Chapter 177: Award Ceremony
The convention lasted for three days, with more or less the same content from the booths throughout the three days. Emperor Dynasty Entertainment were going at it quite aggressively on the first day, but gave up soon after as they got their attention that they deserved for their VR game taken away by Anipop as they lost all their dignity.
Everyone was quite happy being at the convention, but they were said to leave it behind as they returned to HQ.
-Inside the experience store.-
Qian Kun seemingly hadn’t had enough, “The convention was great, when’s the next one?”
Su Jinyu replied, “Next time? Probably another six months, there probably isn’t another one of these before Chinese New Year.”
“I hadn’t had enough. Could we please do more of this in the future?” said Qian Kun.
Zheng Hongxi said, “Anyways, it was incredibly funny that the hottest game of this convention was Anipop. The other large developers probably stained their pants seeing that.”
“Yeah.” Su Jinyu laughed too, “So many developers brought out VR games they worked really hard on, just to have every single player in their line playing Anipop. That was unbelievable.”
Many video game media released their articles following YouPlay’s end. They were also shocked to see that the hottest game of this convention wasn’t a VR game, but a very simple match three game.
It was also a popular topic among many games.
Anipop was then released on Thunderbolt Gaming Platform and the official app store. The game had immense buzz behind it on release, reaching four hundred and sixty thousand downloads on the first day, blasting every other casual game out of the water.
Although this was an insane number, it was still within Chen Mo’s calculations. Anipop had over 3.5 million downloads in fifteen days, with 1.5 million daily active users.
Chen Mo’s Thunderbolt Gaming Platform was now one of the more influential distribution platforms in China. Combined with Chen Mo’s charisma and the viral-like growth the game possesses, this result was well within reason.
Players and media were surprised, how could Chen Mo be so crazy that he could add a spin onto a match three game!
The hiring saga was almost over by the time they got back to the Magic City. Chen Mo had the final call for all of them, although a few of them didn’t meet his requirements, most of them were acceptable.
The abilities of the new hires were more general. They knew their roles, but their main purpose was to spread the work out. Chen Mo still had the final say, the three a.s.sistants are responsible for different content, which would then be executed by the others.
However, the new hires would only officially start after Chinese New Year, so they were currently quite free.
Chen Mo allowed Su Jinyu and the others to make their own games as practice, and it would be placed onto Thunderbolt Gaming Platform if Chen Mo approved of it. On the other hand, Chen Mo was thinking about which games to do after the Chinese New Year, and the annual Video Game Awards Ceremony.
Not long after returning home from Magic City, Chen Mo got a notice from the Game Committee inviting him to the award ceremony and properly inducting him into the committee then.
Chen Mo also did a quick search on the awards ceremony.
The annual game award ceremony was similar to game developer conferences in his previous world, but also had its differences.
The ceremony was hosted by the Game Committee annually, usually in the middle of January right before Chinese New Year.
This awards ceremony only included Chinese games and game designers, which was a recognition and encouragement the officials gave to outstanding developers and games.
Other than announcing Game Committee honorary members, awards in various categories were also given out.
Moreover, there were also exchanges and educational talks too.
Awards included Game of the Year, Most Creative, Best New Designer, Best PC/VR/Mobile Games, Best Story, etc. The Game of the year could be described as the most prestigious award among Chinese designers. Anyone who gets the award was more than likely to become an extremely influential video game designer.
Although it was hard to say overseas, the recognition of the officials had a lot of weight within China.
Chen Mo didn’t care too much about the award as he had been in the videogame industry for two years and had made plenty of high quality games along the way, he hadn’t touched any large MMORPGs or VR games.
And in the videogame industry of the parallel world, the prizes usually belonged to VR games, though special PC games might receive this award occasionally.
Mobile games basically had no chance at Game of the Year.
Therefore, Chen Mo felt that he still had plenty of room for growth. He might have a chance at Best New Designer or Best Mobile Game, but definitely not the others.
Of course, many are jealous of his results that he achieved in two years as someone new to the industry.
—
The weather was fine on the day of the award ceremony.
This award ceremony was viewed highly within the video game industry because it was hosted by the Game Committee, but it usually wasn’t broadcasted unlike the entertainment industry as most players wouldn’t care about these awards. The most that would happen might be a few articles written about the rewards after the ceremony was concluded.
Therefore, although important, there wasn’t much hype surrounding the ceremony.
At the cultural centre in the Imperial Capital, Chen Mo arrived on time, with a few members of staff waiting for his arrival.
Though the event was t.i.tled ‘annual videogame awards ceremony’, it wasn’t just about awards.
The event ran over two days. There are expos, networking, idea exchanges, and talks. The actual award ceremony doesn’t start until the evening the next day.
Of course the award ceremony was important, but the networking and exchanges also couldn’t be overlooked. The officials would also get some famous video game designers to give talks, allowing other video game designers to pick up some designing concept ideas.
And to the Game Committee, the award ceremony wasn’t just for awarding outstanding work, but also to help videogame designers to get in contact with one another in order to improve the progress of the growth within the industry.