Chapter 13: The Best Way to Milk Players Is Still Online Games!

The popularity of an indie game, without external interference, often rises quickly and dissipates just as fast.

So-called external interference naturally refers to promotional marketing and other strategies beyond the game itself.

[Cold Window Study Simulator] is the same; although it became a sensation for various reasons for a while, this kind of popularity is like rootless water, impossible to last long.

Even though Chen Ba specifically sought help from two major streamers to extend the popularity, this method could not change the game’s overall trend of declining daily popularity.

Another week passed, and as time entered mid-July, game sales could no longer rise.

Daily sales growth of a few thousand has already become a thing of the past, with the sudden plunge in popularity, now daily download figures struggle to maintain even triple digits.

The drop in popularity leads to a sharp decline in game downloads...

And this sharp decline in downloads results in a chain reaction causing Chen Ba’s income to plummet, transforming from gold flow to almost negligible.

That’s the way it is with single-player games!

Although income has witnessed a roller-coaster experience, Chen Ba’s mood remains stable, at least not provoked by thoughts of regret.

From the time he chose to make single-player games, he anticipated such a situation would occur.

A buyout model for single-player games is always a one-off transaction!

Even those 3A masterpieces have limited popularity and sales only when first released; as players saturate, the popularity and sales too decline sharply.

"No wonder online games are so popular; this one-off deal is nothing compared to the continuous harvesting in online games."

Chen Ba sighed.

Developers for single-player games earn just at the wave of game release; how much they earn depends, and unless they slash prices for promotions, revenue flows rarely see any big change thereafter.

On the other hand, with online games, whenever operation planners come up with new events, release some new game metrics, skins, and items for sale, or introduce a new draw pool for players, money flows directly into their pockets, a near crazy profit.

Crucially, core players fond of online games are like being harvested one crop after another.

A wave harvested this month?

No worries! When next month’s salary is out, another wave can be harvested.

What premium crops!

Not like single-player game players who after buying a game must go online specially to check ’lowest price in history,’ without it there’s no sincerity, no sincerity means no purchase.

After buying, they still have to check if it’s good; if not fun, poor optimization or has Bugs, they send direct negative reviews with flowery curses that make you unable to lift your head.

And finally request a refund, leaving developers with zero money.

The more he thought about how "money’s hard to earn and shit’s tough to eat," the more Chen Ba saw it as the ultimate truth, he secretly decided that should the day come he’s close to starvation, he too would go into online games.

Given his technical prowess, keen market senses, and... trivial system enhancement, while not promising big fortunes, having plenty and living well shouldn’t be an issue.

Speaking of the system, Chen Ba instantly felt angry.

He didn’t plan to fix the "Herding Cows" Bug found in [Cold Window Study Simulator], but still looked into the specific causes of the Bug.

His findings left him speechless.

The Bug was actually rooted in the "core code" provided by the system, and importantly, this code couldn’t be modified, any attempt would collapse the entire game framework, making it unresponsive to user commands.

"It’s not that I’m lazy and don’t want to fix Bugs; it’s that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t..." thought Chen Ba in resignation.

To this day, he still doesn’t know how [The Hardest Core Game Producer System] came to be, let alone interpret the code it provides.

That stuff is really like scripture, isn’t it?

Chen Ba has suspected for a while that the core game code provided by the system might be some extremely special programming language, definitely beyond human programmers’ comprehension.

That string of symbols resembling ghost pictographs, wouldn’t it be bizarre if he could understand them.

He also checked online for related information, confirming this wasn’t written in a language known to humanity or ever existing historically.

Could it be alien script?

Derived computer programs in mysterious script, it’s normal that Chen Ba can’t understand, but what he couldn’t grasp was how something so sci-fi could still have Bugs?

"I can’t understand, but I’m deeply shocked.jpg"

Indeed, whether in distant alien worlds or higher-dimension universes, programmers are still creating Bugs, writing incomprehensible mountains of garbage code!

After lamenting about the useless system, Chen Ba considered another issue.

Since the Bug was caused by the system, could the new game under development also have some nasty Bugs?

"No, impossible!"

Chen Ba reasoned that the Bug from the last time hadn’t been detected primarily because he trusted this system cheat too much.

As the saying goes, wisdom grows with experience, he would conduct multiple rounds of intensive testing before the game’s official release this time, he refused to believe there could be such absurd Bugs!

"Actually, it’s not that bad..." See his boss had a lingering worry over the game’s Bug issue, Lu smiled and said: "Aren’t Bugs common in games? A certain major studio even bundles Bugs with games!"

"Since the release of [Cold Window Study Simulator], except for the conflict Bug from the Herding Cows event, no other Bugs have occurred, this performance is already very good."

"Indeed!"

As an old player with total playtime over 50 hours, and also one of the earliest buyers, Yang Dong has a right to speak on this matter.

"While the Herding Cows Bug is abstract and ridiculous, aside from that Bug, I haven’t encountered a second Bug so far, nor have players reported new bugs on the forums..."

This is already amazing!

Consider that for games of such scale, Bugs inevitable; the difference lies only in their quantity and severity.

[Cold Window Study Simulator] as an indie game, and completed by Chen Ba himself, discovering only one Bug until now shows quite a remarkable performance.

Look at other games, casually spouting ten or twenty small Bugs, issuing a patch every three days, weekly massive Bug fixes...

Comparatively, Cold Window Study Simulator is almost perfectly unlike any indie game.

"If it weren’t for me eating and sleeping under the same roof with you, I would suspect you might actually be an alien!"

Yang Dong joked: "Is it possible a single person made something so perfect?"

"If time is adequate..."

Chen Ba never disclosed to them how long he spent developing [Cold Window Study Simulator], partially because there was no need, and also to avoid frightening them.

Three and a half months, about a hundred days!

Creating such a highly complete indie game in such a short timeframe, likely nobody would believe repeating it.

Might as well keep it quiet.

If people inquire later, he’ll say he spent two and a half years, so it doesn’t sound oddly impressive.