Chapter 159: The Trap

Translator:

_Min_

Editor:

Yukira_

Whenever Lingyu Technology’s name cropped up, most mobile games fanatics would automatically think of games with unique designs and outstanding gameplay, such as ‘I am ATM’ and ‘Dota History’.

Inside the Lingyu Technology building in Wanghai City, Ling Zhongtian was sitting in front of the office table with a dark face as he silently looked at the information on his table. The manager responsible for mobile game development, Qian Haiming, had his head lowered while sweating profusely and waiting for the boss’ reprimand.

After a long while, Ling Zhongtian finally spoke.

“In one month, ‘Dota History’s’ ACU dropped by 10% and KPI indices decreased by 17%…This is the goose that lays a golden egg you’re telling me about? And what about ‘I am ATM’? What’s your team doing for the past month?” His voice was trembling due to rage.

ACU referred to the average concurrent users, while KPI referred to key performance indicators. The first was related to the sustainability of the game, while the latter was related to the game’s profitability. At this moment, however, in front of him was a report that showed the stats of their two most profitable mobile games were in great decline.

[It was still fu*king okay last month!]

BANG! Ling Zhongtian threw the document in his hands on the table with great force, his lungs were on the verge of exploding due to anger.

The scolded Qian Haiming had a face of being greatly wronged. It was really not his fault.

Swallowing, he tried to organize his sentence in his head before explaining quietly to his boss, “Boss, this really cannot be blamed on us.”

Taking a deep breath, Ling Zhongtian picked up the cup on the table to take a sip of tea, and gradually calmed the anger in his chest.

“It’s that ‘New Era’, right?”

“Mhmm.” Qian Haiming felt secretly relieved that the boss understood the situation, but the atmosphere remained tense as ever.

These two games of the company were very profitable, and ‘Dota History’ had a record of a staggering cash flow of 200 million per month. Although the result was somewhat watered down, it was not far off from the truth.

The issue had to do with ‘Dota History’, despite running for over a year, had nothing new to offer. Unlike PC games, mobile games’ real-time interactive capability was already very limited; thus, it was destined to severely limit the player’s likelihood to stick to the game through social interaction. It could be said that when mobile game players quit the game, the reluctance to part with the game would be mainly due to the equipment and diamonds and not because of their good friends in the game.

After last year’s success, the active users of ‘Dota History’ had been gradually decreasing. However, Qian Haiming had still a bit of skill, as he led the entire project team to devise numerous unique events which allow the KPI to barely hit the mark.

But who would have thought that a highly competitive game would take the market by storm and took a huge piece of the pie away?

Ling Zhongtian fell into a deep contemplation while looking at the report on the table.

As the president of a corporation, he obviously would not be clueless about the existence of the most promising mobile game in the market.

The game’s massive content made it difficult for players to get bored due to repetitive gameplay.

It also offered real-time interaction comparable to that of PC games which meant that when players play the game, it really felt like an online game rather than playing just with a single list of friends.

And more importantly, how come it didn’t consume a lot of data?

Ling Zhongtian was so jealous that he wanted to spew forth profanity, or perhaps he had already cursed in his mind.

The three points above were the major limitations of today’s mobile game development. All major game developers that wanted their share of the market were racking their brains to come up with the best possible solutions to overcome these three major hurdles.

Too much game content? If users saw a game with a few gigabytes, they would be too lazy to download it. High hardware specs? This would cause lag and make the phone hot. High data usage? This might make telecom companies happy, but this would definitely enrage the users; thus, the game would naturally be unable to survive.

How to use software packers to include more game contents that most of the mobile phones would be able to run, and would not consume too much data. This has always been a great source of concern in the industry.

Fortunately, came a software which realized the inspiration of many programmers.

It was Future 1.0.

By simplifying the algorithm, the performance of mobile phones was