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C10: Who Can Say No to a Beautiful Girls Game?

"Huh, unexpected!"

Inside my rental house, I was a little surprised as I looked at the sales statistics on the backend of the official platform.

The data had spiked significantly over time, and some numbers exceeded my expectations.

On the first day, I sold 162 copies—not particularly high, but not too low either for a no-expensive-marketing indie game.

But on the second day, sales soared by about four times, bringing the total to 610 copies.

The main reason? My unique promotional strategy—aka *Man of Culture* marketing.

With a budget of 20,000 yuan, traditional advertising wasn't an option. The money wasn't enough to even make a dent in some places for 2 days, and besides, my game had a special niche (R18).

So I set my sights overseas—specifically, on a certain forum that all men of culture and gentlemen frequently visit.

For me, all that mattered was getting exposure on the platform, and soon a group of wolves would follow.

As for the method, I used a relatively primitive, cost-effective but super-influential and niche strategy: elite navy posts.

I didn't consider large-scale bombing with naval posts. That approach doesn't work well and can even backfire because my game revolves around the niche.

Instead, I focused on buying high-level accounts and making elite posts. I bought older accounts on the forum and then posted well-thought-out comments and content.

After posting, I had a team of high-level hired accounts to comment and upvote on my content.

But the key to all of this? The game had to be good. If it didn't hold up in terms of quality, this method wouldn't work as well as large-scale naval efforts and would eventually backfire.

The most crucial aspect of this strategy's success is converting players who discover the game into enthusiastic promoters within their circles, getting them to recommend it to their friends, brothers, and fellow gentlemen.

In my previous life as a professional game planner and an honest, down-to-earth player, I learned a simple truth:

What are players interested in?

It's simple: players love doing one thing in games.

In regular games, they love doing risqué things; in risqué games, they love doing regular things.

This contrast makes it hard for players to stop playing and stop anticipating with curiosity.

Like a popular joke from online forums: men have two hobbies—pulling others into mischief and convincing those in mischief to follow the righteous path. Quite two-faced...

Players are no different. Some love pulling clever tricks in games, while others loves pulling clever tricks on forums to lure players into joining.

Of course, this feature alone isn't enough to make a game successful. Ultimately, the game's quality is what seals the deal.

But this feature is enough to draw players in, and that's all I need.

Looking at the sales of *Magic Mirror*, I can say that my promotional strategy worked like a charm. This game is just waiting for the right time to explode.

After all, I chose *Magic Mirror* after carefully considering every angle—how similar competing products were performing in the market, whether the gentlemen's preferences had shifted, and the feasibility of promotion on different platforms. I researched it all beforehand. Hehe.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.- Sun Tzu

I calculated everything. But why am I still sweating? Well, my hands are in Namaskar's position as I pray to God for it to work out.

Given all that, the success of *Magic Mirror* was still undetermined.

The only thing that caught me off guard was how much more enthusiastic these gentlemen were than I had expected. Truly, gentlemen are gentlemen.

---

The second day, I sold 610 copies, and I believed that this increase was just the beginning.

As time goes on, word of mouth among players will increase the sales of *Magic Mirror* bit by bit.

"Well, according to this model, the money owed by the payment software will be repaid directly next week," I thought, calculating and predicting what my earnings would be by the end of the week.

Fortunately, the settlement method of the overseas official platform is real-time credit. As long as the player passes the refund period, the payment can be directly credited to my account.

However, just like in my previous experiences, third-party platform channels are a bit hard to deal with. Quite a lot of them are truly unscrupulous with individual developers.

The official game platform takes 30% of the commission, which is mainly for daily platform maintenance, game engine updates, and the development of the latest technology. It's a bit high, considering all the other costs involved in game development.

As for the other third-party game platforms, things get a lot trickier and darker.

Especially for mobile channels, where the commission starts at 50%. Some platforms even take a 73% cut, leaving only 27% for developers like me—leaving scraps and nothing.

This reminds me of the "Hay Farm games" and the channels of major mobile app stores from my previous life, which were white in theme but eternally darker on the inside.

There are some advantages, though. The number of users on these third-party platforms is quite large and concentrated, and since official recommendations are rare and algorithms aren't very sophisticated, many studios and companies still make a small profit despite the higher revenue shares of the platform.

But for me right now, these platforms are barely on my radar.

It's not that I find them too predatory and don't want to use them. If I did, I could accumulate funds much faster in the early stages.

The real issue is that *Magic Mirror* is a bit special, and even if it were on those platforms, it wouldn't get any recommendations.

This mainly applies to domestic platforms. For overseas platforms, the restrictions aren't as strict. But with access to the official overseas platform, I don't see any need to bother with third-party channels.

Those domestic platform providers don't have much influence overseas anyway. Their main market is domestic.

---

From the afternoon to the evening, I was continuously monitoring the game sales data. I was updating it every few minutes. I even set the auto-refresh to every 30 seconds.

This period is prime time for sales growth.

Refreshing the data in the analytics background every hour, I could see that the sales of *Magic Mirror* were steadily rising.

From the previous hour's 100+ copies, during this prime time, sales surged to over 300.

Clearly, from various information channels, the name *Magic Mirror* was slowly making its way to potential players.

This spike in sales came from the support of some very devoted players and Mr. Gentlemen.

And with more sales came the ratings, and the score for *Magic Mirror* was finally displayed.

9.7 points, an explosive score.

Most of the ratings were in the range of 9 to 10, thus averaging it toward the higher end.

But I wasn't too excited.

The main reason is that as an 18+ game, players tend to be very forgiving of this type of content.

Compared to traditional games, this score doesn't have much reference value.

Just like how some forums are filled with complaints and negativity, the ones frequented by *Magic Mirror* players are quite harmonious. The posts range from praise like "The developer is a good person," "The developer is quite conscientious," and "The developer knows the way of the gentleman" to discussions of game features or experiences shared with certain in-game characters.

The high score of *Magic Mirror* only proves that in the eyes of the players, the game is worth picking up and recommending.

After all, who can resist such a fun matchmaking game with beautiful characters?

Like it ? Add to your library!

Have some idea about my edits? Comment it and let me know.

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