After collaborating on Palace Storm, Yangfan Studio and Qihang accumulated ample experience, making the development of the murder mystery game progress quite smoothly.

The writing team had been working hard on the scripts during this time. After figuring out the format of murder mysteries, their writing speed noticeably increased recently.

The art team was also fired up. Ning Sha excelled at character design, and Chu Yue’s environment art was consistently top-notch. With over a dozen employees dividing the work, they produced artwork incredibly fast.

Once the concept art was finalized, it went to the modeling team for holographic rendering, then to the level design team to add mechanisms and clues, and finally to the programmers to write the code. Post-production elements like UI design, background music, and story animations also slowly began production.

Under Xie Yunfan’s control, the entire game production process proceeded in an orderly manner.

By the end of March, the first scenario was officially complete.

Xie Yunfan organized the QA team for initial testing to fix obvious bugs before letting internal employees experience the murder mystery gameplay early.

Driven by curiosity, many employees signed up to participate in this internal closed beta.

After experiencing the three-hour holographic murder mystery, everyone gave rave reviews: “I really didn’t expect that ending. Playing this as a dummy, I felt like my brain wasn’t enough.”

“I think this is even more fun than Palace Storm. Players have more agency, and playing detective in a holographic game is incredibly satisfying.”

“I love Di Renjie’s character model. Lord Di is super handsome! I have a feeling the marketing department is going to make a fortune on merchandise again.”

Xie Yunfan gathered the closed beta participants and said, “If you have any feedback or suggestions, you can send them to my personal email. Anonymous submissions are welcome.”

That night, Xie Yunfan received several emails.

“Boss, I don’t think the UI looks good, and there’s too little system guidance. As a newbie who hasn’t even played Werewolf, I was completely lost entering the game, not knowing what to do. I hope the beginner experience can be optimized.”

“The environmental lighting is uncomfortable; the light reflection off the ground during the dusk scene is glaring. Also, the characters’ hair is too flowy; it feels like everyone just washed their hair for a giant shampoo commercial.”

This was clearly an artist complaining about the modeling, too embarrassed to bring it up face-to-face, so they vented frantically in an anonymous email.

Someone else wrote, “Boss, I didn’t participate in the test, but just listening to my colleagues discuss it, I already know who the killer is. Since a murder mystery is a suspense game, if you know the killer in advance, doesn’t the game lose its appeal?”

……

Xie Yunfan collected the batch of suggestions.

The next morning, he went to the Qihang office building to discuss matters with Luo Hang.

System UI and rendering tones were easy to fix. Only the “spoiler issue” mentioned by a colleague gave Xie Yunfan the biggest headache.

In his previous life, murder mysteries were offline entertainment where spoilers weren’t a prominent issue. There were many physical stores nationwide, and people who liked these games wouldn’t deliberately search for spoiler guides online.

The advantage of porting murder mysteries to holographic gaming pods was providing convenience to all players. They could lie at home and play without scheduling in advance, and the system would instantly match them with teammates to start their desired scenario.

But the downside was the rapid circulation and massive volume of online information. Some players couldn’t control their “desire to share” and would post walkthroughs of scenarios they had played. Once spoiled, the game would be ruined for others.

Xie Yunfan shared his concerns with Luo Hang: “After the game launches, it won’t just be players actively spoiling things. If competitors maliciously post spoilers revealing the truth of every script, future players will lose all interest in playing.”

It wasn’t that Xie Yunfan was slandering the competition, but given Wings of Dream’s track record, they were absolutely capable of such underhanded tactics.

Luo Hang asked, “Can’t we introduce smart NPCs like in Palace Storm to create dynamic storylines?”

Xie Yunfan shook his head: “The core gameplay mechanics of the two games are different. In Palace Storm, players face numerous NPCs, and player choices influence NPC behavior, thereby changing the story.”

“A murder mystery brings a group of players together. NPCs don’t influence the event itself; all the truths must be uncovered by the players themselves.”

This was essentially the difference between PVE and PVP.

Palace Storm was fundamentally a PVE game, players vs. the system. Even in faction wars, players relied on system NPCs to defeat enemies.

Murder mysteries were pure PVP, players vs. players.

If smart NPCs had too much presence, players would lose their sense of participation. They would feel like “bystanders watching a case,” completely losing the core essence of a murder mystery.

