Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 181 - Award Ceremony Underway - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 181 - Award Ceremony Underway Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 181: Award Ceremony Underway

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

They were shocked to see Chen Mo going off script!

Those two words completely changed the meaning of the title!

"This was a pitfall that many designers fall into. I Am MT's gameplay was really fragmentation, but what about Onmyoji? Without a doubt, it's a very replayable game.

"Even though it's a replayable game, and even though it doesn't fit what mobile games are used to, it was really successful, why? To put it simply, if your game was the same quality as Onmyoji, you could make it a replayable game too, and you could even make more revenue...

"... And the third point, although it's easy to pivot when the cost is low, but once it's faced against high quality games, your game will be out-competed, which is why other mobile card games were dumpstered...

"The fourth point, although IP is important, you don't have to throw everything down just to get it. The highest point of mobile card games are games that are their own IP. Buying IPs are just opportunities, it's just a skin for your game, it still depends on the game as to how well you can execute it.

Chen Mo went through the points at his own pace as there were only a few points that were noteworthy among mobile card games. He could fill out an entire talk just by using knowledge from the top of his head.

The audience were both surprised and dumbfounded as they listened.

"He completely changed Qiu Bin's powerpoints for the last three points. He even completely overhauled the conclusion page?"

"Yeah, and it's the complete opposite too."

"Which one's right?"

"I think it makes sense.'

"Yeah, I need to digest this a bit."

"But according to Onmyoji, Chen Mo is right."

"Onmyoji did overhaul the idea of mobile card games, but I didn't really pick up on how he did it?"

"Did he mean that once the quality is good enough, you could do as you wish?"

"That's not possible right?"

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"So should I focus on replayability or fragmentise gameplay? Should I buy an IP? I'm so confused!"

-Two hours passed in a blink of an eye.-

Chen Mo reached the last page of the powerpoint, "Mobile card games have a limited lifespan. It might've grown a lot in this year, and many mobile card games made a lot of money, but in the long term, players will get bored of it, and the genre will eventually fall out of favour.

"It's hard to say how long the downfall will last, but I'll leave you guys with this: Think about how the game plays, make sure it's high quality. Mobile card games are only here temporarily and will not be able to sustain us indefinitely.

"Lastly, I hope you guys have learnt something from this, and I hope that you guys can make excellent games in the future. This concludes my talk, thank you."

Chen Mo bowed and left the stage with roaring applause from the audience.

"That's excellent! There's no way Qiu Bin could give a talk of this quality!"

"Yeah, it's Chen Mo after all. His knowledge in mobile card games is really deep! His views are completely different from ours."

"Yeah, but there's still parts I don't understand."

"Take your time and digest it. It's a blessing that he was willing to tell us so much."

"I thought Chen Mo was crazy, but he seems quite humble today. It's nice that he was willing to share so much too!"

Many video game designers came forward to greet Chen Mo and exchange their contacts. Chen Mo didn't deny them as many of them genuinely wanted to become friends.

Chen Mo knew exactly what he was saying. There are only so many things with mobile card games, but knowing is one thing, executing is another.

Just like Onmyoji, so what if they knew that the game was profitable, how many developers were actually willing to match their game to that quality?

The various settings of the game tie in directly with the finished game. Even if Chen Mo revealed his settings and decisions, most designers wouldn't be able to recreate a successful mobile card game.

There were even some designers that uploaded Chen Mo's speech online.

Qiu Bin died a little bit inside, I wasn't at the ceremony, why is my name showing up!

Why did Qiu Jiang egg him on? Why did you drag Chen Mo on stage?

And Chen Mo too, couldn't you have declined? Why did you actually deliver the talk?

And even then, why did you use my powerpoint?

And you even changed it? Isn't that just saying that all my thoughts were wrong?

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Qiu Bin felt helpless as he got tied into it even though he wasn't even there.

Damn you Chen Mo!

The event continued on the second day.

The talks were still the focus during the day. Chen Mo would listen to anything he came across as the contents were mostly similar, just on different topics.

The main event finally started during the night.

The talks during the day were just supporting events for the main award ceremony. Many designers worked hard for an entire year just for recognition from this event as it would help a lot for their future development.

A few people whom Chen Mo met greeted him as they entered the venue.

"Chen Mo? You're here!"

"I hope you get the mobile game of the year, I'll even congratulate you ahead of time."

"Your talk was great yesterday, when are you going to talk about RTS games??"

"Chen Mo, can you tell me if there's any strategy for drawing SSRs in Onmyoji?"

Chen Mo answered every single question.

"Well, I'm just here to learn."

"It's hard to talk about RTS games, maybe next time."

"There's no secret, the players don't buy it, but you don't believe it as a videogame designer either? It's all random."

Soon, the award ceremony started.

A member of staff came up to Chen Mo and whispered to him, "Mr Chen Mo, in case you get an award, be sure to think of what to say."

"I have an award?"

"No, I'm saying if you do get it. I don't know who's receiving the award either."

Chen Mo laughed, "Alright, you don't need to tell me twice."

Chen Mo claimed that he was just here to learn, but he actually really wanted to get the reward. Chen Mo was in a different world, and also had a different goal. In the previous world, he'd be happy just to have clothes on his back and a roof over his head, but Chen Mo wanted to make more better games in this world.

Chen Mo had already made plenty of money and didn't need to worry about clothes on his back or a roof over his head, but Chen Mo wanted to make more better games, and receiving an award from the officials would do wonders in helping him achieve that goal.

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Chapter 182: Chapter 181: Becoming an Honorary Member

Qiu Hengyang arrived soon after Chen Mo and sat next to him.

The seats were predetermined by the officials. Other than the front row which was reserved for leaders, the other seats were determined more or less by grade, with higher grade in the front. The relationship between designers are also taken into account when assigning seats.

As Chen Mo and Qiu Hengyang were both A-grade designers and knew each other well, they were sat in the same row.

Qiu Hengyang introduced the other attendees to Chen Mo.

"The ones in front are all leaders in the Game Committee, you'll have to deal with them sooner or later. You should get to know them early as your game will have to go through them.

"That Mr Zhang is responsible for the official appstore.

"Mr Liu over there is responsible for the Illusion Game Editor.

Chen Mo struggled to remember each of them.

Qiu Hengyang went on to introduce the video game designers behind them.

"Those are the three S-grade videogame designers from Emperor Dynasty Entertainment. You've met Qiu Jiang, and the other two are Yan Zhang and Qin Xiao. Three of them are working on their own VR games, and others on that side are Zen Entertainment...

"That's Ran He, the designer behind Heavy Assault, you've seen him yesterday...

Chen Mo tried to remember their names as Qiu Hengyang introduced them. He didn't really care, but Chen Mo knows that it'd be beneficial to know them. It'd be awkward if they cross paths in the future but he didn't know their names.

As there weren't many S-grade videogame designers, Qiu Hengyang introduced a few more prominent A-grade video game designers. By the time he was done, it was almost time to start.

Chen Mo came to a realisation, "There are so many incredible people here. I've been shut-in working on my games, but I just realised now many talented people there are after attending this award ceremony."

Qiu Hengyang nodded, "Yeah, the best videogame designers in China are all gathered here, of course there would be many talented people here."

As the host stepped onto the stage, the chatter died down, followed by roaring applause.

The leaders have also all arrived. The leaders were heads of different departments within the Game Committee.

Chen Mo also noticed Qiao Hua who contacted him before. He was a man in his forties, skinny, elegant, and seemed quite well maintained, a big contrast from the other middle aged men with huge pot-bellies.

Zhang Zhongxiang, Chairman of the Game Committee, delivered a speech.

The speech lasted for ten minutes and was quite similar to the speeches of other leaders. They focused on last year's result, pointing out some places that needed work, and their plans for the future.

Soon, the speeches ended, and the award ceremony finally started.

Chen Mo could tell that this award ceremony wasn't as serious as the likes of science award ceremonies as the atmosphere felt quite lax.

The ceremony started by announcing the honorary Game Committee members of this year.

"I'm proud to announce this year's honorary Game Committee members: Designer of Protoss Wings, Li Feng, designer of Heavenly Three Kingdoms Zhang Xiaokong, designer of Wulin Legend and Onmyoji Chen Mo, designer of Death Walk Zhu Fanglin, designer of Sword of Dreams... Please make your way onto the stage!"

There were members of staff locating the respective designers to guide them onto the stage.

The Game Committee inducts ten honorary members every year. These members are usually quite young, and must have made a high quality game.

Obviously the designers who received the awards were quite shocked, some even struggled to walk, other than Chen Mo of course.

The other designers watched on with envy.

"Honorary member. That's like making yourself known in front of all the Game Committee heads and being inducted to be part of the department."

"How long has Li Feng been waiting for this? He's been in industry for almost eight years now, and has had plenty of decent games. He finally made with with Protoss Wings this year huh."

"Yeah, it's because of how many considerations the officials take into account. It's not just based on how profitable the game is, it must have a certain amount of impact and look professional. Death Walk probably got included because it contained traditional elements.

"But this Chen Mo guys is a freak! He just became a B-grade videogame designer this year, he's now an A-grade, and an honorary member no less!"

"You're comparing yourself to Chen Mo? He's not human!"

"Yeah. He probably made a huge impression with the Game Committee with Warcraft and Wulin Legend. Onmyoji's monthly revenue was probably the last nail in the coffin."

"It's crazy that he could do western fantasy and Wuxia. I'm so jealous."

