Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

The entire film was only forty-eight seconds long, not even a full minute.

However, the clash between the several experts was simply too intense. Aside from the initial atmosphere-building shots of a rainy night, every second afterwards was immersed in fierce combat.

The clanging of weapons collided non-stop, the siege of the men in black, the resistance of the besieged couple, the lone hero against four… the pace was just too fast.

In the players’ eyes, every second of the film seemed to be playing at fast forward, too overwhelming for the eyes to catch.

Yet, the hero skillfully seized the fleeting chance, risking his life to ensure his wife escapes, and then, when everyone assumed he would grab the sword and counter-attack, he is ambushed by the Mother and Child Sword, falling instantly into a hopeless situation.

From despair to hope, then from heaven to hell.

All that happened within mere seconds, leaving everyone utterly blindsided.

The players were still stunned long after the video ended, the resounding echo of the final drumbeats still seeming to linger in their ears.

But once they recovered, they were all beside themselves with enthusiasm-

“Finally got to see it! The battle between heroes!”

“So fast! So powerful! So cool!”

“It was too fast, didn’t see it clearly, let me watch it three more times!”

…

The combat system of “Chang’an” is one of the most anticipated contents by the players, yet it’s also the content that Yunmeng has released the least information about.

Everyone knew: Xu Chun, who could split bullets with a sword in the virtual world and was also a master of swordplay in reality, was recruited by Lincoln into Yunmeng a long time ago. Later on, they traveled around the country, amassing experts into Yunmeng. Many of them were young experts with strong reputations who had aced martial arts championships.

With the talents of these experts combined with the industry’s top technical team, the cold weapon combat system they create will undoubtedly not disappoint.

But prior to seeing it, one can’t help but be apprehensive, especially with Yunmeng’s reluctance in releasing related information, it amplified the worries.

However, now as “Night Rain” released, much of the players’ worries have been greatly alleviated!

At the same time, martial arts lovers are ecstatic!

Yunmeng’s remaining stock of 420,000 units of [Mirage 2.0] was bought out, completely clearing its inventory.

How many martial arts enthusiasts are there in Daxia?

And how many more in the surrounding, East Asian, and Southeast Asian countries?

No one knows.

But now, this film seemed to have stirred the hornet’s nest, drawing them all out!

Even many middle-aged and older users who only logged into the virtual world to play cards, rarely doing anything else, for the first time were prompted to participate more actively, and finally started to transition from “users” to “players”.

The sensation caused by this film was not only limited to the East Asian cultural region, it also triggered intense discussions in Europe and America.

Not only were the players in Yunmeng’s system in Europe and America intrigued, many outsiders who saw this breathtakingly fierce cold weapon combat also continually exclaimed and questioned: “What is this new movie about to be released?”

When given an introduction by the players, and found that it was actually a game, many people instantly rushed to online and physical stores, intending to purchase the Mirage console.

However, whether they can buy it or not is up to their luck.

Yunmeng is still in a rapid expansion phase in many countries, especially those in the Americas, where their consoles sometimes sell out as soon as they hit the shelves.

Deciding spur of the moment to buy a console is by no means an easy task.

*

Two hours later, the discussion fever regarding the short film not only hadn’t cooled down, it had instead escalated.

Online, there were already petitions from players asking Yunmeng to invest in producing a real martial arts movie, to shoot it in Virtual Chang’an, ideally with Lincoln as the producer and Alex as the lead actress.

This ridiculous idea, in just a little over two hours, received the approval of more than three hundred thousand people.

Moreover, both the media and players were discussing: If Yunmeng had used this battle short film named “Night Rain” as a trailer instead of the city tour film, would the outcome have been better?@@novelbin@@

And Samuel had already initiated the second step of the promotional plan – pre-sales.

Lincoln wasn’t really in favor of pre-selling games, as he always felt this move had the risk of transferring losses and exploiting players.

But Samuel thought that pre-sale was a great promotional tool, and could largely test the effectiveness of the promotion. As for Lincoln’s worries, they could be avoided by corresponding measures.

In the end, Samuel successfully persuaded Lincoln.

So…

The pre-sale of “Chang’an” officially begins!

The price is still the standard for Yunmeng’s top games: 500 dollars.

The players and media weren’t surprised; they were accustomed to judging the status of a new game inside Yunmeng by its price—

If the game only costs two or three hundred dollars, or is free with profit coming from monthly subscriptions or in-app purchases, no matter how good the game is or how popular it is outside, it may be treated as a step-child inside Yunmeng.

But if it sells for 500 dollars, it definitely is a biological child! A blockbuster you can buy blindly!

As for whether the price is a bit expensive…

The points from Yunmeng’s [Rehabilitation Plan], the obviously inflated cash transactions of “Pokémon” now, the year-end bonus, and the Spring Festival’s money coming soon… all are solutions.

However, just this wouldn’t achieve the [dominating screen] effect Samuel wanted.

So, there are two important rules for this pre-sale—

First: Players who are not satisfied can get an unconditional refund within three days after the game is released!

Second: 5% of the pre-sale proceeds and 3% of the official sale proceeds will all be donated to the [Ancient Architecture Recording and Protection Foundation] for the preservation of Daxia’s ancient architecture, without an upper limit, and the funds will be fully disclosed.

——

Players who originally intended to pre-order, seeing these two rules, have put down all their worries and decisively placed orders and paid.

Just within 10 minutes, the number of pre-ordering players exceeded one million, and on the same evening, it exceeded 3.5 million.

The next morning, it again exceeded 5 million!

The growth rate slowed down afterwards, but overall, the speed is still considerable.

One game media after another came to climax again!

——Not only because of the surprising pre-sale volume of “Chang’an”, but also because Yunmeng announced that it would “proportionally” donate part of the game proceeds, which will be fully transparent.

What does this mean?

It means that for the first time, everyone can confirm the final sales of a Yunmeng game!

Before this, Yunmeng also released game sales celebration pictures, but they never released the final ones.

“Assassins’ Alliance” only released the 20 million sales celebration picture.

“Speed Chase” did a little more, but only released up to 25 million.

Anyone with discerning eyes knows that the sales of these games must far exceed these numbers, but since Yunmeng doesn’t disclose them, nobody can do anything about it.

But this time it’s different!

This time, just look at the total amount of money Yunmeng donated to the foundation, then do a simple division, and you can get the real sales of “Chang’an”.

Both the media and the players are very curious about this result.

Because everyone wants to know: Has Yunmeng’s game sales really become the world’s first in the complete sense?

To be more clear: not just topping the list of serious large-scale games, nor being the first in total revenue calculated by sales times price, but winning the famous spicy hot game “Rock n Sex”‘s 120 million sales fairly and squarely at sales, and indisputably topping the world!

This may not be important to Lincoln and Yunmeng, but it is very important to the media and players!