William planned to stay up late to finish the "Craftsman Wood" demo, mainly to tie in with the variety show's promotion.
He told Merry about it, since the game and show were tied together. If promotion could happen at the same time, that would be ideal.
Now, all they could do was wait for tomorrow morning.
While working on the demo, William still took a moment to check the earnings from his two other games.
"Happy Mahjong": 507,240
That meant he got over 500,000 himself, so the game's daily revenue had passed $270k. Active players had now exceeded a billion, and even at midnight, over 40 million people were online. Clearly, people loved playing mahjong.
In just over 10 days, "Happy Mahjong" would launch overseas. Vince said the Mahjong Association connections were already set, but the game servers had some issues.
By local law, the servers had to be hosted abroad, and the server files had to be fully open to the authorities for review, to ensure there was no prohibited content.
It sounded troublesome, but it wasn't Earth Games' problem. Also, a new "Happy Landlord" game, developed by WeChat Games and sponsored by Earth Games, would be launching soon. William had even prepared the music score for the game's theme song, though WeChat seemed to have their own singer in mind.
No big deal. Earth Games just had to share the profits and didn't need to do anything else.
After the overseas launch, cross-region matchmaking might take another year, since there was a lot to prepare. Without the Mahjong Association's help, they might not even get past the first hurdle.
This reminded William that for future overseas game releases, they'd need to manage not only overseas connections but also domestic ones, since the authorities could ban a game from being sold abroad. Going against them would mean leaving the domestic market, which was unrealistic.
Claire didn't disappoint today, adding five new levels to "Happy Match Mania." Although revenue was still falling, the online reviews had improved. With the new unlock limits, new players couldn't finish all the levels too quickly, and older players were replaying more, boosting daily activity.
William had made it clear to Claire—updates had to continue even on her days off, and there would be no overtime pay. She didn't complain, and it was clear she was just as determined to keep the game alive.
8 a.m.
The top trending topic on Weibo had been bought: "Earth Games New Release! Paired with Variety Show!"
Second place: "Earth Games Mysterious New Title Revealed!"
The third headline was "The nationwide audition for the Craftsman Wood show!"
The fourth was "Craftsman Wood open beta!"
The sixth and eighth posts were also related to Earth Games. Basically, if you opened Weibo this morning, there's no way you wouldn't know that Earth Games' new title, Craftsman Wood, will launch together with a reality show of the same name.
Maybe because it's just a trial version, even though downloads hit tens of millions, no milestones were unlocked.
Reactions online were mixed, and even most of the people in the studio were shocked, because they had no idea about this new game. It looked like their boss had secretly pulled this off again.
The most excited and yet the most upset was Marcus. He always had a sense of pride in being the first to play the studio's new games. But this time, William didn't let him try it early. Instead, he just dropped the demo online for everyone, making Marcus feel like he'd fallen out of favor.
William dared to release the demo so early because of how hard the game was to develop. Even if copycats wanted to make a similar game, they'd need at least ten to fifteen days of research just to figure out the basics. By the time they finished, Craftwood would already be running on every player's phone. It would be a waste of effort.
Of course, if they tried to copy and re-skin it like they did with Rebirth Simulator, William wouldn't let them off easy.
"I need a good sleep."
After pulling an all-nighter, William decided to take care of himself and get some rest. He said a few words to Cynthia, ate breakfast, and went upstairs to bed.
When he woke up, it was almost evening. Cynthia hadn't been idle at home either. She had to go through all the resumes, and everything had to be ready before the new office was finished. That meant no days off for her these two weeks.
"I've picked out about twenty resumes. I'll send them to you later."
"Okay."
Since he had skipped lunch, dinner tasted extra good to William.
Aunt Oliver was getting better at their tastes lately. The food she made was more and more popular. Before, there would always be leftovers, but now the plates were almost licked clean.
After dinner, William went upstairs to look through the resumes Cynthia sent.
There were concept artists, animators, and even a server engineer. Basically, all the positions they were hiring for had candidates. They had prepared fifty desks, but it was impossible to fill them all at once. If they did, the studio would be running at a loss, and that put a lot of pressure on him.
They only needed one server engineer, so the requirements for that role had to be high.
Since they already had Angela and Zach, they didn't need many more animators—two or three would be enough.
Concept artists and modelers were the main focus. They needed them to speed up the development of Honor of Kings. The goal was to start beta testing within six months because the studio would eventually shift to PC games. They couldn't keep making mobile games forever. William's latest deadline for expanding into PC gaming was before next year's New Year.
As for programmers, they needed to hire a lot more. None of them had experience in game development, so training would take time. Plus, programming jobs were split into many roles. What William really wanted was a book like "Beginner's Guide to Programming for Artists," so he could train people for specific roles more accurately.
He had two bronze chests saved up. He originally planned to collect ten and open them all at once, hoping for a guaranteed rare reward like in games. He thought maybe these chests worked the same way, instead of always giving out useless items.
But looking at the current situation, he had to take a gamble. He couldn't finish his tasks, the milestones and growth path weren't progressing, and he wouldn't get more chests anytime soon. Waiting longer would just be a loss, so he decided to open them now.
Two at once!
[Obtained "Character Modeling (Beginner)"]
[Obtained "Writing Boost Card" ×1]
At least one was a skill book—not bad.