Gu Fan opened the game editor on his computer and started looking for a suitable game template.
The game development technology in this world was very advanced, with many useful professional tools for game development and testing, which could greatly shorten the development time and reduce the costs for various types of games.
As for art and music resources, they were provided directly by Hell.
According to Lilith, Hell was brimming with talent, with many excellent artists, architects, and musicians, who could provide a dimension-shifting level of original artwork, modeling, or music composition compared to ordinary gaming companies.
With "design" and "art" completely monopolized by the demons, Gu Fan had virtually no room for any tricks!
The only things that could be considered "loopholes" were two points.
First, Lilith, as a Hell Demon, could only appear from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and could not come to the Human World during the other 12 hours.
Second, Lilith emphasized that once the game was released, it could not be modified in any way.
This was because the demons' means of collecting negative emotions from players through the game was actually a form of contract, and the game content was considered part of the contract.
Although demons often played with the wording and left many pitfalls when drafting contracts, they had one ironclad rule: once a contract was signed, it could not be modified.
Therefore, if the game was modified or taken down, the contract would be invalidated, and the demon could no longer obtain negative emotions from the players.
Even if the game was reverted or re-released later, an invalidated contract could not be restored.
But with just these two loopholes, what could Gu Fan do?
Could he transform a trash game into a top-quality one right under Lilith's nose without being noticed, and do so unnoticed afterwards?
Could he make Transcendent Heaven Gaming Company the most valuable company in the Human World under the circumstances that Lilith was solely focused on harvesting players' negative emotions and completely forbidding him from participating in the design?
Gu Fan fell into deep thought.
...
...
In the following month, everything progressed steadily according to Lilith's plan.
Gu Fan finished the development of "Infernal Trajectory," then spent three days testing it with the "AI-debug" tool provided by the official editor.
Normally, even with more advanced game production technology in this world, it would be safer to test the game for at least a week before releasing it.
But clearly, Lilith didn't care about whether there were bugs in the game or not.
After all, "Infernal Trajectory" was meant to collect negative emotions from players, and encountering bugs was also considered a form of negative emotion.
If it weren't for the official platform's mandatory requirement that a game must be free of major bugs to be released, Lilith wouldn't even want to spare these three days for testing.
After submitting it for review, Gu Fan also uploaded some materials for the game as required by Lilith, such as promo images and taglines.
These contents would be displayed on the game platform's details page.
The game's promo images were easy to handle, just a few screenshots taken directly from the game were sufficient.
As for the tagline, it was crafted personally by Lilith: "Infernal Trajectory" will overturn your perceptions and bring you an FPS gaming experience like no other!
This tagline seemed a bit clickbait, but for a cunning demon, this level of lying didn't even count as deception.
When players are being thrashed by the first level's minor monsters, you tell me if that's overturning or not! You tell me if it's an unprecedented experience or not!
The tagline was absolutely perfect!
In any case, the game smoothly passed the official platform's review.
On Saturday night at 8 p.m., the game was officially released!
...
"The show is about to start!"
In the rental room, Lilith lay on a beanbag chair, with chips in her left hand, cola in her right hand, and an expectant smile on her face as she watched the projection screen in front of her.
The rent in Capital City was expensive, and Gu Fan's simple one-bedroom apartment had a monthly rent of five thousand yuan.
Although Gu Fan was now the president of Transcendent Heaven Gaming Company and Lilith would provide him with a salary on time according to the contract, his base salary was only eight thousand yuan a month.
Whether this game could make money or not would directly determine whether Gu Fan would live lavishly or frugally in the coming months.
There wasn't much furniture in the one-bedroom apartment, just a beanbag chair and a projector in the living room. Now Lilith had unapologetically taken over this spot, and Gu Fan could only move a small stool silently to sit beside it.
On the projection screen was the currently most popular live-streaming platform "Totoro Live."
Gu Fan pressed the remote control and found the current number one gamer in the gaming section, "Instructor Xiao Ding's" live-streaming room.
Instructor Xiao Ding's full name was Ding Qiang.
He did not care much about his appearance, shaving his hair into a buzz cut every few months, and at the moment, his hair had grown out unevenly. His beard was scruffy, and according to him, he shaved every day but it just grew too fast--the viewers did not believe a word of it.