Luo Hang suggested: “We can disable the livestreaming windows and forum guide sections for this game. We can also set up official moderators for Weibo super topics to delete any posts involving spoilers, at least blocking them online.”

Yangfan Studio’s games always had high livestreaming popularity. Disabling livestreams meant completely discarding the hype and traffic brought by streamers.

But if a murder mystery allowed livestreams, it would prematurely reveal the game’s content to everyone in the chat. The cons outweighed the pros.

This was a trade-off they had to make, and it required great resolve.

Did they want the hype brought by livestreams, or did they want to keep the game mysterious to give subsequent players a better experience?

Xie Yunfan thought for a moment and said decisively: “Shut down the livestreams. If streamers want to play the murder mystery game, they must experience it immersively. They cannot show the gameplay process to their audience.”

Luo Hang said: “Also, have all players sign an NDA upon logging into the game. Holographic game NDAs have legal effect. Once signed, most players won’t leak spoilers, and for the minority who break the agreement, we can contact the platforms to delete their posts.”

Xie Yunfan’s eyes lit up: “That makes things easy.”

99% of games only sign NDAs during the closed beta phase, not during open beta. That’s because open betas demand hype, and developers wish players would advertise everywhere. Requiring an NDA during open beta… they were probably the first!

It couldn’t be helped. The game genre was unique; failing to maintain secrecy would be very unfriendly to latecomers.

Xie Yunfan quickly followed up: “For some flexible scripts, we can design more choices. For example, clues aren’t fixed, player identities are randomly assigned, and each scenario has two or three variations. Following a guide won’t guarantee you find the real killer.”

“But murder mystery games place heavy emphasis on the completeness of the logical chain, so there can’t be too many variations, or it’ll become a mess. We cannot sacrifice narrative logic to prevent spoilers.”

Luo Hang agreed: “Makes sense, that would be putting the cart before the horse. If the plot logic is messy, the player experience will be even worse. Let’s start by preventing online spoilers. As for reality, we couldn’t stop it even if we tried.”

The solution the two discussed couldn’t prevent 100% of spoilers, but blocking 95% was enough.

If some players insisted on looking for guides, even if there were no posts online, they could just ask people around them who had played.

That kind of thing was impossible to prevent.

Xie Yunfan decided to set up a point-based ranking system. The more murder mystery scenarios you cleared, the higher your rank, and the higher the skill level of the teammates you matched with.

This could guarantee the gameplay experience for experts to some extent, while also giving newbies an adaptation process.

……

Next, Xie Yunfan continued to monitor the game’s progress. Luo Hang had the tech team repeatedly debug the network servers.

Time passed quickly, and scripts were completed one after another.

The QA team always had work to do. Each murder mystery scenario was independent, so they could make one and test one. Encountering bugs meant timely fixes, which also accelerated the entire game’s progress.

As long as there were no issues with each script’s flow, the only thing left to test later was the load capacity of Qihang Games’ servers.

In early May, Qihang Games suddenly recruited for a beta test.

Luo Hang gathered a hundred thousand people online, inviting players to do a server stress test under the promotion of “rewarding 10 free hours for the Qihang gaming pod.”

The players who signed up for the test were thrilled, thinking they could get early access to the new game co-developed by Yangfan and Qihang!

Brother Liu also drew a testing qualification this time and said excitedly: “Family, Qihang is definitely testing Yangfan Studio’s new game this time. I’m participating in the closed beta tomorrow, and I’ll come back and tell everyone if the new game is fun.”

The next day, Brother Liu lay in the gaming pod early.

After the test started, options A, B, and C appeared in front of him. The player operated according to the system prompts, and then a prompt box popped up in the middle of the screen——

System matching in progress, please wait.

Brother Liu thought excitedly: “Online matchmaking game? Could it be a dual PK or a multiplayer dungeon?”

A few seconds later, some pixelated figures appeared in the room.

System: “Match successful, please exit the room.”

Brother Liu: “???”

Several players were kicked out of the room.

A moment later, there was another “System matching in progress” prompt.

Brother Liu: “……”

For half an hour, the players participating in this test had nothing but “System matching in progress” in their heads.

The moment he climbed out of the gaming pod after the test ended, Brother Liu was completely bewildered——Who am I? Where am I? I just tested absolutely nothing!

Opening his livestream room at night, netizens flooded the bullet screen with questions.

“Brother Liu, is the new game fun?”

