As soon as the 'Throne of Heroes' project was published on Yosuganosora Animation Studio's official website, it drew the attention of numerous players online. Kamiyā Yuu had already previewed the project during the joint novel launch event for 'Fate/Zero' and 'Gate of Mystery', and there were plenty of viewers and gamers interested in the game project he had mentioned.
The news might have had an even greater impact on the gaming industry than on the anime industry. Not everyone who watched anime necessarily played games, but among Japanese gamers, there were already very few who had never heard of 'Warship Girls Collection'.
'Warship Girls Collection' leaned heavily toward otaku-oriented subject matter, but its excellent game structure had made history for the card-collection genre. As a result, a huge number of similar games released in its wake had flopped, while many card-collection game projects died before they even entered production.
"If you don't 'reference' the gameplay system of 'Warship Girls Collection', there's no way to survive."
That saying had become an ironclad rule in the game industry for producing card-collection games.
There had indeed been card-collection games released during the second half of the year that followed this rule. With 'Warship Girls Collection' occupying the number-one spot on the game spending rankings year-round, no game company could look at the profits involved without growing envious.
Thus, throughout the latter half of the year, card-collection games that "referenced" the gameplay of 'Warship Girls Collection', changed the skin, and rushed to market appeared one after another.
Anyone with eyes could tell that if they wanted to make some quick money, they had to strike while the iron was hot. Once the craze generated by 'Warship Girls Collection' died down and its game framework became widespread, even getting a share of the leftovers would become difficult.
In fact, this approach really had proven effective.
On September's game spending rankings, two of the top ten spots were occupied by games modeled after 'Warship Girls Collection'.
'Demon King's Growth Diary' and 'Pet Paradise'.
The former was a game in which the Demon King raised monster girls to invade the human world. Kamiyā Yuu was willing to give it credit for the originality of its theme.
The latter leaned toward the female market. There was no anthropomorphizing of the pets; instead, the player ran a pet shop, raised all kinds of animals, and had access to added social features. It was reportedly the most popular game among female high school students at present.
The only thing those two games did better than 'Warship Girls Collection' was that they were mobile games.
However, most veteran players who liked card-collection games did not approve of them. Their gameplay was simply 'Warship Girls Collection' with a different skin, while their overall quality had dropped considerably. They had become popular purely by copying what already worked, so most people's first reaction was naturally disdain.
The foundations of 'Warship Girls Collection' were extremely stable, so there was no need to worry about losing players.
A game could not maintain popularity over the long term through the game itself alone. If a company wanted to operate a game for years and increase user retention, there were only so many methods available. Adding social functions was one practical method, while another was cultivating a player community centered around the game.
The foundation of 'Warship Girls Collection' lay precisely in the gaming community maintained by the players themselves.
As the game's popularity grew, 'Warship Girls Collection' became the largest doujin community in the ACG scene. The derivative works it spawned included manga, fan art, all kinds of merchandise, radio programs, and more.
Using 'Warship Girls R' from his previous world as an example, purely in terms of gameplay, the game ought to have been categorized as boring. It consisted almost entirely of grinding endlessly, accumulating materials to build ships, while even attacks against enemies could not be directly controlled by the player. Only the seasonal events gave players any real motivation to grind hard.
Yet even when weeds practically grew over many players' ports, they still did not completely abandon the game.
The tediousness of the gameplay itself was instead compensated for by the social community surrounding the game. Even the act of "showing off ships" became an important factor in stimulating player interest.
Mizuhara Raiko understood very clearly what players wanted.
From the very beginning of operating the game, she had relied on her connections within the gaming industry to seek cooperation everywhere. Those companies were not stupid either. The popularity of 'Warship Girls Collection' was constantly rising. Even if Mizuhara Raiko had not approached them about cooperation, they would have sent representatives to her door begging for the opportunity.
Thus came all kinds of official merchandise, radio programs, image endorsement collaborations, and so on.