However, Little Ding had once been a professional FPS game player, with both reaction speed and gameplay operation generally on point, and he was naturally a streaming prodigy. Every broadcast managed to conjure up many black-out moments for his audience, ensuring his uncontested reign as the top gamer on Totoro Live.
He had just started his broadcast, shouting at the camera, "Brothers, it's time to eat again, ao brothers!"
Upon his words, the bullet chat knew right away that he was about to cash in.
As a host, Ding Qiang never said no when it came to cashing in. No matter the game sent his way for promotion, he accepted them all.
Of course, sometimes he could be a bit "picky," playing for a while before making an excuse and abandoning the game if it didn't suit his taste.
But for the most part, he endured the torture of these trash games and stream for the duration required by the clients.
And his audience was very tolerant of his cashing in antics; although they didn't necessarily go play the games themselves, they at least supported the scene and didn't curse the brands like some other streamer's fans would the moment they saw their host cashing in.
It was precisely for this reason that Instructor Ding became the go-to for some lousy game companies looking to promote their games.
Gu Fan already knew that today's cash-in game for Instructor Ding was "Infernal Trajectory."
Clearly, this was part of Lilith's game promotion plan.
Lilith's promotion plan was quite straightforward and ruthless, with a total budget of about 2 million for promotion, of which 400,000 was allocated to host Instructor Ding for a 2-hour broadcast at a price tag of 400,000; the remaining 1.6 million was spent on buying exposure on platforms other than the official one.
Although these platforms had varying recommendations, the current industry cost for buying players was about 3 yuan per person.
This meant that the 1.6 million budget could roughly bring in around 530,000 "live players" for "Infernal Trajectory," referring to people who not only saw the game ads but actually downloaded and tried out the game.
This cost of acquisition seemed quite cheap to Gu Fan.
Of course, how many of these people would actually spend money to buy the game was another question.
Soon, Instructor Ding in the live room officially entered the game "Infernal Trajectory."
Seeing the game screen, Instructor Ding's eyes lit up.
"Hey! Brothers, doesn't this game look pretty good? Look at this volcano, these demons, and this gate; the graphic assets are of high quality!
"Doesn't it look like a high-quality, big-budget production? Didn't I tell you the truth?
"18 bucks won't get you regret or deception, and you can even play for two hours before paying. It's incredibly economical—I always tell the truth."
Because of Instructor Ding's open-minded nature, he had previously braved through many promotions for games with rough graphics.
This time's ad was placed by a small vendor, and Instructor Ding had not held much hope, but to his surprise, the game's visuals pleasantly astonished him.
"Infernal Trajectory" was priced at 18 yuan, which was the cheapest in its category and quality of games.
In fact, Lilith didn't care about the game's price at all; if it weren't for the official platform's mandatory requirements, she would even have wanted to make the game free.
To bait players into the game to the greatest extent, she adopted an outrageous pricing strategy: any player could play for 2 hours for free, and only then would they need to pay if they wanted to continue playing.
Lilith was highly confident that, let alone two hours, most players would opt-out after barely five minutes.
What she wanted was a quick deal—to harvest negative emotions wildly within the first few minutes and then drive the players away.
If these hundreds of thousands of players could provide a large wave of negative emotions after entering the game, then Lilith would consider it a perfect fulfillment of her plan.
"Alright, brothers, let's not waste any words and get started," he said.
Instructor Ding moved the mouse towards "Single Player Mode" to officially start the game.
After a brief black screen, Instructor Ding found himself at the starting point of the first level.
The location seemed to be a city's overpass or elevated road, quite broad.
The road surface was riddled with bullet holes and signs of destruction. Various types of vehicles such as cars, buses, RVs, trucks, and concrete mixers were parked haphazardly; some were full of bullet holes, some were mere wrecks, while others were ablaze.
Looking up into the distance, it seemed one could vaguely see flames and hurricanes, as well as a colossal Gate of Hell standing between heaven and earth.
That was clearly the direction he needed to head in.
In the top left corner of his field of vision appeared the words: "Sole objective: Reseal the Gate of Hell."