Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 121 - Chapter 120: Last Match for Dignity - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 121 - Chapter 120: Last Match for Dignity Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 121: Chapter 120: Last Match for Dignity

Inside the Fates Internet Cafe, Chen Mo was controlling three Undead heroes, battling it out with the opposing Orcs.

"Hey, this Orc is pretty good. You wanna kill my Crypt Fiend?

"Burrow.

"You wanna kill my Lich? Frost Armor, then Death Coil.

"You wanna kill my Death Knight? I'll just run away.

"You wanna surround me? That won't work.

"Hmm? You wanna run? Take my triple combo!

"Geez, this Shadow Hunter is still struggling?

"Sorry, you'll be followed by my Death Coils.

"Geez, you're done already? Next!"

-Inside the chat group-

"Lost again! Let's go again!"

"How is this guy so good at Undead too? The Crypt Fiends and Ice Armor are incredibly difficult to deal with! The glass-cannon Lich and the healing machine Death Knight!"

"No, we gotta queue again!"

This time it was a Human player.

"Silent got Night Elves again!"

"Be careful of his Pandaren Strategy!"

"There's no need, there isn't a Tavern on this map!"

"Build towers, quickly! Let's see how he reacts this time!"

"We're finally onto something now that the mines are fully operational. Mine more and crush him!"

"Huh? How is he so rich?"

"He has more mines than the Humans! How did he get so many mines!"

"Don't worry, there's a battle to be had later!"

"I can't win! That's awful!"

"My turn, my turn."

"Wow, Silent got Humans this time! Your turn to use the Pandaren strategy!"

"What, he trained a Mountain King first! Ah! My Pandaren got surrounded and killed!"

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"He's building towers again!"

"Man, why are there so many Siege Engines. They... are destroying my base!

"Man, there's nothing I can do, the Siege Engines aren't dying at all!"

"My bases are destroyed! I'm done!"

It didn't matter that they went right after one another! Silent was still stomping on these pros while playing random!

The chat was ecstatic as each match was better than the last.

There were many players within the group making requests from Zou Zhuo.

"@Zzz, what does Silent look like? Send us a clip."

"Yeah, hurry, you're reporting from the battlefield!"

Zou Zhuo sent a few videos one after another, but all behind CHen Mo. They could see Chen Mo's incredible hand-speed as well as hear him explaining the situation to Zou Zhuo.

"Hmm, this is the second time playing against Nightwind, he seems much better this time.

"Huh, he played this strategy pretty well, he's improved a lot."

"His defence is pretty good, what about this?"

"Damn you!"

"Look, he's almost done."

"Wasn't the Blademaster pretty cool? What happened? Huh, you want it to end? Nope! Look at me running circles around him."

"Hmm? Rage quit?"

"Alright, next!"

The group went wild after seeing the videos.

"Man, this Silent is so cocky, I really want to punch him!"

"What is this, I thought he's the cool type? He's obviously the annoying talkative type!"

"Yeah, his ID is Silent, he's silent in game, but not at all in real life!"

"Wow, it feels like he's not even trying, but toying with all these gods!"

"It really feels like Ragnaroc!"

"Has K-god played?"

"K-god can't play as he has class this afternoon."

"I think it's wise for K-god to not play. This Silent guy is crazy, bullying anyone he comes across!"

"All of them have been bullied once right?"

"Nope, there's still one more."

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"Oh yeah. There's Goph!"

"Let's go Goph! Humans, Night Elves and Undead have all fallen, you're the only one left to defend the honour of the Orcs!"

"My goodness, it really is the battle for honour, Goph losing means that Silent beat the entire army, and Silent would become the best of the best!"

"We can't allow that to happen!"

This time Chen Mo queued into an Orc player named Goph.

"Hmm?"

The ID was familiar to Chen Mo, it was the highest ranked player who mained Orcs.

"I'm almost at the top already? I feel like I'm stomping all over these people."

Chen Mo was now at four thousand and twelve points after his long win streak. Beating Goph would allow him to be at the top of the leaderboard.

The chat was going wild

"Goph! The best Orc player is about to play!"

"Wow, it really is the battle among gods like Ragarok! It would go down in history if Silent beat Goph! Getting to the top with straight wins after beating all the pros?"

"Don't be so sure yet, Goph must've done his research. He would lose that easily!"

"Let's see what he randoms, I think Goph has a chance is SIlent gets Night Elves or Undead!"

"Wow! Night Elves! You're a prophet!"

"Alright, he has a chance!"

It was commonly accepted that Silent had a high chance of winning if he got Humans or Orcs. He could use tower spam if he got humans, and out probably out skill Goph in a mirror match.

Silent could use Frost Armour Crypt Fiends if he got Undead, and had beat a few other Orc players with the same strategy. All that's left were Night Elves, as Silent hadn't played that matchup yet.

Most players felt that Night Elves aren't good against Orcs as Night Elf units were squishy, the Archers would easily die in three hits from the Blademaster.

Although Demon hunter and mana burn the Blademaster, but it was difficult to get all his mana, furthermore the orcs could use mana potions too.

Moreover, when the Orcs reach the second tier, they could train Raiders and Spirit Walkers. And when combined are very difficult for Elven heroes to play against as they could easily die from a group of them.

Many viewers were happy that Silent might have been overzealous in choosing to random, then being put into an unfavourable matchup.

Many Night Elf players were also watching this match. They found that the matchup against Orcs were difficult, but have never been able to find a way to play around it. Maybe Silent could give them some pointers?

The match was in a four person map, with both players spread quite far apart.

Silent didn't do the usual farming with Ancient of War, instead walling off his base using buildings.

The Orc's opening was the usual farming with Blademaster.

The observer was trying their best to provide commentary.

"Silent isn't using Ancient of War this time, that's unlike him. Is this some new strategy? Hmm? That building placement is interesting, it seems like it's meant to block off passage. It's all placed in a row with plenty of space behind it.

"The Demon Hunter is running straight towards the Orcs, that's odd. It seems like he has no plans to farm levels at all! Moreover, he only trained an Archer, who is currently sitting in base!"

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Chapter 122: Chapter 121: Flying Units!

After the wisps had discovered where the Orcs were, the Demon hunter started burning mana and killing Grunts.

Goph scowled, he most certainly could use the Blademaster to kill the Demon Hunter, but so what? The Demon Hunter could just run back to base and heal up, interrupting his farming.

"You're not farming, but choosing to interrupt my farm? Not gonna work."

Goph didn't take the bait, continuing to kill neutral creeps to level-up.

He thought of running into their base to kill the wisps too, but gave up upon seeing the blockage as there was no way the Blademaster was making it through that.

The Night Elves didn't train any other units other than Archers, instead investing their resources to level the Archers.

The audience was shocked at this move.

"Straight to level three? You're fighting high-tier Orc units using that?

"That's not possible right? Demon Hunter is still level one too, and most of the Orc army is at level two now. As long as Raiders are able to take down buildings quickly, the Night Elves stand no chance!

"The Night Elves trained a Beastmaster! And he's still harassing the Orcs!"

"What's Silent planning, I don't understand this at all!"

The Beast Master learnt Summon Quillbeast and was picking off damaged Orc units. And everytime Goph allied a heal, it would be cancelled.

"Don't worry,it's normal. If he's not doing anything and letting me farm, he's not the real Silent.

Goph was naturally pantient as he was so highly skilled.

Finally, the Night Elves finished their level three training. Silent slapped down two Ancient of Wind as well as increased their population to fifty, and started producing Druid of the Talons.

"What is he playing at, making Druid of Talons?"

"That thing is useless, it does no damage in human form, it only hits air units in crow form. Isn't it just going to feed itself to the Blademaster?"

"Maybe he plans to use Cyclone to control Blademaster?"

"The Druids only have enough mana to use it maybe two times, but the Orcs have Spirit Walkers to deal with that!"

"Maybe that's why Silent has no Ancient of Wind to mass produce the druids? Win in numbers?"

"I think that's too optimistic, you're only controlling the Blademaster, it doesn't do any damage. Once the Blademaster hits the ground, it's going to chop the Druid of Talon into pieces!"

"I think Silent fell into his own trap! The win streak is about to end!"

Druids of the Talons were cheap in terms of resources and population, allowing the training of the Night Elves was done pretty quickly. After hiring some mercenaries and summoning the third hero, Goblin Tinker, to fill out some space, the army of fifty was completed and proceeding to grinding levels.

Goph was shocked when his scouting Blademaster walked into the massive army.

Three level one heroes followed by many different mercenaries, it wasn't something that he could say he'd seen before.

Goblin Tinker? What does that thing provide? Are you sure it's not here to give my Blademaster experience?

Without hesitation, Blademaster showed himself and started hacking away at the Goblin Tinker.

But after just a few attacks, the one of the Druid of the Claw raised their hands and threw Blademaster into the air.

And once it hit the ground, another Druid of the Claw raised their hands and threw him into the air.

What was the meaning of this!

He knew that this unit exists, but it was never commonly used because of its low health and damage. It was completely useless to have a few of it. It's only use was to throw enemies into the air, but it didn't deal damage, and would run out of mana after two casts.

But Goph had just realised how disgusting it would be when there were many of them. If they worked together, the Blademaster would permanently be in the air.

Goph was now sweating, as his Blademaster hit the ground, he quickly casted Wind Walk to try and escape.

Although the Night Elves had Faerie Fire to reveal the invisible Blademaster, they chose to continue grinding levels instead of keeping the Blademaster constantly in the air.

Goph knew better than to slack off, levelling in order to summon Tauren Chieftain. Tauren Chieftain's Shock Wave was a pretty good AoE spell, which would certainly be good against the squish Druid of the Talon.

The Orcs were also training Spirit walkers, which could use Spirit Links to split damage across multiple units. It also had Disenchant which would be useful to remove the Cyclone effect off units.

But when Goph's population reached fifty, the Elven army had arrived.

There were a lot more Elven units despite both armies being about fifty population, due to the cheap costs of Druid of the Talons. The Druids charged forwards, immediately tossing the Blademaster into the air!

Goph wanted to retaliate by netting the Demon Hunter, but Silent was mindful of it, staying just out of range. The Goblin Tinker then put down its Pocket Factory, blocking the path towards it! This made it difficult for the Orcs to charge in as most of them were affected by Faerie Fire, and the key units were all in the air too!

Goph used the Spirit Walker to dispel the Cyclone, but that dispelled the Spirit Link of itself too. And after landing, it would immediately be brought back into the sky by another Cyclone. The Orcs had a few Spirit Walkers, but the Elves had an entire army of Druid of the Talons!

The Night Elves also had Mana Flares from two Faerie Dragons, making the Spirit Walkers take damage every time they cast spells.

It didn't take long for the Orc's Raiders to die from the summons from the three heroes and Faerie Fire from the Druid of the Talons. Goph wanted to save them, but his Shadow Hunter was still in the air from the Cyclone!

Goph finally let out a Shock Wave when his Tauren Chieftain landed on the ground, but Silent responded with an AoE heal, replenishing all his units to full health!

It was hopeless!

The match was already decided, but Goph wasn't about to give up. His Tauren Chieftain had enough mana to cast another Shock Wave to at least regain some dignity!

The Tauren Chieftain landed, and shot out another Shock Wave!

But this time, the Druids immediately turned into crows, becoming flying units, causing the Shock Wave to miss!

"Pfft!"

Goph may as well have spat out blood. How could he still toy with me when I'm about to call GG, that's insufferable!

It took the druids a lot of mana to turn into crows. Dodging the Shock Wave by using Crow Form was a cool effect, but might be game losing in a close match.

But Silent could do anything he wanted as the victory was in his hands, and that whole maneuver was just to show off.

Goph's rage was building, his units were thinning out, with just three half dead heroes left alive.

Goph reluctantly called GG.

The chat was filled with laughter.

"What, Night Elves can beat Orcs? I've been living under a rock!"

"Wow, the Blademaster was completely decked out, but it was useless. It never even hit once..."

"This Silent actually defeated Goph just by using Cyclones."

"I'm impressed ! From today onwards I'm team S-god!"

"He's at the top of the leaderboards with straight wins! What a historic moment!"

At the same time this was going on in chat, a paragraph was trending on Weibo.

"The four races were comparing who had the most air units. The humans said they have Flying Machines, Gryphons and Dragonhawks! The Undead say that they have Obsidian Statues, Destroyer, and Frost Wyrm! The Night Elves say that they have Hippogryphs, Druid of the Talons, Faerie Dragon, and Chimeras! The Orcs say, "That's nothing, when we fight the Night Elves, all our units are in the air!"

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Chapter 123: Chapter 122: English Translation

"Geez, there isn't a single one that's worthy to be my opponent."

Chen Mo decided it was time to leave after looking at his watch.

His account was now at the top, he even showed off every single race. All that's left is to have these pros learn and understand. It's better for the growth of the game if it was at a higher level anyways.

The news of 'Mysterious random player Silent destroys the ranked ladder, reaching the top' were plastered all over the video game media. The news spread especially quickly in the Warcraft community.

There were a few stickies that were discussing this matter.

"Did you watch the matches today? Silent destroyed the ladder by reaching the top using random only! Even Goph couldn't handle him!"

"I saw it, and all I can say is that it's too sad! All the pros have been bullied!"

"Silent has no match at the top of the ladder at four thousand odd points. They also got there in straight wins, and in just a few days! That's horrifying!"

"His skill level for all the races are exemplary. Has anybody counted how many strategies he had come up with?"

"Raiders rush, mine rush, tower rush, Frost Armor Crypt Fiends, Gargoyles and Ghouls... and of course Cyclone spam!"

"That's revolutionary! I thought the pros had already discovered what the game had to offer, but it wasn't even close!"

"In particular that Cyclone spam, I didn't know you could play games like that."

"Alright, I'm going to watch some replays as revision. These replays are the best education material, you'd probably gain two hundred points if you learn them properly!

The forms were filled with players complaining about how strong the Humans and Guard Towers were, asking for CHen Mo to nerf them, but it didn't take long before all these complaints were gone.

The players didn't even know which races were strong or weak even since Silent's appearance!

It feels like whichever race Silent plays was strong!

Any post that complained about the race they played being weak would be replied with a replay from Silent saying, "Your race isn't bad, you're bad."

Silent had gained plenty of fans in the process. Although nobody knew who Silent was, it didn't stop them from worshipping him.

This also helped Warcraft gain a lot of popularity, the number of daily sales even peaked a little.

However, Silent never returned after beating Goph.

Many observers thought that Silent just missed a day, but as days went by, Silent never came back!

There were theories that he had quit because that was all that he had to offer; others said that he was afraid of losing, and would never play again; there were also some who said that it was a publicity stunt put together by the pros.

But nobody got it right, nor did anyone know who Silent was. Although Zou Zhuo had seen Silent in person, they only added in game and had no other forms of communication.

His fans were worshipping the few clips of him in the internet cafe filmed by Zou Zhuo.

However, a few players who have seen CHen Mo felt that the silhouette was familiar, and yet couldn't remember who it was!

The pros could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

After all, it was difficult to deal with constant losses everyday.

But one thing was for certain, the appearance of Chen Mo dramatically increased the playstyles of Warcraft. The pros had finally realised now much more the game had to offer.

They thought that they'd explored the entire game, but Silent gave them a wakeup call.

They could almost imagine what Silent would say, "What is this? You guys are happy even though you're so bad? Watch and learn, this is how you actually play the game."

Silents replays were now treated as scripture, watched again and again for anyone looking to improve their gameplay.

Meteorite Technology meeting room.

Chen Mo looked through the translations provided.

The translator asked, "Is the translation alright?"

The translator was just being nice, as the translations were done by professionals, he was confident regardless if it were English to Chinese or vice versa. Although the young man before him was the designer of Warcraft and had good knowledge of Western Fantasy themes, how much English could he possibly know?

He might not have even passed sixth grade!

Asking for the final say was probably just to show who was in power, and to pick out a few problems to make him seem professional.

The translators have seen things like these many times..

Chen Mo nodded, "Yep, it's great. But there's a small portion that needs to be changed, especially in the cinematic."

The translator was visibly agitated, yet another one who pretends to know what they are saying.

Chen Mo explained, "When Arthas kills his father, it says 'continuing legacy', but it should be 'succeeding you, father' in English.

'The next line should also be translated like this: This kingdom shall fall! From the ashes there will arrive a new order, and it'll shake the very foundation of the world!"

Chen Mo translated the content as he went.

The translator was shocked, he thought CHen Mo was nitpicking, but it made sense as Chen Mo went along.

The translator could tell that the lines in Chinese held a pretty high standard. The translations were meaningful, short and sweet, and fit the theme well.

However, they didn't think that the translation could be so true to the original!

Chen Mo's syntax and vocabulary made sense and fit the theme really well. Although Chen Mo had a strong accent, these translations were really good!

He even remembered the emotions he felt as he embraced the beauty of some English works.

The translator nodded, "Alright, we'll do as you said!"

The representative sitting next to them was also shocked that Chen Mo wasn't all talk. There must be something to allow him to be so successful after all.

They even got slightly emotional listening to these lines!

The more true the translation, the more successful the English version of Warcraft will be. It may even become hugely popular in the Western market!

This was the first time he felt so confident in shipping a Chinese game overseas!

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Chapter 124: Chapter 123: Guest Commentary

Chen Mo spent the next little while dealing with shipping the game overseas.

Meteorite Technology planned to release the English version first to test the waters, but under Chen Mo's request, they have agreed to release English, French, German, Russian, Korean and other languages at the same time.

Meteorite Technology planned to release the Korean version in the second wave, but decided to move it ahead under Chen Mo's request.

It would've been easy just to do translations as they could be swapped into the game and would be released. It would've been the same amount of time for one version compared to many versions, all was required was more translators.

However, the main workload comes in from promotion, meaning that wanting to release in multiple countries at the same time meant that the initial investment was much higher. Moreover the rules for the different markets were different, and especially when taking into account the different preferences from region to region, releasing in so many regions wasn't a simple task.

Chen Mo was serious about his decision. Promotion? What's that? Does this game need promoting?

Alright, wouldn't hurt, but there's no point in wasting money in insane amounts of advertising.

"Don't worry, you guys just have to steal the thunder from Legion conquest, promoting the game as 'Better than Legion Conquest in every aspect', or 'Masterpiece RTS game'. This would mean that any player that searches for Legion Conquest would also receive results from Warcraft," said Chen Mo.

Meteorite Technology was shocked, isn't that commiting a bit too hard?

"What does that expression mean, am I wrong? Isn't the game better than Legion Conquest in every aspect? Isn't this an RTS Masterpiece?" asked Chen Mo.

The Meteorite Technology representative nodded as it seemingly made sense.

Chen Mo was hoping to hype up the game across all regions by releasing it at the same time. As pros emerge from all the countries, they could learn from one another to speed up the expansion of the game.

Of course Chen Mo didn't request to overlook the translations for other languages as he didn't have the ability to do so. He didn't understand a word of German, there would be no point in him poking his nose there.

But these didn't matter as the most important part was that the English version was as close to the original as possible. It wouldn't be a great gaming experience if the translations were horrible just like in the previous life.

After working hard for a few days to put the English Release in the home stretch, Chen Mo let his hands off the effort. The rest were dependent on Meteorite Technology's promotion and advertising overseas, which they were working hard at doing so.

—Inside the experience store.—

Su Jinyu was still checking forum posts daily to gather the thoughts of the players as well as some hot topics.

"It's already been so long, and there's still people talking about Silent. These guys are crazy," said Su Jinyu.

"Huh? There's still talk about it? Didn't Goph and Digwa surpass Silent's rank a few days ago? There's now three players who are in the four thousand range," expressed Qian Kun.

Zheng Hongxi nodded, "Yeah, but it seems like Silent has left a long lasting impression. He did get his rank by destroying a bunch of high-skilled players while having straight wins. It's on a completely different level."

"That's true. If Silent was still playing, they might not even reach four-thousand," added Qian Kun.

"Have you seen the few clips of Silent's silhouette? It just feels so familiar, his voice was familiar too," asked Zheng Hongxi

Qian Kun said, "I've seen it, it's over at that internet cafe. But it's pretty blurry and from the back. The internet cafe was also quite noisy, so it was difficult to make out his voice, I just remember that he was full of himself."

Su Jinyu was speechless, "Huh? You guys couldn't tell?"

The two of them were confused, "Yeah, why? Do you recognise him? You know Silent?"

Su Jinyu facepalmed, "How sad would the manager be if he knew!"

Qian Kun had his eyes wide open, "Huh? Do you mean..."

"Yeah! Doesn't Silent mean 'Chen Mo'[1]? You really couldn't tell?"

Qian Kun and Zheng Hongxi were shocked, "MY goodness, that's it! I knew the silhouette was really familiar! Since when did you know, Goldfish?"

"I knew it from the start! The manager had me get the ID for him!" said Su Jinyu.

Qian Kun shouted, "Why did you tell us earlier!"

"You guys never asked!"

Zheng Hongxi said, "We never considered that! Moreover, we have work to do everyday, who would have enough free time to discuss this!"

"My manager is so good!" exclaimed Qian Kun.

Chen Mo came down the stairs at this moment.

"Alright, keep it down low. It's a secret for now."

Qian Kun said, "Wow, you hit it so well, manager!"

Su Jinyu asked, "Manager, when do you plan to let the players now?"

Chen Mo replied, "Why would I tell the players, they'll be guessing for a while. By the way, I'll be heading to Magic City over the weekend. Call me if anything happens."

"Huh? Why are you going to Magic City? Are you promoting a game?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Something like that. Fantasy Gaming Platform is hosting a Warcraft competition.

