Starting as a Manga Editor

Chapter 157: Fragmented Narrative?

The development model proposed by Tang Yao received full support from everyone at the afternoon meeting that same day.So that day,the entire Dou Pai project team underwent a restructuring.

The core team was finalized.

At the same time,the entire project team began moving toward the first step—following Tang Yao’s design plan, they started to build the skeleton, create a prototype, and define the core gameplay.

This wasn’t difficult.

Because most members of the Dou Pai team had previously worked on Dou Pai, and Tang Yao specifically instructed that during the prototype phase, no one was to work on anything unrelated to gameplay. All resources had to be applied to Dou Pai.

All existing assets from the previous game were to be reused.

That saved a lot of time.

And in the early stages, Tang Yao had already provided the game framework, underlying rules, and even the card decks—so the team already had a very clear understanding of the entire structure of the game.The only one who wasn’t too clear, Kang Ming, quickly grasped the requirements with help from seasoned card game veterans like Si Jinliang.

Dou Pai’s gameplay was rapidly taking shape and evolving.

Meanwhile,other modules were also progressing in parallel. For example, confirming the game’s visual style, and the story.

Although the pace was much slower than the core gameplay side...

Because they didn’t have a ready-made Warcraft-style world setting, it was hard to lock in the art style.

And for the same reason, the game’s story also became a problem.

Si Jinliang and Chu Yuxin both felt that the game could borrow from the FATE series’ world setting and make the card designs as close to FATE as possible.

This would save a lot of work while also capitalizing on the popularity of the company’s first game, which would benefit IP operations.

But Tang Yao had a different opinion.

“That won’t really work...”

In the meeting room,Tang Yao thought for a moment, then gently shook her head. “The FATE series mostly revolves around the Holy Grail War, which doesn’t fit well with many of our current card settings.”

This was the truth.

Tang Yao genuinely couldn’t think of how to make the two stories compatible.

The Type-Moon universe is indeed huge and complex in its lore,

but the main narrative still revolves around the modern Holy Grail Wars.

That’s completely different from Warcraft.

Not to mention...

Like, seriously... how are you supposed to cram in a bunch of giant dragons into FATE? Tang Yao had no idea.

And more terrifyingly, if they used the FATE universe, that would mean a huge number of characters would need historical prototypes.

After all, FATE’s main hook is Heroic Spirits.

Just thinking about that made Tang Yao’s heart seize up.

Wow.

She didn’t want to drop dead from exhaustion.

She still had FGO to work on.

“Then... do you have any better ideas?”

Hearing Tang Yao’s concerns,Si Jinliang and Chu Yuxin cooled down from their initial excitement over borrowing the FATE universe.

They exchanged a glance and asked.

“Hmm...”

Tang Yao hesitated. She didn’t really have any good ideas.

She genuinely didn’t know what to do...

Warcraft, huh.

What, was she supposed to make an MMORPG first?

That was unrealistic. The company wasn’t big enough yet to take such a risk.

And the Warcraft universe wasn’t built overnight—it took twenty years, layer upon layer of plot holes and twists, who knows how long that would take to reproduce...

Come to think of it.

A lot of Hearthstone players didn’t even play Warcraft later on... and they still had fun.

In fact, plenty of people discovered Warcraft lore through Hearthstone.To some extent, Hearthstone even influenced how Warcraft characters were perceived.

The most classic example: Anduin.

Crown prince of Stormwind, the Alliance’s shining hope—but in Hearthstone, he became synonymous with stealing: Thoughtsteal, Mind Control, wow...

So really, even though Hearthstone used the Warcraft universe, it actually went down a very different path.

Later on, Warcraft often just became a source of material for Hearthstone...

Because Hearthstone players primarily came for the card battles.

Hmm?

Separate storylines, gameplay-first player motivation...

At this point,a thought flashed through Tang Yao’s mind, and she looked up: “What do you guys think... about fragmented narrative!?”

“Huh?”

