same time, a feeling of completely uncontrollable grief and anger surged up in my heart.

He almost "questioned" Aonuma in a resentful tone: "Since you knew all this, why didn't you bring it up earlier?"

Unexpectedly, Aonuma spread his hands in a scoundrelly manner: "Because it was not my idea."

"Who is that?"

"Him!" Aonuma raised the phone in his hand proudly.

Todd looked carefully and saw a private message page. The other party accurately answered their questions with one sentence:

“Map resources in competitive games are meaningless without competition among players.”

Of course, the most important thing is not this sentence, but the person who said it.

Yunteng.Pei,

Todd rubbed his eyes, snatched the phone again, clicked on Pei Yunteng's homepage to confirm again and again, and finally found out with a smile and tears that it was actually him!

"Since we haven't come to a conclusion after discussing it for so long, I decided to ask Pei-san, who has the highest attainments in competitive game design," Aonuma said with some pride.

He is a die-hard fan of Pei Yunteng.

Todd didn't know what to say.

Aonuma actually dared to take the most serious deadlock that Glory has currently encountered and go to his rival to resolve the issue, without fear of being deliberately misled.

The key is that Pei Yunteng really answered him very considerately.

One dares to ask, the other dares to answer, the show effect is really maximized.

"In fact, Pei-san may have stopped considering us as his rivals the moment he saw the finished product we handed in." Miyazaki interrupted at this time, his voice full of emotion.

"How can a game that doesn't even fully understand the basic concept of competition compete with the world's top e-sports masters?"

This is depressing, but it is also true.

Todd sighed: "Let's not talk about this. The question is, what should we do now?"

Although they finally figured out the crux of the problem, at this critical juncture, they simply didn't have time to overhaul the entire system.

Even if we only make minor modifications to the existing framework, it will be a huge project considering the size and system complexity of the game Honor of Kings.

The popularity of the Glory League is declining exponentially every day.

When this question was mentioned, Aonuma and others, who had been quite excited just now, fell into silence involuntarily.

That bastard, Kotick, didn't even try to understand their current predicament.

He only knows how to pass the buck and exploit.

"F**K Kotick!" They had no choice but to curse him viciously and give Kotick the middle finger at his dear horse in the Kuiper Belt.

Just when the designers were gritting their teeth and planning to work all night to make a more interactive version,
"Mr. Aonuma! Oh no! Something big has happened!" A former Hell Programmer who was brought into the team by Aonuma suddenly exclaimed while staring at his phone.

The designers were stunned and without thinking much, they immediately gathered around to watch.

"Seizing IP, introducing gambling, and forcing the game to become zzzq? Revealing the biggest culprit for the collapse of the Glory League, Bobby Kotick's unknown past!"

This is a relatively well-known self-media abroad, but it can only be said to be a wild one, and the title is also exaggerated.

But Todd and others were not calm after seeing the content.

Just looking at the charges listed in the title, it seems that Kodick... does meet all of them?
He... exploded?

　The first update of 5,000 words has been sent. There will be more later.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)