"Huh? Do you plan to come out from your retirement?" asked Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo shook his head, "Nah. I'm a special guest to provide insight."

Su Jinyu breathed a sigh of relief, "Oh, that's alright. It probably isn't easy for the players to enter the competition to try their hand at the prize, so it's good that you aren't going to squash them."

"...regardless, it's a good opportunity to promote the game. I'll be leaving during the afternoon, remember to let me know if anything happens," said Chen Mo.

The competitive video game scene wasn't as developed as the previous world, but it wasn't non-existent.

As there aren't esports games that were popular all over the world the functions of esports clubs were blurry. Most of them functioned the same as gaming workshops.

Larger RPG games such as Legend of the Sword, Warring Three Kingdoms as well as Heavenly Ring from overseas have team PvP or GvG content, players from these clubs would most certainly enter.

There were a few competitive esports in the VR circle in shooter games. On the PC side of things, RTS games like Legion Conquest had smaller scaled tournaments as well, but there weren't competitions that had attention from all over the world.

The reason was simple, tournaments only had two basic components, money and people. The competition could only succeed when there were enough viewers and funds.

Legion Conquest hadn't even come close to the popularity of MOBAs in his previous life, which was why they haven't been able to host large tournaments.

However, there are more and more companies and games who have discovered the potential of competitive gaming, which was why there were more and more regional tournaments happening in China.

Smaller tournaments for Warcraft were finally a thing following Warcraft's popularity.

TL note: [1] One of the chinese translations of the word 'silent' is pronounced the same way Chen Mo's name is.

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Chapter 125: Chapter 124: Comedian Ended up Videogame Designer

Chen Mo caught a cab to his destination after getting off the train.

This competition was called the Fantasy Cup. Obviously the name was named after the officials, Fantasy Gaming Platform. Not only were they a distribution platform, they were way ahead of other companies in terms of gaming tournaments as well.

Although Chairman of Fantasy Gaming Platform Ding Xing knew nothing about video game design, he had a good eye for the development of the gaming industry.

Chen Mo had a little bit of beef with Fantasy Gaming Platform as he took some of their user base when Thunderbolt Tabletop directed some of their players to Fantasy Gaming Platform.

But as they say, temporary enemies mean forever profits. There wasn't any reason why Ding Xing would give up this opportunity given Warcraft was doing so well. If he could work with Chen Mo, there was no reason for him to burn the bridge.

Legion Conquest's professional scene was moving along quite smoothly as most of the bigger esports clubs had plans to acquire pro players. However, the release of Warcraft put a wrench into the plans. Many clubs have decided to reassess the situation before acting as there very well could be only one survivor from this altercation.

Wouldn't it be sad if the game was dead two months after the Legion Conquest team was acquired?

As Warcraft had its own ranking and replay system, the different skill levels were very clear cut. There were even a few pro players who had gained popularity on a replay website, so the requirements for hosting a tournament were already met.

This offline tournament was hosted in Magic City, meaning that the players and special guests had to go to Magic City to attend. However, as the tournament was of a smaller variety there was no live audience and the games would be streamed.

As Chen Mo arrived at his destination there was a representative who led him to his hotel as well as some documents going over the format of the tournament.

Eight of the higher ranked players were invited to this Warcraft tournament. Players like Goph, Nightwind, and Digwa who have played against Chen Mo on the ladder were there too.

All the matches were best of three, straight into playoffs. The tournament would start from the top eight, then quarterfinals, semi-finals, then finals. There wasn't a lower bracket or repechage. As it was a smaller tournament, there wasn't a need to go through all that trouble.

The tournament spanned over two days. The first day consisted of the top eight, and the quarter finals, third place, and finals were hosted on the second day. The champion would get five hundred thousand RMB cash prize, two hundred thousand for second, ten thousand for third.

The prize money was a good amount. Furthermore it was fully livestreamed, and the pros from all over the country would battle it out over BO3, so these players took it quite seriously.

Chen Mo's commentating partner was a professional called Zhang Yang. He casted a few games before and was known for his quick thinking and his ability to control the flow.

Other than paying for his transport, food and accomodation, the officials also paid Chen Mo an extra fifty thousand RMB fee. Chen Mo was a special guest afterall, they couldn't pay him the usual rate.

Chen Mo's commentary was a gimmick more than anything, as having the designer or Warcraft to provide commentary must attract a lot of viewers!

Of course, the officials were worried that Chen Mo would get off topic as he didn't have any experience in commentating, which was why Zhang Yang was assigned as his partner to control the flow of the conversation. Chen Mo was responsible for professional analysis in this duo.

Chen Mo felt that this was a good opportunity to promote his game. Moreover he had never commented before, it would be a good experience and an opportunity to show his face to the fans.

The competitors had arrived and the machines were being checked.

Zhang Yang walked over to greet Chen Mo, "Nice to meet you Mr Chen."

Chen Mo couldn't help but think of a certain photographer with the same last name from his previous life, "D-don't call me Mr. Chen, it reminds me of a certain someone."

"Huh?"

Chen Mo waved his head, "Don't worry about it, call me by my whole name, don't leave out the word 'Mo'".

Zhang Yang laughed, "Sure. You're a professional video game designer after all, pleased to be in your presence."

Chen Mo laughed too, "Geez, what professional video game designer. We're both commentators today, we're partners."

Zhang Yang nodded, "Yep, seems like you're fitting in well. Let's go test out the equipment."

Zhang Yang cooperated with the officials sto test the equipment. Chen Mo didn't need to do anything as they were all handled by professionals. Chen After the preparations were complete, Chen Mo did a quick mic test to make sure everything worked.

Zhang Yang looked at the stream from his phone, it hadn't even been officially live, and the stream was still black too.

But it turned out that there were two hundred thousand viewers on the stream already.

"Yo, there are quite a few viewers today. The tournament hadn't even started and there were already close to two hundred thousand viewers. It would probably reach seven or eight hundred thousand viewers.

The users in chat were talking to one another.

"Why hasn't it started! Hurry up!"

"I heard Chen Mo will make an appearance today?"

"Who's Chen Mo?"

"He's Warcraft's Designer!"

"Really? Why is he here?"

"To commentate!"

"Wow, then there might be something to today's competition. The videogame designer must have better insight and average right? Let's see what he says later."

"Wonder if Chen Mo even plays his own game. Who knows what he'll provide to the stream? Maybe he's not even over two thousand points."

"Maybe, maybe video game designers can't play games at all."

Zhang Yang laughed, "It seems like the viewers are looking forward to this. It's about to start, look into the camera."

The stream had started.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Fantasy Cup Warcraft invitationals hosted by Fantasy Gaming Platform. I'm your caster Zhang Yang," said Zhang Yang.

Chen Mo followed suit, "I'm Chen Mo."

The audience was shocked, that's Chen Mo? He's much younger than i imagined!

It was the first time most of the audience had seen Chen Mo. Most wouldn't care who the designer of the game was when they played the game anyways.

Zhang Yang said, "This is Chen Mo's first time casting. I can see that the chat is being very nice and giving Chen Mo tons of love."

Chen Mo said, "Really? Let me take a look. It looks like most are spamming: Chen Mo refund my hard earned money."

Zhang Yang laughed, it seemed like Chen Mo was quite good at gags, he must've done this before!

"Mr Chen Mo, you're pretty good at cracking jokes!" Zhang Yang said laughing.

Chen Mo waved his hand, "No no no, I thought we've talked about this Mr. Chen Mo thing before this!"

"What could I call you by?"

Chen Mo replied, "Maybe, Designer Chen, I'm a videogame designer afterall."

The viewers were laughing, weren't they supposed to commentate? This feels like a comic sketch!

Zhang Yang was speechless, "That's still undermining your efforts. Alright I'll just call you Mr Chen Mo."

Chen Mo replied, "That was just a joke that's supposed to ease up the atmosphere. It's also my first time commentating today. I'm honoured to be paired with Mr Zhang Yang."

The chat couldn't help but complained, "How could this be your first time? You must've done this before, you seem so at home with this!"

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Chapter 126: Chapter 125: Spoiler Commentary

While the machines were still being tested, Chen Mo and Zhang Yang continued chatting.

"To be honest, this is my first time meeting Mr Chen Mo. I've heard so much about you."

"Geez, I'm flattered. I've also heard plenty about Mr Zhang Yang, in particular in Chinese commentary community. If you claimed first, nobody would claim second!" said Chen Mo.

Zhang Yang was shocked, "Huh?"

The chat was filled with laughter, he must've said it backwards!

Chen Mo continued, "I actually really look up to Mr Zhang Yang. If I had to rate you, I'd give you ten!"

Zhang Yang waved his hands, "Geez, that's too much! I'm not worthy of that!"

Chen Mo continued, "As for the remaining nine hundred and ninety nine..."

Zhang Yang was caught off guard, "Huh? Out of a thousand?"

The viewers didn't expect Chen Mo would be so funny! How did a commentary team turn into a comic pair!

Chen Mo looked at Zhang Yang and said, "I can tell that you learn maths from your PE teacher."

"Huh?"

"Ten plus nine hundred and ninety-nine is one thousand and nine no?" corrected Chen Mo.

Zhang Yang was speechless, "Geez, you set me up!"

The viewers were all laughing, this Chen Mo guy is such a troublemaker!

Zhang Yang was converted into a fan after being surprised at how entertaining Chen Mo was! How could he have been someone who had never done any commentary, he could become a comedian with this amount of talent!

Chen Mo continued, "To be honest, I wanted to join this competition as a competitor."

"Really? Why did you choose to join as a commentator then?" asked Zhang Yang.

"Well, when I asked the officials, they asked me to play ranked to see where I placed," explained Chen Mo.

"Well, then show them what you've got!"

"But in the end, the officials were really emotional and told me that I was too good, much better than Goph! Even that S-god from before wouldn't be able to beat you! You're nine million times better than him!"

"Huh, how did they get that number with all that zeroes following."

"But the officials told me that there were two things preventing my development in game."

"Which two things?"

"My left hand and my right hand."

Zhang Yang was speechless, "That means you're garbage at the game and not made to play these kinds of games! The hand-speed requirement of this game is really high!

The viewers hadn't stopped laughing. It had only been ten minutes and Chen Mo had made five or so gags which had been non-stop. Who knows how he came up with these!

"Hahaha, Chen Mo's a comedian!"

"I've never seen a videogame designer who had such good speaking skills!"

"Woah, who could tell this was the guy who made Warcraft!"

"On the basis of Chen Mo's jokes today, I won't be mailing him any razor blades anymore."

"This is a comedian who accidentally became a videogame designer!"

The preparations were eventually complete.

"Alright, our players are done preparing, hold on to your seats as the games are about to start!"

The chat didn't want that to happen.

"Don't start it yet! I want to watch Chen Mo's comedy show!"

"Five more minutes of this please!"

"My goodness, it's the first time I wished there were more testing!"

It didn't take long before the competition started.

Undead vs Orcs, poth players had fairly high ranks as it was an invitational afterall. All the players that were picked by the tournament officials were high ranked players.

Zhang Yang introduced the players, the locations and the setup of the map.

Zhang Yang also played Warcraft which was why he had a good understanding of the basics, he wouldn't be able to cast the tournament otherwise. His main objective was to control the flow or to guide the conversations, give overviews of the match, and all the analysis would be left for Chen Mo.

After the introductions, Zhang Yang asked, "Mr Chen Mo, what do you think of the strategies the players are going for?"

"The players are going by the book so far, the Death Knight harassed the Blademaster for a bit, slowing down his progression to level two. But the Blademaster can farm the 331 camp now, which would give him better experience.

As Chen Mo finished, the Blademaster ran towards the 331[1] camp.

"Death Knight secured this 533 camp. At the top of the ladder, the most common strategy is to secure as much as possible early. It doesn't matter how good or bad the items are as the players can sell bad ones. The key part was denying it for your opponent."

"Blademaster has two circles, so he wasn't too lucky. It would be perfect for the first ten minutes if he got Gloves of Haste or Blades of Attack. But if the Orcs get 6 Agility on Blademaster, the game would heavily favour the Orcs.[2]

"The fights right now are pretty intense. This Crypt Fiend with Frost Armor should probably back off now, yep, it's running away now. Run around the trees then cast death coil to heal it up. Yep, this should mean that the Undead won the exchange.

Chen Mo continued to explain the situation as the match went on. Zhang Yang was shocked to discover that he couldn't interject!

Chen Mo wasn't speaking too fast or too slow, having a good control over the tempo of his words. His analysis was also incredibly in depth, in particular he knew the strategies of the players really well. Anytime Chen Mo said there was something the players would do, the players would do exactly as he said!

And sometimes he even found time to crack jokes.

The viewers were shocked as Chen Mo's commentary far exceeded their expectations.

"Oh man, spoiler commentary? It feels like he sees the match two minutes into the future."

"Why does it feel like the players are listening to Chen Mo's order? They'd do everything Chen Mo says!"

"The thought process is very clear and full of reason, he can even tell the players' intent!"

"This is amazing! Who knew there were so many considerations behind one decision!"

The audience discovered that the commentary was more enjoyable than the competition!

The players played as best as they could, but in the end, the Orcs' Blademaster was killed instantly followed by a GG. The match was taken by the Undead.

Chen Mo concluded, "I think it was entirely even from the early to mid game. It was down to the Orcs being unable to kill the Undead, and when they failed to take over mines in the mid-game, losing two towers in the process. Of course, the Orc player also had a few mechanical mistakes...

"And I think that the Orc player is lacking a bit afraid of fighting, as the Blademaster is one of the best early game heroes, but never killed too many Undead units when it was at its strongest.

When Chen Mo finished his conclusion, there were some unhappy viewers in chat.

"He said it wasn't bad at the start, but what did he say afterwards? The Orcs made mechanical mistakes? This is an RTS game, and all the players are top ten in the ladder. It's alright to say that they messed up strategically, but how can he say so sternly that they didn't execute well?"

"Yeah, I wanna ask what rank Chen Mo is, how dare he say that they made mechanical mistakes!"

"This doesn't feel right, there should be an upper limit for the executing in an RTS game. How could someone watch over dozens of units? I don't think its a mechanical mistake."

"Of course Chen Mo could tell from the perspective of an observer, but what would happen if he was the one playing? I'd want to see him prove it!"

"He's calling the Orcs bad? These are all top tier players, do you think it's played by noobs?"

Evidently there were playing viewers that are fans of the ORc player. They would've felt nice after watching their player lose, but it was salt on wounds to see Chen Mo criticise the player they were supporting.

TL note: [1] I think this refers to the level of the units in the camp

[2] Various items in Warcraft that give the Heroes bonuses, Agility basically makes the Blademaster stronger

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Chapter 127: Chapter 126: Showmatch

It was alright during the first match, but during the second and third match, Chen Mo never stopped talking and always pointed out any mistakes the players made, angering some of the fans.

"My goodness, it's gone! He really does dare to criticise anybody!"

"It's fine if you point out the mistakes of the loser, but picking out mistakes from the winner too?"

"Wow, I finally realised what Captain Hindsight means!"

"I really want to tell him to play if he's so good at the game!"

Of course there were many who were standing by Chen Mo.

"Braindead fans out!"

"Can't you just listen to the commentary? Did Chen Mo say anything wrong? He's the developer, wouldn't his game knowledge be much better than you keyboard warriors?"

"Another 'You play if you're so good'. Do I need to be able to cool things down before I review a fridge?"

"If you don't wanna listen to him, just mute the stream! Nobody is forcing you!"

"You're doing great Chen Mo! Don't listen to these haters!"

Soon, the two opposing sides of chat started going at each other's throat.

The majority of the players stood by Chen Mo, but the people against it had strong will and never gave up.

During break time, a member of staff spoke to Chen Mo.

"Mr Chen Mo, I've got something to discuss. There are many in chat who are saying that you're too good and commentating and started arguing. Could you tone it down a bit in the future matches?"

Chen Mo laughed, "I understand your concern. I've looked at chat and I know where I'm at. Moreover, wouldn't this tournament be more popular if more were talking about it? This is a good thing for you guys too."

The staff was a bit hesitant, "So Mr Chen Mo, there's a showmatch tomorrow when the tournament finishes. You're supposed to play against the winner of the tournament."

Chen Mo was shocked, "Huh??"

The staff explained, "Of course we won't get the champion to play against you at full strength. We thought about getting them to only use the mouse to play against you. It's for entertainment purposes afterall. Do you understand what I mean?"

Chen Mo nodded.

The organisers planned a showmatch for entertainment, by having Chen Mo play a game. The viewers would probably want to watch the videogame designer play their own game.

Of course there could be a discrepancy between the skill level of the players, which was why the winner would only use a mouse, making it a bit more entertaining.

But after all the arguments in chat, the showmatch got more interesting.

Many of the viewers felt that Chen Mo was Captain Obvious, although his analysis was good, there was no way he could be good at the game. How awkward it would be if Chen Mo lost to the winner who'd play with one hand.

Nobody but himself would be to blame if he lost!

The staff said, "How about this, you go ahead with what you're doing, and I'll get the organisers to cancel the showmatch tomorrow. It wasn't anything important anyways."

Chen Mo shook his head, "Don't, how could we do that? Don't worry, the match will be my concern, the show will go on."

The staff was shocked, What does this mean? Was he confident in his abilities?

Obviously they didn't know how good Chen Mo was, but he couldn't be bad seeing how confident he was. It should be a big deal when he would play against the champion.

The staff nodded, "Alright, we'll do as you say."

The tournament continued. Chen Mo didn't make any changes and continued speaking his mind, completely ignoring what was going on in the chat.

Zhang Yang even felt bad for Chen Mo, thinking that he didn't know how bad the haters were!

The tournament went on quite smoothly, the players were playing seriously and Chen Mo's commentary was very insightful. The viewers are more than happy to watch it.

The organisers were also quite satisfied as the money spent on Chen Mo was well spent!

Of course there was a vocal, unhappy minority. But the organisers didn't see it as a big problem as Chen Mo acknowledged and approved of it himself.

The tournament continued on the second day.

The quarter finals, third place match and finals had the viewers going crazy. In the end, Goph outskilled Digwa to win the tournament.

"Alright, let us congratulate Goph for being the champion of this Fantasy Cup! He will receive five hundred thousand in prize money, congratulations!" announced Zhang Yang

The chat was also incredibly supportive.

"Goph-god!"

"King of Orcs! Long live the king!"

"Let's go Orcs!"

"Geez, that's too bad! If Digwa didn't make a mistake in picking mines, he probably would've won!"

"This tournament was so enjoyable to watch! Warcraft is much more entertaining to watch than Legion Conquest!"

"Watch this makes me want to play ranked!"

"By the way, don't leave now as the competition is not finished. Yes, up next will be a very entertaining showmatch!" said Zhang Yang

The audience were shocked. Showmatch? What show?

"This showmatch will be a matchup between our champion Goph against the designer of Warcraft and my partner, Mr Chen Mo!" announced Zhang Yang.

The chat went wild following this announcement!

"What? Chen Mo is playing the showmatch? Against Goph?!"

"What's the point. Goph has four thousand something points, wouldn't he just bully Chen Mo?"

"Maybe not, Chen Mo has really good game knowledge."

"What good is game knowledge going to do. The game depends on execution and hand-speed. Wouldn't Goph stomp all over Chen Mo? What is the organisers planning?"

"Hahaha, we were just talking about Captain Obvious Chen Mo. He's good at pointing out mistakes, lets see how he does in a match."

"Wow, I'm amazed that Chen Mo accepted it! Is he underestimated the strength of his opponent?"

As the chat was discussing, Chen Mo was already sat at a computer ready to play.

"Alright, as it's a showmatch, Goph will have to play with one hand. That means Goph can only use his mouse, no keyboard." explained Zhang Yang.

The chat went wild yet again.

"Like I said, Goph would stomp Chen Mo if he played seriously. Playing one-handed is more like it!"

"Wow, that's kind of insulting, only one hand?"

"But I still think Goph will win!"

"Hahaha, how bad would Chen Mo feel if Goph won one handed!"

"It's hard to tell, I think he could last a little bit?"

Before the chat calmed down, Zhang Yang held onto his earpiece and was shocked.

Zhang Yang continued after thirty seconds, "Alright, I just got the message from the producer. Mr Chen Mo is asking Goph to play with both hands. To be honest, I'm surprised to hear that message. I won't say much more, let's look forward for the showmatch!"

The chat took a quick 180. There were a few people being condescending at the start, but the chat was filled with "LOL" and "???" when Zhang Yang was finished.

"Chen Mo is asking for Goph to play with both hands?"

"Hah, that's incredible. Maybe he thinks it would be too embarrassing if he lost to him single-handed, which is why he requested two hands?"

"Hahaha, this'll be good. Let's go Goph! Bring down Captain Obvious!"

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Chapter 128: Chapter 127: A Long Weibo

As Chen Mo didn't bring his own keyboard and mouse, he borrowed one off one of the players. After testing it and making sure it felt alright, Chen Mo signaled Zhang Yang that he was ready to go.

Goph was quite nervous as he wasn't sure what Chen Mo was planning.

The difference in skill level between a pro player and an elite player was huge. Someone like Goph could easily defeat a player around three thousand points.

But he didn't want to destroy Chen Mo as it was just a showmatch, and Chen Mo was the designer!

If Chen Mo was vengeful and nerfed the Orcs because of that, perhaps reducing the Blademaster's damage? That'll be his own fault.

If that happened, Goph would cop the blame of many Orc players.

A familiar ID entered the lobby as he was worrying.

Silent: Let's go.

Goph was shocked, what is this?

The other staff members were also shocked. They saw Chen Mo log into his account with their own eyes, and turns out his ID was Silent?