Chu Yuxin and Si Jinliang were both stunned. “...Fragmented narrative?”

“Yes.”

Tang Yao’s eyes sparkled. “Simply put, it means only giving players the main plotline and some specific details, letting them piece together their own understanding of the story like solving a puzzle.”

She had just thought of it—Since Hearthstone was gameplay-focused and story came second,

then why not use a fragmented narrative style?

So-called fragmented narrative is essentially a clever way of handling story—like she just said, only offering key plot threads and some scattered details. This not only reduces the cost of story development but also gives players a sense of discovery and involvement, avoiding widespread player resistance due to story elements.

Of course.

Fragmented narrative isn’t a cure-all. A good fragmented narrative still requires the creator to have a strong grasp of the story—at the very least, a complete world setting and script.

Otherwise, if the scattered story pieces contradict each other, it would completely defeat the purpose of using this storytelling method.

Players aren’t dumb. They’ll spot lazy writing at a glance.

But Tang Yao was an old Warcraft player.Maybe she didn’t have every plot memorized,but she was definitely familiar with the worldbuilding and lore.

And every Hearthstone card... has flavor text.

So it was totally possible to gradually unfold the Warcraft story behind Hearthstone through flavor text, voice lines when summoned or attacking, hero interactions,and later on, through released adventure modes.

Take the DK expansion for example—the story of the Lich King could be revealed through the adventure mode, through his legendary card’s description, through the flavor text of neutral legendaries like Silver Hand Knight, and through later Paladin hero Arthas’ voice lines.

How did this devoted son fall so far?Why did the crown prince of Lordaeron become the Lich King of the Scourge?

Card descriptions, adventure narratives, voice lines of specific legendaries...

All of these could gradually reveal the truth to players and encourage those interested to dig deeper into the backstory.

Even though the nature of card games limits how the truth can be fully shown, meaning most of it would end up being player speculation—

Tang Yao felt this was totally doable!

Because this approach avoided awkwardly shoehorning in an incompatible story,kept the worldbuilding consistent,and preserved future potential for long-term IP expansion!

Because fragmentation means there’s no one “correct” version.

If the story is built up slowly,

it might even be possible to expand into other Warcraft-based content later, and backflow the audience from the card game! Even if that sounded heretical...it was definitely a workable solution.

And with fragmented narrative, there was another benefit...Art style wouldn’t be restricted.

The more Tang Yao thought about it, the more feasible it seemed.

“Uh... how exactly would we do it?”

But on the other side,Si Jinliang and Chu Yuxin exchanged confused looks, clearly not following.

Seeing their expressions, Tang Yao immediately started giving examples: “Like, for the Priest hero Anduin, we define him as the King of Stormwind, High King of the Alliance, Supreme Commander of the Alliance army...”

...

At the same time,

While Tang Yao was racking her brain for her card game,

on the ANF side,

Li Xue’s hard work finally bore fruit.

The anime acquisition campaign—

ANF site users were on fire... the servers even crashed once during the process.

Even Cai Quan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

But in terms of long-term impact,

it was still the million-yuan manga creation fund campaign that made the biggest splash.

Because FGO was the first anime-style game in this world,most manga artists had played it,and many had even drawn FGO fan art.

And the already-famous mangaka were especially focused on this game because of magazine strategies.

The magazines also wanted to cash in on the mobile game trend.In this world, FGO was born from the manga Fate/Zero.

Which manga magazine doesn’t have a few flagship titles?

If Fate/Zero can do it,why can’t our manga make it big too?

In fact,many well-known manga IPs had already been sold off.

And all of that was closely tied to the major mangaka involved—so of course they were keeping an eye on FGO’s performance.

Now,

with ANF suddenly launching such a major initiative,inviting mangaka to submit their work to the site, with the promise that outstanding entries might get FGO collabs and revenue share...

Hiss—

Once this news got out,

it was like a small nuclear bomb dropped on the entire manga industry!