When Mizuhara Raiko personally visited Kamiyā Yuu to inform him about the changes within Frontier Legend, he was extremely surprised.
Did she really have that much confidence in 'Warship Girls Collection'?
So much so that she was willing to gamble away a bright future that ordinary people could only envy.
Business was like war. Although Kamiyā Yuu did not know the internal details behind the matter, he certainly was not going to let such a good opportunity slip by.
The operation rights for 'Warship Girls Collection' had changed from Frontier Legend to the obscure 'Mirror Flower Water Moon' Game Studio. On that basis alone, Kamiyā Yuu had sufficient reason to reclaim the game's operation rights.
Of course, he also had no intention of warmly accommodating 'Frontier Legend' after being treated coldly by them.
Through information he gathered online about Mizuhara Raiko, Kamiyā Yuu had developed considerable admiration for this powerful operations expert. It was no easy feat to both make money for a game company and maintain a positive reputation for the game among players.
In response to the changing situation, Kamiyā Yuu ruthlessly proposed an additional condition.
If 'Mirror Flower Water Moon' Game Studio wanted to operate 'Warship Girls Collection', then the original agreement of thirty percent profit sharing would be changed. Instead, Kamiyā Yuu would directly receive thirty percent ownership of the studio itself, while also providing financial support to the studio.
This was essentially unilateral commercial coercion.
Yet Mizuhara Raiko, who had already sacrificed everything for this, had no second option.
Without 'Warship Girls Collection', the 'Mirror Flower Water Moon' Game Studio would become meaningless.
At present, her team only has experience in the gaming market. They possessed no actual game development capability.
In other words, if the studio lost the operation rights to 'Warship Girls Collection', all that would remain would be an empty shell incapable of doing anything.
Grinding her teeth helplessly, Mizuhara Raiko accepted Kamiyā Yuu's demands, making him a joint major shareholder of the 'Mirror Flower Water Moon' Game Studio alongside herself.
For a small game workshop, this was not necessarily a bad thing. At the very least, the road ahead would become more stable, and they would gain support from a reliable financial chain.
Under such circumstances, 'Warship Girls Collection' officially launched onto the market.
A good game requires time to prove itself.
The reputation of 'Warship Girls Collection' had already spread across Japan's internet long ago. Countless mysterious halos surrounding the game left players eagerly anticipating this legendary title.
One professional streamer dedicated entirely to 'Warship Girls Collection' maintained a stable audience popularity of around one hundred thousand viewers every day. Streaming the game had elevated that streamer from a nobody into one of Japan's first-rate gaming streamers.
Fan creations were also one of the main factors influencing a work's popularity.
In his previous world, the rise of 'Kantai Collection' had been heavily influenced by doujin works.
Knowing this clearly, Kamiyā Yuu had distributed game accounts to every illustrator responsible for character designs in 'Warship Girls Collection'. Altogether, there were probably over a hundred illustrators within the industry who had accepted this "gift" from him.
And most illustrators naturally possessed hardcore otaku tendencies.
They had practically no resistance to a game like this.
As a result, even though 'Warship Girls Collection' only had around thirty thousand regular players before its official release, all kinds of all-ages doujin manga and adult-only fan works had emerged endlessly.
Within the doujin community, while it had not yet become a dominant force, it already possessed considerable popularity and influence, only one step away from reaching the status of one of the "Three Great Cult Classics" from his previous world.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, everything Kamiyā Yuu did was pushing the popularity effect of 'Warship Girls Collection'.
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On its first day, 'Warship Girls Collection' surpassed five hundred thousand registered players, while peak concurrent players reached two hundred fifty thousand.
Even among Japan's large-scale online games, such data was extremely rare, belonging to the level of ultra-first-tier popularity.
Yet these miraculous statistics, which even most major MMORPGs could not achieve, had appeared on a browser game.
The astonishing data attracted the attention of all gaming media and players.
Fake statistics?
The overwhelming flood of discussion and reviews about 'Warship Girls Collection' across gaming forums certainly could not be fabricated.
Moreover, the aggregate review score given to 'Warship Girls Collection' by gaming media had astonishingly reached ninety-six points.
Different gaming media use different standards when reviewing games, making it difficult for any single score to accurately represent a game's quality. Aggregate media scores, however, were calculated by famous gaming websites that compiled ratings from all major game media, representing the opinions of most players and critics.
Generally, an aggregate score of sixty was considered the passing line for a game, meaning it was worth trying.
A score of seventy meant the game possessed highlights and attractive features, making it recommended for players to experience.
A score of eighty meant the game's overall quality was solid, allowing most players to find it enjoyable and satisfying. Most AAA games lacking sufficient sincerity usually landed around this level.
Ninety points, however, represented the greatest threshold in gaming reviews.
Games that crossed this line were either historically significant titles—such as ancient games that pioneered the first-person shooter genre—or hidden masterpieces. While hidden masterpieces often only possessed quality equivalent to around eighty points, their niche genres granted them considerable bonus points.
The final category, naturally, consisted of "masterpieces" that aligned with the preferences of most players, games so enjoyable that players became completely immersed in them.
'Warship Girls Collection' possessed all three qualities.
Although it was not the original ancestor of construction-management or card-collection games, its unique game systems and features absolutely established a new standard for the genre.
Construction-management and card-collection games had always been lukewarm genres within Japan's gaming industry. Truly outstanding works were already rare, much less genuinely fun ones.
As for the fun factor, there was no need to elaborate further.
Japan's internet was already overflowing with praise.
The best term to describe the popularity of 'Warship Girls Collection' after launch was simply:
"A phenomenon-level game."
For the 'Mirror Flower Water Moon' Game Studio, the clearest realization of 'Warship Girls Collection's popularity probably came on launch day itself.
On that very first day, the game generated thirty million yen in pure profit.
Those profits all came from the insane spenders who poured money into the game as though celebrating at a carnival party.
The reputation and influence of 'Warship Girls Collection' among mainstream players still required time to accumulate and ferment.
A good game might explode in popularity at launch but fail to maintain momentum, while some niche games could begin quietly before becoming massively popular later on.
Kamiyā Yuu was not in a hurry to see whether 'Warship Girls Collection' would grow to surpass the 'Kantai Collection' of his previous world.
After handing the game over to the 'Mirror Flower Water Moon' Game Studio and opening player registration, his main focus shifted toward the soon-to-premiere anime 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica'.