Chen Mo walked onto the stage with the fest of the designers to receive a certificate from one of the leaders.

As they weren't expected to deliver a speech, they walked down the stage after receiving their award and grabbing a photo.

Qiu Hengyang asked, "How did it feel to be on stage?"

"Not much."

Qiu Hengyang laughed, "Don't worry, it's just the beginning. The main course is up next."

The awards of various categories followed the induction of honorary members.

The A and S-grade videogame designers were nervously looking at the stage. This award meant a lot to them as it was an acknowledgement of their year's work from the officials.

Soon, the first award: Best Sound Effects.

The leader on stage cleared their throat, "I'm proud to announce, this year's winner of best sound effects is—Dream Journey by Zhou Haibin!"

A loud round of applause followed!

Zhou Haibin stood up filled with shock and disbelief.

Qiu Hengyang was also clapping as he whispered to Chen Mo, "This is an indie game. Zhou Haibin has really high requirements on music, so this wasn't really surprising. However, being able to make a game of this quality as an independent developer is quite amazing."

Chen Mo was clapping too, a designer that treats games like a work of art did deserve respect.

Zhou Haibin got up on stage to accept the award before delivering his speech.

"Thank you, thank you. I didn't expect to receive this award because it was an indie game with a niche target audience. The gameplay wasn't anything new either, and the highlight of the game was the music and sound effects. This award means a lot to be as it's a recognition for Dreams Journey, and a recognition for me. Thanks to everyone at the Game Committee and my loyal fans. Thank you!"

Another wave of applause followed.

Although they were competitors in the same industry, an indie developer like Zhou Haibin was most definitely out of the ordinary, most were happy for him to receive the award.

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Chapter 183: Chapter 182: Unworthy Award

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

The next award was for best art. This time it wasn't an indie game, it was received by Ascension, a VR game by Zen Entertainment.

The designer was also very emotional, thanking the leaders, their company, and the players as per usual.

The rewards were being handed out one by one, best visuals, best debut work, best level design, best models...

These awards focused on different points. For example, art focused on art, and visuals focused on graphics from an artistic point of view. One must have an excellent art style to be able to receive the ward.

Most of the awards at the beginning were taken by PC or VR games. There were some indie games too, but mobile games have yet to be represented.

Although a game like Onmyoji was one of the best in the mobile industry, it still couldn't go toe to toe to VR or PC games.

Soon, they reached awards by genre, Best FPS game, Best Fighting Game, Best Sports Game...

Finally, they reached the Best Strategy Game.

The leader on the stage handing out the awards had changed a couple times, this time it was Qiao Hua's turn handing out awards.

Many had an idea who could win this category as there was only one person who made an RTS in the country this year, and there was only one person who made a really popular RTS game!

Qiao Hua said sternly, "I'm happy to announce, the winner of this year's Best Strategy Game Award is—the designer of Warcraft, Chen Mo!

A huge wave of applause followed!

Many knew who was going to win this award this year as Warcraft was really eye catching in the RTS industry. It managed to overcome an overseas game like Legion Conquest too. Moreover, it was doing really well no matter in or outside of China, so this award was well deserved.

Chen Mo went up the stage to receive the award.

Qiao Hua passed the award to Chen Mo, smiling, "Congratulations."

Chen Mo nodded in thanks, then grabbed the microphone to start his speech.

"Everybody knows that Warcraft is an excellent game. Therefore I fully acknowledge the acknowledgement the officials give this game. Thank you."

There was a moment of silence before another huge wave of applause.

"Hahaha, this Chen Mo guy loves messing around! He's doing it when he received an award too!"

"My goodness, does his family know he's doing this?"

"Warcraft's results are to be proud of."

"But that's crazy what he did! It's an award ceremony after all, and the leaders are all watching!"

There were varying reactions from the leaders.

"This Chen Mo is quite cocky," Mr Zhang from the official appstore department scowled.

"He's still young, it's a good thing. Moreover, the video game industry is an industry that needs personalities like this," Chairman Zhang Zhongxiang waved his hand, "He can be even more bold if he makes better games."

Soon, the awards for various genres were done. Up next were the more important games, Best VR GAme, Best PC Game, and Best Mobile Game.

Best VR Game was awarded to Qiu Jiang's Moon Lord's Prophecy. The game was released at the end of the year, and seemed like it had a chance at overtaking Legend of the Sword to receive Game of the Year.

Best PC Game was awarded to "Songs of Demeter", Zen Entertainment's MMORPG, now commonly viewed as Zen Entertainment's hit product after Tale of the Sword.

Next was the Best Mobile Game Award.

Most didn't care about this award in previous years as mobile games focused on casual games. Even if there might be one or two decent games, they'd hover around thirty to forty million RMB in monthly revenue.

This year wasn't like the last as Onmyoji managed to get over three hundred million in monthly revenue, surpassing many PC games by a longshot.

"Best Mobile Game, probably Onmyoji."

"But Onmyoji has a japanese theme. Are the leaders going to like it? Most games that receive the award are Chinese themed."

"It's difficult to say. Onmyoji's results are right there in plain sight, and the monthly revenue is sky high."

"The leaders are just basing it on profitability, they take artistic value and uniqueness into account too, it's hard to tell."

Everyone was waiting for the winner to be announced.

"I'm happy to announce, this year's winner for Best Mobile Game Is—

"The designer of Onmyoji, Chen Mo!"

Chen Mo was a bit surprised, but he still got up and walked onto the stage.

There was a lot of chatter under the stage.

"It really was Onmyoji!"

"That means the leaders don't mind its theme?"

"You think they really care that much about it? They can accept western themes, so why not japanese themes? Moreover, if the players like it doesn't that mean it's a good game?"

"That's true."

Chen Mo accepted his trophy and grabbed the microphone.

"To be honest, I'm surprised to receive this award. Strictly speaking, I don't think Onmyoji is a perfect game.

'I think Mr Zhang Yuanchao's Home and Mr Lin Yuan's Evening Valley Rain were all incredible Chinese themed games. Their graphics were much better than Onmyoji. I think I'm unworthy of this award.

"I will continue working hard to be able to make games that are artistically rich and able to represent China so I can live up to this award. Thank you!"

Applause followed the end of his speech. MAny thought that CHen Mo would deliver a speech like his last one, but Chen Mo was really down to earth in accepting Onmyoji's flaws. This made them feel like Chen Mo wasn't someone with no respect, netting him a lot of applause.

Next, the most prestigious Game of The Year award belonged to Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's VR game, Wolf Soul. This was a FPS game developed by Qin Xiao that was placed in the modern world. The story and design of the game were top notch, and the game was worthy of the title.

With that, the awards have all been handed out, and the annual Video Game Awards Ceremony finally came to an end.

However, most attention wasn't on Qin Xiao who got Game of the Year, or Qiu Jiang who got Best VR Game, but Chen Mo.

As someone who entered the industry for two years, it was incredible for him to be able to receive two awards from the ceremony.

Many articles were released following the ceremony.

Annual Videogame Awards Ceremony Comes to an end, Chen Mo— only person to receive two awards!

Best Strategy Game: Warcraft

Best Mobile Game: Onmyoji

Chen Mo: Undeserving of Award

Chen Mo: Cocky or Humble?

Among all the hot articles, many were waiting. What would Chen Mo do in the coming year following the success of Warcraft and Onmyoji?

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Chapter 184: An RPG Map

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

It was the sixth day of the Chinese calendar, and Chen Mo was back in the experience store in Beijing.

The Imperial Capital was welcoming huge waves of people as they were coming back from their hometown to resume work.

The hustle and bustle before the new year had come to an end. Many people on the streets seemed discombobulated as their bodies were still in holiday mode.

Chen Mo opened the experience store door and went inside.

Everything was as usual since a week ago when he left. Chen Mo moved the computer chairs to where they belonged before wiping down everything with a cloth, arranging the phones and tablets to where they should be.

There were usually professionals cleaning the experience store, but dust had gathered as the experience store was closed for the past few days.

Chen Mo was taking the cleaning quite seriously. This was his first experience store afterall, it had been with him since the start, and it wasn't surprising that he developed an attachment.

"Manager? You're back?"

Chen Mo turned around to find Zou Zhuo at the door with a shocked look on his face.

"Yep, just got back. Happy Chinese New Year. You want a drink?" Chen Mo tossed a can of coke to Zou Zhuo.

Zou Zhuo caught the can, "Thanks manager, you too. Happy Chinese New Year."

Zou Zhuo was a local, he was going on a walk after having his meal and just happened to walk in on Chen Mo opening the experience store.

Zou Zhuo was quite excited as he wanted to play a few matches of Warcraft against Chen Mo to learn from it, but it never happened as he was usually so busy. Luckily, the experience store was quite empty as it was just after Chinese New Year.

Zou Zhuo turned on a computer, "Manager, you want to play a few rounds and give me some pointers?"

Chen Mo laughed, "Sure, I've got nothing to do anyways."

They started playing a few private matches.

An hour later, Zou Zhuo called GG three times.

The fatty scratched his head in confusion, "Alright, I'm done. The gap is still too big, there's no game to be had."

Zou Zhuo's Undead was destroyed by Chen Mo's Night Elves, Undead, and Orcs during that hour.

Chen MO said, "It's alright, you've improved quite a bit."

"The gap is still too big, I'll have to watch these replays when I get back," said Zou Zhuo.