His rank on the top of the screen was four thousand one hundred and ninety six!

Everyone was shocked, including the staff and Goph!

You were that Silent guy who destroyed the ranked ladder!

"Wait! Quick, we'll need a camera focused on Chen Mo's hands. Yes, screen, keyboard and mouse. We'll need another source from Chen Mo's first person perspective!" ordered the producer.

Chen Mo didn't mind them filming as the staff were hustling around him.

Luckily the staff were quite efficient, the whole process only took around ten minutes.

As the game was broadcasted, the chat was shocked.

"What is this??? Silent!!!"

"What's going on? Why is Silent here!"

"What? Is Silent Chen Mo's account??"

"Huh? Huh? Huh? My entire life is a lie!"

"Yeah, doesn't Silent mean 'Chen Mo'? My goodness, I've never noticed!"

"Sucks that our English is so terrible!"

"Is Silent really Chen Mo?"

"MY goodness, this should be good. This'll be the match of the century! The finals won't even compare to this!"

"Hahaha, where were the people who said 'if you're so good, you play'. Chen Mo must've obliged to teach us all a lesson!"

"There were people complaining about Chen Mo being critical. So does he have the right to be critical?"

"This Chen Mo is amazing acting. What did he say before? The only things stopping him were his left and right hand? I really thought he couldn't play!"

The chat was going wild before the game started. There were more viewers now than in the finals!

The familiar ID and random race player, Silent, appeared once again! And he was actually Chen Mo!

It didn't take long before the news spread all over the internet. Many of them were asking where they could watch the match!

Goph wasn't concerned about making it entertaining, nor was he worried about going easy. He might not even win if he tried his best!

This reminded Goph and his Druid of the Talon incident. His Blademaster was capable of killing everything, but never managed to land a hit!

And when the game loaded, it was Night Elves vs Orcs again!

Goph was about to cry. Again? It's so difficult to play against cyclone spam as Orcs, it's Silent's cyclone spam at that!

The game started.

The viewers had their eyes glued onto the screen as they didn't want to miss a single bit of action. There were many who were there to watch Chen Mo's first person perspective.

"My goodness, the hands are like moving so fast! Expected no less from the Ultimate Tentacle Monster!"

"So this is what four hundred APM looks like!"

"I can't handle this! I'm dizzy, and I have a headache!"

"I'm about to vomit, back to the observer I go.

The match was intense. Chen Mo went cyclone spam just like before, but Goph was clearly prepared and made suitable changes such as training Tauren Chieftain second, but it was no use.

After thirty grueling minutes, Goph called GG.

As the two of them stood up, Chen Mo gave him a pat on the shoulder, "Not bad, you've improved."

Goph turned blue, it didn't feel like he improved at all! Destroyed just like before! All he did was last a few minutes longer this time!

He was quite happy when he won the tournament, but all that had been taken away!

The other players felt bad looking at Goph.

He tried his best to win the tournament, but it ended with a loss against Silent.

This is crazy!

Everyone was incredibly entertained, from the forums to the chat, everybody was going wild.

"Hahaha, Chen Mo is too funny! He even pat Goph on his shoulder saying he played well! Even though he got destroyed!"

"Chen Mo probably meant, You're pretty good among these noobs, but you're not on my level yet."

"Goph was blue at the end of that! He was so happy to win the tournament, but the showmatch! Turns out he was playing against Silent! Do you think he regrets winning?"

"This means that everybody is still beneath Silent..."

"My goodness, who knew that Chen Mo was the Ultimate Tentacle Monster! That guy is so good at pretending!"

The tournament ended with a roar of laughter.

This competition performed much better than the organisers expected. The last part in particular brought the whole thing together.

The viewers thought that Chen Mo had made this arrangement beforehand with the officials. But even the organisers were shocked, but at least they gained from it!

Goph being crowned as Champion, Silent showing himself, Chen Mo's analysis... All these hot topics combined had dramatically increased the popularity of the tournament. It also brought the popularity of Warcraft to a whole new level!

On the train towards Imperial Capital.

Chen Mo went on Weibo out of boredom, to discover that many players tagged him.

Of course many players were shocked to discover that he was Silent and commented to express how impressed they were. There were also many other players who were asking Chen Mo to make some educational videos or do livestreams.

There were so many messages Chen Mo couldn't go through all of them at all.

In order to give back to the fans, Chen Mo posted a Weibo in an emotional tone.

"I'm grateful for all your love, but I won't be making any educational videos or doing live streams. I'm a videogame afterall, not a competitive player or a streamer. I'm pretty average at games.

"I'm fighting my own battles. I've never received a penny since I started Thunderbolt Entertainment. I've only been paying others. I never touch money, I have no interest in money.[1]

"Although Warcraft has some amount of success, there will be more to it, and this is but a small step. Maybe not a small step, a medium step perhaps.

"Just like me who is still fighting my own fights. I don't have my own house, nor do I have a car as I take the train whenever I go out.

"Therefore, I really appreciate your support. I'll surely make more games that are better in the future to repay your kindness. I've seen some comments, it seems that I Am MT players are quite bored of the game. Should I make a similar game on PC? What do you guys think?"

TL note[1: It's a famous quote from Jack Ma

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Chapter 129: Chapter 128: Advertising for Overseas Release

The fans went crazy when the Weibo went out, "I've never seen someone so shameless!"

"My goodness, can't believe Chen Mo typed out all that garbage. Is this a new form of bragging?"

"You're average at games? You're literally the best in Warcraft!"

"You never touch money? No interest in money? Do you have no idea how money you make?"

"Warcraft is just a medium step! Amazing!"

"You don't have a house, but you have a massive experience store! Moreover, couldn't you buy any house you desire?"

"I thought this guy made a change of heart when he made Warcraft, but he still has his mind on I Am MT! I knew he wanted to make scammy games! Rot in hell!"

"Average at games, Chen Mo?"

"Previous poster, you did it wrong, it should be 'Average at games, Silent."

"Average at games, Silent. No love for money, Silent. Medium step, Silent. No cars or house, Silent. Non-scummy games, Silent!"

Chen Mo let Su Jinyu, Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun two days of break.

The three of them were now actual employees. They even got a pay rise to ten thousand RMB a month.

Of course, Chen Mo was a generous boss who gave out bonuses outside of their normal pay. This money would come from games that the three of them developed themselves.

For example, Chen Mo would split 8% of the profits between Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi from all the profits.

This was already quite a bit as a game like Lifeline had around three hundred thousand in profit, meaning that the two of them would get around ten thousand in bonuses.

Of course, they must've made the game themselves. A game where Chen Mo managed most of it like Warcraft wouldn't count.

Chen Mo would save the profit from big games like Warcraft to reinvest into developing other games, and maybe share it among the staff as year-end bonuses.

This was to make them more satisfied. Chen Mo didn't lack money, nor did he want his assistants to check-in and out everyday. He hoped that they could develop great games by themselves too.

Chen Mo had been focusing on the release of Warcraft overseas recently, taking a break from game development. Making this the perfect opportunity for them to take a break and grab some rest.

Afterall, the workload from working on Warcraft was huge. From level design and balancing to story writing. They were basically working day in day out, and were quite tired as a result of that.

After a lot of meticulous planning, Warcraft was finally about to go live overseas.

Meteorite Technology gave it their best this game. The only thing they were worried about was the advertising and not being able to break even because of how small of a cut they took. Everybody had pushed back tasks in order to focus on Warcraft, from translators to advertising.

translators, voice actors, advertising material, ad spaces, review, approval were all places that had to be worked on overtime to ensure that the game was released at the same time across all countries.

It was at this time when the players of those regions discovered this game called Warcraft.

Warcraft introduction: Warcraft is a highly successful RTS game developed by Thunderbolt Entertainment. Players can choose from Humans, Orcs, Night Elves, and Undead to gather resources, train heroes and units to defeat your enemies.

Warcraft's unique points:

Complex story to bring you the most well crafted fantasy world.

Perfectly balanced game with four races and dozens of units to allow an even battleground!

Revolutionary controls and game modes. All new Heroes and equipment system to allow you to experience what it's like to be a Hero!

This introduction was translated into many different languages and was released in many different countries.

Of course, other than the promotional pitch, there were huge artworks, cinematics, and gameplay footage that were released, including a 'Free trial' text in a nice font.

As there were no intentions of hiding it, the news was spread within the Chinese video game development community during its preparation phase.

"Have you heard that Chen Mo plans to release Warcraft overseas?"

"Europe and US?"

"No, I think he's releasing all over the world. He even made Korean, French and German versions."

"Tsk, that guy sure is ambitious. Is he not afraid to fail?"

"It's hard to tell, just from how popular Warcraft got in China, it's not surprising to release it overseas."

"But the tastes of overseas players and Chinese players are different. Moreover, there are plenty of good video game designers overseas, so they aren't lacking any good games. I don't see a world where Warcraft makes a huge scene."

"That's true. I do think that Chen Mo is a bit crazy, but he does have a crazy capital and the hunger for success."

"True, Warcraft had been doing incredibly well. Even Legion Conquest couldn't match it. I'm envious."

"So what if you're envious? You couldn't make a bootleg no matter how hard you try, you can only watch it from the sidelines."

"Yeah, we'll just watch. It has nothing to do with us anyways."

"I'm quite conflicted right now. I don't hope to see Warcraft taking over the world, but I do want to see a successful Chinese game to represent the rest of us."

"That's that, it's not up to us if the game becomes successful anyways. We'll see."

The players of Warcraft were discussing it on Weibo and the forum too.

"I heard an overseas version of Warcraft is in the makes?"

"No wonder why Chen Mo hadn't been playing ranked recently, was he dealing with that?"

"Although it has been quite popular in China, it's not that popular to warrant expanding overseas right? Is he overambitious?"

"Warcraft would do well no matter in which country. If so, he will release it as soon as possible!"

"I'm supporting him, this is one of the less scummy games Chen Mo has made!"

"Maybe once the game is released overseas, we could bully the others from other regions!"

"Huh? Makes sense! Why haven't I thought of that! Get out of my way, I'm heading towards the Korean server!"

"Korean server? With your twenty-four hundred points? There are a bunch of Legion Conquest pros there, and if they all changed to Warcraft, tsk tsk, it's not gonna be good."

"Geez, if the game gets popular all around the world, could there be a world championship? Regionals would be great too!"

"It's hard to tell, we'll see. Who knows if the others will like it?"

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Chapter 130: Chapter 129: Overseas Release

In the United States.

"Hmm? A new game, Warcraft? By which company?"

"A developer and distributor that I've never heard of."

"Isn't that a Chinese company?"

"That's weird. Chinese RTS game? I thought the ones they made in the past were huge failures. Weren't they wiped off the market by Legion Conquest?"

"The last few posters, you guys are too out of touch with the Chinese market. Warcraft is currently incredibly popular in China, it's even exceeded Legion Conquest."

"Really? Maybe it's because it fits the taste of the Chinese more."

"I've seen some posters and videos. To be honest, I'm really shocked. It seems really high quality unlike the other Chinese games I've seen. There's nothing I could nitpick from the dialogue. You guys should try it out."

"The dialogue really is perfect. I'm curious as to who did the translation. Did they pay big bucks to get a translator from the US?"

"This is the first time I've seen the Chinese make a game similar to Heavenly Ring. Moreover, the quality seems amazing."

"THe game is also free to play. I think I'll try it out when it comes out."

-Europe-

"I've heard there's a game that's similar to Heavenly Ring that is about to be released. I've seen its ads everywhere."

"Really? I've never heard of an European company making that game, is it from the US?"

"No, it's Chinese."

"oh, then I'm probably not going to play it. It's difficult to imagine what they would do to a story like this. I'm also doubtful if they could make a world to match the standards of Heavenly Ring."

"They seem alright from the promotional videos I've seen. At least I never realised it was made by the Chinese."

"I've seen it too, the dialogue is excellent. Although the French and German dubs are a bit weird, the English version was fine, perfect even."

"Really? That's hard to believe."

"Alright, you've convinced me, I'll take a look."

-Korea-

"You're still playing Legion Conquest?"

"Yeah, are you done with the game? Off to RPGs?"

"Nope, I've been playing another RTS game."

"What? Another RTS game?"

"Warcraft."

"Never heard of it."

"Yeah, because it's not out on the Korean market yet. I downloaded it from a Chinese app store."

"Chinese game? I'm not sure if ditching Legion Conquest for that is a good idea."

"This game is better than Legion Conquest in every single aspect. It wouldn't be a stretch to call it the best RTS game in the world."

"Really?"

"I think there's a Korean version soon. I'm looking forward to it."

"Alright, I'll check it out then."

Advertisements of Warcraft have appeared in money countries. However, due to the limited budget, there was no way they could paste it on every wall, so the popularity of the game had to be slowly built up. The games that really pop off are usually shared by mouth anyways.

Finally after all the advertising, Warcraft is finally live!

Chen Mo couldn't do much for the international version as the small amount of fame he had was only in China. Nobody would recognise him or the Thunderbolt Entertainment Logo outside of China.

The success of the game depended entirely on the quality of it!

Warcraft was priced at twenty-nine USD, slightly cheaper than Legion Conquest. However, after exchange rates, the English version was sold at twice the price of the Chinese one.

Chen Mo didn't want to sell it cheaper to sell more copies as the consumers overseas were more willing to spend. Twenty nine USD wasn't much for a game like Warcraft. It was even considered to be value for money, therefore the price wouldn't affect the sales.

Moreover, the game also uses the same model of one free chapter before charging the players, which was why Chen Mo felt that the price was suitable.

If he could sell it higher, why not?

The players who had their eyes on the game previously downloaded the game upon release.

What shocked the Western players was that the game was exactly the same as advertised, extremely high quality. They were also completely drawn in by the cinematics!

The emotions these players felt were similar to the players in China. From curious, too surprised, to shock, and finally completely impressed.

Players who liked the theme and RTS game would more than likely buy the after the first chapter without any hesitation.

The screen was dark.

A deep voice filled with resonance started talking.

Betrayer?

In truth, it was I who was betrayed!

There was lightning followed by thunder. An unspeakable melody peaked the suspense. A winged and horned silhouette appeared on the screen signifying their identity.

Illidan.

In the dark sky, thick dark clouds rolled in the howling of the violent wind. The stormy waves on the sea kept tearing the coast and shaking the jagged rocks.

"I'm still being chased."

"I'm still hated."

"Now, my blind eyes can see what no ordinary man can!"

The camera turned around to the skies faraway, filled with thunder and darkness.

"Sometimes, we must put our fate in our hands!"

Thunder, waves, and there seems to be some terrible force recovering from the bottom of the sea.

The music became tense, the camera went hundred water revealing many surfacing Naga.

The lightning revealed their horrible looks.

A Naga with a trident walked towards the camera, and looked at the shouted looking at the camera as a lightning revealed its face.

"Awaken all, set off a frenzy of destruction, and annihilate those enemies who dare to oppose us!"

The cinematic ended, and yet the players have yet to come back to their senses.

This cinematic was amazing, even without the perfect art, voice acting, sound effects, shots, and story, the dialogue was more than enough to take the breath out of your lungs!

These didn't sound translated at all. Not only did they have perfect grammar, the tempo was also perfect, giving it an amazing feel.

In just three minutes, the image of Illidan was fully revealed. This kind of first-person narrative allowed the players to be fully immersed in the story.

They couldn't understand how a Chinese company could write such an authentic dialogue!

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 131 - Chapter 130: Good Reviews! - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 131 - Chapter 130: Good Reviews! Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 131: Chapter 130: Good Reviews!

Players all around the world were feeling the unique charisma Warcraft possessed.

The high quality animations keep the players glued to their screens at the start while learning the game as they proceed through the story.

The players will discover the core of the game was in versus mode after experience the entire story and familiarise themselves with the controls.

They will also continue all the game has to offer in terms of content, controls and even luck, and they will all become parts that players learn to enjoy and love.

Finally, there was the incredible addictive ranked matchmaking. There they will find that two thousand points would only be the beginning.

It could even be said that there is limitless exploration in this game.

It didn't take long for the reviews of Warcraft to come now in the app stores in various countries. It was more or less a score of nine across the board, with similar praises everywhere.

US.

"This game is much more rich and balanced than I expected. To be honest, I didn't want to agree with the claim of 'better than Legion Conquest in every aspect', but I think it deserves that title after playing."

"I don't know how the designer managed to incorporate the concept of Heroes into an RTS game, but this is an amazing design!"

"I think that the game was designed around the concept of heroes. This game feels a lot like an RPG which contradicts RTS games. Because you control a bunch of units in RTS games right? But somehow they managed to combine them too, I'm honestly amazed!

"To be honest, I can't stop playing at all. There are many things I've found surprising after playing all four races. All of them have different units and buildings, yet they are completely in balance. This aspect was done much better than Legion Conquest."

"I thought the claim of being the best RTS game was some marketing gimmick, but after playing, this game most definitely deserved it!"

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"To be honest, I'm kind of sad that the Chinese made this. Do the developers of our country lack inspiration?"

"You can't deny that the Chinese are really creative. It's amazing how they managed to recreate a fantasy theme like this!"

Europe.

"How did the Chinese manage to recreate a fantasy world so well? I'm amazed, I didn't think Easterners understood our culture."

"I'm really surprised about the characters in the game. MY favourite characters are Arthas and Illadin, but they both seem antagonistic."

"I would've thought this game was American or European made if nobody told me otherwise. This would probably go down in history as a classic RTS game that will never be replaced!"

"Although PC games stand no chance against VR games, this game managed to draw me in. Games can be good regardless of their platform, hurray for RTS games!"

"It's not hard to create an original story, it's making it logical that's difficult."

In Britain, there were even professional video game reviewers who wrote articles analysing the story of the game.

"Arthas's story is the most intriguing. I was honestly really shocked at the development of this arc. The righteous prince being drawn in by the evil forces and succumbing to the forces he once defeated, holding up his sword swinging it at people he swore to defend, turning his kingdom into ruins. It's amazing how the designer came up with such a bold story!

"The story is pretty unique, you might think it's illogical why a prince ready to succeed the throne would give up everything he had? To turn into the dark side? Even killing his father? This is a very difficult topic, and if not dealt with correctly could easily become the biggest flaw of the game.

"The story of this game is one of the best in the industry. From the beginning when the price was full of righteousness, but because of how full of himself he was he completely ignored the warnings of Uther.

"And after the Stratholme incident, Arthas got on the wrong path. He was blinded by revenge and hatred and did everything he could to get revenge.

"Up till he got to Northrend, sank ships and drew Frostmourne... At that point, he was completely blinded by hatred which was why he gave into the allure of power, controlled by evil.

"Eventually, darkness took over his heart, becoming the nightmare of all of Lordaeron.

"Needless to say, the story is incredibly complete. I think that this level of storytelling is on the par with a professional writer!"

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Korea.

"I don't think there's much to be said. This game is better than Legion Conquest in terms of balancing and many other aspects"

"If you're still playing Legion Conquest as an RTS player, you're outdated. Warcraft is the future of RTS games!"

"I heard there are already players with over 4000 points. We have to step it up, we can't lose to the Chinese.

Chen Mo was right, this game did even better in Western countries than in China.

Especially when fantasy themes are deeply rooted in their culture, meaning that there will be many more players who will love the theme of the game.

With the help of Memory Playback Potions, Chen Mo recreated Warcraft in English to a similar level to that of the original. The dubs in particular were essentially the same.

As Warcraft was released all over the world at the same time, the sales kept going up, breaking one hundred thousand in three days!

At this rate, it should reach seven hundred thousand in the first month worldwide. The biggest markets were Europe, US, and Korea.

The Europeans and Americans liked it because of the theme. There were fantasy games as well as RTS games available on the market, but it wasn't common to combine RTS games and fantasy games. There were no RTS games that told the story like an RPG game, with Warcraft being the only game to do so.

It was popular in Korea because they had roots in RTS games, and there were many die-hard RTS players.

The sales weren't anything to write home about compared to all PC games, but it was very impressive for an RTS game.

It mainly had to do with the small RTS player base.

Moreover, Chen Mo's brand wasn't even close to how well known Blizzard was in his previous life as games such as Diablo, Warcraft 2, and Starcraft were already out, Warcraft 3 gained plenty of attention the moment it was out.

Chen Mo was proud to be able to get results like this overseas.

The game sold seven hundred thousand copies in the first month, meaning Chen Mo received around sixty million net from international sales, much more than the revenue Chen Mo got from his previous games!

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Chapter 132: Chapter 131: Balance in Warcraft

It didn't take long for the success of Warcraft overseas to be spread within China.

"Warcraft is doing pretty well overseas? Especially in Europe and America? That's weird, haven't they seen fantasy games before? Why are they buying it?"

"Yeah, although Warcraft is doing well, but satisfying players overseas? I never would've thought."

"The overseas players rated the game quite highly. There was even a game reviewer from Britain that gave Warcraft a high score for its story!"

"The players also love it! Chen Mo must be making the big bucks this time. Warcraft took over the Chinese RTS market, and now its heading for the international market?"

"I'm so jealous."

"Geez, I can't understand it at all. Maybe prodigies do exist."

"Yeah, there's no way it could be replicated."

"Sigh, lets just make another copy of I Am MT."

"Why are you all so depressed? I think it's a good thing for the Chinese video game industry. Chinese games and especially RTS games never had a presence on the international market. Chen Mo's Warcraft is also an opportunity for other Chinese games to expand out of China!"

"But what does that have to do with us!"

"Yeah. Moreover, Chen Mo made a Western fantasy game. It doesn't have much to do with getting our culture out there at all."

"You guys are asking for too much. It's true that Chinese culture doesn't have much ground internationally, but isn't it the same for games, movies and books? We'll need to take it step by step, I think this is a good start."

