To ascend, I had no choice but to create games

Plagiarism is a common occurrence in the game industry.

Many games have even plagiarized their way to classical status, becoming milestones in the history of gaming.

When it comes to plagiarism, as long as there’s no direct use of code, original artwork, or models, then copying gameplay is generally not legally recognized as plagiarism.

In the past year, there have been countless incidents of plagiarism, but only a very few have actually been judged as such by a court.

Tianyi has not been exempt from plagiarism; in fact, one could say they built their business on it.

They have many experienced planners, who can deduce a game developer’s thought process and the remaining gameplay from the game kernel exhibited by a beta version, through clues and traces.

Even with just a test version, or a few minutes of a demo, they can discern the core enjoyment of a game and deduce additional gameplay from it.

Through a brainpower advantage brought by a large planning team, they could even make others’ core gameplay more interesting, and through capital promotion, expand its influence to absurd lengths, ultimately achieving the ridiculous feat of plagiarizing their way to the death of the original.

Afterwards, Tianyi would even use the others’ corpses as case studies, packaging the original clone as competition to cover up their past.

Besides that, they had another major advantage, which was their rich art and programming resources.

After all, Tianyi was a company with decades of history, and it had started laying out 3D a long time ago, accumulating a vast amount of art resources and 3D technology.

Their massive art library contained a plethora of reusable resources— Eastern, Western, classical, and modern. These years of accumulation were the deep reserves of a massive game company, significantly reducing their art costs.

In addition, Tianyi had a big killer application in experimentation.

That is, AI programming modules.

Tianyi had specialized AI programmers internally, who continuously fed all sorts of codes to the AI program. The end result was that as long as the planning document was written according to certain specifications, the program could automatically fulfill more than eighty percent of the work.

Although it still couldn’t replace programmers outright, it could directly cut down programming workload by sixty percent, and bugs were virtually nonexistent afterward.

Thinking about the company’s existing resources and flipping through the materials provided by product operations, Zhang Ping’s brain worked at high speed.

Before long, he had estimated the approximate costs of plagiarizing “Dark Builder” and the prospects of such a game, based on the available materials.

By collaborating to build different structures to resist the threat of darkness, each battle could be very short. Such a fast-paced game fit the current market well.

The co-op mode would entail some light social elements; the game could enable voice chat, but by default, voice communication would be turned off, avoiding the presence of stress inducers and satisfying the light social needs of players.

The gameplay was simple, but the market feedback was good. Through anonymous surveys, the product operations found the game had a positive reputation, though some players criticized its pixel art style.

Therefore, by optimizing the art and grafting on some monetization elements and other features, it was very likely to achieve a game with monthly revenues exceeding one hundred million.

Looking at Kongkong, Zhang Ping felt that he had come to his senses not too late.

He was a game producer who could make money, not one who could create great games.

Recently, several good games from Tianyi’s headquarters had emerged and received a good reception among players; they were both critically and commercially successful.

In contrast, the much-anticipated Rong City branch had not been performing well.

Plus, the fact that a producer from Feixiang Studio announced retirement put him under considerable pressure. He urgently needed some successful games to boost morale and show the higher-ups they were also striving hard.

So, although plagiarism was not exactly honorable, especially when the victim was an independent game, if the plagiarism was successful enough to completely outdo the original, players would only remember the victor in the end. Losers do not deserve to be named.

Patting Kongkong on the shoulder, Zhang Ping said, “Go ahead and do it with confidence, the company supports you.”

After a pause, Zhang Ping continued, “But if it fails, someone will have to take the fall. You understand what I mean, right?”

Kongkong nodded.

As a producer who often made others take the fall, he knew all too well how big the ‘pot’ could be if he failed.

This was to be a high-stakes gamble with his past reputation on the line.

It was still not too late to back out now, but he had grown accustomed to sitting on the throne, reigning like a local emperor in his own studio.

The taste of power was more exquisite than anything else, once tasted, it could never be forgotten.

Tianyi was quick to respond.

They decided to kick off the project in the morning, and by afternoon, Kongkong Studio was reorganized.

A group of battle-tested programmers and artists capable of ‘007’ work were transferred in to staff the studio.

Game outsourcing was maxed out as Tianyi once again went all-in on a project, working at an almost insane pace to start production of the new game non-stop.

The game’s code was not complex. Although they couldn’t crack “Dark Builder’s” code through reverse engineering, “King’s Dungeon’s” code and art resources were readily available. By re-skinning the models and adjusting the camera angle, they could create a similar effect.