"I think your Frost Armor Crypt Fiend is quite alright, but you messed up some on the details. I'd recommend you play some other races so understand your opponents better. You might even catch your opponents trying new things, you'll learn a lot that way."

Chen Mo gave Zou Zhuo more tips on combat and some details as Zou Zhuo nodded along as he felt that he had a lot to gain from this.

"What are we going to play next?"

Chen Mo looked at the games on the computers in the experience store.

They were already kind of tired with Warcraft which had the most depth. Other games like Plants vs Zombies, Wulin Legend, and Onmyoji no longer appealed to CHen MO.

"How about we play some RPG maps in Warcraft? There's a map that has been quite popular recently. I've tried it out and it was quite fun," suggested Zou Zhuo.

Chen Mo nodded, "Sure."

Zou Zhuo found the map and created a lobby.

Soon after Chen Mo entered the lobby, it was filled with other randoms.

It was an RPG map called Holy Land. The story was based on a novel by the same name. The players could choose to play as Holy Knight, Witch, Rouge, and Archer. They would explore the map before finally defeating the final boss to save the world.

"Manager, since you're better mechanically, you should pick the witch. I'll pick the holy knight and heal you," said Zou Zhuo.

Chen Mo picked the witch and started exploring the map with the other two players.

All in all, the map was excellent. It was one of the most popular maps on the Warcraft as it had a lot of players, and many guides following its popularity.

The level design was alright, the combat was rich, and the balancing was well done. Most importantly, the game was placed in a western fantasy world which allowed it to fit in well with the resources of Warcraft. The complete product could almost pass as a complete game.

There were human villages, elven cities on isolated islands, and the spooky land of the dead. The multitudes of adventures allowed the players to feel incredibly immersed.

Chen Mo couldn't help but praise it, "This game is great, the author must have good knowledge with western fantasy."

Zou Zhuo nodded, "Yeah, but most importantly he used the story from Holy Land so it's not as shocking as the other western fantasy games in China. But unfortunately the author doesn't have the rights to the work, so we can only treat it as a fan project and they can't actually profit from it."

"Has Holy Land not been turned into a game outside of China? Is there no Chinese version?" asked Chen Mo.

"There is, but it's a small VR game. I think the company had some funding issues when they bought the rights. They were insistent on making a VR game, but they couldn't make a large world to explore. So the game is doing alright overseas, but not so well in China.

"Moreover, the game is different from this RPG map. I think most MMORPG games aren't all that satisfying to play, just like Warcraft. Killing monsters of the same level takes a lot of effort, sure it's balanced and realistic, but it's not really satisfying.

"I think that's one of the reasons why this map is so popular. It's really satisfying to be able to kill so many monsters in one slash."

Chen Mo nodded.

Many designers in this world were quite stubborn with VR games, thinking that they may as well make large VR games if they were going to make VR games anyways. When designers of this world think of large games, they default to VR games.

But there was a lot of risk with making VR games. It would cost ten times more to develop the same world in a PC game in VR, and with the same money, it would mean a VR world a tenth of the size.

Therefore most video game developers choose to make a PC game before migrating it to VR after it's proven to be successful.

Chen Mo and Zou Zhuo both played well, and combined with Zou Zhuo's map knowledge, they finally beat it after an hour.

Chen Mo said to Zou Zhuo, "You go ahead, I'll do some research for my next game."

This caught Zou Zhuo's attention, "Huh? New game? Have you figured out what game you're going to make?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, I'm almost there."

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Chapter 185: A Hack and Slash Game

"Wow, you're working too hard, manager, you just got back from your break! Anyways, could you tell me what kind of game you're going to make?" asked Zou Zhuo.

Chen Mo smiled, "Hold your horses, I'll need to do some research and see if feasible."

Zou Zhuo nodded, "Alright! Manager's new game has got to be good!"

Chen Mo did some quick research for standalone RPG games on both PC and VR.

Basically, no matter in or out of China, MMORPG was the dominating genre. There were many points for MMORPGs, and the best point was that the interaction between players could extend the lifespan of the game, which in turns extends the profitable window of the game.

There were still traditional RPG games, but it was gathering far less attention than it did, and naturally there were fewer high quality games.

This was one of the greatest pitfalls that this world had fallen into as placing too much emphasis on MMORPGs bought a series of chain reactions.

Most MMORPGs were in first person view and had a focus on the artstyle.

This was because first person perspective was widely accepted to allow players to immerse more into the game. And combined with high quality arts allow players to spend more time in the world.

However, this introduced a problem, the information that the players get becomes incredibly limited as their field of view is smaller, making it harder to deal with large groups of enemies.

And in most MMORPGs, players fight in groups. There were already many players, and if many monsters are introduced, the screen will be incredibly cluttered as the players get overwhelmed with information.

This was much better on VR, but because most VR games are imported from a PC version, it would still be more or less influenced by their PC counterpart.

And combined with various other reasons, this led to a lack of hack and slash games in this world.

This was one of the reasons RPG maps in Warcraft were so popular. Players still liked the feeling of being powerful, killing many enemies in one hit, but they didn't understand what they wanted. Therefore, their voices would never be heard by the developers.

Of course, they might not execute it even if they noticed. Although hack and slash might seem easy to execute, there were a lot of technicalities to it. If the design wasn't done well, the players would quickly leave the game.

And coincidentally, Chen Mo has a pretty good hack and slash game on his hands that he could use as a transitional work to pivot into an RPG, filling out gaps in this world in the process.

At the front desk, Chen Mo turned on his laptop and started writing a concept design document for Diablo.

It was harder for Chen Mo to develop Diablo than Warcraft. The game must be comparable in quality to Diablo 3, therefore the resources required was much more than Warcraft.

Most of the maps in Warcraft can be done in the map editor, but the same couldn't be said with Diablo as maps in Diablo are dynamically generated with very high quality. This was a major challenge for Chen Mo.

Diablo was a decent traditional game as Chen Mo had never made an RPG in the past and it would be risky to rush into MMORPGs.

Moreover, even in the previous world, Diablo's theme and playstyle were all unique. There were many Diablo-like games, yet not a single one could surpass the original.

It was still one of the most classic hack and slash games.

Lastly, it was time to choose which generation to recreate.

Diablo 1 was too old and had a simple playstyle.

Diablo 2 was a timeless classic and pioneered Diablo-like games. Moreover, the atmosphere and playstyle fit Diablo the best.

However, Diablo 2 was still quite old. Although many concepts in that game were timeless, the combat system, user interface, and artstyle didn't age too well.

Diablo 3 was also really successful, but Diablo fans felt that it never reached Diablo 2's level. Although the graphics were quite nice, it was lacking in what players sought in a Diablo game.

Chen Mo had no problems making Diablo 2 or Diablo 3 with his current abilities. The quality of the game he would make could match Diablo 3, so the only considerations were the atmosphere and the playstyle of the game.

Chen Mo decided to use Diablo 3 as its foundation, using its world design, story, and artstyle, while making some improvements to the playstyle and artstyle to make it feel more like Diablo 2.

One of the reasons the older fans dislike Diablo 3 was because of its art style and gameplay.

Diablo 2 had dark and dank jail cells, weird monsters, blood trails, and limbs to create a scary atmosphere. The player's vision would also be limited in forcing the players to play more vigilantly. Combined with music and audio effects, players were always kept on their toes.

But Diablo 3 gave up some of that artstyle, perhaps as a process of making it look better, losing the sad, mysterious, and scary atmosphere.

At the same time Diablo 3 was much easier, most players could easily beat the levels. This resulted in it being less satisfying to defeat bosses.

Chen Mo wanted to make a game that was as Diablo as possible, because being able to recreate that atmosphere would make all that hacking and slashing feel more meaningful, which in turn extends the lifespan of the game.

Of course, there were some obstacles in the way of making the game.

The biggest obstacle would be getting it through the review process.

In the previous world, Diablo would have struggled to get past the reviewing process, and Diablo 3 took a long time before being passed.

However, the parallel world was more tolerant with gore and violent themes as long as they had age restrictions. Moreover, Chen Mo was part of the committee which would surely help with the reviewing of the game.

It probably would be easier if they submitted the concept of the game to the committee ahead of time for the final review of the game.

Next was an overview of a design overmap, planning various aspects of the game.

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Chapter 186: Diablo's Settings

Diablo's design could be split into three main categories.

Story and quest lines: Building the foundations for the story as well as laying out every single quest line, allowing players to experience the story of the game seamlessly.

Map and level design: Create the scenes according to the story. Each chapter was placed in a different setting with different models and textures.

Moreover, one of Diablo's biggest pros were its dynamically generated maps. Every scene the player experiences are randomly generated. Elements such as dungeon entrances and altars are randomly generated every time, which makes exploration one of the important pleasures of the Diablo series.

Combat system and monsters: This focused on the abilities the players have in combat as well as the characteristics each monster had, making the combat system feel more rich.

After these three points are done, everything else could be polished slowly over time.

Other than that, Chen Mo also wanted to make some changes to Diablo 3 in terms of art style and play style.

Chen Mo put an emphasis on cult, dark, scary, ominous, and bloody art style as he wanted the players to feel depressed and anxious when they play the game.

He also wanted to give the players a similar fear from the gameplay.

First, cut down on player attributes and increase boss damage. This will decrease the rates at which players beat levels, as they feel more in danger against large groups of enemies and bosses.

