Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 192: Azazel’s Trump Card

Chapter 192: Chapter 192: Azazel’s Trump Card

Huang Wang opened the backend of Henggang Middle School Simulation with a surprised and delighted look on his face.

At first, there weren’t many changes, and the sales were as sluggish as usual, barely alive.

But gradually, the sales growth seemed to pick up, and the newly acquired reviews also began to improve!

Initially, the game’s reviews were "mostly negative", which soon plummeted to "an overwhelming number of negative reviews".

The reasons were simple: "mostly negative" because players were greeted by poor graphics and tedious controls as soon as they entered the game; and the "an overwhelming number of negative reviews" came after they discovered the monotonous gameplay and frequent bugs with deeper experience.

But now, the game’s positive reviews were actually starting to recover, changing to "mixed"!

Afterwards, Henggang Middle School Simulation was mostly going to maintain this standard of review. It wouldn’t become famous for its shocking negativity like Hell Inferior Demon, nor could it achieve the legendary high praise of a Nitiandang game.

However, the mixed reviews were enough to make some players willingly give the game a try!

Especially since recent reviews even occasionally showed "mostly positive", seeing the comforting blue text filled Huang Wang with joy.

And seeing the continuously growing sales data in the backend, Huang Wang was even happier.

Then, he opened other live stream rooms and gaming forums.

After that, Huang Wang was surprised to discover that some live stream rooms on the Longmao streaming platform had already begun to use a mini-app ahead of others.

This mini-app was also quite straightforward, it could be considered a MOD or a sort of patch tool. Once activated, it could connect to the live streaming platform’s backend data, automatically collecting the IDs and information of the viewers who gifted and changing the student, teacher and dean of student affairs’ names in Henggang Middle School Simulation to correspond with those viewers’ IDs.

Moreover, this mini-app could even handle simple settings, such as what kind of gift allowed for the changing of what level of names, all clearly priced.

For some smaller streamers, their audience base was naturally not large enough to have many wealthy benefactors showering them with planes. With not enough people gifting, it’s hard to create a bandwagon effect, and the likely outcome would be that people would be reluctant to gift at all.

So, those small streamers could lower the gifts’ threshold at their discretion, like offering free cat food or a few Yuan for card activation, to get their names changed in the game and heighten the sense of participation.

As a result, the effect once seen in Wang Dawei’s live stream was now easily replicated in other streamers’ live rooms!

This form of gifting not only had a strong positive feedback, but this feedback was also rapid and immediate, without any delay.

Previously, Wang Dawei would manually enter the information upon receiving gifts, which was understandably inefficient.

But with this mini-app, all the renaming was done automatically. After the name change, the student would even have a bright highlighting effect over their head, with a fireworks-like gift animation, and the changed IDs would be displayed directly above their heads.

Of course, the streamers still had to thank their viewers for the gifts.

For some special wealthy viewers, when the streamers paid particular attention, they could also manually adjust the names, assigning the affluent viewers to even more desired roles.

All in all, the arrival of this mini-app was very timely, as though pillows were being handed out just as the streamers were dozing off.

As for the forums, players also had diverse opinions about Wang Dawei’s speech, sparking heated discussions.

Even on a question-and-answer site, questions related to Henggang Middle School surged to the top of the hot search list once again.

This popularity... was soaring fast!

It must be said, popularity is quite mystical. When you strive for it, no matter how hard you rack your brains for topics, or break the bank to buy trending spots, popularity may not come your way; but sometimes, when you least expect it, it just mysteriously arrives!

At this moment, Huang Wang felt as though he’d been hit by a sudden squall of riches.

He couldn’t help but get excited, "I’m sorry, President Sa, you were right! It’s obviously better to do simulation management games from the principal’s perspective!"

Of course, Huang Wang was just saying this and didn’t truly agree with Azazel. He knew that President Sa had probably just blindly stumbled onto something successful.

And even if the game became a hit, he wasn’t likely to get any project bonus; after all, with Hell Inferior Demon barely able to recoup its development costs, the company had barely avoided bankruptcy.

But even so, Huang Wang was still happy.

From now on, he was a programmer with two successful game projects!

Although the names "Hell Inferior Demon" and "Henggang Middle School Simulation" send shivers down the spine when seen on a resume, you have to admit they are successful projects!