Nor could anyone underestimate the creative power of the player community itself.
The influence created by the players was even broader and more far-reaching than anything official.
For example, at Comic Market's summer event in August that year, there was no need to say much about anime—the entire convention had practically been conquered by 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica'. Seeing hundreds of different Kaname Madokas over the course of a single doujin convention was perfectly normal.
As for games, the event belonged to 'Warship Girls Collection'.
Many doujin circles had their fan-made ship-girl manga completely sell out less than half an hour after the convention opened. The number of cosplayers dressed as ship girls was similarly astonishing. Seeing more than a hundred different ship girls from the character roster represented across the convention was nothing difficult.
When a game had immense popularity and such stable foundations, any new game released by the same developer was bound to attract considerable attention.
Most importantly, Yosuganosora Animation Studio was participating in the game's promotional campaign, raising the hype by several more levels.
On top of that, 'Warship Girls Collection' was BIUBIUBIU's main operating game. Its player count was almost equivalent to the number of viewers online on Bilibili's homepage.
The craze it had triggered within China's ACG community was far more exaggerated than in Japan, while its profits surpassed the Japanese market by several levels as well.
Ever since news of the 'Throne of Heroes' project was announced at the joint novel launch event in September, both Japan's gaming industry and China's ACG community had been significantly shaken.
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On Yosuganosora Animation Studio's official website, visitors could freely browse previews of the 'Type-Moon World Setting Collection' and place preorders to purchase it.
Those who wanted to learn more about the game needed to follow a webpage link to the official 'Throne of Heroes' game website operated by [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio.
The official website focused heavily on introducing the game's overall mechanics. Like 'Warship Girls Collection', it was a card-collection game, but 'Throne of Heroes' placed greater emphasis on PvP, and its core gameplay was completely different from that of 'Warship Girls Collection'.
At this, quite a few 'Warship Girls Collection' players breathed a sigh of relief.
Different gameplay meant the games targeted different player markets, so there was no need to worry that [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio would abandon 'Warship Girls Collection'.
At the same time, although both were card-collection games, the PvP-focused gameplay of 'Throne of Heroes' also felt fresh to many players.
Besides introducing the game, the 'Throne of Heroes Completion' project announced on [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio's official website also attracted considerable player interest.
The project would accept submissions until the end of the year. Anyone throughout Japan could independently create a Heroic Spirit character card and submit it to [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio. The creation of Heroic Spirit character cards had to comply with the rules of the 'Type-Moon World Setting Collection'.
A Heroic Spirit character card was essentially the Heroic Spirit's status panel, so creating one was not especially complicated. It would be even better if the submission also included a brief altered version of the character's background story.
As long as the submission was deemed reasonable, there was a strong possibility that it would receive recognition from [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio.
Creators of approved Heroic Spirit character cards would receive prizes ranging from 100,000 yen to 1,000 yen.
For example, outstanding Heroic Spirit character cards could be selected as actual cards for inclusion in the 'Throne of Heroes' game. Those of slightly lower quality could still enter the Hall of Heroic Spirits, earning the creator a small cash prize while also receiving an illustration commissioned from a professional character artist by [Mirror Flower Water Moon] Game Studio.
Once the 'Throne of Heroes' project became more mature in the future, the upper limit of the prize money would be increased. Besides monetary rewards, creators would also receive various unspecified prizes, such as figurines, posters, Nendoroids, and other merchandise.
The purpose of the Hall of Heroic Spirits was not merely to serve as something similar to the SCP Foundation's fan-creation community.
It would also function as a foundational pool of creative material for the entire Type-Moon World series, including novels, anime, games, all kinds of merchandise, radio programs, and more.
If Kamiyā Yuu ever wanted to create a MOBA similar to 'League of Legends', then he would only need to search the Hall of Heroic Spirits for suitable character material.
The overall influence of this project would be far more profound than that of the Type-Moon World series in his previous world.