The worst part of Diablo 3 was the growth of the player at the later stages of the game. It gets to a point when it didn't matter if the player was dodging attacks from the boss as they didn't do much damage anymore.

The real trouble comes from elite mobs, but they weren't beaten by out maneuvering or out skilling them, but it was based on equipment (resistance), making the game less tense that it should.

Therefore, Chen Mo strongly considered nerfing the growth of the attributes to allow the players to feel tense from the game.

Second, build on Diablo 2's field of view design. The player's field of view could be smaller, making it possible for the players to be under attack by enemies out of sight. This was especially important in dark caves or dungeons.

Third, designs could be borrowed from Diablo 2.

Take the character screen for example. In Diablo 2, the screen was placed in a dark town, the characters are blanketed in darkness and will only reveal themselves after the player had made their picks.

Diablo 3 on the other hand had character selection under moonlight, dramatically impacting on the atmosphere of the game.

Chen Mo wanted to make changes to all these functions and scenes that didn't fit Diablo 2.

Fourth, the flow of narrative and player emotions should match Diablo 2.

Diablo 2 was a master at managing and manipulating player emotions. In the first chapter for example, the player would go through safety, danger, nervous, anxiousness, restricted, release, and relax in a cycle.

The first chapter went something like this:

Town (safe), Den of Devil (Danger), Kill all enemies, field of view increased (safe)

Cold Plains (safe), Blood Ravens (Nervous), Sisters' Burial Grounds (Extreme Danger)

Stony Field (Safe), Underground Passageway (Danger), Dark Wood (Nervous), Jail (Anxious).

Inner Cloister (Temporary Breathing Room), Catacombs (Extreme restraint), Kill Andariel (Release, relax).

The players' emotions rise and fall as they progress through the game as they are allowed to relax and times but are incredibly tense at others as they become increasingly immersed in the game.

However, Diablo 3 didn't address this point so well. Evidently they didn't care too much about the emotions of the players during level design.

Chen Mo planned to make slight changes to the progress of the scenes in Diablo 3 to remedy this, allowing scenes to better control the players' emotions.

Moreover, Chen Mo planned to balance the game in the style of Blizzard, nerfing builds that players have a tendency towards. This allows the game to feel ordered among all the chaos, instead of making changes directly to the foundations of the game to meet his expectations.

After settling on a general design concept of Diablo, Chen Mo visited the Game Committee to run this through Qiao Hua to ensure the game wouldn't have too much trouble during the review process before work resumed.

It was the eight day of the Chinese calendar, and the new employees officially started work.

Their new office was more or less in a finished condition. Computers, drawing tablets and other office supplies had arrived, and things like coffee machines, fridges, microwaves, and snacks were also provided.

Su Jinyu arrived back at work a day before the others to work on the new arrivals.

Chen Mo returned to the experience store at 11am.

"Manager, the new employees are here, would you like to welcome them?" said Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo nodded, "Alright."

The new office was in a shop lot near the experience store. It was originally a cafe, but after a few light renovations it suited to be an office.

Everybody stood up upon seeing Chen Mo.

"Let's meet in the meeting room, I'll give a quick overview of what I expect," said Chen Mo.

A meeting area was split out from the main office in order to form a meeting area for twenty people. After grabbing their seats, Chen Mo sat in the middle with his assistants by his side.

Chen Mo was quite happy with these new hires.

Most of them had plenty of working experience. As Chen Mo had the final say, the employees were more than capable.

Chen Mo looked around and said in a serious tone, "I'm pretty straightforward so I'll skip the customs. I'll skip the talk about pay as it has already been discussed when you guys were hired, but in summary, it's higher than the industry average.

"I only have one wish, for you guys to complete the tasks I ask. I'm not sure what your previous companies were, but here, I go through every single detail of the game. I don't hope to receive an ambiguous answer.

"No matter the circumstance, even if you don't understand the intent behind my decisions, I hope that you will continue executing as ordered. You'll understand the meaning behind them when the game is released.

"Similarly, as long as you guys do your jobs, I can guarantee that I'll pay you what the companies cannot. You won't have to worry about money as this isn't one of those companies that skimps on that."

The new hires seemed to be looking forward to this.

The vast majority of the new hires were older than Chen Mo, but not a single one dared question him as his experiences in the past two years trumped many of them.

Moreover, when considering the profitability of his games and his name, none of them dared to underestimate their boss who happened to be quite young.

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Chapter 187: Design Concept Draft

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Chen Mo continued, "Of course, I'm not a dictator, I'm open to any suggestions or opinions, but be ready to be rejected.

"Alright, that's about it. You guys don't have to be anxious, my aim is to make everyone here money after all. You will realise that joining Thunderbolt Entertainment will be the best choice you made.

There were varying reactions, some excited, some calm.

It was normal to doubt a company one just joined, especially one with such a young boss.

This 'hyping up the employees' sessions were commonplace in every single company, and most new hires would most definitely go through this at least once.

'Make everyone money' are just words coming out of their mouths 99% of the time.

Chen Mo continued, "I focus on efficiency. Warcraft took around half a year of work to complete. There might be some communication issues now that our team is bigger, but I still hope that our efficiency can be higher.

"Next, is the game we'll be working on. Here's the concept document, please take a look."

Chen Mo turned on the projector in the meeting room to reveal the title: Diablo Design Concept Document.

The new hires signed non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses so there was no need to worry about leaks. They wouldn't be so dumb as to give up such a good job in exchange for short term benefits.

Many were shocked to see the name just as Chen Mo predicted.

The name Diablo was a bit weird, but within realms of reasoning. Diablo wasn't a god[1] they were familiar with, no matter ancient or modern times.

However nobody dared question him as Chen Mo was known to have weird names for his games.

Chen Mo started explaining the game.

Artstyle.

Core gameplay.

Background story of the setting.

Storylines.

Controlling the player's emotions.

Classes and combat system.

Improving on gameplay and multiplayer features.

Equipment system and long-term goals.

Chen Mo didn't go into too much detail as it was just a concept document. It was up to his assistants to fill those gaps.

However, Chen Mo went through the most important parts of the game, going over the good and bad of the game, target audience, and profit model. As a result, everyone understood what kind of game Chen Mo was going for.

Su Jinyu, Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun didn't say much as it wasn't their first rodeo.

Even if the concept of the game seemed really weird now, the final product would most certainly be a classic that was well polished.

However, the new employees were confused.

And Chen Mo could tell they were confused, "Please bring out any questions you have, I'll try my best to answer them. In particular, the few who are playing bigger roles should ask any questions they have, I wouldn't want you guys to start work confused as it would affect the efficiency."

There were seven playing the bigger roles, Su Jinyu who was responsible for the videogame project, Zheng Hongxi in story related matters, Qian Kun in numbers, balancing and level design, Zhou Hanyu in art/graphics, Fu Guangnan in sound effects/music, Zhao Yunting in promotion/operations, and Lin Xiao in pay, bonuses, and allowance.

Although Lin Xiao was an assistant, she was unlikely to participate in game development, but rather worked on keeping the company rolling.

Zhou Hanyu, Fu Guangnan, and Zhao Yunting looked at one another.

Zhou Hanyu and Fu Guangnan were industry professionals in their thirties with plenty of skills and experience behind them. These were hand-picked by Chen Mo from large companies.

Zhao Yunting had only been in the industry for around three years, but she had been a part of three successful projects.

Zhou Hanyu asked, "Mr Chen, I have a question."

"Please don't call me Mr Chen, just call me by my name, or manager. Go ahead."

"Manager, my main confusion stems from the artstyle. The keywords you gave for the artstyle were cult, dark, scary, ominous, bloody. I understand where you're coming from, but as far as I know, that isn't common in or outside of the country. Even if there was a small audience outside of China, I don't think I've seen anyone in China do something like this.

"Sure it is a unique style, it matches the theme of the game too. But I'm not entirely sure if the players of China would accept this."

Chen Mo nodded, "I understand what you mean. It's true that many companies will consider the taste of the average gamer when making games. Even if they were working on a game with a depressing theme such as this, they'd usually increase brightness and saturation to make the players feel more comfortable."

Zhou Hanyu nodded, "Yeah."

"But this isn't a game that was meant to please the majority of players. The idea lies in originality, I'm doing it because there is a gap in the market for games like these."

Zhou Hanyu still wasn't sold, "But will the players accept it?"

Chen Mo explained. "What's the most important part of the game? Consistency. Those games are giving up their identity by changing up the artstyle. This is a singleplayer adventure, hack and slash game. The tense and anxious themes will allow the players to better immerse into the game. As to if the players are accepting of it...

"That's going to depend on the quality of the game."

Zhou Hanyu nodded, still confused but now understood Chen Mo's idea clearly: Make a single player RPG hack and slash game with a fantasy theme and use its artstyle.

The art style was the last thing to be decided, but there was no other way given the type of game, playstyle, and theme.

However, will the players accept it? Zhou Hanyu didn't fully buy it.

Chen Mo looked at Fu Guangnan, "Are there any problems in terms of music and audio effects?"

"No problems. My questions are similar to that of Hanyu, I'm just worried that the music will drive the players away. But if the manager already had that in mind, I'll just follow the orders. The music and audio effects will surely be to your liking."

TL note[1: The literal translation of the chinese name is a god that destroys darkness. Diablo is from a spanish work meaning devil.

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Chapter 188: Changes to Game Settings

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Zhao Yunting said, "Manager, I have a question.