"Sight, I guess we'll need to see what Chen Mo does."

Chinese players.

"Have you heard that Warcraft was doing quite well overseas?"

"Yeah, the reviews were really good too. It was doing especially well in Europe and America!"

"It's great that the game is able to make it out of the country to allow for players all around the world to experience the greatness of Chinese games, an RTS masterpiece at that!"

"Wow, I'm so looking forward to playing with international players!"

"It's great that China got the game first, we have three four thousand point players already. We should be able to beat Korea this time right?"

"It's hard to tell, there are so many RTS freaks in Korea!"

"Chen Mo's amazing! I must sing praises for another month!"

"One month? You must do three months!"

The experience store had been popular the past few days.

Many Warcraft 'pilgrims' from the Imperial Capital came to the experience store to see Chen Mo in person.

Players never really paid much attention to video game designers, and would at most send razor blades when they aren't happy about scummy business practices and balancing.

But Chen Mo was different, Chen Mo was Silent's alter ego, the developer of various strategies, the one who reached the top of the ladder with straight wins. His commentary was enjoyable and charismatic. It didn't take long before he gained a huge fan base especially within the Warcraft community. Anyone who talks badly of Chen Mo would get a bunch of angry fans after them.

Chen Mo's popularity increased even more after Warcraft's release. Players would visit him everyday, making his life quite difficult.

As Zou Zhuo lived nearby, he was now a regular at the experience store, practicing Warcraft everyday dreaming of reaching thirty five hundred points.

The experience store was quite small with enough room for eighteen computers and ten massage chairs. Two of them were reserved for Qian Kun and Zheng Hongxi too, there weren't enough seats at all.

There were many players who went to the experience store just to play games, but as there weren't enough seats, many went to Fates Internet Cafe to play Warcraft. This made Zhuo Yao really happy as she gained plenty of business this way.

Chen Mo was troubled, as the players were really friendly and the experience store was open for players and the designer to interact with one another, it wasn't reasonable to ask them to leave.

This made Wen Lingwei and Jia Peng feel really out of place. They treated the experience store as their second meeting point, but from Warcraft's popularity their meeting point was taken.

Chen Mo was now considering a bigger experience store.

But those were still an afterthought. Although he had the money, he was still in a developmental stage, and it wouldn't be wise to expand willy nilly as the experience store was just a front for the work he does.

As Warcraft was hugely popular, there were many who were interested in Chen Mo just to see him, but it should return to normal in a few month's time when it would cool down slightly.

Chen Mo was saving his money to develop more games, it wouldn't be a wise choice to spend it on buying or renting properties.

So after some consideration, Chen Mo decided to stay, and would only entertain the idea once he makes a game that would surpass Warcraft.

There were player discussions everyday on the Warcraft forums. Most of the discussions were about strategy, and story and playstyle topics were becoming less common.

But these topics were more than enough to keep them occupied for a long time. Topics like which races were stronger, the best way to play different matchups, and the best way to play mirror matchups would usually be quite heated, usually ending in '1v1 me'.

Many players ranked around fifteen hundred liked talking trash. There were even some who were known to do that in the forums, making the forums a bit of a disaster.

Therefore, Chen Mo thoughtfully included the points of the players when they comment. From then onwards, there were less quarrels and the forums became a much more peaceful place.

Posts like these were becoming more common.

"I wanted to talk trash when I saw the title, but then I saw thirty five hundred points. Whatever, I'll back off I guess."

"Uhh, thirty seven hundred god? I'll do some worshipping, although I don't understand what's going on, it looks incredible!"

"Twelve hundred points? You're making posts at that level! Reach two thousand before you talk!"

"Trash talkers were solved by Chen Mo just like that.

Warcraft was basically completely balanced in the previous life. Especially after version 1.24e, Blizzard would only release small changes once in a while.

In this version, other than the Undead being slightly weaker by virtue of finding it a bit difficult to get mines, the other races were more or less even with none of them having a noticeable advantage.

Moreover, even though Undead was known as the weakest race, it wasn't so bad that nobody would play it.

Undead never made it once to the finals of WCG for the first ten years it was held, but in WCG 2012, Chinese Undead player Ted beat Korean Orc player the second time in the lower bracket, and beat Moon who was known as the fifth race 2:0 to reach the finals. Then they proceeded to beat Chinese Orc player fly 2:1 to be the first one to win with Undead.

These players were the best of the best, especially when lyn and fly were Orc players, and it was accepted that it was difficult to play Undead into Orcs.

This demonstrated that Warcraft is a very balanced game with incredibly rich content. Che Mo would make more balanced changes to this version to make it an incredibly balanced RTS game, allowing the players to play years and years without getting bored of the game.

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Chapter 133: Chapter 132: RPG map

Chen Mo hadn't heard of news from anyone else during the time when Warcraft was gaining popularity.

It wasn't that the other designers weren't jealous and weren't willing to copy, but they couldn't copy!

Warcraft couldn't be replicated, no matter story or playstyle. Most of the designers knew that there was no way this could be copied.

Therefore this had been a one man show by Chen Mo, all the other could do was just watch on.

Chen Mo hit the ground running by breaking to the PC market with a game like this. He became a pretty well known video game designer from this, especially being the king of the RTS hill.

Of course, when his demonic performance on the ranked ladder taken into consideration, he gained his popularity much faster than designers of a similar grade.

One good thing to come out of this was that the players were now closer to the developer.

Many players didn't care about the developers, they would either butcher their Hero/race, or force a certain playstyle onto the player, and sometimes would only care about money and block off all communication from players.

There were a large number of players who felt that designers didn't know who to balance the game at all, nerfing whichever seemed strong.

However, as Chen Mo also happened to be Silent, the gap between designers and players was significantly closer. The players felt that he was the same as them, people who loved playing games, someone who was good at games at that, which further increased the trust players had in him.

Chen Mo was ready to set Warcraft aside at this point.

Just like Plant vs Zombies, many felt that Warcraft would pave the way for RTS games, but Chen Mo knew that it wasn't an opening, but the peak.

The learning curve for RTS games was incredibly steep. RTS players could play it forever and ever and not get bored of it, but for the average player who wasn't good at RTS games, they would only play one to two years.

Many knew after playing for a few months that they were a one thousand point noob with no chance of climbing.

A majority of players didn't think that micromanaging was fun.

Under these circumstances, their interest in RTS games would decrease rapidly, in turn making the RTS player base smaller and smaller, and the game would slowly die off.

It was actually one of the most enjoyable genres, but the only reason it didn't do well was because of the difficulty of growing its player base.

It had been smooth sailing so far for Warcraft and tournaments were appearing left and right. However Chen Mo knew deep down that there is a limit.

Which was why Chen Mo was preparing to release a new version of Warcraft, and started laying the foundations for a new game.

There were two points he wanted to focus on. One being to spend money to ensure the cinematics were high quality to allow it to be a flawless classic; the other was to have a complete editor to allow players to explore what the game had to offer endlessly.

Chen Mo did some planning around the cinematics, if he were to do everything before making cuts, it would cost around forty million RMB.

Chen Mo didn't need to spend this money as the sales for Warcraft have already been made, and the players' interest in the story was fading, it didn't matter too much if he added the cinematics or not.

But Chen Mo felt that there were some in the previous version that left a bit more to be desired. As he wanted to recreate this classic, he must recreate every part of it perfectly.

Just like a high quality artwork. How could you put it in a cabinet for display before it is patched up?

The other problem was the editor.

So far, players were still focused on progressing through the story and versus mode. They didn't pay much attention to the world editor at all.

Of course, this was mainly due to players not realising the potential of the editor.

Just like in Plants vs Zombies, the best way to keep the players interested in the game was to allow them to create whatever they want and allow them to pick whatever they want.

Therefore, Chen Mo decided to give the players a little help.

First were the controls. The hotkeys for Warcraft were quite illogical. They would pick a random letter from the name of the ability as its hotkey. This created a problem as different Heroes, units, and buildings from different races would have different hotkeys.

This seemed like a small problem, nor did Blizzard have the desire to correct it, but it actually dramatically increased the difficulty for players to get into the game as many players struggled to remember the hotkeys.

This was easy to solve. Cen Mo included the ability to rebind keys into the game to allow players to customise all their hotkeys.

The second was improved to the editor.

The original editor was relatively complicated, and would take new players some effort to pick it up. As he was making it simpler to use, he included a small tutorial to make it easier for players to learn.

At the same time, he included some classic RPG maps as inspiration in order to attract the attention of the players.

As this update was relatively simple, Chen Mo finished the plan in no time, allowing Su Jinyu and Qian Kun to take over.

"Here are the plans for the new update. The editor tutorial will be done by the Goldfish. You'll have to write it in more detail, take the learning abilities of our players into account."

"Qian Kun, I'll need you to design a few RPG maps. Hongxi, do some planning for the design too. Take a look at the dialogues while you're there."

Chen Mo introduced the new update document to the three of them.

Qian Kun looked at the document, shocked, "'Protect Athena?' 'Escape Pyramid'? 'Chenghai 3c'? 'Tower Defence'? What are these? Are these maps for Warcraft?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yep, I've given a brief overview for each of them. You guys will have to work on the initial drafts and I'll give you the go ahead when it's good enough."

Qian Kun nodded, "Alright, I'll take a look."

They didn't question as they have now developed an unconditional trust for Chen Mo especially when it comes to Warcraft.

Qian Kun took a quick look at the update plans, isn't this just a few maps? How is this a new update?

But as he looked more into it, it didn't seem like just a few maps. These maps made changes to hero abilities and items.

Who knows!

Chapter 134: Chapter 133: Warcraft's Update

Su Jinyu, Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun started working hard after receiving the update document.

In truth, these RPG maps weren't the most classic or the most balanced, so why would Chen Mo pick these maps?

It's because these represented the Warcraft RPGs that eventually branched off. These were prototypes of the classic Warcraft RPG, allowing the players to enjoy the fun of Warcraft RPG maps while not restricting their thinking.

Warcraft RPG maps eventually gave birth to DotA. Chen Mo didn't want to shoot his own foot by giving map designers the inspiration to make something like that.

Defence map: Protect Athena

Defence maps were really simple, and yet managed to have the essence of Warcraft RPG games: Hero combinations and Hero training. As time goes on, the enemies will get stronger and stronger, and the players' objective would be to find the best combination across numerous Heroes and items.

Tower defence map: Tower Defence.

This game came from classic tower defence games from his previous life. The core of tower defence games are similar to defence maps, the difference being players would need to pick towers instead of Heroes.

Casual map: Escape Pyramid.

This map was representative of casual maps. The players could pick from ten different modes and beat the game by dodging various traps.

PvP map: Chenghai 3c.

Compared to DotA, Chenghai 3c was quite primitive. It's biggest problem was balancing, and yet it was also the fact that it wasn't balanced that made it so popular. Many players played Chenghai 3c imba(imbalanced) just because of how imbalanced it was.

At the same time, players could play as multiple heroes, which balanced out some of the imbalance, making it an extremely entertaining map.

Chen Mo decided to only release three maps, leaving the others for the players to come up with themselves.

The new version didn't take long at all, and was finished in under two weeks.

There were many different maps in Warcraft's campaign, and the three of them have worked on them too. Therefore it wasn't difficult for them to make the maps as they were already quite familiar with the editor. Most of the time was spent balancing the abilities as well as the difficulty of the levels.

Chen Mo mentioned specifically that the heroes in the RPG raps have to be completely different from the ones in versus mode. They need to match the heroes while being new ideas.

This required a lot of thinking from the three of them, but their imaginations were stimulated in the process, making it quite fulfilling.

Especially Qian Kun who was basically responsible for all of Chenghai 3c. Chen Mo was especially happy as it was pretty close to the quality of the one in previous life.

Chen Mo did one last check of the three maps, "Alright, it's good."

"Yes! We're done!" exclaimed Su Jinyu.

Zheng Hongxi said, "But it felt pretty easy."

"Manager, this new patch feels lackluster. Although it seems fun, are the players going to be happy? I feel like these maps don't even come close to the game content." asked Qian Kun.

"Don't worry. Hongxi, could you work on the match notes then push the update?" ordered Chen Mo.

It didn't take long for the patch notes to be done. Su Jinyu then posted the patch and the patch notes.

This patch was pretty small, there was only one extra cinematic, improvements on some foundations of the game, as well as the three RPG maps.

As the production of the cinematic takes a long time, it could only be pushed one by one. The patch would look sad without the cinematics, as it would be less than one megabyte.

Oh maybe very sad would be a better world.

Of course, Chen Mo could pad out the update with new encounters in the campaign, but players had their focus on Versus mode with little attention paid to more encounters, which was why Chen Mo decided against it.

Chen Mo didn't want to charge for this patch, nor did he plan to charge for future maps.

As there was so little game content, it wouldn't be good if he sold it as DLCs.

He could also charge per map, for example when a player makes a good map, the other players could pay one or two RMB for each, and the money would be split between Chen Mo and the maker.

But Chen Mo still decided against this.

It was simple, obviously they couldn't start charging for the map from the start as it would never gain popularity. But it wouldn't make sense to charge later either, why was it free at the start, and it starts costing money when it gets popular?

Therefore, although charging for maps would be good for the map makers, players would be less inclined to play them, which was completely against the point of Warcraft RPG maps.

Chen Mo wasn't making RPG maps for healthy development of the gaming industry or anything, but to further boost the sales of the game.

RPG maps were a great reason for a group of friends to stay up late. Chen Mo's intentions were to draw in non-RTS players, as their friends who play Warcraft would get them to get the game in order to play these RPG maps.

Moreover, RPG maps would further extend the lifespan of Warcraft, as it continues to grow and expand, paving the way for future PC games.

After some simple preparations, Warcraft finally got a new update!

Although this update was fairly low key, only made known to the players via a patch note.

Many players noticed a new patch when they logged into the game.

"Huh? New version? Chen Mo sure is efficient!"

"Yeah, Warcraft was already doing quite well with no balancing issues. Was there a need for a patch?"

"He's so nice! Wow, is this the Chen Mo I once new? I'm so grateful I'm about to cry!"

"Yeah, how come he's so nice all of a sudden."

"So what did he include in the patch?"

Many of the players started complaining upon seeing the patch notes.

"My goodness, what's this? One cinematic, a few settings update, and a few new maps?"

"Are you kidding me?"

"How is this a new patch? Chen Mo? Do we have different understandings of patches?"

"At least it's free..."

"How dare he charge for something like this. That would be unreasonable!"

"I just watched the new cinematic, it's great!"

"So is the new cinematic the only good thing from this new update?"

"So is Thunderbolt Entertainment rebranding to Thunderbolt Movies?"

"Do you guys produce games or movies?!"

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Chapter 135: Chapter 134: New version live!

Confused and shocked, the players started looking at the patch notes.

New cinematic? Very cool, but it's barely three minutes long, and after watching so many incredible cinematics, the players were starting to desensitise to it.

New settings? Able to freely rebind keys? Ummm. seems useful, but this feature is too simple! It's probably really simple to implement too!

Therefore the key content in this update must be the three maps!

Therefore the players started trying to make sense of these maps.

Many players have noticed World Editor when Warcraft just launched.

But many lost interest after taking a few looks. Although it wasn't complicated, it was difficult to learn without any guidance. Moreover, as most players focused on the story and combat of the game, very few tried to learn the World Editor.

This implementation was similar to that of Plants vs Zombies, map sharing, rating and downloading all came with the game, allowing players to make maps as they wish.

The players would eventually discover the World Editor when they get bored of playing against one another, so Chen Mo aws only fastracking that process.

It didn't take long before players tried out the maps.

"Protect Athena? Why do we need to protect Athena?"

"Who knows, maybe defending isn't that important? Wow, there are so many heroes to pick from!"

"I pick Demon Hunter!"

"I pick Blademaster!"

"Uhh, I seemed to have picked a healer."

"Huh? How come the abilities are different? My goodness, my Blademaster seems so strong. I have an Omnislash and a crit. I can even put points into attributes?"

"So can my Demon Hunter!"

"There's a shop too, there's so many incredible items to buy from the shop!"

"The enemies are there! Quick, stop that opening!"

"I'll kill them, you block them off!"

"We defended! Wow, there are so many attribute books on the ground, and a lot of money too! Pick it up!"

"I'm buying equipment!"

"I leveled up! Give me a second to see what I've learnt!"

"Hurry, the enemy are here again!"

"Tower defence? What's the difference between this and the other Tower Defence games on the market?"

"Wow, we can play together. We have separate lanes!"

"The towers can be leveled up! You can turn them into Heroes too!"

"Seems interesting!"

"Stop leaking! What! How did you leak three!"

"No, we have to break down where everyone is placing their towers. We need to manage the few key entrances."

"You guys are terrible, you should put it like this..."

"Escape Pyramid? This sounds like an action adventure game!"

"... How could you include an action adventure game in my RTS? My VR pod is crying..."

"Take a look, it says there are many game modes inside."

"Vote for mode? My goodness there are so many modes!"

"Let's just pick one."

"Dodge attack? Running? What, why is there lava and ice on the ground, I'm dead!"

"I'm still alive!"

"It's just you now! Keep going!"

"My goodness you made it! Hahaha!"

"That's incredible! Man this is actually quite fun... Let's play something else."

"Chenghai 3c? This is such an inconspicuous name, it really matches Chen Mo's style."

"Yeah, Chen Mo always does these weird names, seems like a bad habit of his..."

"Man, this game is so fun! You only need to control one hero! Mama doesn't have to worry about my terrible skills anymore!"

"Man, they've even changed the heroes! My Hero is so strong! Even I'm afraid of him!"

"Mine too!"

"Fight me middle!"

"You think I'm scared? Hey, come back!"

"I can't beat you now, stand there and wait for my backup!"

The players soon realised that the maps were much more fun than expected.

There maps were different types of games. Although they had different styles, they had one thing in common. In these maps, the player only has to control one unit.

This makes the players who find RTS difficult happy as it was more than they could handle. This put high and low skilled players in the same playing field.

Moreover, multiplayer matches in Warcraft were never as fun as 1v1 as it took away from strategies and techniques.

But with these four maps, friends could play with one another with no problems. Moreover, the skill gap was also reduced, the ones that were good could carry the game, but the ones that were worse wouldn't drag down the team as much. This made multiplayer games much more fun than Versus mode.

After their hands were free from micromanagement, the players would be able to experience different content from the game, such as hero picks, team compositions, training, and item combinations. After building up a strong Hero, they would be able to cut through the creeps like paper, and might even be able to do the same to other players, bringing a lot of enjoyment to players.

In the campaign and versus mode of RTS, killing a single creep took a lot of effort. Every unit death could easily compound up as it RTS required players to slowly build up an advantage. There was so way the players could be this carefree in RTS mode.

But in RPG maps, the carefree feeling was brought out entirely. It didn't take long before a large portion of players to fall in love with these maps.

Warcraft playing an RPG map during their free time with their friends slowly became a trend.

There was also discussion on these four RPG maps on the forums.

"These four maps Chen Mo released are actually quite interesting. I'm completely addicted, playing it every day. Anyone else with me?"

"PRevious poster 1"

"It really is like that. I thought these were just a few more maps during PvP, but I discovered two completely different games when I looked deeper into it!"

"I'm actually playing action adventure games and tower defence games in an RTS game, and it's really fun too... This doesn't make sense!"

"The tower defence map trumps any other tower defence game on the market. Chen Mo actually made four new games for us!"

"I'm shocked. The game engine for Warcraft is amazing! These maps combined were only around one megabyte, meaning that Warcraft supports content like this perfectly!"

"Buy one free four! This new update was completely free! I'm off to sing praises of Chen Mo again!"

"I'm so happy I'm about to cry!"

"Did you guys notice there's a tutorial in the World Editor?"

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Chapter 136: Chapter 135: Notice

"Geez, they are still using tutorials?"

"My goodness, it's actually really detailed!"

"According to what they say, we can make these four maps too? Anyone could do it?"

"Man isn't this the same as Plants vs Zombies? And it's more rich than Plants vs Zombies too, you could mix and match hero abilities, make new items and levels!"

"That's crazy! Isn't this basically a game editor in Warcraft?"

"Yeah, you need permission to use the editor video game designers use, but this editor doesn't require any rights. It's also really simple, basing it on the limits of Warcraft. You could probably make many different games using this!"

"Alright, I'm going to try it out!"

"There are many new game modes in Plants vs Zombies, and the highly rated ones are really fun too. I'm looking forward to see what the players will be able to make!"

"I heard that there's a top-tier modder in Plants vs Zombies who got hired because of how well they did."

"Really?"

"No idea, I just heard of it."

"Oh man, I want to work at Thunderbolt Entertainment too! There must be a lot of bonuses!"

The players were all riled up after playing a few RPG maps. It didn't matter if they were talented, many of them started trying to learn the editor and trying out their own maps.

Of course the people who were able to map actual maps were probably less than one percent, let alone make a high quality mpa.

The makers of high quality maps must have some knowledge in designing, good inspiration, as well as taking suggestions and feedback from the players. They also need to modify and improve on them day after day, comparable to making a simple game.

However, Chen Mo's objective was complete upon getting the players riled up.

As the RPG maps gained popularity, Warcraft's sales obviously increased yet again.

Many players egged their friends on to buy the game. These players weren't into the traditional RTS format, but Warcraft was now a way of socialising with friends with the inclusion of RPG maps, increasing the sales.

It didn't take long before Warcraft followed the footsteps of Plants vs Zombies, with various different types of maps being created by players. Although these maps were simple and primitive, Chen Mo felt that it was a good start.

As soon as the players are interested in it, the growth should be really fast.