They are much better than those completely unknown projects that died before even going online!

They added a dubious distinction to one’s personal history... oh no, infamy that lasts for eternity, but anyway, notoriety is still a form of fame, and that’s definitely beneficial for his future career!

He wanted to share the joy with President Sa, only to find Azazel’s face deathly pale, his hands trembling slightly.

He muttered, "There’s still the emergency plan, the emergency plan..."

Huang Wang was somewhat confused, "Emergency plan?"

He had never heard there was any emergency plan for the game. Besides, with the game’s current favorable situation, was there really a need for an emergency plan?

Or could it be that President Sa’s so-called "emergency plan" was actually meant to be used in such a favorable situation?

Azazel opened the gaming forum and quickly began editing a post.

The title of the post read: Solid Proof! "Henggang Middle School Simulation" Plagiarizes "Prison Tycoon"! Irrefutable Evidence!

The content of the post was very clear; it directly accused "Henggang Middle School Simulation" of plagiarizing "Prison Tycoon," matching similar systems and functions between the two games. It also listed a plethora of screenshots as comparative evidence.

For instance, the "One-Click Course Scheduling" was blatantly copied from "Prison Tycoon’s" "One-Click Prison Guard Assignment." However, since "Prison Tycoon" only deals with prisoners, no matter how the guards are assigned, it doesn’t matter, so the rules were written quite arbitrarily. The "Henggang Middle School Simulation" didn’t add too many extra rules during production, resulting in a particularly sloppy feature that doesn’t achieve its intended effect.

Additionally, the post explained many of the BUGs found in the game.

For instance, the BUG where "students eliminated from the honors class mysteriously disappear" is because, in "Prison Tycoon," the honors class corresponds to death row, and upon leaving, they are executed.

The strange artistic asset errors in the game, such as the cafeteria tables and chairs and the classroom doors and windows often getting mixed up and changing into a different style, were also due to residual art assets from the game template not being properly deleted, leading to resource allocation problems.

That is why the tables and chairs in the school often turned into prison furniture, and why the classroom windows and doors turned into prison bars.

Finally, after all the evidence was laid out, came the decisive blow: "As for such a shameless game developer, please make sure to stand united in boycotting them! Feel free to play for 2 hours, but remember to ask for a refund!"

After finishing, Azazel didn’t just post on the forums, but also disseminated it widely, including spamming the comments section of "Henggang Middle School Simulation" a few times.

Huang Wang watched in shock, trembling, but he didn’t dare to stop him at first, since President Sa was his boss after all.

But when he saw Azazel copying and pasting for the fifteenth time, Huang Wang finally couldn’t stand it anymore. He grabbed his arm, "President Sa! What are you doing!!"

Huang Wang’s urgency was not without reason, anyone could see the damage these posts were doing to "Henggang Middle School Simulation"!

Of course, strictly speaking, "Henggang Middle School Simulation" hadn’t violated any laws or regulations.

If "Henggang Middle School Simulation" had directly copied another game’s code, or used other games’ art assets, then it would have been illegal. Even if other companies didn’t sue, official platforms would take down the game once verified.

"Henggang Middle School Simulation" resembled "Prison Tycoon" so closely mainly because it used the same game template and functionality modules used by "Prison Tycoon."

Since these templates and functionality modules were officially purchased, there was no legal risk involved.

And even for the buggy art assets, those were part of the poor-quality resources bundled with the templates and sold together.

But just because there is no legal risk, doesn’t mean there are no ethical issues.

Just like some gaming companies that completely imitate the gameplay of popular games, releasing a similar game and then using marketing tactics to snatch market share. Is it illegal? No. But that doesn’t stop players from cursing them.

Just when "Henggang Middle School Simulation" was starting to pick up, it was being stabbed in the back by one of its own, extinguished like a snuffed out star, Huang Wang could not accept this!

Azazel, however, was unmoved. He shook off Huang Wang’s hand and sent out the final post, then leaned back in his computer chair, full of confidence.

"You don’t know shit. I am the boss of Hell Frontline!"

For Azazel, if the game actually made money, Lilith would take three-quarters of the negative emotions away, and that was something he couldn’t tolerate!