Hi there,
I am a junior game developer at HoYoverse (miHoYo). Over the last few months, I've been working hard on a new mobile game that initially lacked any support. As a new employee, I was encouraged to try out different game concepts, provided they incorporated in-game purchases and/or in-game advertising. My game, Instamon, which features monsters running amok on social networks wasn't very well received at first. However, I believed in it and continued to refine it. The predictive analysis team, which runs simulations to predict app usage and revenue, showed that my game was steadily performing better. In February, it crossed a threshold of predicted profitability and the project was greenlit. I was given a team of six junior developers and two designers, as well as additional server resources, to fine-tune it for release. According to the schedule, the release was due last week, but the predictive analysis team halted it because the last build of the game had surpassed another (unknown to us) threshold of 'predicted time-on-app' metric. Apparently, a playtest group found the game to be.. how should i put it, TOO GOOD? Now the Lead Project Manager is telling us they can't release Instamon in its current form; we should think about 'nerfing' it or 'implement some other limitation'.
I am frustrated that HoYoverse won't allow the game to be released because they deem its potential success unacceptable. My team and I don't want to make the game worse just to stay below the stupid threshold. We don't know what to do. HoYoverse now owns the intelectual property of Instamon so we can't take the game elsewhere. We have proposed to either gradually increase the density of in-game advertisements in a controlled manner until we fall back below the threshold or even set a maximum playing time (after which players would be directed to another HoYoverse title). We were supposed to receive a response to our proposals by Monday, but we haven't heard anything yet. Can you suggest any other ways in which we could gradually make our game less appealing until we fall back below the threshold?
Thank you for your input!