Never doubt what the players could do once given the opportunity.

At this point, Chen Mo's development of Warcraft was set aside.

The game was still early in its development stage to the players.

The PvP mode was still in full swing.

High skilled players are appearing one after another on Ranked matches.

And the more and more people outside of China were feeling the love of Warcraft.

The RPG maps attracted a huge number of non-RTS players, many of them were making their own RPG maps.

But for Chen Mo, the development of the game was almost at the end. He did everything he could do to guide the players, all that's left is for the players so enjoy what the game has to offer.

From this point onwards, RTS games will only follow a slow decline. This was fate, and Chen Mo wasn't about to change that.

Ever since the development of Warcraft until now, going through releasing the game, stomping the ranked ladder, releasing the international version, and making RPG maps Chen Mo had always been working. Chen Mo was quite tired and wanted to take a break.

Using a high quality game like Warcraft breaking the RTS genre, Thunderbolt Entertainment successfully pivoted from mobile games to PC games.

Of course this didn't mean mobile games development was coming to an end. It was up to Chen Mo to decide what game he was going to develop.

What will he do next? Chen Mo wasn't decided either.

Early next morning, Chen Mo received a phone call from Lin Mao.

"Hello?" Chen Mo was still quite drowsy.

"Hello? Chen Mo, I made a game in Warcraft, could you promote the game for me?" asked Lin Mao.

Chen Mo laughed, "What? You're playing Warcraft too?"

"Yeah. Sigh, I was never an RTS player, and basically set it aside after I finished the story. But after you released the update, I realised the World Editor is quite enjoyable. I never noticed it before that, so I decided to make a map for fun." said Lin Mao.

Chen Mo replied, "I've been quite busy lately, so I haven't contacted you guys."

"Geez, there's no need for that. You must be busy to make a game like that. By the game, this game is amazing. You even made it overseas to represent us Chinese video game designers," said Lin Mao.

"Geez, it's nothing. Also, I haven't heard from Zhao Zihao for some time, what has he been doing lately?"

"Oh, I think he's overseas for some personal matter. I never delved any deeper. He's from a rich family after all, it's not entirely surprising for him to go overseas and have fun. By the way, since it's been so long, you wanna grab a meal together some day?" asked Lin Mao .

Chen Mo sat up on his bed, "Some day? How about tonight, I've been free recently anyways."

"Alright, it's tonight then. I'll take a look for what to eat, and you do the same too. Let's discuss later. By the way, have you seen the notice on the editor?"

Chen Mo was shocked, "Notice? What notice, I haven't been on the videogame editor for a few days now."

Lin Mao was speechless, "How could you overlook something so important. I wanted to talk about that too. Alright, you take a look and we can discuss later."

Chen Mo was left with confusion after hanging up, What notice?

After his morning ritual, Chen Mo went onto the videogame designer editor. There was a notice upon logging in.

Chen Mo was shocked as this was something he had never seen before.

Illusion Game Engine was made in China, and as a VR capable editor, there were many things that had to do with VR.

Evidently this video game editor wasn't so simple. This must've had the government's support and couldn't have been done by some random company.

The reason for the huge sums of investment to develop a videogame editor capable of making VR worlds and allowing its users to use it for free was because countries all over the world put emphasis on VR technology.

The official app store and Illusion Game Engine had strong ties with the government. Otherwise it would be impossible to build such a massive, complete system, allowing video game designers to grow and flourish from the ground up with no obstacles in the way.

Chen Mo was confused, what was the objective of this notice?

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Chapter 137: Chapter 136: Chinese Themed Game

Traditional Cultural Theme Game Season Event Notice

In the spirit of this event, promoting Chinese culture and healthy development of our industry, the Game and Virtual Reality Committee have decided on a 'Traditional Cultural Themed Games' event. Designers are invited to use their expertise to design various Chinese themed games, potentially with educational value, to further expand the impact of our culture in the videogame industry.

Target audience.

All video game designers.

How to participate

All Chinese themed games will be automatically entered.

Design requirements

a. No platform limits, mobile, PC, and VR games are all eligible.

b. Rich game content with a healthy theme and emphasis on traditional Chinese culture with educational value.

Prizes

At the end of this event, Game and Virtual Reality Committee members will judge all entries, with one first place, three second places, five third place, and a few notable mentions.

The award-winning designer will be awarded a certificate, and the winning game will be recommended by the official app store for a period of one month.

Signed by the Game and Virtual Reality Committee yesterday.

The corner of Chen Mo's mouth was twitching.

Isn't this a serious official document?

Even the punctuation looks official!

Moreover, what is this Game and Virtual Reality Committee? Chen Mo didn't even know that existed!

He never knew the relationship between the videogame editor, official app store, and its corresponding departments even though he had used the editor before.

Chen Mo finally understood the situation after looking it up.

This Game and Virtual Reality Committee, also known as the Game Committee, was a legitimate committee. It had a lot of power and was affiliated with the Ministry of culture, it basically governed the entire video game industry.

Why did this exist in the first place?

Every country noticed the potential of Virtual Reality when it first appeared. For example, soldiers could train within a VR world, making training safer and cheaper.

Virtual Reality wasn't just for video games, it also had great value in other industries.

But an editor is still required in order to design a complete world using the editor.

And that was now the Game Committee was bord.

The reason this world put so much emphasis on the videogame industry wasn't because of artistic value, but because games will improve VR technology, and that would benefit all industries.

As a result, the value of video game designers increased dramatically.

The Game Committee represented other departments in the country. They gathered the best of the best in the country to make the Illusion Game Engine for the videogame designers and developed a rating system to allow video game designers to continually grow. Finally they would end up in VR territory, making VR games.

The official app store also belonged to the Game Committee. The twenty percent cut from the sales from the official app store were funds for the Game Committee.

Chen Mo finally understood.

Why did Lin Mao ask him to pay attention to this matter? Because this event was hosted by the Game Committee, a legitimate department.

If the game goes well and gets promoted by the officials, it wouldn't be surprising it gets on the news. Then their popularity will sky-rocket!

"I really can't take a break!"

Chen Mo planned to take two days break, but the work game to him very soon this time around.

The duration of the event was one season or three months. This meant that Chen Mo needed to make a game related to traditional chinese culture in these three months. Moreover, the game must be good enough to meet the requirements of the judges.

May as well go for first place if joining.

"Chinese themed game? Educational too?"

Chen Mo had a few ideas, but hadn't decided on which one to settle on. He decided to talk with Lin Mao before making any calls.

Lin Mao and Chen Mo were eating away at skewers at a BBQ store.

The two of them haven't met in a while as Chen Mo didn't have much time as they worked on his game. This time, the two of them were chatting, de-stressing.

"Did you see the notice?" asked Lin Mao.

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, I took a look, but I haven't decided on what game to make."

"Don't worry, take your time," assured Lin Mao. You're aren't required to enter the event. It's alright to sit out if you have your own plans. You're better at Western Fantasy themes anyways, if it doesn't feel right to make a Chinese themed game and won't get a good result, there's no point wasting that time and effort."

Chen Mo grabbed a piece of paddywhack, "I actually want to do this. I've always been making games that are related to Western Fantasy, I've never really made a Chinese themed game."

"It's great that you want to do it, but even better if you place it somewhere. The promotional spaces aren't too important, the key is that you reveal yourself in front of the Game Committee members."

Chen Mo was shocked, "Huh? That's most important?"

"Of course. They govern the entire gaming industry. Who knows what happens when you get on their bad side, I wouldn't want to find out. If you manage to grab their attention, it would probably do wonders to your career."

Chen Mon nodded, "That makes sense. Then I'll need to prepare well and aim for first place."

Lin Mao waved his hand, "Forget about first place, second or third place is already good enough."

"Why?" questioned Chen Mo.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning your abilities. The biggest obstacle is time. The event lasts for three months, that means you need to make the game within three months." explained Lin Mao.

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, the others have three months too right?"

Lin Mao shook his head, "Of course not! Big companies like Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Zen Entertainment have insiders. They knew about this a few months ago. They've had a few months worth of development ahead of you, you don't stand a chance."

Chen Mo was shocked, "Huh? They can do that?"

"Why can't they. It's not really a secret for the members of the Game Committee. As long as you know someone, it wouldn't be difficult to catch wind of that. Video Game designers like us would only find out after the notice is released."

"Geez, how is that fair?" cried Chen Mo.

"There's nothing you could do, as it's more or less the hidden rule of the industry. Everybody knows if they can get to Emperor Dynasty or Zen's level, we can do that too. But now? You'll have to look past that."

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Chapter 138: Chapter 137 Wuxia Game vs Xianxia Game

"It's fine, it's just a one or two months right, that doesn't guarantee first place." said Chen Mo after some thought.

Lin Mao nodded, "That's true, the Game Committee members do have specific tastes. But you'd probably have a hard time getting first place if your game wasn't super innovative."

Chen Mo did some more thinking.

"I'm thinking of making a Xianxia mobile game, what about you?"

Chen Mo said after a thought, "I'm thinking Wuxia."

Lin Mao was shocked, "Wuxia? Wuxia is pretty difficult!"

Chen Mo nodded, "I know, that's why I picked it."

"That's true, if you make it well, there's a high chance of it getting first place. But it is extremely difficult to make the theme special. Zen Entertainment have been playing with it for a long time and never got any results."

"I know, that's why I'm still thinking about it," said Chen Mo.

Lin Mao nodded, "Alright! You can do it! I believe in you! You made an RTS game like Warcraft when it is commonly accepted to be difficult! If you plan it out and do this theme justice, you have a good chance of getting first place."

Chen Mo nodded, "Good luck, let's get some good results!"

After his meal, Chen Mo returned to the experience store and started thinking hard about the game.

There weren't many types of games that were Chinese themed. The popular ones were Wuxia and Xianxia.

In the parallel world, the first response of video game designers and players when they think about Chinese games would be Xianxia games. The currently popular VR game Legend of the Sword was a type of Xianxia game.

The reason Xianxia games were popular was because they could use the combat system of an RPG game, making its playstyle easy to pick up and familiar to players.

Just as Western Fantasy RPG games have warriors, casters, archers, melee or ranged, flying with Gryphons... These could all be reskinned with a Xianxia theme.

In Xianxia games, players could fly on their swords, attack others with spells, they could explore areas like caves or mountains, all very fitting with Western RPG games.

The combat of Wuxia games could easily be reskinned using the combat system from Western RPG games, and the players wouldn't feel that it was out of place.

Therefore most popular Wuxia games were basically reskinned Western RPG games. And because they had games to base it off of, there weren't any risks involved as it was something players were used to.

So why couldn't they do the same with Wuxia?

The biggest problem was the combat system.

Xianxia are placed in worlds where magic is common, as opposed to Wuxia where magic is rare.

You could fly on your sword, kill demons, and summon thousands of swords in Wuxia worlds, making it rich and fitting of this spellcasting based combat system.

In Wuxia combat systems you take damage and other effects when I cast spells, which can be reflected in skills and debuffs.

Wuxia was completely different. Traditionally it would be throwing punches and countering them. The Wuxia skills are usually pretty basic. For example, it would be a stretch to treat Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms as eighteen different skills, but it might be too simple if it was just one move. It was also difficult to convey its meaning and uniqueness if it only dealt damage.

Moreover, Wuxia worlds lacked monsters, making it more difficult to tell a story as there wouldn't be huge bosses, with humanoids in its place.

Converting Xianxia to Wuxia would require taking out a lot of content, moreover, it was also difficult to convey the cultural aspect of Wuxia through a game.

Which was why designers would father do Xianxia over Wuxia.

There were quite a few Wuxia games in his previous life, but the problem was that these Wuxia games were just a reskin and bore the same core as Xianxia and Western RPG games.

The large portion of the games that were based on successful novels by Jin Yong and Gu Long depended on the IP, the games themselves made no new innovations.

For example, making Six Meridian Swords[1] a ranged attack, and making Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms and melee attacks, energy drain would be a mana drain, and quick steps would increase evasion...

These still had strong ties to the combat system of Western RPG games. Setting aside the sentimental value to the original works, these mechanics were a bit of the stretch, and players would probably not buy it.

Although there wasn't Jin Yong and Gu Long in this world, there were similar Wuxia novels, with the concept of energy, move sets, and different types of Wugong. The Wugong in this world were pretty similar to the previous world too, stuff like Yijin Jing, Tai Chi, and Baguazhang were also popular in this world.

It was impossible for Chen Mo to secure one of these IPs or to remake one of Jin Yong's novels were impossible as he only had three months to do it.

The Wuxia IPs in this world were quite expensive and doesn't come close to how popular Jin Yong's novels were. Even when setting aside the price, buying it wouldn't have a huge effect anyways, otherwise Zen and Emperor Dynasty would've bought it.

Zen Entertainment insisted on making high quality games with a Chinese theme. It wasn't that they didn't want to explore Wuxia's potentials, but the outcomes of those games were mediocre at best, which was why they went back to Xianxia themes.

Forcing a Wuxia themed game without making innovations to the core of the game was obviously a no go.

The judges weren't dense either and would easily be able to tell terrible works like these. What's the point of making a Wuxia game with barely any Wuxia content?

Chen Mo wanted to make a Wuxia game to show off Wuxia content, one that makes innovations on the play style, and not one that just has Wuxia in the title.

Chen Mo had made quite a few games since he entered the industry, including two incredibly successful games such as Plants vs Zombies, and Warcraft, scummy games like I Am MT, and a visual novel like Lifeline.

But they were mostly classic overseas games, there wasn't one that was actually a full fledged Chinese themed game.

You couldn't blame Chen Mo for favouring the west. This was what happened in his previous world, good games from China were few and far between, and most of them were scummy games.

But that wasn't what Chen Mo wanted. He hopes that Chinese games could be shared all across the world, and Chinese players would appreciate the traditional cultural aspects Chinese games.

Therefore, Chen Mo wanted to use this opportunity to make a standalone Wuxia game to allow players to fully experience China.

TL note: It's like this finger gun attack https/youtu.be/OVz6fi1KMkg?t=134

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Chapter 139: Chapter 138: Wuxia Game Design Document

Chen Mo wrote down the title of his new design document.

Wulin Legend design concept document.

There were many classic Wuxia games in Chen Mo's previous life. Although Wulin Legend wasn't the best, it was the most creative, starkly different from the Wuxia games that were based on Western RPG games.

Although Wulin Legend wasn't extremely popular, its predecessor Heroes of Jin Yong was.

In Heroes of Jin Yong, the main character was transmigrated into a world formed from fourteen of Jin Yong's novels. The main character was constantly interacting with the characters from Jin Yong's novels, collecting items, learning Wugong, and recruiting swordsmen before completing the fourteen main quests lines, gathering fourteen holy books and returning to his world.

This game was shocking at the time of release, as players could train Wugong from Jin Yong's novels, recruit warrios such as Duan Yu and Yang Guo to fight alongside them, and even complete quests that were relevant to the original novel.

Moreover, Heroes of Jin Yong had a good/evil system, which would increase or decrease depending on the choices of the player.

When the player finally was about to leave the world after gathering all fourteen holy books, if they were nice, the ten evil masters would attack the player, if they were evil, the ten good masters would attack the player.

The player would need to beat the ten masters before beating the game, giving the player an immense amount of satisfaction.

Jin Yong's novels weren't in this world, and Heroes of Jin Yong wasn't as rich in content as Wu Lin Legend. The art wasn't good enough to satisfy the needs of players nowadays either.

After considerations, Wulin Legend would better fit what Chen Mo was looking for.

There wasn't much content from Jin Yong's novels in Wulin Legend. Although it descended from Heroes of Jin Yong, the different factions, characters, and styles of Wugong were basically all made from scratch, making it easy for the people of this world to understand.

In terms of artwork, although Wulin Legend was an old game, it was remade in 2015 (as Tale of Wuxia). The artwork, character models were all remastered. Moreover, as Chen Mo's art skills were relatively high, it should satisfy the demands of the players.

Chen Mo felt that Wulin Legend would match the content in this game better as opposed to Tale of Wuxia.

Of course the most important part was that the playstyle and the story fit Chen Mo's needs very well. The innovative playstyle of the game was unique among Wuxia games.

There was also a story regarding the remake of the game.

Wulin Legend was released in 2001, although it was well received, it didn't become a classic like 'Chinese Paladin' or 'Xuan-Yuan Sword'.

Other than the fact that it had a small audience, its difficulty, unbalanced combat system, and incomplete story contributed to its downfall.

Of course, these were due to limits in funding.

In the end, in an environment plagued with piracy, Heluo Studio disbanded. The new studio Oriental Calculations weren't able to make anything noteworthy either, disappearing like fireworks in the night sky.

In 2006, someone posted a question on the Wulin Legend forums :"Is Oriental Calculations still a thing?"

The players replied, "Haven't seen them in a long time. It'll be too bad if they disbanded."

In 2009, the post was received with a reply by Heluo Studio's founder and Wulin Legend's producer Xu Changlong.

"Oriental Calculations ceased all operations three years ago, but everyone on that team is still in the videogame industry. All the key players are also in a certain videogame company. As long as we are still here, there is a chance of us making better products."

Xu Changlong was shocked.

As time went by, he along with many others in the videogame industry gave up on making standalone games, turning into online games instead, doing things they didn't want to do and questioning their future.

Until discovering that post on the Wulin Legend forums, seeing there were so many people discussing the game.

He didn't know there were so many people in 2009 talking and reminiscing about a game from 2001.

And it was because of this reason, with support of the fans, Xu Changlong wanted to remake Wulin Legend, releasing Tale of Wuxia in 2015, and selling a respectable four hundred thousand copies in January 2016.

Just like when he made Warcraft, Chen Mo did a concept draft, giving an overview of the game, before distributing the workload among Su Jinyu and the others.

Chen Mo didn't need to raise his skills this time as the game was pretty simple. After making a game like Warcraft, a game like Wulin Legend was a piece of cake.

He only needed to figure out some of the complicated settings and the stories, then recreating the content as close to the original as possible.

It didn't take long for the concept draft to be complete.

This game can be split into two categories, exploration and training.

And the character arc could be split into three sections, entering the world (exploration), learning from the masters(training), and entering the field to save the martial arts world (exploration).

The reason Wulin Legend got good reviews was because of how it melded both.

Of course, Chen Mo needed the help of Memory Playback Potions to recreate all the details. It was still largely the same as before, Chen Mo would write down some of the more important features of the foundations. The story, numbers, and artwork would be done by his three assistants.

After the draft was done, Chen Mo held a meeting with Su Jinyu, Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun.

"I planned for morerest, but there are changes made to the plan. This is the concept document for the next game, take a look," said Chen Mo as he handed out the document to the three of them,

Qian Kun was disappointed, "Not a scummy game..."

Zheng Hongxi was quite interested in it, "Hmm? From the looks of it the story is quite rich. And this a Wuxia theme too, Chinese style."

Su Jinyu was confused, "Manager, I thought you said Wuxia themes were difficult? There are so many innovations in this game, isn't that a bit risky?"

"Don't worry about that, familiarise yourselves with the content of the game. I'll provide concept art for the characters and the locations. Goldfish, you'll be taking on all the artwork this time.

"Hongxi, you're mainly working on the story which is Wuxia themed. There is a lot of cultural knowledge in this, including artworks, books, chess, and music. You'll need to do some research on that. Of course, make it suitable, don't go too easy or too deep on it.

"Qian Kun, you'll be working on the combat system and balancing as per before. Balancing this time isn't as important as Warcraft. There's a few abilities that need to be especially strong and difficult to achieve, I'll tell you more about it later.

"Alright, that's about it. Take a good look at the document and have an idea of what the game will look like at the end. Make suitable preparations."

After receiving their work, the three of them started working.

As for Chen Mo, he started recalling some key scenes and settings from the game using Memory Playback Potions.

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Chapter 140: Chapter 139: Gameplay and Side Quests

Chen Mo's once fuzzy memory became clear after using the Memory Playback Potion.

Tale of Wuxia was basically an updated version of Wulin Legend with no changes made to the story line other than a few minor corrections.

Chen Mo listed out every key item in both storylines in order to combine the both to get the most complete story.

Now that Chen Mo's story writing level was maxed out in the first level, he believes that he can objectively improve on the story after making a few changes.

The main gist of the story was very clear, starting from entering Luoyang, Xiaoyao valley, Hangzhou City, Chengdu City, then the invasions of the cults. This progression was interspersed with a few side quests and backtracking back to Xiaoyao valley.

This timeline was pretty easy to recreate following the main gist, but that was all he needed as Zheng Hongxi will fill in the rest.

There were many paths in Tale of Wuxia, namely Eastern Depot, Beggars' Sect, Wulin League Leader (Good), Wulin League Overtake (Evil), all leading to different endings.

The main character could become the leader of the Wulin League, but could also go into the path of killing all friends and relatives and overtake the Wulin League. They could also be a carefree head of the league, or become a judge or ranger. These were all choices the player could make.

Other than these endings, there were endings where the main character finds love, and even one specifically when they woo a specific girl.

Yes, you can find love in this game, you can give gifts, accept gifts, complete special quests, to eventually woo the girl.

Of course, there was also a harem ending.

Zheng Hongxi had plenty on his plate with this many endings.

Chen Mo also had to deal with drafts for characters scenes, combat system, live skills, and item system too.

Wulin Legend had more than one hundred and eighty characters, and most of these characters had unique looks, Wugong, or personalities.

Chen Who would give them a name and a rough sketch, then finished by Su Jinyu. The character design and background story will be finished by Zheng Hongxi.

Life skills including hunting, fishing, mining, and foraging. Each life skill had their own minigame and their own equipment system.