Zhao Yunting was responsible for operations and promotions. She was currently working on Onmyoji's day to day operations, but obviously she would be responsible for promoting the new game when they come out.

Chen Mo nodded, "Yep, go ahead."

"I'm not worried about the game quality, my main concern is that the game is really heavy and gore and violence, like corpses in prisons, blood pools, and even a necromancer. Could the game get pass the committee review?" asked Zhao Yunting

"I've already spoken to the Game Committee. The game will be rated 18, so the review shouldn't be a concern. You guys don't have to tiptoe around the things that might make it difficult to pass the review. There's no need to cut down on the corpses, blood, limbs, give it your all and make sure it doesn't affect the atmosphere of the game," assured Chen Mo.

Su Jinyu exclaimed, "Incredibly, the honorary committee member can do whatever he wants."

Chen Mo laughed, "Less talking more working. Alright, now that you guys understand the game, we can start working on it. Hongxi, I'll send you an overview of the story in a bit, so prepare yourself for that.

"The story will have its unique Diablo theme. The players must always feel a sense of hopelessness in this world. Take a look at the Dark Ages, Black Death, death by burning, soul cleansing, gibbeting, iron maiden... These could all be used in the game, especially things that are associated with hell." said Chen Mo.

Zheng Hongxi wiped sweat off his forehead, "Alright, I'll try my best..."

After going through the design document, everybody started working on various aspects of Diablo, wasting no time.

As the others were doing research and understanding the design concept, Chen Mo wasted no time and used Memory Playback Potions to take notes on aspects of the design of Diablo.

The difficulty of developing this game came from using assets from two different games, the story and basic gameplay from Diablo 3, but the art style, atmosphere, settings, and highlights from Diablo 2. He must recall both games and think about how to combine them together.

First, the story will follow Diablo 3.

From an unknown hitting Tristram Cathedral, so beating Skeleton King Leroic in the first act, to defeating the Lord of Lies in the second act, infiltrating Bastion Keep and the Heart of Sin defeating Azmodan in act three, before reaching High Heavens to defeat Diablo.

The story of Diablo 3 was really high quality and wasn't any worse than Diablo 2. But because of the artstyle and the representation of it in general, Diablo 3's story felt lacking. This wasn't because of the story itself, but due to narrative techniques and overall style.

The changes in the scenes of Diablo 3 was also really well done. Field of Misery, Desert, Snowy Plains, Hell, and Heaven, were all well done, and were even referenced many times by action RPG game developers in china;

Other than the main story, the players can also learn more about the world through notes, letters, or narratives from the NPCs.

Second, classes and combat systems will be based on Diablo 3 with some balancing changes.

The players can pick two primary abilities, four secondary abilities, and three passives. The abilities and controls were of a familiar design and was much better than Diablo 2.

Moreover, the players aren't required to relearn abilities or visit special locations in order to change abilities, making it new player friendly, increasing the potential player base.

Although Diablo 3's abilities system were criticised by fans to be one dimensional as there were only so many viable strategies, Diablo 3's abilities system was actually really rich. It was due to the addition of ranks that players tried their best to discover the best strategy then subsequently being copied by other players that the system became monotonous.

Therefore, the reason it seemed monotonous was entirely due to the ranked system.

Many felt that Diablo 2's ability system was better, but if a ranked ladder was introduced to this system, the players would do the same min-maxing, which would end up the same as Diablo 3.

As long as there was a tangible target for the players for the players to reach, these hack and slash games become incredibly monotonous as they give up exploring the game for optimal strategy and builds.

Chen Mo wanted to make some changes to the ability and equipment systems to make the game less monotonous.

Third, the equipment system will be based on Diablo 2.

Although Diablo 3 had a random attribute system like Diablo 2, it didn't work as well because of the introduction of a equipment ceiling. For example, a certain class must get certain equipment to allow a build to work, rendering the other equipment useless.

Chen Mo planned to improve equipment drop rates, increase the randomness of attributes, and increase the number of equipment available to remedy this.

Of course, this could make the game difficult to balance. A strong class with strong abilities and strong equipment, who knows what the players are capable of under so many random elements.

It was a single player game after all, and as Chen Mo didn't plan to include a market system, the randomness wouldn't affect the game too much.

Fourth, the difficulty of the game. Chen Mo wanted to slightly increase the difficulty and the players must complete the game under the default difficulty.

This will be a challenge to new players as bosses will require fitness and skill to beat. Combined with the artstyle and field of view, the players would be struggling when they play the game as they could die at a single misstep.

The difficulty will be slightly decreased after multiple deaths, but basically the players couldn't cruise through the story with no obstacles in their way.

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Chapter 189: Making a Game That Way?

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Fifth, in terms of online and extended functions, continue Diablo 3's online functions, but hold off on Challenge Rift and Ranked.

Diablo 3's Challenge Rift system was an excellent design, except for the fact it was a double edged sword.

When the players want to just kill a large number of enemies, they would obviously default to levels in the story with high spawn rates. Blizzard decided to release Challenge Rift to allow players to do so with ease without the need to go through the story again and again.

This was a good news to the players who liked the feeling of hacking and slashing as they saved them time. However, this damaged the lifespan of the game to a certain extent, making something that the game is incredibly repetitive.

Chen Mo planned to release Challenge Rift in an update after the main release. By that time, the players that remained are loyal fans who are sick of the story who would enjoy something like Challenge Rift.

Competitive seasons, ranked ladder, and increased difficulty would all be added in an update as something that extends the lifespan of the game.

With a general plan in mind, various aspects of the development process were running along smoothly.

With the foundations of the story in place, artwork can be worked on. Chen Mo gave out concept art for some of the key areas to allow Zhou Hanyu to have a better grasp on the theme Chen Mo was going for.

Chen Mo explained some of the key aspects of these scenes to Zhou Hanyu.

"Leroic's place should be scary and old. The ground could be made to look gritty and worn. Consider adding spider webs in corners of the wall too. You should also use a cooler colour scheme to make it look dead.

"Remember, do not make it look too fancy and cut down on the lighting too as it would feel out of place and the players wouldn't be as impressed.

"The Keep should be here. The players should have a wide field of view and the walls should give the players an impression that the keep has seen many battles, so you should add some destruction. You could even add some animations of the keep falling apart as the players walk by. The monsters will also attack the player from different angles so the players must feel that they could be swarmed at any moment.

Chen Mo went through each scene in detail to ensure that Zhou Hanyu could capture the scene as he wanted.

Zhou Hanyu nodded as Chen Mo explained, "Sure, no problem, understood."

He was shocked as even though he was responsible for art, he didn't need to do too much thinking as Chen Mo did most of the considerations for him, even drawing concept arts himself!

And Chen Mo's drawing skills might even be better than his!

In previous companies, Zhou Hanyu would take a look at a concept art and release a few different renders to allow the designers to pick the best one before slowly working out the rest of the graphics.

But he didn't need to do that at all. Chen Mo gave the art style as he wanted, even drawing out concept art for the monsters and scenes. All he needed to do was polish it up and outsource it to a company with some quality management work here and there.

This was the same with Fu Guangnan, Chen Mo gave a few BGM melodies, evidently of a certain style. He even specified which instruments to use in these pieces, including which to use in which scenes, and what emotions it should convey, all in great detail.

This meant that they saved a lot of time as there wasn't a lot of time spent in communicating or considering, all they had to do was execute.

The other employees were shocked too as they were never involved in the development of a game that was as easy as this.

No endless meetings.

No redoing.

No arguing.

Only 'doing'.

We can make games this way? Zhou Hanyu and Fu Guangnan felt like they were involved in something new. It was their first time experiencing something like this for the eight years they've been in the industry!

Many players on the forums seemed a bit lost after Chinese New Year.

"I'm so bored, any game recommendations?"

"Nope, I'm also bored."

"It's just after Chinese new year. Most companies probably just resumed operation. We'd probably need to wait until March even if it was a game that started its development last year."

"Geez, I'm bored of all these games. The games nowadays take so long to develop."

"By the way, have you guys seen Heavenly Ring 3's new year movie?"

"You should ask who hasn't seen it instead, it's such a huge work!"

"Yeah, the box office is over one billion dollars, and it's still expected to increase. People who liked movies like these probably already watched it right?"

"It's kind of weird that the movie is really popular in China, but the game was a complete flop. Heavenly Ring the game entered the Chinese market two years ago before calling GG soon after."

"It probably has to do with the gameplay. Their tastes overseas aren't the same with us in China."

"I really liked the theme, but it's sad that there aren't any good games."

"Previous poster, I recommend Warcraft."

"That's an RTS game, I can't play those games at all."

"There are maps that aren't RTS in Warcraft, you should check out Holy Land."

"Holy Land? Isn't that another Western novel?"

"Yeah, there's an RPG map in Warcraft that's basically a fan creation. You should try it out, I quite like it."

"Alright, I'll do that."

Nobody expected that an overseas movie like Heavenly Ring 3 would bring another wave of popularity to the Warcraft RPG map Holy Land

There were noticeably more strategy guides in the forums with thousands of concurrent players every day.

This was normal as Western fantasy themed games were in an awkward spot in the parallel world.

There were many huge western works, but most didn't match the tastes of Chinese players. It was difficult for them to enter the chinese market without the help of a game like World of Warcraft.

Although Chinese developers knew the tastes of Chinese players, they struggled to make a western fantasy game that was true to the original, and the players weren't taking any of that.

