Time really flies.
The naive young men have all turned into devils...
Mingyan took a sip of coffee and thought: Hmm, it definitely wasn't my fault.
229. Glorious Years
Days filled with fulfilling work always seem to pass exceptionally quickly.
May of this year arrived quickly, and preparations for this year's Blue Star Carnival began well in advance.
Putting everything else aside, the park on Blue Star is scheduled to be open for a full month.
The Blue Star Paradise Project has officially launched.
Around the time of this year's carnival, Blue Star Park will undergo a one-month trial operation. The results will determine the official opening date for the second half of the year.
Even though it was said to be a "trial operation", the number of players coming to experience it was still overwhelming.
Or rather, it is precisely because it is a trial operation that it has aroused the interest of players.
May is still late spring in the local area, and the weather is gradually getting warmer. It feels even more stuffy when people are crowded together in line.
Fortunately, the park anticipated this scenario early on, so tickets for Blue Star Paradise are sold entirely online, eliminating the tragic possibility of "queuing up in the middle of the night to buy tickets but still not getting any."
Nowadays, most of the people crowding around outside the park are still nearby tourists hoping to get lucky and ask scalpers if they have any tickets.
Meanwhile, the scalpers were surrounded and pleaded, "Sold out, really sold out..." You gamers, do you have to be so fast?! Even professional ticket-grabbing teams couldn't get many tickets!!!
Blue Star Paradise opens at 8:00 a.m. and closes at 9:00 p.m. every day. It does not allow visitors to stay overnight.
However, there will naturally be hotels nearby for players to rest. If any tourists are not satisfied, they can try to snag tickets for the next day and have a two-day trip to Blue Star Paradise.
Although the park is only in its first phase and only half of the area is open, it hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of the visitors.
Some hardcore fans can easily spend most of the day in the Minecraft area and are reluctant to leave.
—After all, tickets to the Blue Star Carnival are truly impossible to get in a lifetime! As a second-best option, visiting Blue Star Park means you can at least actually touch the exhibits!
Tickets for this year's carnival are still in high demand and short supply, fetching exorbitant prices of tens of thousands of yuan on the black market.
This year's situation is even more special, as it happens to be the tenth annual Blue Star Carnival—
Rounding up, it's practically the tenth anniversary celebration of Blue Star Studio!
This is quite an anniversary for players, let alone for Mingjiao fans, it's like a grand celebration for everyone.
Many people who win tickets to attend the carnival on such a day are overjoyed and cry tears of joy, feeling it's a once-in-a-lifetime lucky experience.
This year's carnival also saw the full participation of both the Blue Star and Dragon Slayer Studios.
It was made clear that there was no favoritism; a separate dragon-slaying experience area was set up in Blue Star Paradise, and the game following the dragon-slaying sword was also included in the experience hall.
The two studios each have their own rules and regulations and development cycles, but the employees get along very well and don't distinguish between each other, which is quite an interesting "one country, two systems" situation.
The most eye-catching part of this year's carnival player exchange event was the player meet-up.
Ming said that he has his own half hour, which is also the time he gets closest to the players in a year.
Looking down at the stage, the glow sticks gathered into a galaxy, and the shimmering light seemed to carry the expectant eyes of the players.
The host asked him, "This year has truly been a year of great upheaval, and Chief Designer Ming himself has announced his dual identity. What was Chief Designer Ming's mindset when he founded Blue Star Studio and Dragon Slayer Sword Studio?"
Mingyan said with a smile, "BlueStar was founded to facilitate the distribution of Minecraft and its successor, League of Legends. The latter was a relatively novel game concept at the time. I contacted several distribution companies, but their offers were all far below my expectations. One even offered 200,000 yuan to buy the entire copyright—"
He paused slightly after speaking, because he heard a commotion from the audience.
Even the host gasped.
—Two hundred thousand! To acquire League of Legends!!
Who doesn't know how popular League of Legends is right now? After the ninth season ended, it paid nearly 900 million in taxes to the government last year alone!
Two hundred thousand? It's more like they're offering two billion to buy the limited distribution rights for "League of Legends"!
"Yes, back then, we were really unpopular, so I had to set up my own studio, publish it myself, and negotiate partnerships with platforms myself—it took a lot of persuasion and Xia Cheng's help to finally sign a tiered contract." Ming Yan sighed softly. "And even after *League of Legends* was launched, it operated at a loss for the first year. Even the promotional funds were entirely borrowed from Xia Cheng; I think many people have heard about that. To drive traffic to the game, I planned and established the Sixth Star Province league, which is the prototype for today's S-series. At that time, we didn't even have a single sponsor—"
Upon hearing this, the audience erupted in noise once again.
The bosses, especially those sitting in the front row, were practically going crazy when they heard this.
Look at the level of sponsorships for League of Legends now! Even multinational corporations are competing for these positions!
Last year's biggest sponsor for the ninth season was the Sixth Star Province Air Force Headquarters—yes! The government military! They had to submit a bid to place their recruitment ads there!
At this moment, in this situation, the bosses just want to beat their chests and stamp their feet, and go back ten years... to buy the advertising rights for ten or twenty years!
Mingyan continued, "Without sponsors, funds are tight, and we're even hesitant to pay Varian's salary."
Varian, who was sitting next to him, laughed.
Yes, Ming had directly signed a performance-based contract with him at the time. He later learned that this was intentional on Ming's part, because otherwise, the first year's salary might not be paid on time…
Looking back now, Chief Engineer Ming really was cunning as a devil when he was young... no, he was shrewd and calculating!
Mingyan smiled knowingly and said, "As everyone knows, almost all of the revenue from Minecraft was donated. So at that time I was penniless and could only try to make a new game to quickly earn some money so that League of Legends could continue to operate."
They just wanted to keep operating; they were being extremely humble.