For example, there would be a chance of getting snake galls when hunting snakes, and a chance of getting the bear paw or bear gall when hunting bears. Some of the equipment could be sold for money, and others could be used for buffs, for example, eating snake galls can increase the player's energy by one.

These life skills will have an effect on the player's combat abilities. For example, ores from mining could be crafted into weapons, improving the player's combat abilities.

The combat system also required a similar amount of effort.

Tales of Wuxia had a chess-like combat system similar to that of Heroes of Might and Magic. The player can move and attack once each round and have different areas, damage, and effects.

For example, the first stance of Dugu Nine Swords ignores their target's defence, and could deal huge damage when combined with Aotian Sword and the weapons master talent. They could even solo the battlefield when combined with effects like multislash.

There were many other things that affect combat abilities other than Wugong such as cleaving, multihit, multi slash, items, and special buffs/debuffs making the combat extremely rich.

There were even different types of Wugong such as energy, fists, kicking, claws, swords, knives, dual wielding, staffs, short staffs, Guqin, and concealed weapons. They would have different attack ranges, area of effect, strength, and different effects. It included all well known weapons and fit well with how Wugong were set.

Of course, Chen Mo made some amendments to some of the flaws Wulin Legend had.

First was the art, in particular the art level was constantly increasing in remakes from Tales of Wuxia to Tale of Wuxia:The Pre-Sequel, but overall it wasn't the game's strong point.

Chen Mo wanted to oversee the entire artwork and character model process to ensure the models, animations, and scenes were the best they could be. He even planned to improve the special effects during combat to at least match the levels of the parallel world.

Second was the difficulty curve. He could include a few hints during certain events. For example, when the player gets stuck in a puzzle section for too long, NPCs would give some hints or allow players to train more, allowing players to complete the game without specific strategies.

Furthermore, Chen Mo gave the game two types of combat systems. First was turn based combat just like the original, the other being a fake RTS combat like Soul Hunters allowing players to control a character during combat, repositioning them or casting spells.

Moreover, Chen Mo improved on the inspect ability, allowing players to check their rating, strength, or combinations of their Wugong, essentially viewing how good their strategy was. When the player's inspect ability wasn't high enough, they could take the skill scroll to their master for inspection, allowing players to easily differentiate between strong and weak Wugong.

The entire combat system would be managed by Qian Kun. Chen Mo gave these abilities a quick overview as Qian Kun wouldn't know things like Dugu Nine Swords and cleaving.

Moreover, Chen Mo would also give a quick overview of the locations of the enemies and the level designer of Qian Kun.

Other systems such as titles, recruiting warriors, relationship with NPCs, and wooing girls would be done by Su Jinyu.

Su Jinyu, Zheng Hongxi, and Qian Kun were getting better and better at their jobs after making Warcraft. They now had no problems understanding what Chen Mo was looking for from his design concepts, making the development go smoothly without any communication problem.

Warcraft could be described as a key obstacle, and once his assistants overcame it, they were able to work on games much more efficiently.

Su Jinyu was completing the character artwork in the experience store.

The main character was called Dongfang Weiming in Wulin Legend, but the players could freely change their name and looks in Tales of Wuxia.

Wen Lingwei was also helping with colouring.

"Goldfish, why are there so many avatars? The only thing different is their expression, they basically all look the same," questioned Wen Lingwei.

Su Jinyu nodded, "Yeah, it's to give the players choice."

Wen Lingwei was confused, "What does that do?"

Su Jinyu explained after a pause, "It's probably to allow players to customise their characters and allow them to match their looks with their personality. The personality of the character isn't set, so the players can play as the protagonist or antagonist."

"Oh," Wen Lingwei nodded, "That sounds like there's a lot of content, like a visual novel."

"Yeah, this game takes some inspiration from that. But the difference is still huge, and there is much more content in this game than visual novels." said Su Jinyu.

Wen Lingwei was worried, "This seems like a game I could play. But will there be no problems stuffing all these different playstyles into one game? It feels like it's going to be a game that has no place."

"It's hard to tell, who knows before the game is complete. But I think we should trust the manager, he must know what's up," assured Su Jinyu.

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 141 - Chapter 140: Zen Entertainments Xianxia Game - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 141 - Chapter 140: Zen Entertainments Xianxia Game Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 141: Chapter 140: Zen Entertainment's Xianxia Game

"Ah, I'm so tired after finishing one story branch and the background story of two characters," said Zheng Hongxi as he streched

"Really? Did you write the story for Warcraft?" asked Jia Peng.

Zheng Hongxi shook his head, "That's different, although Warcraft has a much more incredible story, it's only one branch, I just had to go along the flow of the story. This game is different, there are so many story branches that affect one another. This is so much more complicated than Lifeline and it's making my brain hurt."

"You better hurry up, I have a bunch more Wugong and equipment descriptions waiting for you," asid Qian Kun as he was working.

Zheng Hongxi had his hand on his forehead, "Oh my goodness!"

"Could you show me the script? I could look through it for you," offered Wen Lingwei.

Zheng Hongxi shook his head vigorously, "I can't do that, wouldn't I be leaking? Moreover, I don't need you to look over it, the manager has already seen it."

Wen Lingwei was speechless, "Selfish, why are you the same as the manager."

"This isn't selfish, its professionalism alright?" asserted Zheng Hongxi.

Wen Lingwei rolled her eyes with a 'yeah yeah, you're right' expression.

"Oh right, remember to give a few special Wugong and equipment their own story. The manager specifically asked for story special Wugong and equipment like Six Meridian Swords that can only be obtained after completing the quest from Wuliang Cave"

Zheng Hongxi nodded, "I remember, I'm planning to give it an extra long questline."

"From the sounds of it, although it is a Wuxia theme, the manager gave it many Wugong. The names also sound awesome, like Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms, Six Meridian Swords, energy drain, Dugu Nine Swords. They feel so fitting!" expressed Jia Peng.

Wen Ling said, "Do you really need to question the story that the stingy manager comes up with? He has so many of these ideas."

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Jia Peng said, "But I'm still kind of surprised. I thought the manager would never leave the world of Western Fantasy since Warcraft got so popular that he could probably live off sequels of it. Why did he want to make a Chinese style game all of a sudden?"

"You didn't know? It's because of the Game Committee. That means the department related to video games sent out a notice, asking for the designers to make a Chinese themed game. There's even judging for it," explained Su Jinyu.

Jia Peng was shocked, "Is that so. I thought the manager wouldn't' care about things like this."

Su Jinyu said, "He was actually already planning to make a Chinese themed game, but this came up at the right time."

"Can the manager get first place?" asked Jia Peng.

Wen Lingwei replied, "Has the stingy manager ever lost?"

Su Jinyu quickly interjected, "Don't be so full of yourself this time. It's hard to tell because Zen Entertainment is also making a standalone Xianxia themed game. They've also started a month or so earlier than we did, so it should be further in development."

"Huh? Zen Entertainment is joining too?" asked Jia Peng.

Su Jinyu nodded, "Of course, Zen Entertainment and Emperor Dynasty Entertainment are both competing. There are way more competitors that you guys think. That's why I said we can't be sure."

Jia Peng seemed to understand, "That's true. If there is judging, Emperor Dynasty Entertainment stands no chance, but Zen Entertainment excels at Xianxia games. Legend of the Sword was a very successful RPG game, so they must have good knowledge on that matter."

Zheng Hongxi said, "You can't be sure about that either, the advantage Zen Entertainment has isn't that big.

"I've looked up the games that won before, and most of them just fit the Game Committee's liking. In short, they don't like online games, although online games are more profitable, it isn't easy to tell a story.

"The judges put extra emphasis on the story and innovative playstles. That means the best type of game are standalone games, and the high quality the better, the richer the story the better."

"Even so, Zen Entertainment still has an advantage. There are many quest lines in Legend of the Sword, meaning that Zen Entertainment has plenty of experience in that. It probably wouldn't be that bad if they converted that into a standalone game," argued Su Jinyu.

Zheng Hongxi said, "It won't be bad, but our story will be much better."

Everyone was speechless as he praised himself.

Zheng Hongxi nodded in agreement, "Yep."

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They were once again speechless at his honesty.

Qian Kun waved his hand, "Alright, that's enough free time. Let's get back to work as we have a lot to do in very little time."

At the same time, in the experience store under Zen Entertainment, there was an A-grade video game designer working hard.

Yao Yu, A-grade video game designer and one of the main designers of Legend of the Sword. They were responsible for the story and was a well known story writer and Xianxia novelist.

"A few of the character artworks from earlier this morning aren't good enough, redo it."

"I've made a small change to the Nether Crypt, remember to carry that into the game. Changes need to be made to the corresponding dialogues and cinematics."

"Pay more attention to the combat system. It's going to affect future development otherwise."

"The level is too hard, please make some changes. It can't be too easy either, take the feelings of the players into consideration."

"Remember that this game isn't for the players, but for the judges. Our goal is to allow the judges to feel immediately that this game is a very traditional Xianxia themed game, and allow them to feel our feelings and sincerity, understood?"

"Yes, it can feel close to Legend of the Sword, but it mustn't be too similar. Otherwise the judges are going to think that we weren't innovative enough."

Yao Yu was giving orders left and right to their four assistants as they worked hard for the Xianxia themed standalone game.

In truth, an A-grade videogame designer might've been overkill for this.

An S-grade videogame designer could work on a VR game by themselves, and an A-grade designer could work on a large online PC game or take a large role in a VR game.

Making a standalone game was completely underutilizing them.

However, Yao Yu understood the reason why the higher ups of Zen Entertainment assigned the job to him. It was because of his experience from developing Legend of the Sword and his excellent story writing skills.

In other words, this was a political move. Getting a good placement in this competition would mean improving Zen Entertainment's position in the Chinese gaming industry as well as improving his name.

Therefore Yao Yu didn't dare take this lightly, giving his all to develop a standalone Xianxia game to win first place!

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Chapter 142: Chapter 141: New Customer in the Experience Store

Many companies were busy developing a Chinese themed game with the aim for a good placement.

There were many mobile games, less PC games, and no VR games.

The main reason being three months was too short of a time frame to develop a VR game. Even companies like Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Zen Entertainment with inside knowledge only had a bit over a month of extra time.

It was too difficult to develop a large VR game in this time span, one might even say impossible.

Moreover, the main reason for the games was to please the judges, and there was no reason to spend a lot of money to develop a game just to do that. If neither the judges or players liked it, it would be doubly bad.

Therefore, the larger companies decided to make a PC game whereas smaller companies planned to make mobile games.

Many communities of gamers were discussing the matter after catching wind of the news.

"Have you heard that the bunch from the Game Committee is planning a Chinese Themed Games Event? They are encouraging designers to make Chinese themed games."

"Again? The pile of hot garbage from the Resistance War Games event last time is still steaming."

"Yeah, the games from last season were utter garbage, it could even be worse than some of the drama series."

"Sigh, it's a political move after all. These games aren't meant for us, but for the judges."

"But the judges have decent taste other than being a bit pretentious."

"Yeah, the first three places do seem to be like that. But you can tell what they were going for, staying close to the theme, high quality game, unique artstyle, innovative gameplay, and good story. As long as you adhered to these points you stood a chance at winning."

"It can't be helped, they are treating these games as artworks."

"Luckily it's not some weird theme like last time."

"Chinese theme...feels a bit out there too. What can you do with that? I think there's going to be a bunch of Xianxia themed games this time."

"Geez, Xianxia games are so overdone."

"Maybe it's already decided that Zen Entertainment would get first place."

"Predetermined or not, Zen Entertainment is basically guaranteed to get first place. They have deep knowledge in Xianxia games and good story writing after all."

"But I feel like their games are lacking something."

"By the way, do you think Chen Mo is going to join? If he enters with a game like Warcraft, it could get really interesting!"

"Chen Mo? I don't think so. Chen Mo is better at Western Fantasy stuff. I Am MT, Lifeline, and Warcraft are all Western themes. Plants vs Zombies are western based too, he's never touched Chinese style games!"

"That's true, this isn't his strong point. He's probably going to fail if he forces himself to join."

"But there aren't other Chinese video game designers that can wow me. Maybe Chen Mo manages to do the theme justice?"

"I doubt it, there are different specialisations in the artistic world afterall."

"To be fair, who thought CHen Mo could make RTS? And didn't he do exactly that?"

"Fair point. If he was doing this, there's probably a demo in his experience store right? I'm heading towards the Imperial Capital anyways."

"Wow, you're really going for this."

"It can't be helped. I'm really interested in this Chinese themed game event. It ends in two weeks, so Chen Mo is probably close to done, I'll go check it out."

"Onwards, the people of your village will await your return!"

There was a girl talking to her phone in the close vicinity of the experience store.

"I'm here today with another outdoor session that you guys love. Guess where I'm at! That's right, Thunderbolt Entertainment's experience store!"

She then pointed the camera towards the signage of the experience store.

"I've wanted to come here for a long time, it would sad to not come visit the company that made Warcraft. Moreover, they are situated in the Imperial Capital. But I don't really vibe with RTS games and I've been doing a lot of work related to streaming, which was why I haven't been here.

"We'll check out what the experience store has in store for us, we might even be able to meet Warcraft's designer Chen Mo."

She walked into the experience store as she spoke.

Her name was Lin Xue, a famous standalone game streamer.

She was different to other girl streamers, she started from making videos and was highly educated.

How high?

Top performer in liberal arts, got her bachelors in Renmin University, and got her Masters from Beijing University.

Someone like her should have no problem finding a job that would pay twenty to thirty thousand a month. But because of how popular she got when she was studying, she chose to become a streamer and content creator instead.

She was doing quite well for herself too.

The one who said they wanted to visit Chen Mo's experience store for a Chinese themed game was Lin Xue.

Lin Xue was shocked to see that many people in the experience store.

The experience wasn't' big and had less than twenty computers and ten massage chairs, but they were basically all full. There were even people chatting on the sofa within the store.

But she soon realised it was to be expected as Warcraft was amazingly popular in the RTS community. It wouldn't be surprising if players who lived nearby would visit the experience store daily.

Luckily Lin Xue chose to visit on a less popular Tuesday afternoon and there were still some seats within the store.

Lin Xue got to the front desk.

Su Jinyu said as she was working on the game within the game editor, "Welcome, please swipe your ID here."

Lin Xue took a glance at Su Jinyu's screen as she swiped her ID.

It was the first time she saw someone working at the front desk of an experience store being so busy, having to deal with customers and designing games.

However, the game on the screen attracted Lin Xue's attention.

Su Jinyu was making some changes to the game according to Zheng Hongxi's story changes so Lin Xue saw a game that looked cute. From the looks of the characters, clothing, and scenes it seemed like a Wuxia themed game.

"They are working on a Chinese themed game! But it doesn't look like a Xianxia theme, but a Wuxia theme!"

Lin Xue asked, "Is that game available to play?"

"Oh, yes. It's installed on the computers in the experience store. But the game isn't complete, so the game might be a bit unbalanced," replied Su Jinyu.

Lin Xue nodded, "Alright."

Lin Xue quickly sat down at the only remaining PC.

The chat was going wild on her phone.

"Hot girl! Hot front desk girl!"

"The girl working at the front desk is so quiet! Could you ask for her number?"

"Xue, could you show us the girl from the front desk again?"

Lin Xue was speechless, "You guys!"

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Chapter 143: Chapter 142: Tried and True Chinese

As the chat kept asking to see pretty girls, Lin Xue checked out the experience store as she turned on her computer.

A majority of them were playing Warcraft, a small number were playing Plants vs Zombies or other mobile games. The two computers furthest into the experience store seemed to be occupied by two other assistants, one was dealing with numbers, the other with the story.

"Haven't seen Chen Mo, he's probably on the second floor."

Lin Xue didn't find Chen Mo after looking around the experience store.

Many people now know what Chen Mo looked like since he showed his face during his commentary.

Lin Xue didn't feel that it was a good idea to go search for Chen Mo as she didn't want to interrupt him if he was working.

There weren't many games on the computers as they were all games from Thunderbolt Entertainment. Lin Xue noticed that there was a game without an icon called Wulin Legend.

"It actually is Wuxia themed! Chen Mo never disappoints in the wow-factor department," Lin Xue was shocked.

As a streamer passionate for standalone games, Lin Xue had some know-how in the videogame industry. She knew that all Chinese themed games were almost unanimous with Xianxia games. There weren't many games that had Wuxia themes.

But many players looked forward to Wuxia games as it gave away a completely different vibe to Xianxia games.

Moreover, there were many Xianxia MMORPG games. Players looking deeper into it will realise that they have the same core gameplay as western RPGs with modified looks and story, with no changes to the gameplay.

There were some good standalone Xianxia games, but there weren't many of them and the players were getting sick of them.

Lin Xue felt that it was brave for Chen Mo to make a Wuxia themed game.

"Alright, I'll download the streaming software now. The internet should be good here, I'll swap over to streaming from the computer and we'll be able to experience Chen Mo's new Wuxia game together." said Lin Xue.

Lin Xue looked at the chat as she waited for the streaming software to download.

"Show us the cute girl at the desk!"

"Grab her number!"

"Xue, get Chen Mo to teach you how to play Warcraft!"

"I don't wanna watch Wuxia games. The existing Wuxia games are complete garbage, it's probably the same too!"

"Yeah, since we are at the experience store now, could you show us more of it? We aren't in a hurry to play games."

"Alright, shut up, let her decide what she's going to stream."

"I like Wuxia games! I wanna watch!"

"We must take a look at Chen Mo's new game!"

There were many different comments in chat.

As the internet was pretty fast, the streaming software was done downloading. After doing some testing, Lin Xue started streaming from the computer.

She then double clicked the icon to enter the game.

It started off with a cinematic.

The background looked like traditional paper made of rice, with ink slowly dripping on the paper and spreading out. The Thunderbolt Entertainment LOGO in the form of a seal appears on it.

There were many different things flashing on the screen. With each stroke of the brush, a character would show up in ink. The characters had simple animations, zooming, panning or fading, appearing on the screen one after another.

There were handsome swordsmen, violent meon, serious monks, mysterious martial artists. Classic character designs flashed by one by one and Lin Xue could barely keep up.

As the cinematics continued, the camera started to pull away to reveal a word.

It was followed by a cut, a few martial artists were fighting over secret scrolls and above them were a few evil looking characters controlling the situation.

A young handsome swordsman flew across the screen, hacking down the thieves.

In the vast mountains, an old man stood with his back to the camera, a group of masters and disciples stood respectfully behind him.

Among the plum blossoms, there was a lady playing her Guqin, standing beside her was a martial artist playing their flute.

In the vast deserts, a large eagle flew by with a warrior sitting on it, overlooking the world.

Among the chaos, a few Hero looking characters showed up.

In the end, an evil looking person opened her eyes, and two words showed up in ink in the middle of the screen.

Wulin Legend.

Lin Xue was shocked after viewing the cinematics.

It's not comparable to the cinematics from Warcraft as the budget was completely different.

This CG wil ink drawn characters wouldn't even be on the same magnitude in terms of Warcraft.

However, Lin was shocked how good the cinematics felt, perfectly reflecting the atmosphere of a Wuxia game.

She could tell that the characters were classic Wuxia themed, and the scenes were also classic scenes that would appear in Wuxia themes. And combined with the ink artstyle, the players could feel how traditional and how integrated the whole thing was.

People overseas might not be able to tell, but someone with strong Wuxia knowledge could tell how traditional this was.

The game started after the cinematics ended.

The background was a drawing in ink of a mountain. Thunderbolt Gaming's logo was at the bottom left, and the title Wulin Legend was on the top.

There were four different options in the bottom right, Enter Wulin, Re Enter the Field, Retreat into Mountains, and Forget the Past.

Lin Xue clicked on Enter Wulin and started the game.

She was surprised to not enter into the game right away, but to a character customisation screen.

They could set their name, change their looks as well as other basic attributes.

System hint: Press spacebar for random attributes.

Lin Xue was shocked to see something like this in a Chinese style game.

This was similar to some standalone western fantasy games, but those were usually spent on attributes like strength and intelligence.

After looking deeper into it, Lin Xue realised that Wulin Legen's attributes were different to other western fantasy games.

The most important ones were three talents, namely Smarts, Sentimentality, and Bravery. There were also three attributes Qi, Energy, and Resourcefulness. There were also three images of Baguas for the other attributes.

The first Bagua had eyes, ears, flexibility, strength, Neigong, Qinggong, attack, and defence.

The second Bagua had mining, hunting, fishing, foraging, medicine crafting, smithing, cooking, and tea ceremonies.

The third Bagua had medicine theory, chess, toxicology, surgery, art, books, wine, and flower arrangement.

Lin Xue was shocked to see this many attributes.

She pressed on the spacebar, and all the attributes shifted.

She noticed that the lowest value for the attributes was zero, and highest was thirty. The total value of these attributes were probably set, and the player could only change how they distribute them.

Moreover, as the attributes change, the talents change too.

"This... is so rich!" Lin Xue was shocked.

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Chapter 144: Chapter 143: Rich Game Content

Lin Xue was shocked, why were there so many attributes?

Obviously the ones on the Bagua must be attributes for the main character. Not only this include Qinggong, Strength, and Neigong which were standard for Wuxia games, it also had attributes such as books, cooking and tea ceremonies which seemed to have nothing to do with martial arts.

There were two possibilities. It was either a gimmick the developer added to intimidate others, or something the developer integrated to be a key part of the game.

Lin Xue hovered over the talents and found out what they did.

Other than the talents providing attributes, talents such as Sentimentality gave double experience for artistic skills, 1 to combat strategy, and improve the limit of all artistic skills to one hundred and twenty.

