"Oh, I see!"

After the management’s painstaking explanations, the shareholders and investors finally understood the significance of the investment.

However, they soon had new doubts.

Can the GAL League, which arose from "Star Emperor," really have such an exaggerated influence? Is it worth these giants rushing in to invest?

For this question, the management of these listed companies did not provide an answer.

Nonsense!

Explain to those middle-aged people who don’t watch eSports matches, rarely surf the Internet, and don’t understand the preferences of young people today—even if explained, would they understand?

To put it bluntly, the GAL League is just another eSports event!

Since it is eSports, it is destined that the majority of the audience and fans will be young people under 35, not a bunch of middle-aged people who only know how to browse short videos.

Only by entering this circle and empathizing with young people can one truly feel the booming popularity and influence of the GAL League.

If you’re not in this circle, talking to them about influence, popularity—it’s all just nonsense...

Chen Ba deeply understands this.

The top-tier "superstar" player Xu Xiaofei in the GAL League has an online popularity comparable to the stars in League of Legends.

As long as you’re young, whether you’ve played "Star Emperor" or watched the GAL League, you’ve likely come across related videos or reports, and undoubtedly know Xu Xiaofei.

But for the older generation, Xu Xiaofei? Who’s that? A household name eSports player? What’s eSports?

No way!

These are two completely unrelated groups, so it makes no sense to explain how impressive Xu Xiaofei is or how popular he is to them.

The same goes for the GAL League.

This competition is hailed as the Esports F1 and is globally recognized as a top-tier eSports event. Whether for its prize scale or its unique tour-based format, it receives high attention worldwide.

But the influence of this event truly needs to be viewed differently.

For gamers, the GAL League, known as the eSports F1, is unmissable. They’ll watch every match on time, or catch the replay if they miss it, and know all about the star players and top teams...

But for non-gamers, what’s eSports F1? Dude, I’ve only heard of F1; I’ve never heard of eSports F1!

"That’s also why we need to make ’Star Emperor 2’ to inject new momentum into the GAL League and attract more fresh blood."

In an internal meeting, Chen Ba eloquently spoke: "’Star Emperor’ is still too old and can’t meet the new era’s GAL League demands. A new game is needed at this time!"

The graphics certainly need to be better!

Not just game graphics; the combat effects must also be upgraded to top tier. After all, this is what we’re known for, and it must never be neglected.

Meanwhile...

Because the investors of "Star Emperor 2" are the major teams of the GAL League, this game is also "born for eSports," so in some aspects, necessary trade-offs will certainly be made.

"What are the necessary trade-offs?"

"Simply put, we need to serve the GAL League, not the ordinary players, and we mustn’t mix up these priorities."

Chen Ba explained: "The playability and fun of the game can be put aside for now; the important thing is to satisfy the viewing and balance of the competition."

Is "Star Emperor" an excellent fighting game?

No!

As a fighting game, "Star Emperor" is actually quite poor, with extremely bad character balance. Every version features a bunch of "overpowered" characters and "low-tier" characters.

This is also related to the concept Chen Ba had when designing this game!

When he initially designed "Star Emperor," he never expected the event system to become so developed and popular, so he was quite casual with character designs.

It didn’t matter if a character was a little stronger or weaker; back then, no one thought game balance was important.

However, things changed later on.

Kuangsha Venerable, Nether Dragon Venerable, Nine Yang Emperor...

Each version produced a new god, especially with the Nether Dragon Venerable incident, which truly infuriated everyone. It made players extremely concerned about balance between characters, so even slight tweaks would cause uproar.

Moreover, these version changes greatly affected the subsequent competition environment.

Based on these reasons, Chen Ba made up his mind for the sequel, "Star Emperor 2," to get the balance mechanism right from the start of game design.

Focus on the spectacle of the competition!

Ordinary players’ experience can be slightly adjusted as long as it ensures the matches are exciting and balanced. But if it impacts the competition, the ordinary players’ gaming experience can be sacrificed.

As said before, since this game was funded by the GAL League’s teams, following the principle of "he who pays the piper calls the tune," their opinions must be prioritized.

There may indeed be complaints from ordinary players, even saying that the sequel is not as fun as the first...

But there’s no way around it; compromises must be made. Many games can’t simultaneously cater to both player experience and the competition environment.

Take League of Legends as an example.

The ADs like Zeri and Aphelios have win rates almost at the bottom, yet the designers keep nerfing them. Isn’t that because the matches are very popular?

From an ordinary player’s perspective, it seems like the designers are deliberately causing trouble. These champions already have low win rates, so why keep nerfing them?

But to ensure matches are more balanced and exciting, this is indeed an unavoidable compromise.

Nerfing them allows more champions to appear on the field, and viewers won’t complain about seeing the same champions over and over.

Not nerfing ensures ordinary players’ experience, but the matches become exceedingly dull, with almost every match featuring identical champions, lulling people to sleep...

The compromise made by Riot’s designers clearly prioritizes "performance in competitions," and as for ordinary players’ experience, that’s secondary!

Chen Ba is doing the same thing, prioritizing performance in competitions over player experience for now.

"OK!"

After jotting this down, Liu Jinfu asked, "Ba, is there anything else we need to pay attention to?"

"Let me think..."

"Hmm, there is actually one more thing I almost forgot!" Chen Ba patted his forehead, suddenly recalling something.

Budget!

Damn it, he almost forgot the most crucial part. This is the most noteworthy detail of the "Star Emperor 2" project. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

As mentioned earlier.

"Star Emperor 2" is a game crowdfunded by various companies for Tianba Studio, with funding exceeding $400 million US Dollars.

So much money to make a sequel, and not even a AAA game, it’s definitely more than enough!

But Chen Ba wasn’t thinking about having more than enough; he was thinking about how much he could pocket. Once the money is in his hands, don’t expect to get it back.

"A little greed isn’t really greed!"

Chen Ba, eyes shining, said, "Taking out a million from $400 million should be enough for us, right?"

Liu Jinfu: "..."

Lu couldn’t stand it anymore, rolling his eyes and said, "Ba, don’t go too far! Corruption isn’t done like that, what can you do with a million?"

Spending only a million out of $400 million?

Ba’s crazy idea almost fried Lu’s brain CPU. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out how to make this game with just a million?

"Then how much do you think is suitable?"

"At least ten million, and I’m talking about US Dollars!" Lu calculated and said.

"That’s too much..."

Chen Ba was still hesitating.

Ten million US Dollars, converted to RMB, is several tens of millions. How can we be so wasteful? He thought one or two million RMB would be enough.

"...It’s not impossible!"

Lu nodded first, then looked at Chen Ba meaningfully and said, "But are you sure you want to be this greedy?"

Using only about 1% of the $400 million budget, the rest all pocketed by Ba.

If word of this gets out, the hardware manufacturers might not mind. After all, they anticipated Ba’s "cost-cutting" when they invested.

But the shareholders and investors behind these companies aren’t going to be so lenient. Can they really let Ba off the hook?