Therefore, the developers defaulted to Xianxia and fantasy themes, showing no interest in western fantasy.

The result of that was that Chinese players struggled to find western fantasy games that suited their tastes, and it was one of the reasons Warcraft got so popular so quickly.

But as Warcraft was an RTS game, it couldn't take up a large amount of players like RPG games.

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Chapter 190: Impossible to Become Popular

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Many were tagging Chen Mo on Weibo.

"This map called Holy Land is pretty good, maybe give an official endorsement?"

"I recommend Holy Land too."

"@Chen Mo, it's a new year and time to make new games! Stop slacking off, my wallet can't take it anymore!"

"@Chen Mo, please make a nice, non-scammy game like Warcraft. Please stop trying to milk my wallet with scammy games!"

Chen Mo was surprised to find that many diehard fans as he looked through his tags.

And there were many who were waiting for yet another high quality game.

Chen Mo decided to give everyone a small hint.

He sent out a short and simple Webio.

"The next game will be a single player RPG game, Western Fantasy."

He included a concept art of Tristram Cathedral under the cover of darkness lit up by candles. There was a traveller who looked into the sky where there was an unidentified object flying towards the cathedral, giving away an ominous vibe.

The Weibo caught the attention of many.

"My goodness! Look at this, Chen Mo's new Webio!"

"It's coming, Chen Mo is making another PC game! I have my money ready! What kind of game do you think it is?"

"Are you dense? Didn't Chen Mo already tell you it's a singleplayer western fantasy RPG game? You can't be more detailed than that!"

"From the looks of it, isn't the atmosphere a bit too dark? It's really ominous. The cathedral gives away the vibes of a cemetery."

"Yeah, I think there are tombstones upon close look. I think there's a shadow of a skull in one of the windows."

"Maybe it's related to Warcraft's Undead?"

"Doesn't look like it. The artstyle seems much gloomier than Warcraft. It does give away dark ages vibes though."

"Chen Mo is finally making an RPG! I'm looking forward to this!"

"Unfortunately it's a single player game. It probably wouldn't feel as satisfying"

"Not necessarily, don't you have to play single player games to get a good story? Moreover, designers usually make single player RPG games to get their names out there in order to reduce the risk for MMORPGs."

"That's true. It's by Chen Mo, it must be good. We'll just have to wait!"

"Geez, I thought he was going to make an RPG version of Warcraft. That's too sad."

"Who knows, maybe he has something else in mind. I want to play a Warcraft RPG too!"

It didn't take long before the news spread around within the industry.

"Have you heard? Chen Mo's new game is on the PC, a western fantasy themed single player RPG game."

"I've heard about it. Thank the heavens that he's doing that."

"Why?"

"Hopefully this means he's not making anymore mobile games, give us some breathing room!"

"But I'm in PC games, who's going to give me breathing room?"

"Alright, take note that Chen Mo is making a singleplayer game. Emphasis on single player."

"Oh, singleplayer. That makes it slightly better."

"It's great that it is single player, they have limited profitability after all. Seems like Chen Mo has the same thing in mind with Warcraft, he's trying to work on his name and not for money."

"We'd still have to be careful. It'd still be pretty bad if our games happened to be released around the same time. Take a look and see what he's up to."

"There's a picture on Weibo! The game is called Diablo. This doesn't look like a first person game."

Maybe designers were trying to figure out what Chen Mo was up to via his We.

The new Weibo post was also quite simple. It specified that the game is called Diablo. It also included an image of a forty-five degree third person view with a dual axe wielding barbarian battling countless skeletons and demons.

"It really doesn't look like a first person game. Is he planning a third person game?"

"Possibly. Third person games are easier anyways. It's normal that he'd go for something more stable and predictable for his first RPG game."

"That's not bad as there are fewer and fewer third person games as it is going out of fashion. This game probably wouldn't lose him money, but it's unlikely that it'd get all that popular."

"Yeah, I've also thought out what Chen Mo was planning. There's too much first in making a first person MMORPG, which was why he chose to pivot using a third person RPG, focusing on the story and theme."

"That's what I think too. He's making this game just for the players who like Western Fantasy themes. Luckily the playerbase of this game will have a huge overlap with Warcraft, which guarantees some of his sales."

"We panicked for nothing. But I do feel kind of sad as this suggests that he's admitting defeat? I remember how confident he was when he made Warcraft to go directly against Legion Conquest. Now he probably thinks that he doesn't have the abilities and is playing safe."

"Not sure if you guys noticed the color scheme of these artworks?"

"Color scheme?"

"Yeah, the colors are really dark."

"Oh, maybe he's trying to create a scary and ominous atmosphere."

"It's not as simple as that. Sure it might just be for atmosphere, but this combined with scary background music will give the players a lot of pressure. It'd be really tiring for them to play the game. Just take a look at the popular online games, none of them are dark at all as they fear the players might get tired quickly."

"Oh is that so. I've learnt something today!"

"So I think Chen Mo made a mistake. He went too far just to create a unique Western Fantasy game, but he never considered if the players would accept it. The artstyle in particular is too out there! Just take a look at Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Zen Entertainment, none of them dare to do this!"

"Incredible. I've learnt so much from your analysis!"

"I think Chen Mo's game will be profitable, but it's not going to be much, possibly just breaking even. There's no way this game will be as popular as his previous ones. Perhaps it'll be well received in a niche community, but there's no way this game will get popular."

"Thank goodness for that!"

Many were talking about Chen Mo's new game, industry professionals and players alike, but most of them didn't expect too much from it.

The reasoning was simple, they thought that third person RPG games were one of the most ancient types of games, verging on extinction.

Moreover, the potential for these types of games have more or less been fully explored as the industry was dominated by first person games. How many players still liked ancient single player RPG games like these was a question that remained to be answered.

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 191 - Playtest - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 191 - Playtest Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 191: Playtest

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Single player games like Chen Mo's Wulin Legend and Zen Entertainment's Tale of the sword usually get around four hundred thousand sales in their first month, which wasn't much.

Many felt that Chen Mo was playing safe by making a game like this. Even considering the fact that he was known for good stories, he might sell alright, but it definitely wouldn't be incredibly popular.

Moreover, the game might have gone a little too far in its concept judging from the concept art. How many players would like spooky dark themes like this?

If it wasn't managed well, it would most certainly drive away most of the players.

Some were looking forward to it.

Some were questioning it.

Some were making fun of it.

Chen Mo didn't seem to mind at all as he wouldn't usually pay attention to these doubts. Only after the game was completed will they know how good the game was.

It was more likely to not to make predictions at this stage.

Diablo's development was going along swimmingly.

As there were more hands on the project, the speed it was moving along also increased.

In Chen Mo's previous life, the development of Diablo 3 took a long time. There was a gap of twelve years from Diablo 2 to Diablo 3.

Of course there were many back and forths during this time, and the majority of the time wouldn't have been spent on developing the game, but on remaking assets.

Another problem was that the team responsible for Diablo 2 left Blizzard, adding more time on the development for Diablo 3.

As the first versions weren't taken well by the hire ups, multiple revisions were required, which was why Diablo 3 didn't feel the same as Diablo 2.

Chen Mo could completely bypass all the difficulties that the team went through as the development of the game increased dramatically as he viewed these matters through mature eyes.

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Zhou Hanyu would polish up sketches of monsters and characters by Chen Mo before sending it to a company to make the models and animations before making quality assessments.

A few other assistants dealt with the areas, design of the levels, as well as the flow of the combat.

Cinematics that were higher quality than Warcraft were also in the works.

There were also tasks like balancing, equipment design, as well as some details with the players. Under Chen Mo's leadership, the entire development process was streamlined, dramatically increasing the speed of the development.

Diablo was more challenging to develop than Warcraft, but with the extra help, it's development was faster than Warcraft. It only took four months before having a working game that was in its early stages.

The cinematics weren't done and neither was the balancing. Challenge Rift, ranked ladder, and professional mode weren't in the game either, but the game was playable.

Chen Mo sat down in an empty massage chair in the experience store.

He had been working hard the past few days reviewing graphical resources and level design. He decided to take a much needed rest after finally having some free time.

Zou Zhou was on a computer next to him playing Warcraft.

"You've been working hard, manager. How's the new game going?" Zou Zhou said as he passed Chen Mo a can of drink, "I've been itching to play the new game upon hearing its an RPG. Unfortunately I haven't been able to see the development of the game as Goldfish, Qian Kun, and the others have moved.

"It's playable now. I'll grab a hard-drive for you to playtest later."

Zou Zhuo was shocked to hear that, "Is it really playable? Hooray! Manager, your efficiency sure is scary!"

Chen Mo went back to the office next door before copying a incomplete Diablo to install onto Zou Zhou's computer.

Chen Mo estimated that the game should be live in two weeks or so. It'd be a good idea for Zou Zhou to test the game out and experience the flow of the game in order to collect some feedback.

It didn't take long to install. Zou Zhou could barely contain his excitement as he was proud to be the first player to playtest this game.

The other players gathered around too.

"My goodness, Diablo is playable already?"

"Manager, you're like a sow giving birth to all these games! Start the game so we can take a look!"

"Incredible, let's watch."

"Manager, I wanna play too!"

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Chen Mo laughed, "Hold your horses. This is just a playtesting version. There are many things that aren't up to scratch, so you guys will have to wait. I'll install it onto the computers in the experience store next week for you guys to try out."