There was also 'Serpent's Heart', increasing attacks based on how low their morality was.

Lin Xue got increasingly confused the more she hit random. This design wasn't friendly towards players who have a difficulty making choices.

After struggling for some time, she finally started the game after finding something she was happy with.

The early game content was similar to other Wuxia and Xianxia games. They would walk around the city, gather items and talk to NPCs. This was similar to puzzle adventure games, exchanging A for B, then B for C. The players would get equipment or items after they finish the quest line.

Lin Xue was giving commentary as she played the game.

"This game feels pretty Chinese. The scenery, NPC, tasks, artstyle, background music all feels authentic. Although it doesn't feel as classic as Warcraft, it feels very clean and comfortable.

"There are a few complicated tasks that require some thinking in this game. But the one thing I don't quite like is the huge amount of attributes. Who knows what these do, it's kind of overwhelming."

Wulin Legend's early game wasn't newbie friendly, especially when the player roamed around Luoyang City. As the player didn't know any Wugong, they would spend most of their time walking around collecting items which may make the player feel irritated.

But Chen Mo had tried to make some amendments by improving on the art, music, and player guide in his game.

It's difficult to iron out all the flaws as Wulin Legend was really content rich. Even when including player guides, it was unlikely that players would get the hang of it in their first playthrough, which was a huge obstacle in the game's success.

However, this was also the fun of Wulin Legend, a game that was rich and had high replay value.

Luckily, Lin Xue kept playing as she was quite interested in the game.

After dwelling in Luoyang city for an hour, Lin Xue met Gu Yuexuan in the tavern, and drank some alcohol poisoned by Xuan Mingzi.

Afterwards, the game transitioned into a cute version of the game which happened to be the development screen.

"Huh? What happened?"

This was the first time Lin Xue saw a development screen like this like this.

Turns out after the main character was poisoned, Gu Yuexuan brought them to Xiaoyao Valley to get his master Wu Xiazi to treat them.

Lin Xue was utterly shocked to see something like this.

Other games, and in particular the vast majority of Xianxia games, the main character would be constantly killing monsters, leveling up and gaining experience.

These screens would only be commonly seen in interactive fictions or Japanese tamagotchi style games.

After the main character recovered, they became the third disciple of Xiaoyao valley. Wu Xiazi also started passing on swordsmanship skills and Neiggong, improving some attributes of the main character.

Lin Xue was shocked, "Huh, this development mode is quite interesting.

The development screen had a cute artstyle, relaxing music, and funny texts. She realised that this development mode fitted the idea of training in the valley perfectly.

Moreover, there was a lot of content during training. other than learning new combat skills, her surgery, arts, smithing, and cooking attributes were also increased.

These attributes were actually useful. Some quests required relevant knowledge to complete, otherwise they would fail the request and the relationship with the quest giver can worsen.

Lin Xue found the game more and more enjoyable the more she played.

The game remained in development mode while training in the valley. During this time, she could assign activities to her character, have them go out and trigger events, practice Wugong, or train her other life skills as she pleased.

Moreover, there were certain events that would happen on certain days. For example, on Chinese new year the disciples would have to visit their master, and the master would quiz the player during the moon festival, and would even get prizes when they got it right.

The master would give the main character tasks during training, such as visiting someone, participating in ceremonies, or to fight against enemies.

The character was then returned to exploring the map after accepting these tasks. The player would visit places like Shaolin Temple, Wudang Mountain and Hangzhou City and would meet other warriors through certain interactions.

Moreover, the combat system really intrigued Lin Xue.

The combat system was chess-like which wasn't anything new. But Lin Xue was shocked that Chen Mo managed to perfectly incorporate all the Wugong she previously learnt into the combat.

Neiggong were passive attacks, and leveling that up can increase the energy of the character, and some of the special effects of Neiggong can be combined with auto-attacks.

Auto attacks or the effects of Wugong were varied. Each Wugong had a few different skills, and would either be single or multi target attacks. They also had different effects, for example punches can trigger multihits, attacking twice in one attack.

This combat system was a bit complicated for Lin Xue's taste, but she took her time in learning new attacks and only had one Neiggong attack and a few other Wugong attacks.

"This game is quite interesting. It's hard to stop once you get into it!" exclaimed Lin Xue.

There was also discussion in the chat.

"Xue is addicted..."

"Yeah, she's really focused, she was still chatting before, but she isn't talking much anymore."

"But this game does seem really fun. There seems to be a lot of content. I didn't expect a Wuxia game to be this open world either!"

"yeah, does seem complicated. I'm amazed they included arts into the game!"

"I wanna try, is there a download?"

"Nope, it's not released yet. You can only play it in Chen Mo's experience store."

"Xue is so stupid, I wanna play in her place!"

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Chapter 145: Chapter 144: Theme Song

Wulin Legend's playtime depended on their players. Higher skilled players playing through the game just for the story might take thirty odd hours, but a less skilled player wanting to get either the good or evil endings would probably require over thirty hours.

If the players wanted to experience all the endings and the different branches in the quests, or even wanting to complete all the quests in Luoyang city before meeting their master, the number of hours would be a whole different story.

For someone completely new like Lin Xue who didn't have any strategy in mind would probably take a few tries before they got an ending relating to being the head of the league.

Of course she didn't know that was going to happen, she was just highly focused on the game, completely forgetting to gank Chen Mo.

-Zen Entertainment-

Yao Yu Was still preparing an advertising document for Tale of the Sword.

"Yes, include a few more exciting shots into this cinematic. And the combat system as well, put more emphasis on the cooler spells. The colors are too dark for this one, redo it or increase saturation or brightness. And this one..."

The advertising was just to make the players feel excited about the game through posters or videos. Yao Yu had done this many times and had a good idea of what to do.

At this moment, one of his assistants informed him, "There's news on Chen Mo's new game, it's a Wuxia game!"

Yao Yu was shocked, "Wuxia? That means he's joining the competition too?"

The assistant nodded, "Must be, why would he go through the effort of making a game with such a weak theme otherwise?"

"Is there a video?" asked Yao Yu.

Yao Yu was actually quite nervous upon hearing that Chen Mo was also participating.

Yao Yu wouldn't bat an eye if it was any other B-grade videogame designer. You do you. It's a Wuxia theme too, where many see it as a theme destined to fail, you'd be digging your own grave.

But Chen Mo was different, that guy seemed to have some mystical powers. He dabbles with games others wouldn't even think of doing, and succeeds at that, Yao Yu didn't dare underestimate him.

The assistant handed over the phone that had a few clips of Wulin Legend that were posted by fans.

Chen Mo didn't try and hide it either as it didn't matter if the other designers saw it. The cutoff was coming and the game was mostly complete. There was no time for the other designers to copy it even if they wanted too.

Yao Yu didn't feel the need to want to copy it as Tale of the Sword was also at its last stages, it wouldn't make sense to make big changes to it now. He just wanted to understand Chen Mo's new game by watching the video.

Yao Yu scowled as he spent nearly ten minutes watching over all the clips.

"A huge map with a development mode? What is this? It's so weird," Yao Yu was a bit shocked.

Wulin Legend was very content rich, the players might not even understand the extent of it by playing it themselves, even less so by watching a few short clips. Yao Yu watched it one more time and decided that Wulin Legend's competitiveness must come from its playstyle. Other than that, there wasn't much else he could make out.

"What do you think we should do?" asked the assistant.

Yao Yu replied after some thought, "Apply for more money for advertising, I want the whole world to know! His game is probably heavily reliant on the game mechanics. The new players will find it difficult to get into because of how much content there is. We'll play the advertising game this time, as long as the players are on our side, there's no way his game will get popular."

The assistant nodded, "Understood!""

Although the results were decided by the judges, sales and the reviews of the players are also taken into the consideration. If there was a game that the judges felt alright but it had terrible sales, it would more likely than not affect their decision.

Yao Yu's thought process was correct. Players would find it difficult to learn Wulin Legend because of all its innovations, and the game lacked advertising compared to Tale of the Sword. If they overwhelmed Wulin Legend in terms of advertising, they would be more than likely to take first place.

Yao Yu also had an idea of Chen Mo's plans. He didn't like to spend too much money on advertising, therefore Yao Yu was confident that as long as he can secure good reviews from the fans early on to drive up the sales, he'd win for sure.

Even if Wulin Legend gains popularity later? The judging would be over!

Chen Mo wasn't in the experience store today.

He was chatting with Guo Feng in Dazzling Aurora Studio.

"How is it? Did you find the singer? I'm not paying if I'm not happy with it," said Chen Mo.

Guo Feng laughed, "Don't worry, you still don't trust me after working together for so long? But the cinematics you're making this time are so simple, when are you going to make more big works like Warcraft?"

Chen Mo rolled his eyes, "You wish! Are you depending on me to keep your huge studio alive? Furthermore, there are still some cinematics for Warcraft that aren't done yet!"

"Don't worry, they are working hard on it," assured Guo Feng.

Chen Mo waved his hand, "That's fine. Since we've been working together for so long, there's no need to speak in a roundabout manner. I'm telling you that this song is very important to my new game, you have to understand that."

Guo Feng patted his own chest reassuring Chen Mo, "Of course. The recording studio, orchestra, singer are all the best of the best. Of course it might be a stretch to get a big star like you asked, but right now all the singers I'm looking at are the best in their field. Singing shouldn't be a problem."

Chen Mo nodded, "Alright. The lyrics and melody are done. If the singer is terrible, all I can do is ask some huge star."

"Sure, it's your song, you make the call! You aren't lacking money anyways, hiring a huge star shouldn't be a problem," jested Guo Feng.

Chen Mo waved his hand, "What's going on, I feel like you've been speaking sweeter and sweeter lately. Alright, that's it for now, update me whenever there's something new."

Guo Feng urged Chen Mo to stay, "They are recording right now. Just sit still for a bit and it should be sent over soon."

Guo Feng received a music file after fifteen or so minutes.

"Alright, it's done. Have a listen and see if you're happy with it. If you aren't we'll just get him to do it again," said Guo Feng as he handed headphones over to Chen Mo.

Chen Mo gave it a few listens.

Chen Mo shook his head as he took off the headphones, "It's no good."

Guo Feng was shocked, "No good? What's no good?"

"Everything, get someone else."

Guo Feng was confused, was there a need to change the singer?

Guo Feng had listened to it a few times. Although his main focus was animations and didn't have much knowledge in music, he had listened to many starting and ending themes of many animations in his many years in the industry, and could tell the difference between good and bad.

Guo Feng would've rated this song at the top. The lyrics and melody was provided by Chen Mo, there was also a professional composer involved, so none of this should be a problem.

That means Chen Mo wasn't happy with the singing.

But the singers Guo Feng reached out too were the best of the best, so their skills weren't a problem. Any better than that, they would have to resort to stars.

Was there a need for so much effort just for a theme song of a game?

"You think this guy isn't good enough of a singer?" asked Guo Feng.

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, far from my expectations."

Guo Feng wiped the seat off his forehead, "But.. If you keep going higher, we'll be looking at A ranked singers. But from the looks of it, you need the best of that too?"

"Yes, can you do that?"

Guo Feng cleared his throat, "I could, but just the managers of those singers, and we'll probably pay market rate. But you have to know that it's going to be a huge sum of money, do you really need to invest that much into the theme of a videogame?

"Of course. Alright, just help me look for one. Ideally it would be someone that has done songs of similar themes like Wuxia or Xianxia. Someone who sounds authentically Chinese, someone that sounds really elegant. I don't want someone who is popular in their niche, I want a singing juggernaut."

Guo Feng nodded, "Alright, you're paying after all. I'll see what I can do."

Recording studio, Huaxiang Recording Company, Hong Kong.

Zhou Yifeng had been dealing with some problems.

He had been doing quite well recently as the most popular male singer under Huaxiang Records.

But had been troubled by his new album.

He had done most of his songs for his album, but his main song for his album hadn't surfaced.

Zhou Yifeng was one of the better singers. He looked pretty average but was a good singer, a singer-songwriter at that, helping propel his popularity in China.

But singer-songwriters would often encounter inspiration droughts. He hadn't released anything amazing in the past two years. He could still stay afloat through his previous songs, but it wasn't a long term plan.

Because of how saturated the market was, the spotlight comes and goes. They might be replaced after a year of not releasing albums, and he might be nearing retirement if he maintained two years without one.

The manager walked up to him, "Hey Yifeng, there's someone from China who asked you to sing a song, a high price."

Zhou Yifeng scowled, "I thought I told you, I'm not doing anything before the album is released. You don't need to tell me about performances like these in the future."

The manager shook their head, "It's not a performance. A gaming company is making a theme song and already wrote the lyrics. They just want you to sing."

Zhou Yifeng was a bit angered, "I don't have time for that either. I'm still preparing for the new album, reject it."

The manager said with some hesitation, "But I've heard the song, I recommend you to make that decision after you listen to it."

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Chapter 146: Chapter 145: I'm Buying This Song!

Zhou Yifeng was shocked, "Huh, is decent?"

The manager nodded, "Yep, the lyrics and melody have been sent by them. They got a normal singer to do it but their client wasn't happy, which was why they reached out to us."

Zhou Yifeng was conflicted, he wanted to decline it, but he thought it was worth a listen after the manager praised it.

It was normal for dramas, movies and even games to get a star to sing their theme song. In Chen Mo's previous life, Asura had Albert Leung to write the lyrics, and Eason Chan to perform it, dramatically increasing the clout of the game.

But all in all, most video game companies wouldn't be able to afford stars, nor is there a need for it. Most of the time they were hired just to create a talking point.

Zhou Yifeng didn't want to take the offer upon hearing it was from a videogame company.

Video Games companies were probably not going to write their own lyrics, and it wouldn't be too good even if they got a professional to do it, the vast majority of it wouldn't get past Zhou Yifeng.

If the lyrics weren't good, it would more or less be an ad deal, using his popularity to get the game famous, not benefitting him at all.

But since the manager said the song was decent and the money was good, Zhou Yifeng decided to give three minutes of his day to listen to it before making judgements.

Zhou Yifeng grabbed the headphones.

The opening was pretty good, the melody was great too. Zhou Yifeng was pleasantly surprised.

Zhou Yifeng was even more surprised upon hearing the lyrics.

"My sword, where does it go, love and hate are hard to come by."

"My sword, pierces the sky, can't tell the difference between right and wrong."

"I'm drunk, can't open my eyes, gratitude and hatred come and go."

"I awake, it's all a dream, thoughts of life and death are gone."

These lines seemed simple, yet they were filled with Wuxia's spirit! No matter the violence or the romance, these lines perfectly conveyed those feelings.

Not only that, they even fully conveyed the feelings of warriors going on solo adventures and drunk martial artists!

The song entered its climax with a transition.

"Things come and go, it's sad we can't meet again."

"Love and hatred come and go by the wind."

"A laugh, a sigh, a life of happiness, a life of sorrow!"

"Who will live and die with me?"

"Who will live and die with me?"

Zhou Yifeng could feel his blood boiling and his hands shaking. He could barely contain himself as he wanted to scream from excitement!

Zhou Yifeng could clearly recite the climax of the song just from listening to it once. The song was too good!

Zhou Yifeng listened to the song again, this time at a higher volume!

There wasn't much difficulty in terms of singing. There weren't high notes or transposes, making it seem like anybody could do it, but at the same time, it felt like no ordinary person could perform it.

Zhou Yifeng was really excited from the song, but he could tell that the singer couldn't do the song justice at all. Although the singer was trying their best to convey the feelings of the song, they just couldn't do it.

Zhou Yifeng guessed that this must've been the reason to get another singer!

This song wasn't rugged nor soft, not masculine or feminine. If one could only use one word to describe it, it would be elegant.

Therefore, in order to convey the feelings of solo adventures, personal drunkenness, and living and dying together required singing in a carefree, elegant tone, but the tone couldn't be too casual.

Zhou Yifeng got more and more emotional as he listened, asking the manager, "Quick, let them know that I'll do it. Ask them how much the rights to the song are, I'll buy it!"

Guo Feng called Chen Mo.

"I have two good news, which one do you want to hear first?" asked Guo Feng.

Chen Mo didn't reply.

Guo Feng continued, "The first good news is that Zhou Yifeng really likes the song and agreed to perform it. The second is that Zhou Yifeng really likes the song and wants to discuss buying the rights to the song."

Chen Mo replied, "Oh, I'm not selling the rights."

Guo Feng was speechless. He thought Chen Mo would be ecstatic, but he rejected it without any thought!

Chen Mo would need to spend so much money just to get Zhou Yifeng to perform it, but it would be a two way relationship since Zhou Yifeng liked the song and wanted to buy it. It could even fetch a good price and make Chen Mo money in return.

But Chen Mo didn't even care?

Guo Feng said, "... Hold on, they are quite serious about this. They aren't just buying the song, they're adding it to their album and will give you a share of the profits."

"Is there a difference?" asked Chen MO.

"A portion of the profits will be much more than just buying the song, it's a completely different magnitude."

Chen Mo replied, "So no matter if they were just buying the song or giving me a cut, it's still about money right?"

Guo Feng nodded, "Yes, it's about money."

Chen Mo flipped the question, "Do you think I'm someone who lacks money?"

Guo Feng was speechless, "... No."

"Then why would I want to sell it?"

"What are you going to do with it if you aren't going to sell it, it's not going to reproduce!"

"I like the song, and I like having it." replied Chen Mo.

Guo Feng felt helpless, replying after some thought, "There's also one thing, Zhou Yifeng said it's going to be the main song of the album. He's pretty well known in China, so when this song becomes popular, it's going to draw attention to your game too right?"

"That's true. Alright, I'll consider selling it to him, if I'm happy with his singing."

"Alright, I've sent you his manager's phone number, you guys can do ahead and discuss. We'll get someone else if you aren't happy with it. But there really aren't many other male singers that are as good or better than him in China, hope he's good enough.

The two of them finally reached an agreement after some back and forth. Chen Mo sold the rights to the song to Zhou Yifeng and agreed to get a portion of the sales of the album as payment. Chen Mo didn't try to fight for the rates as both parties benefited from this.

Zhou Yifeng got a good song, and Chen Mo got a good promotion.

In his previous life, A Life of Fighting is but a Dream was sung by Emil Chau, and just like Unforgettable Scripture[1, they were classic Wuxia themed songs.

Chen Mo also liked Unforgettable Scripture, but it would've been a bit weird to have it as Wulin Legend's theme song as it was in Cantonese, which was why he settled with Life of Fighting is but a Dream in Mandarin.

Chen Mo had been thinking long and hard since the early stages of the game on how to get more attention into his game.

He couldn't make cinematics or animations like he did before because of the different themes as Wuxia had a strong focus on the setting rather than certain images. This was the reason why Chen Mo decided to settle on a theme song.

Only time could tell if the players would find it acceptable.

TL note: Not the official name of the song that was sung in Cantonese, but its called 难念的经 if you're interested in looking it up. Life of Fighting is but a Dream is the official English name of the song.

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Chapter 147: Chapter 146: Pre Sales Promotion

On Lin Xue's screen.

Beggar

"After failing to defeat the Cult of the Sky Dragon and taking heavy damage, you awake from a months long slumber.

"As you awake, you feel like you're living in a completely different timeline. The Dragon King defeated the masters of the plains, becoming the leader of the guild.

"You've lost all of your ability to fight, rendering you completely useless. Anyone who opposed the evil were either killed or imprisoned, it was everybody for themselves.

"You managed to escape the Dragon King, but your life fell into disarray. You were in poverty with nowhere to go, begging as you wandered, till the end of your life.

There was an image of a skinny beggar curled up at the corner of the wall, with eyes full of discontent.

"What! How? What is this game!"

Lin Xue was so angry she was about to explode.

She had played the games for three days, but whenever she lost a key battle, she was met with the end of the game.

The main character becomes a beggar.

Other games would usually tell the players to try harder, or 'everyone has to deal with victory and defeat', and would prompt the user to start again from the last save. But this game turned the game over screen into an ending, making the player feel more immersed.

Lin Xue was on the verge of breaking down. The main character was ordered to gather the Shalins, Warriors and beggars to band together before the cultists invaded. But Lin Xue died before she could even gather all of them. She didn't have a chance to see the subsequent scenes of the martial arts meeting, election, and fighting against the cults!

Lin Xue felt really bad as her three days of hard work resulted in such a pathetic ending. It was incredibly embarrassing for someone like Lin Xue who self-proclaimed as an experienced standalone game player!

At this moment, someone behind Lin Xue said, "Tsk tsk, the beggar ending huh?"

Lin Xue turned around to find Chen Mo behind her.

Who knows how long he had been there for, he even had a smug grin on his face.

Lin Xue stood up, "Ah! Aren't you Chen Mo! I've waited for you for a few days. Why haven't you shown up?"

Chen Mo was shocked, 'What do you mean? Although I've been heading about quite a bit the past few days, I've spent most of my time in the experience store. Maybe you've never noticed me because of how focused you were on the game?"

Lin Xue was shocked, 'Uhh... maybe."

Lin Xue then suddenly asked, "Tell me the strategy! This game is so difficult I'm about to rip my hair out!"

"What strategy? It's it more fun when you figure it out yourself? Keep going at it, I have high expectations of you." replied Chen Mo before leaving.

Leaving behind the angry Lin Xue.

The chat started moving again.

"My goodness, we finally caught Chen Mo!"

"He's so punchable! As punchable as always! Xue, punch me for me!"

"Keep going at it? That's it?"

"I think he intentionally made the game hard! Screw that guy!"

"Don't be mad, Xue. Keep going at it, you can do it!"

"That's just how he always is huh. He's so irritating."

Lin Xue took one last angry look at Chen Mo's silhouette before restarting the game.