“What’s the content of the closed beta? Spoil it a little!”

“Looking forward to Yangfan Qihang’s new game! When is the official launch?”

“I don’t know anything!” Brother Liu scratched his head helplessly. “It was just system matching the whole time. This is a server stress test, not a game content test.”

It was truly a waste of excitement.

Qihang’s bizarre test this time also triggered countless player complaints——

“After matching, I thought I was going to play a game, but it kicked me out of the room?”

“First time participating in this kind of test. Confused.”

“Matched for nothing, happy for nothing!”

The players were all very confused.

However, after learning this news, the industry was incredibly shocked.

A server stress test of a hundred thousand people, with varying numbers of matches each time, meant Qihang had already broken through the major technical difficulty of holographic multiplayer networking.

Was Yangfan Studio’s next game going to be multiplayer online?

---

At the same time, at Coolplay Games’ magic city headquarters.

Holographic games operations director Duan Yuanxiu received a call from his big boss: “Manager Duan, have you heard the news about Qihang doing a server stress test?”

Duan Yuanxiu nodded immediately: “President Feng, I’ve heard.”

Coolplay’s current CEO Feng Shiming said in a low voice: “We’ve been developing our Coolplay gaming pod networking technology for two whole years, investing over a billion, and finally made a breakthrough this year… I didn’t expect Qihang to follow up so quickly.”

Coolplay’s gaming pod holographic networking technology had always been a major secret project of the company, and also their “trump card.”

As early as two years ago, when Xie Yunfan won the best holographic game award with Ghost Realm, Coolplay prepared to use networking technology to overtake on a curve. Once the technology broke through, they could immediately secure the throne as the big brother of the holographic game world.

He didn’t expect Luo Hang, despite his young age, to actually have some guts. Who knew how many engineers he hired with high salaries, how much investment he threw in, researching secretly, to unexpectedly break through the technical bottleneck so quickly?

Everyone in the industry thought Luo Hang ran to Rongcheng and established Qihang’s southern branch to make games with Yangfan Studio.

Some even mocked Luo Hang “can’t make games himself, so he can only run over to hug Xie Yunfan’s thigh.” Of course, this mockery contained a certain degree of jealousy. Who in the industry didn’t want to cooperate with Little Sailboat? Luo Hang simply beat them to the punch.

But looking at it now, cooperating with Yangfan Studio was just a smokescreen Luo Hang deliberately released to blur the industry’s vision.

——His true purpose in running to Rongcheng was to break through the technical bottleneck of multiplayer networking for holographic gaming pods, putting Qihang gaming pods at the forefront of the industry.

Coolplay had carelessly underestimated their enemy this time. As a result, holographic multiplayer networking games were no longer Coolplay’s exclusive advantage.

Feng Shiming said calmly: “Prepare your marketing and distribution. Let the holographic version of Age of Discovery go up against Qihang’s new game.”

Duan Yuanxiu said: “Understood. Our internal dungeon tests have already been run several times; only the networking test is left.”

Feng Shiming said: “Good, hurry up.”

A week later, Coolplay also publicly recruited players and began a large-scale networking stress test. The players drawn this time were equally confused.

The internet started buzzing with speculation: “What’s the situation? Qihang and Coolplay’s test modes are almost the same——both tested absolutely nothing.”

“Participating in two tests back-to-back, my head is now full of system matching.”

“Testing one right after the other, I can faintly smell a corporate war!”

A tech blogger analyzed: “Everyone didn’t understand the true meaning of these two stress tests——this is a major breakthrough on the technical level!

Holographic games can do large-scale networking now, rather than just single-player, dual co-op, or dual PK. The data processing for multiplayer holographics has multiplied exponentially, placing extremely high demands on the servers.

I’m very happy that domestic manufacturers are brave enough to try and are the first to complete the technical breakthrough. Looking forward to the day of future global networking.”

After reading the tech blogger’s analysis, the players suddenly saw the light.

“So you’re saying, Coolplay and Qihang broke through the technical bottleneck at the same time? Could the next game be multiplayer holographic online?”

“Wow, damn! So, I’m actually witnessing the progress of an era?”

“Looking forward to the arrival of the true global holographic game era. Will we be able to casually greet foreign players then?”

“The technology of Coolplay and Qihang is truly awesome, they’re also holding a leading position among gaming pods worldwide.”