Zou Zhou clicked on the icon, "Whatever, I'm going in!"

Everybody else huddled around to watch Zou Zhou play the game.

Just as expected, there was a cinematic as he started the game.

It started off with some red wax before Thunderbolt gaming's logo was stamped on.

The camera panned upwards, below the seal was a vellum with text written in an unknown language.

Following the tense melody was a raspy old voice.

"And at the end of days, the first sign shall appear in the heavens

"Justice shall fall upon the world of men, the armies of light and shadow will clash across the field of eternity..."

Drawing after drawing appeared on the vellum one after another accompanying the voiceover.

Crows appeared on a battlefield filled with spears. A lightning appeared in the sky before light leaked onto the ground like a waterfall. Many warriors descended from the heavens, charging towards the demons.

The angels and demons were at war before the earth split open, coming out of it a huge demon charging with its mouth open.

Leah awoke violently with horror still in her eyes.

The old Deckard Cain was looking through ancient scripts in the dark cathedral.

"If these translations are correct, the powers of hell could already be on the move. The world must be told of the coming darkness!"

"You do believe me, don't you Leah? It has begun..."

At this moment, the cathedral started shaking, and a meteor appeared in the sky following a flash of lightning.

The meteor flew across the sky, landing right in the middle of the cathedral. The shock from the impact caused Leah to end up on all fours, but as she got up to search for Deckard Cain, there was only a crater left where he used to be.

"Uncle!"

The ending of the cinematic followed her scream. At this moment, both Chinese and English versions of the name appeared on the screen.

Diablo1!

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Chapter 192: Demon Hunter

There was chatter after the cinematic finished.

"Incredible! The cinematics from Thunderbolt Movies still maintain their high standards!"

"I could see every single strand of hard on the girl. I think the manager started burning his money again."

"What does that mean? I don't understand what just happened. The old man already looked so sad, why was he hit by a meteor? Was it because he doesn't his old lady cross the road?"

"The girl was so shocked. Where's my grandad? Oh wait, where's my uncle?"

"Start the game, I can't wait!"

They entered a character select screen.

Five different heroes stood around a campfire under the blanket of darkness, so dark that you could only see their outline.

They looked like they had different looks and equipment. Some had cloth armor, leather, plate armor, wielding weapons like a great axe, crossbow, staff...

Zou Zhuo was quite excited to see this unique character select screen as it felt incredibly immersive, as though he was facing a group of malicious men.

Unlike other RPGs where every character looked like perfect dolls.

A tall strong barbarian stood in the centre of the screen wearing basic armor with a tribal tattoo.

Chen Mo didn't pick the barbarian from Diablo 3, but Diablo 2. Gone was the old man with ashen hair and beard, in its place was a huge man like Kratos.

"Barbarian? Looks similar to a berserker."

Zou Zhuo clicked on the other characters.

Everytime he clicked on one of them, they would walk out from the shadows next to the fire, making themselves in full view of the player. The character that was selected before would retreat back into the shadows.

Cool, crossbow wielding Demon Hunter.

Magic wielding Wizard.

The Eastern looking Monk skilled in battle.

Mask wearing Witch Doctor with the power over life and death.

Zou Zhuo clicked on each character to look through them.

There were only five different classes to choose from in this version. Chen Mo planned to add Crusader, Witch Doctor, ranked mode and a competitive mode later.

The player could pick from any of the unique classes. They would also go through a character introduction for each character, showing off special abilities and their story.

Zou Zhuo couldn't help but quickly go through the story of all the characters.

It didn't take long for him to notice the difference in the design of classes in Diablo and other games.

At first glance, the characters are exactly the same as classic western fantasy characters (warrior, wizard, archer, crusader, etc.), just reskinned. But after looking deeper into their abilities and story, they were actually starkly different.

The biggest difference was the lack of differentiation between characters by separating them into defensive, offensive and support style characters. All characters were offensive characters, only differing in the way they did damage.

Moreover, these characters matched perfectly with Diablo's theme.

Take Demon Hunters for example. They possess an innate ability to resist demonic corruption. They allow them to use the power of demons as a weapon, wielding crossbows to destroy their enemies.

They are relentless vigilanties sworn to do one thing: Destroy the creatures of the Burning Hell.

Compared to the run of the mill archers, Demon Hunters suited Diablo much better. They differentiated themselves by different abilities and talents too, not completely relying on bows.

"Demon Hunter? This guy looks cool. It's him it is."

Zou Zhuo picked a male Demon Hunter, giving him the nickname 'Zzz'.

A demon hunter that looked to be at the start of journey appeared on his screen, with little to no armor and a pathetic crossbow in his hand. He looked skinny and weak but had a cold murderous look in his eyes.

Zou Zhuo started the game incredibly happy with himself as loved vibes like these as he personally loved the Undead.

A vellum with drawing on it passed by the screen accompanied by a deep dark voice.

"My family was butchered by hellspawn. To witness such a thing is enough to leave your mind in ruins.

"I was left frightened and alone, until I was rescued.

"Rescued by survivors, who had joined together to rid the world of the creatures of Hell. They saw in me the strength to resist the demons. And they forged me into a weapon."

"Now, I am ready.

"A meteor has fallen in Tristram, and the dead have risen in its wake. I will send them back to their graves. Once, I was hunted. Now...I am the hunter."

A few lines were more than enough to convey the entire backstory of the Demon Hunter. It also helped the players focus on 'meteor' which was an important theme in the story.

Zou Zhuo was then placed in an empty field with a small village off the screen.

"So it is actually not first person."

Everyone knew that this was a third person game, but Zou Zhuo couldn't help but be disappointed upon seeing the gameplay himself as it would be more immersive in first person.

Luckily, Zou Zhuo was a seasoned Warcraft player and was quite used to a perspective like this.

The graphics were incredibly high quality. They could tell that Chen Mo spent a lot of effort on the graphics as every detail, icon, and pattern were extremely high quality, completely different from what the players are used to with third person RPGs.

The UI was clean and the theme was obvious. Zou Zhuo knew the controls after just looking through which abilities were bound to which hotkeys.

After making his character spin in a circle or two, Zou Zhuo was sure that it was a 3D game with 3D scenes and models. Everything was in 3D of fairly high quality. Chen Mo deliberately chose to lock the perspective forcing the players to go through the game in third person.

The animations were really smooth, the arcs of the bolts were well done too.

However, the graphics gave away a really tense vibe. The scene felt riddled with death before meeting many undead creatures. Dim street lamps, broken carts, and corpses suggested a world in a dire situation,

The Demon Hunter continued walking forwards and was met by a zombie.

After the first bolt, the growling monster charged at the Demon Hunter. Zou Zhuo handily kited[1] and killed the monster with ease.

TL note[1: Kiting means to hit and run at the same time.

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Chapter 193: Obvious Upsides

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Chen Mo made sure that the players couldn't cruise through the game like Diablo 3 in his previous life.

Although it was a monster with zero difficulty, Zou Zhuo had a sliver of worry within him when a monster was rushing at him.

As he continued on, the Demon Hunter found himself at Tristam after beating the group of undead trying to raid the city. The Demon Hunter then entered the city and gave himself a line of quests.

The guidance was pretty good as there was a minimap on the top right hinting at the next location the player should visit. There was also a quest reminder on the right.

Zou Zhuo continued following the line of quests to go through the story.

Zou Zhuo soon noticed a few obvious upsides in this game.

The game felt smooth and the controls were comfortable. The graphics and sound effects were all really high quality too. It even surpassed many games in first person in many aspects even as a third person game.

It was evident that Chen Mo didn't make a third person game to 'hide flaws', nor was it because he couldn't' satisfy the needs of a first person game. He made a conscious choice to keep the game in third person.

Zou Zhuo was taken away by the spooky art style of Diablo as Chen Mo tried his best to recreate the atmosphere of Diablo 2.

As the Demon Hunter walked into the crypts, the area felt like it was sticky from blood.

In some quieter maps where you can hear the crackling of fires, and the footsteps of the character become increasingly evident, any monster that pops up on the screen will be more than enough to give the players a shock as they find themselves on a seemingly endless path.

Combined with this art style as well as an ever changing randomly generated map, the adventure in adventure games was brought out to its fullest.

Moreover, Chen Mo continued the field of view and darkness mechanics from Diablo 2. When the players enter caves, their field of view will be much smaller as most of their screen becomes darkness, only able to see the outline of the terrain as the presence of monsters remains a mystery.

The players could clearly see all the monsters on the screen which took out a lot of the mysteriousness in the game, making it a game that 'could be seen through'.

With the darkness and field of view restrictions added back into the game, combined with the graphics, sounds effects, and level design. This made Zou Zhuo feel anxious at times, tense at others. However, Zou Zhuo didn't feel so stressed to want to quit the game, instead he was compelled to play more.

This played completely different from all the overdone formats on the market. This game didn't look like an amusement park, with knights without a single spec of dust on their armor. The only things in this game were corpses, skeletons, abscess, and endless hopelessness.

The Demon Hunter walked into the Cathedral completely helpless, with silent mercenaries fighting alongside him.

(Chen Mo followed Diablo 2 on this point as well, removing all the lines of mercenaries to allow players to better absorb the horrifying atmosphere.)

Many aspects of the playstyle also surpised Zou Zhuo.

The equipment system was really rich. Zou Zhuo could get decent equipment during his adventure. They also had unique flavour texts so no two pieces of equipment were the same.