The companies were working hard to finish their game as the end date edges ever so close.

It didn't take long before leaks started appearing.

Wuxia and Xianxia themes never garnered much interest, but because it was a pretty big deal this time, players were treating this as drama.

The game most looked forward must've been Zen Entertainment's Tale of the Sword. The players were really excited after seeing some leaked test footage and gameplay.

Tale of the Sword was a standalone Xianxia game. The setting of the game was related to Legend of the Sword, this way they could gain some advantage off their own IP.

There wasn't much to say in terms of art, the scenes were beautiful, the models were really high quality, essentially the best of the best in terms of quality.

Tale of the Sword featured a rich turned based combat. It included many different treasures, items, and monsters.

The game could've been made into an RTS game, but Yao Yu decided to settle on turn based combat.

RTS games were mainstream among online games because of how fast paced it was. Turn based games required places to spend time thinking about every decision, drastically slowing down the pace of the game, and the majority of players wouldn't be patient enough to wait.

But turned based combat has it advantage in standalone games. Players weren't rushed and could spend as much time as they needed to consider all the possible moves. And at the same time, it was much easier for the designer to control enemy locations, difficulty of levels, combat system, and the pace of the game.

In Chen Mo's previous world, RTS games could've been done in the early days of Sword Heroes Fate. The problem was that a large portion of the player base were girls or people who were terrible at games. The joy of gaming for this audience was exploration, collecting, and solving problems, the satisfaction of combat wasn't important to them. Therefore later standalone games like The Legend of Sword and Fairy decided on turned based combat after considering the risk and return.

This was also to satisfy the judges.

Chen Mo could've made an RTS game too, but because of how unique of a game Wulin Legend was, changing it to an RTS game would require a major overhaul of the game. Moreover, the skills and damage effects would also need to be overhauled. There wasn't a need to do that, especially when the judges might not even like it.

He could consider using a large scale real time combat when he would release a Wuxia RPG game in the future.

That's why Chen Mo and Yao Yu both chose to use turned based combat.

The main attraction for Tale of the Sword was its story as the game was developed by one of the main developers and writers to Legend of the sword.

Although these games were made to please the judges, the thoughts of the players were also part of the consideration.

Therefore, Zen Entertainment went all out with advertising. The ads for Tale of the Sword were all over video game media, adspaces of various websites, Weibo, and even all major forums.

Questions like "How should I rate Zen Entertainment's new game, Tale of the Sword" were also at the top of some QA sites, with a few answers that have been prepared beforehand receiving almost eight thousand upvotes.

There was also a lot of discussion among players.

"What's wrong with Zen Entertainment? Why do I see ads for Tale of the Sword even when I'm on the train/"

"They really are spending a lot to get first place!"

"Yao Yu is overlooking the whole process, the story must be decent!"

"I'm even getting ads in my friend group, I'm impressed."

"Isn't Chen Mo making one too? What's his new game? How come I haven't heard of it?"

"Yeah, didn't someone say that Chen Mo was also making a Chinese themed standalone game? How come I haven't seen any ads?"

"It's not like you don't know how little Chen Mo likes to spend on advertising."

"How is he going to compete with Zen Entertainment! Even if it was good, nobody is going to notice!"

"Geez, maybe Chen Mo is confident in his game. But I feel like he's going to fail this time!"

The players were hypothesising that Zen Entertainment have the first place in the bag after spending so much money. Zen Entertainment had the most experience in Xianxia theme afterall, and knowing the tastes of the judges, it would be very difficult for anyone else to contend.

But before the dust had even settled on this matter, another Weibo started huge waves.

Chen Mo posted, "Have a listen to the theme song for my new game, Wulin Legend titled A Life of Fighting is but a Dream. Of course I wouldn't tell you Zhou Yifeng sang it."

There was a link following the Weibo to listen to it.

The players were shocked, what is he playing at? Zhou Yifeng?

That's a huge star, the best of the best in singing!

The gameplay for Chen Mo's Wulin Legend had already been leaked. Many of Lin Xue's viewers have seen the game since Lin Xue had been streaming it for so long.

But how much influence did Lin Xue have? Most of the players have only heard that it was a Wuxia game, having no idea what kind of game Wulin Legend was.

Many thought that Chen Mo would treat this like other video game companies, making a game that would please the Game Committee members and not putting too much effort into it, which was why they haven't paid attention.

But when this Weibo was released, they realised how much money Chen Mo had invested into this!

The players who thought Chen Mo wouldn't spend much money on advertising ate their words immediately, if this wasn't spending big bucks, what was?

Asking Zhou Yifeng to perform was much more expensive than doing ads!

That's a lot of effort!

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Chapter 148: Chapter 147: This Song is Pretty Good, Who Wrote It?

"It seems like Chen Mo is quite rich now, his effort into games seems more and more impressive!"

"I take it back, this guy isn't one who cheaps out on promoting his game, he planned this out extensively!"

"I feel like he's back to making good games ever since he made Warcraft. Look at this game, he even got Zhou Yifeng to perform the theme song. He has a good heart!"

"Maybe he didn't buy it using money..."

"It's fine even if he did spend the money, other companies wouldn't spend it like this."

"I'll give it a listen! Zhou Yifeng is singing, the song can't be that bad right?"

Zhou Yifeng also posted a Weibo not long after Chen Mo's.

"Main song for my new album A Life of Fighting is but a Dream is now available for listening! This song is made in partnership with Mr Chen Mo from Thunderbolt Entertainment. Also, keep an eye out for his new game Wulin Legend. It's a Wuxia game that is very traditional, the game is great too!"

Everyone was shocked to see that Weibo!

Zhou Yifeng promoted the song himself too!

There were people who were saying that Chen Mo bought the song, but if that was true, why would Zhou Yifeng go through the effort of promoting Chen Mo? Moreover, the song was used as the featured song in his album, meaning that Zhou Yifeng was happy with the song too!

Many players who didn't care about this started listening to the song on the basis of that Weibo.

And they realised after one listen that the song was really good!

Soon, the discussion of the song in the comments under Weibo and music streaming websites started appearing, and popularity of the song was steadily increasing!

"This song is great! It sounds really heroic and clean. It fits the Wuxia theme really well! It would most certainly be a classic if it were to be a theme of a Wuxia TV show!"

"I feel like I'm in a Wuxia world where every action has to do with gratitude and revenge!"

"My wine, my knife!"

"This is what Wuxia should feel like!"

"Wuxia songs are all elegant and majestic, making the listener feel like they are in the battle. This song wasn't as hoarse as the other ones, but manages to convey the emotions of Wuxia through and through!"

"I just want to be in a Wuxia world fighting, I don't wanna do homework..."

"There are four doctors in a phyciatric ward, one laughs everyday, one sighs everyday, one is jolly everyday, and the last is sad everyday. The patients call them: Doctor Laugh, Doctor Sigh, Doctor Jolly, and Doctor Depressed."

The song hit the top three songs of the day in no time with the help of the fans, and showed no signs of stopping!

Everyone was wondering, who could this song be written by?

Many thought that Zhou Yifeng wrote it himself as he was a singer-songwriting who had written many memorable songs in the past.

Others thought that didn't make sense as Zhou Yifeng did songs that focused on love in the past, none of them had anything to do with Wuxia!

Moreover, the lyrics for A Life of Fighting is but a Dream required the expertise of someone with deep knowledge in Wuxia and strong literary skills. This didn't fit Zhou Yifeng.

Zhou Yifeng released another Weibo following the other post.

"There are many wondering who wrote the song. The lyrics and melody are written and composed by Mr Chen Mo. I'm sorry I didn't specify that earlier."

Huh? Chen Mo wrote this?

Chen Mo can compose too?

"Really? Chen Mo can compose? Why can't I believe that!"

"Are you stupid? All the music for Warcraft was composed by Chen Mo, the story was also managed by Chen Mo. Do you think he didn't have the music skills or the literary skills?"

"But this is Wuxia themed!"

"Yhea, and he made a Wuxia game. Would he make one if he had no knowledge in this?"

"I'm really impressed, Wuxia is also part of his resume?"

"I plan to play this game now. If this was actually written by Chen Mo, he must really understand the idea and emotions behind Wuxia, this game might be extraordinary!"

Following the popularity of this song, Zhou Yifeng's new album and Wulin Legend gained plenty of popularity too!

Zen Entertainment's advertising department was shocked. They spent so much money and effort to put out this many ads thinking that the victory was in their hands, but Chen Mo came out of nowhere with this??

It would've been fine if it was only Zhou Yifeng singing the song, but the song sounds so good and was so popular too!

My goodness!

Inside the experience store, Qian Kun was playing Wulin Legend and singing, "Things come and go, where can we meet again..."

"Please stop singing..." begged Zheng Hongxi.

"You even got the lyrics wrong!" complained Su Jinyu.

"Can someone save my ears..." pleaded Wen Lingwei.

Even Chen Mo was starting to get annoyed, "You sing the song of death. They take money when they sing, but you take lives!"

Even Lin Xue was complaining as she was playing, "Please stop, my followers are threatening to unfollow!"

Qian Kun was bothered, "Is it really that bad?"

Su Jinyu replied, "I don't understand how you could sing a song with such a simple melody so badly."

"I'm going to play the original version to cleanse everyone's ears..." said Chen Mo.

The experience store was filled with A Life of Fighting is but a Dream sung by Zhou Yifeng through the speakers.

"This song is really good. Everytime I listen to it, I feel like I'm about to grab my sword and head on the road." said Zheng Hongxi.

"Yeah, I think only someone like Zhou Yifeng can sing this song so well," added Qian Kun. "The other singers that have no skills and all personality would never be able to make it sound so elegant."

"So many people didn't believe it when the manager posted that Weibo, they thought he bought the song. But not only did he not spend money, he's even earning from it..." said Wen Lingwei.

"The manager is capable of doing everything. I'm entirely impressed," expressed Su Jinyu.

"Sit down, sit down. It's nothing much." said Chen Mo. "Alright, we've gotten plenty of publicity and attention, and the game is more or less done. You guys can take a break and we'll wait till we release the game."

A bunch of Chinese themed games went online at the end of the month.

There were many mobile games and some PC games, and most of them were standalone games. Evidently, most of them were trying to catch the heart of the Game Committee, and joined just for a chance at the prize.

Although it was a political exercise, there were many games that were actually good as the Game Committee has really specific tastes, a scammy game would ever have a chance.

Players knew that although there were many games, there were only two games that stood a chance at first place, Zen Entertainment's Tale of the Sword and Thunderbolt Entertainment's Wulin Legend.

Players and members of the Game Committee were all downloading these games. The committee members in particular paid much more attention to these games than the average player.

But in the grand scheme of things, Chinese games weren't as good as overseas games. There were also Chinese themed games, but they were never fully explored and developed.

Who knows if there will be a high quality timeless classic among these Chinese themed games?

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Chapter 149: Chapter 148: The Game Has That Many Endings?

–Game and Virtual Reality Committee–

Video games in this world weren't governed by the National Radio and Television Administration, but the Game Committee.

They might seem like they perform similar tasks, but they were actually very different. The National Radio and Television Administration focused on reviewing games, picking out violent, sexual, or otherwise riding on legal loopholes would be filtered and developers would be asked to make amendments.

But the Game Committee did much more than that.

The reviewing process in this world had a tiered system and overall much looser restrictions. Many violent games are allowed, and the changes required might only include changing the age restriction.

Moreover, the Game Committee's main purpose wasn't to screen games, but to control and regulate the gaming industry to allow the gaming and virtual reality technology to be developed better.

Normally the Game Committee would never differentiate games based on how profitable they were, and would never give a game an upper hand just because they were more profitable.

The Game Committee cared more about innovative games, and would help genres that were struggling. AT the same thing, they would also provide support and guidance for anything related to virtual reality.

The Game Committee was currently in a meeting going through the judging process of the event.

As there were a lot of games, the games went through a preselection before having the opportunity to be reviewed.

Moreover, the judges could never be able to play all the games from start to finish. The designers prepared tools to allow them to make changes to the attributes and story branches. The games with a more complicated story were even required to deliver a script.

"We can consider the other prizes later, but the first place is between Tale of the Sword and Wulin Legend, anyone else have opposing opinions?" asked the host of the meeting.

"No problem," replied the other members.

"Alright, then let's discuss which game is better deserving of first place."

As the Game Committee members were discussing, the players were also downloading the game and playing it.

Tale of the Sword and Wulin Legend were essentially neck to neck in terms of their promotion which was why they had most of the attention.

"Which one do you think is going to win?"

"I think Tale of the Sword? Zen Entertainment is really good at themes like these and have mastered both story and gameplay. If they do it seriously, it must be really good."

"But Tale of the Sword made no innovations."

"How do you innovate? There have been so many Chinese themed games, and the ones who try and innovate fail miserably. Tale of the Sword is basically the best format for these games, you're just shooting yourself in the foot if you make changes to it!"

"But this format has been overdone. The core of the game is always the same, and the only thing that changed is the story. What's the point of a game if they all play out to be the same? If I'm just here for the story, I may as well read a novel or watch TV!"

"I'll try out Wulin Legend. Chen Mo seems quite genuine. And I haven't seen a Wuxia game for a long time, I should support it!"

"Yeah, I'm supporting it just because of the theme song!"

In forums within groups, the players were discussing the design and story of both of these games.

"Tale of the Sword's story is so good! I cried going through that!"

"Yeah, the ending made me feel so sad, but the story is so good!"

"Friends who were playing Wulin Legend, how is it going?"

"Oh, I'm still running around doing quests, I feel like I'm going to play it a second time..."

"Why, is that game that fun? Is it worth playing multiple times?"

"No, it's because I don't think I can beat it in one playthrough..."

"What skills did you guys pick? What am I supposed to do? I'm kind of confused..."

"I've done most of the quests now, I can only say that it's really complicated!"

"I have a notebook beside me when I'm playing this game, jotting down notes as I went. I have more than a dozen pages in notes now..."

"Really? Is it that crazy? Even if a game has some puzzle elements, it can't be ten pages worth of notes right?"

"Then you can write in on some toilet paper..."

"You guys will know once you play it. This game makes me feel dumb."

"I heard there's already a strategy by a tester from the experience store. Yeah, a streamer named Lin Xue waas streaming the game, I heard they've gotten two of the endings already."

"What does that mean, is there a third ending?"

"Three? Hehe, Chen Mo himself said that there are nearly ten endings."

"Huh? Ten?!"

"Yeah, and the ones Lin Xue got were the good and evil endings. The main character defeats all the good masters and was chosen as the leader of the guild, defeating the cultists at the end. In the evil ending, the main character joins the cult and exterminates all the different types of martial arts before finally killing the cultist leader to become the dictator."

"Really? Evil ending? My goodness, it's my first time hearing such unorthodox endings in a Wuxia game! But I like it!

"Am I playing the same game as you guys? Why was I defeated by chickens in the first village and obtained the title 'Chicken Warrior'?"

"Geez, stop mentioning that. I saw Lin Xue get the evil ending on her stream and it's crazy. I won't spoil it any further, so if you wanna know you'll have to watch it yourself. I'll just say that there is a lot of freedom given the player, much more than everybody expects."

"My goodness, you've managed to reel me in. Alright I'm downloading it!"

Wulin Legend and Tale of the Sword were both priced at fifty RMB as Chinese themed standalone games rarely went above this price.

Moreover, the purpose of these games wasn't to make a profit, but for the judges. There was no point in having a higher priced game just to anger the fans.

Tale of the Sword received many good reviews at the start as most players were there for the story, leaving a good review after experiencing the entire story.

But Wulin Legend had mixed reviews. The majority of them were five star reviews, but there were one and two star reviews among them. The main complaint was that the game was too difficult to learn and many players couldn't figure the game out. They would die unexpectedly in the first playthrough and were really mad.

But the popularity of Tale of the Sword died down soon after as there were no innovative gameplay in the game. Although the story was great, there wasn't much to talk about a few days after beating the game.

Moreover, many players noticed that the game difficulty, level design, and story were all done with the judges in mind, and the flaws were easy to discover. The game was quite fun initially leaving behind a good impression, but that was as good as it got, and had nothing following that initial hihg.

This game angered some fans too, you're ignoring the players just to please the judges?

On the other hand, Wulin Legend got more and more popular. There were more and more posts about it on the forums. Strategy and tutorial videos were also getting increasingly popular!

Yao Yu, the designer of Tale of the Sword, was getting worried. What is wrong with Wulin Legend. How come it didn't die down after all this time, but actually increased in popularity?

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Chapter 150: Chapter 149: First Prize

It didn't take long before the players realised that Wulin Lengend's popularity was actually increasing too!

Many players played Tale of the Sword just for the story, and after they finished that, there were few players who would play it for a second time.

But Wulin Legend was different as there were so many different storylines. Players would play three or four times and would ever play through all of it. And even taking out its story, its combat was also quite entertaining.

Swords, knives, fists, concealed weapons... the Wugong in Wulin Legend were split into many different pacts. And combined with the different professional skills and talents, there were many different combinations to be had!

The players that get stuck usually get stuck in the start of the game. And the players who move past that would usually play multiple times, at least to get the good and evil endings.

There were a lot of discussions of which Wugong was the best, the flow of the story, the professional skills, strategies... There was much more discussion of this game, maybe even ten times more than Tale of the Sword!

The first month sales of the Chinese themed games have been released.

Tale of the Sword got three hundred and twenty thousand sales, a pretty good number for Chinese game standalone games.

But Wulin Legend had more than four hundred thousand sales!

This number wasn't amazing as it didn't even come close to Plants vs Zombies or Warcraft; income wise it didn't come close to I Am MT either.

But for a Chinese made standalone game, a Wuxia themed standalone game at that, this number was excellent! It had a niche market and was a game with a political motive behind it, this sales was as good as a Wuxia game had gotten!

The most important part was that players realised that Chinese themed games still had innovations to be made. Chinese games didn't need to rely on the story to sell games, they could also make sandbox games or games that are really complicated. The only limiting factor are the designers.

Soon, the articles from the media were released.

Best contender for first place? Who's in the running after Wulin Legend?

Hard to convey Wuxia themes? This game did it!

Players discuss: Unrestricted Wuxia world!

Game review: Hard to learn, rich content, unrivaled creativity!

Chen Mo who always did western fantasy games proved himself to be capable of Chinese themes too!

Of course there were also articles praising Tale of the Sword, but their arguments were much weaker, the heartfelt story was a point that was tossed around again and again, with not much being said about the gameplay.

In the end, the dust were settled by the Game Committee announcing the results of this event.

Wulin Legend got first place, with Tale of the Sword in second.

Although there wasn't any elaboration, it was the final world. It was the same as saying Wulin Legend was the best Wuxia Game with no competition.

As the results were released, an article was released on the videogame editor congratulating Wulin Legend.

"For a long time, Chinese standalone games have been restricted to 'kill monsters, gain levels, progress story', and the players were getting bored of it. And yet designers were never inclined to reach out to better game mechanics as they continued to work on artwork and story. This made Chinese standalone games, especially Xianxia games into a genre with all looks and no personality.

"However, Wulin Legend completely overhauled this mode. It's biggest positive was the amount of freedom it gave players. The players could pick and choose how they wanted to build their character using attributes and Wugong, and could even choose to play as good or evil. This overwhelming freedom had never been done by any other Chinese game.

"Although this game did have some flaws such as this high initial difficulty and bad tutorials, it didn't affect its success. It still remains as the best standalone Wuxia game bar none.

"Maybe the other designers in the country stand to learn something from Wulin Legend, and look deeper into innovating new playstyles and move away from the thought that changing the story is the same as making a new game."

This paragraph basically said that the Game Committee recognised position Wulin Legend among Chinese games, and even criticised games like Tale of the Sword who only paid attention to story and graphics, completely ignoring gameplay.

In the end, Chen Mo managed to get first place in this even, improving reputation within the videogame industry!

-Inside the experience store-

Su Jinyu was happily surprised, "Manager, look! Wulin Legend is on the promotional spot on the first page of the official app store!"

Chen Mo took a look, and Wulin Legend was indeed on the best possible promotional spot for a week.

The effects of the promotional spot on the number of sales were secondary, the most important part was getting his name out.

Furthermore, someone from the Game Committee and delivered a certificate to Chen Mo yesterday, with 'Traditional Cultural Themed Games Event First Place' written on it, along with a trophy, all of which were professionally given out by the officials.

As it was quite a prestigious trophy, Chen Mo let Su Jinyu clear out a spot on the bookshelves within the experience store for it.

"There were so many people who doubted you at the start of this, saying that it was too risky. But in reality, no matter the sales or professional reviews, Wulin Legend is considered to be extremely successful!" exclaimed Su Jinyu.

"I was actually quite worried at the start. I feared the players wouldn't accept something like this, but it looks like I worried for nothing," added Zheng Hongxi.

Chen Mo smiled, but didn't say anything.

He was really confident in Wulin Legend and saw this coming from the start.

As a game that had their main selling point as the story, the story of Tale of the Sword didn't even come close to the level of Chinese Paladin 1, it could only be considered as good.

How could a game with all looks with no personality compete with a classic like Wulin Legend where players would play for more than six years?

In his previous life, Chinese games have encountered many obstacles, there were concerns with piracy, concerns with how much consumers were willing to spend, and concerns with developers and the market.

But no matter what the reason was, the result was that Chinese developers strayed farther and farther away from standalone games onto pay to win games. Even when they have the funds and skills, video game companies weren't willing to make standalone games, which was quite sad.

Chen Mo chos Wulin Legend hoped to allow players of this world to experience a revolutionary Wuxia game, and give the Chinese standalone games a little inspiration.

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