“Pressure given to Wings of Dream: Where are you guys?”

“Wings of Dream says: Do not cue, the stock hit the limit down again.”

“The boss and the second-in-command run tests, but the one out of luck is the third. Feeling sorry for Wings of Dream this time; it feels like Wings of Dream has already started falling behind…”

“Feeling sorry for capitalists? I wish Wings of Dream a speedy bankruptcy!”

Wings of Dream’s PR team was very anxious.

This wave was indeed a bit of a dimensional strike. Coolplay and Qihang breaking through networking technology at the same time made their Wings of Dream look too weak.

It’s a pity that President Tang’s ultimate goal was making money. As soon as he heard that the initial R&D investment for multiplayer networking technology and quantum servers would take billions, he decisively vetoed it.

One wrong step, and perhaps they would never be able to keep up with the footsteps of their peers in the future.

Wings of Dream’s stock hit the limit down again. In this chaotic war of holographic games, Wings of Dream already showed signs of early elimination.

And the head-on clash between Coolplay and Qihang also made players highly expectant.

Players aren’t fans of any specific company. If a game is fun, they will naturally support and recommend it. If it’s not fun, they’ll scold it onto the hot search in minutes.

Only with competition comes motivation.

With corporate wars, players get perks!

---

On June 15th, Yangfan Qihang jointly issued a promotional statement.

“Players, thank you for waiting. The holographic multiplayer networking game The Cases of Di Renjie, jointly produced by Yangfan Studio and Qihang Group, will officially launch in the Huaguo region at 12:00 noon on June 20th!

This new game adopts a multiplayer matchmaking dungeon mode, and each dungeon corresponds to an independent plot.

The immersive experience will surely bring you different fun.

The game’s promotional PV will be released tomorrow, please stay tuned.”

Upon seeing the announcement, players immediately ran excitedly to leave comments and forward it, eagerly awaiting tomorrow’s official promotional PV.

However, at 3 PM, the Coolplay Games official account also issued a statement.

“The holographic multiplayer networking game Age of Discovery, co-developed by Coolplay Entertainment and OMT Company, is about to be released globally simultaneously on June 18th!”

Players: “……”

Is this a coincidence, or intentional?

Little Sailboat just officially announced the new game is scheduled to launch on the 20th, and Coolplay immediately announced theirs is scheduled to go online on the 18th, 2 days earlier than Little Sailboat’s new game?

Players in the comments section all started watching the show.

“Fight, fight, fight!”

“Holy crap, this time the schedules clash, clashing simply tragically~”

“Reminds me of when the two single-player masterpieces Ghost Realm and Vampire Legend 2 clashed. It was the summer vacation two years ago, right? Time flies so fast.”

“Back then, Ghost Realm launched a few days earlier than Vampire, stealing Vampire‘s heat. Coolplay must be holding a grudge. Is this deliberate revenge this time? Launching two days earlier than Little Sailboat to grab players?”

“The time has come to test the operations of both sides! Whoever gives out more freebies, I’ll play their game~”

At this time, Xie Yunfan and Luo Hang were chatting in the office.

Upon seeing Weibo, the two looked at each other, and Luo Hang said helplessly: “We can’t blame Coolplay for grabbing the schedule this time. It should be a coincidental clash of dates.”

Xie Yunfan said: “Age of Discovery was a mobile game. Changing it to holographic networking, relying on the IP’s influence alone can attract a massive number of players. The global release time must have been set long ago. This time… we indeed bumped into a tough nut.”

A simultaneous global launch couldn’t temporarily change its time. This schedule clash was somewhat coincidental, and our side was just unluckier, being two days later than the other side.

Back then, Luo Hang forced continuous overtime to advance Ghost Realm‘s release, stealing the opposing side’s players. Today, the opposite side launched early to snatch our players… This could be considered karma, leaving both sides tied.

Whoever laughs last still depends on the quality of the game.

Luo Hang said: “Age of Discovery is a classic old game with mature gameplay. Porting it to the holographic pod shouldn’t result in self-inflicted messy bugs like Wings of Dream. I’m still quite optimistic; they will be our strong competitor.”

Xie Yunfan asked: “With such a competitor launching simultaneously, should we give away more perks operationally?”

Luo Hang said: “Don’t worry, we’ve always been very generous with perks, and the gaming pods will also provide a service to trade in old for new and cover the price difference.”

---

For the next few days, players spectated a wave of lively corporate warfare.

The next day, Yangfan Studio released the game promotional PV.

The game PV production this time was also extremely exquisite, directly at the level of an animated film. Players matched into dungeons to search for clues and deduce the real killer.

The suspense effect in the trailer was maxed out; it was simply like watching a thrilling and exciting suspense movie.

Many players expressed: “Holy crap! Feels even more thrilling than Palace Storm!” “A holographic version of a detective suspense game, everyone catching the killer together?”

“Holographic investigation, never played it, too interested.” “Yangfan Studio’s games are always refreshing every time!”

At the same time, Coolplay also released their game promotional PV.

A magnificent sea, all sorts of sea monsters, a hot-blooded combat mode, and pirate ships of all shapes and sizes.

Players of the original Age of Discovery were also excited: “Holographic version of sea exploration, more fun than mobile!” “Judging from the promotional video, you guys put a little effort into this game, not as perfunctory as the previous Vampire 2.”

The evaluations for both games’ promotional videos were pretty good.

In the days that followed, the operations on both sides started exerting force.

Various pop-up ads, splash screens, video site pushes, A-site recommendations, live broadcast platform banner ads, etc…

The two sides fought fiercely.

Coolplay announced a seven-day login reward for the game launch. Qihang immediately kept up the pace, directly giving away a large gift pack and limited-edition outfits upon opening the server.

Qihang said gaming pods supported trading old for new and covering the difference. Coolplay immediately hit back with a 20% discount on gaming pods nationwide with free home delivery.

Players expressed: “……The perks recently are really good.”

Only with competition comes progress.

One company dominating is actually the situation consumers least want to see, and it’s also very detrimental to the development of an industry.

Coolplay and Qihang simultaneously breaking through the technical bottleneck, and then perfectly clashing new game schedules, opening a head-on operations and marketing war, made the holographic game players extremely happy——the recent perks were so plentiful they were more exaggerated than a “year-end major promotion.”

Wings of Dream was unwilling to lag behind and also started running various events…

It’s a pity that ever since Wings of Dream’s City of Home rushed to launch and its reputation collapsed, apart from children continuing to play Wings of Dream’s holographic roller coasters, the number of adult players had been experiencing a cliff-like drop.

Unable to produce new games, they were bound to be eliminated by the market.

Their anxiety was useless; they could only watch Coolplay and Qihang fight fiercely while staring blankly from the sidelines.

The week-long marketing and operations war ended. Amid the earnest expectations of netizens across the entire network, Coolplay’s Age of Discovery officially launched on June 18th.

Xie Yunfan also personally went to experience it a bit.

This game was indeed made quite well. Players acted as “Captains” driving various pirate ships exploring the sea. During this period, they would encounter some sea monsters that required players to fight to resolve.

There were small 5-player dungeons and large 10-player dungeons.

Network matching was smooth, the combat process was exhilarating, and playing this game truly allowed one to experience the thrill and excitement of “maritime adventure.”

As the current boss in the holographic field, Coolplay was much stronger than Wings of Dream. This time, their holographic version absorbed the lesson of Vampire Legend 2‘s failure back then, having more innovation in gameplay.

The newly opened sea areas and newly appearing sea monster designs in the holographic Age of Discovery were very interesting, allowing players to play for quite a while.

However, Xie Yunfan wasn’t worried. This game’s main selling point was “naval combat,” belonging to the firearm combat genre, which didn’t conflict with a story-driven game like The Cases of Di Renjie, and the player overlap rate wouldn’t be too high.

Coolplay couldn’t snatch away players who liked story-driven games. Of course, it was also very difficult for our side to rely on The Cases of Di Renjie to snatch away players who loved combat.

Both sides could just be popular in their own ways.

On the day of launch, Age of Discovery received unanimous praise online.

At least, Coolplay dared to break through technical bottlenecks, absorb lessons learned, and do a good job on the game. Such a game developer deserved the players’ respect.

Yangfan Qihang’s The Cases of Di Renjie would launch two days later.

Coolplay took the first step, grabbing a wave of heat. Could Little Sailboat’s new game truly withstand the strong impact of its friendly competitor?

Xie Yunfan expressed: The pressure is given to Boss Luo.

He was very confident in the game’s quality; it all depended on whether the operations and marketing could break through the siege in the heat of Age of Discovery‘s simultaneous global launch.