There were many different abilities to go with the rich combat system. Different abilities were unlocked as the player leveled up. Combined with talents and skill runes, the players could figure out an optimal build from what they have, and this was a process which Zou Zhuo thoroughly enjoyed.

The most important thing was how satisfying the game was! This was also the biggest difference between Diablo compared to other RPG games.

The world the player exists in other games, especially online games, are really small. Not to mention bosses that take the combined power of many to take down, or the powerful NPC leaders of huge factions. There wasn't a big differential in power when considering between players either. Many normal players in MMORPGs know that they are just a normal player.

It wasn't the same in Diablo. You were the only god in the game, the saviour. From an adventure from Tristam at the start of the game, to a hero who saved Caldeum after defeating the Lord of Lies, turning the tides at Bastion Keep, before reaching the High Heavens to defeating Diablo, the embodiment of the seven evils, letting known the name of Nephalem be known from Hell to the High Heavens.

The player could cut through demons like a warm knife through butter when faced with waves of demons, leaving behind corpses and dropped equipment.

Of course, you might die, you might lose some gold, you will also have to retrieve your equipment from your corpse (from Diablo 2),

This was a world filled with danger, a world filled with hopelessness, and the only person you can depend on was yourself.

And it was because of this that the players get to experience a sense of satisfaction better than ever. It was because of a hopeless world that you give the waves upon waves of monsters and demons any mercy. One slash and all the demons will disappear in your wake.

Zou Zhuo was completely absorbed into the game as his field of view was reduced to a small circle when exploring a dark cave.

All of a sudden, a huge wave of monsters appeared in front of him before charging directly at him!

There were some monsters in this group that had a golden hue, leaving behind light in every step.

The players watching around him were shocked, "My goodness! Be Careful! Dodge!"

Zou Zhuo was shocked to see his health fall dramatically before calming his nerves and rolling to a safe distance before laying down traps, setting loose a barrage of bolts!

Waves after wave of groans from the monsters followed the waves of bolts. The weaker monsters started dying, but the huge rare monsters had a lot more health and continued charging towards the demon hunter.

Zou Zhuo skillfully kited as he used all his abilities.

He was exceedingly calm in a situation like this, not making any errors as he was fairly highly ranked in Warcraft.

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Chapter 194: Skeleton King Leoric

"My goodness, this kiting is crazy!"

"Wow, you killed half of them already! Keep at it!"

"You're almost dead, quick, consume potions!"

"Alright, he's recovered. Don't go there, there's many monsters there!"

The players watching on were gasping and yelling seemingly more invested than Zou Zhuo himself.

Zou Zhuo was frantically tapping on the keyboard and mouse, finally defeating the monsters after a bit of a struggle.

There were many yellow equipment following the death of the golden enemies, along with many gold and potions.

"My goodness!"

The on-lookers were getting increasingly animated.

Zou Zhuo also breathed a sigh of relief as he almost screamed from how much he exerted just to defeat the monsters. They would always appear in bunches, and often provide a good scare in dark narrow dungeons like these.

Zou Zhuo felt quite good about himself when he equipped three pieces of yellow equipment.

"Charge into the cathedral and capture Leroic!"

Zou Zhuo continued playing enthusiastically with such a huge ambition in mind.

He was finally about to face Skeleton King Leoric after nearly two hours of playing.

This took quite long because Chen Mo increased the difficulty to prevent players from cruising through the game. Zou Zhuo was also the type of player to search through the entire dungeon before progressing through the game, which further increased the time required.

Back at the town, Zou Zhuo repaired his equipment, organised his inventory, and bought some healing.

Zou Zhuo took a deep breath before using a waypoint to teleport to the third floor of the cathedral in search of the Royal Crypt.

The room was completely empty, void of any monsters, except for a two-handed sword in the middle of the room.

Leoric's sword.

Zou Zhuo clicked on the sword and several illusions appeared around the Demon Hunter recreating moments before Leoric's death.

The Demon Hunter continued forward. The crypt looked abandoned for hundreds of years, but Leoric's insane voice still echoed in the walls.

All of a sudden, Leoric's silhouette appeared in front of the Demon Hunter.

"You dare to bring the warmth of life into my tomb?!"

Following the Skeleton King's howl, pillars were activated and countless skeletons awakened, charging at the Demon Hunter!

"My goodness!"

Zou Zhuo quickly commanded the Demon Hunter to roll around to dodge attacks while releasing a flurry of bolts to defeat the small skeletons.

"This game is actually quite exciting," Zou Zhuo said as he breathed a sigh of relief.

Diablo had many more monsters and were much tightly packed than Warcraft. Although there was only one playable character, there was still a certain amount of skill involved in the combat due to the large amount of skills the character has.

After navigating various obstacles, he finally reached the Crypt of the Skeleton King.

Most of the crypt had been weathered and corroded as the Demon Hunter only left one path forward.

After clearing out a few swarms of skeletons, he finally reached the Skeleton Keep.

Leoric's corpse was on the throne in a spacious hall. All that's left of the body was the skeleton, in the same position as it was when he was assassinated.

Zou Zhuo clicked on the corpse, placing Leoric's crown onto the skeleton.

The screen shook and countless sources of ominous green light gathered on the Skeleton King. Pieces of armour started attaching themselves to the skeleton, before the skeleton finally picks up the mace from the ground.

The Skeleton King woke up following maniacal laughter. He stood up, looking straight at the Demon He with flames in his eyes.

"My goodness, it's a boss!" The players surrounding Zou Zhuo had their eyes wide open as they feared they missed something.

Zou Zhuo quickly tried to gain some distance between them as he feared he might be one-shot.

Leoric's abilities weren't too complicated as he was the first boss, with multiple swings of his mace and summoning skeletons being the two noteworthy abilities.

As Zou Zhuo was playing Demon Hunter, he definitely couldn't trade face to face with the Skeleton King. He kept using his abilities to create a gap and attacked the skeleton king using his mercenaries.

However, the Skeleton Keep had a lot of health. Zou Zhuo would lose half his health if he was greedy in trying to get a few more hits in and could die at any moment he failed to dodge an ability. Zou Zhuo gave it a hundred and ten percent of his focus in his attempt to beat the boss.

"He's about to attack again, be careful!"

"Clear out the skeletons, they'll cause trouble if they start gaining in numbers."

"You can do it, he's got a third of his health left!"

"This is so exciting!"

The viewers couldn't help but be even more nervous than Zou Zhuo.

In the end, the Skeleton King shattered into pieces as he growled one last time. His armour fell all over the place leaving behind gold and equipment.

There was an audible 'ting' when an orange light appeared beside the Skeleton King's corpse.

Zou Zhuo hovered his cursor over it, "Leoric's Crown? Orange equipment?!"

The on-lookers were shocked too.

"My goodness, this is the first orange equipment right?"

"It looks so strong."

"Take a look at the attributes!"

"Put it on first!"

Zou Zhuo inspected the crown before putting it on.

It was much better than the yellow helmet from before as provided bonuses to vitality and dexterity. It also had a special attribute, "Increases the effect of any gem socketed into the helm by 100%"

"Increase the effect of gems by 100%? Doesn't that mean I can attach my yellow gems that increase drop chance for even more loot?

"I'm going to be rich!"

Zou Zhuo merrily returned to Tristram with Leoric's crown on his head and an inventory full of loot.

"This game feels great!"

"Yeah, although it's in third person, it feels completely different to those ancient RPG games I had in mind."

"Killing monsters feel so satisfying too. Could it be that he was inspired by that RPG map in Warcraft?"

"This feels more fun than some of the larger RPGs. The atmosphere in particular feels great. It makes you look forward to combat."

"It feels like a lot of attention has been given to abilities, equipment, boss fights, and story. If this was in first person, it'd be one of the best games!"

"Yeah, I don't understand why it's in third person."

"We wanna play too, manager!"

The on-lookers surrounded Chen Mo begging to play Diablo.

Chen Mo passed them the harddrive, "Install it yourselves. There's a co-op mode to try out too."

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Chapter 195: Donut Principle

They basically snatched it out of Chen Mo's hands in order to install the game onto their PCs.

"Wow! Co-op?"

"Incredible, I thought it was a pure single player game!"

"I heard there's only up to four players. Guess it'll be us four in a group, you guys make your own groups."

"I'm playing Barbarian! What about you?"

"I'll play Wizard then."

"This is exciting, though I'm still sad that we can play with more players."

"I'm done installing. I'll wait for you guys at New Tristram."

"I'm done too. Huh, it really resembles that RPG map from Warcraft, like a official remastered version!"

"Yeah, I was just about to comment on how familiar this felt."

"But how can you compare this to an RPG map?"

"Of course, this is the manager's own work!"

"I thought there wasn't anything fun about third person games, but it turns out to be quite fun!"

Diablo was now the new trend in the experience store. The players that were here for other games stopped what they planned and pivoted to playing Diablo instead.

Diablo's online mode wasn't like other games, nor was there a synergy between different classes.

It resembled a LAN game like Diablo 2, more suited for a small number of players. The game would change its difficulty based on the number of players to prevent the loss of a challenge with more players.

Relatively speaking, co-op modes reduce the difficulty of the game as noobs could depend on better players to beat bosses. Moreover, a combination of various classes also helped with clearing levels.

However, when taking the preference of multiplayer games, new player experience, and prevention of cheats into consideration, an online mode was inevitable.

It didn't take long before the players were immersed into the dark world of Diablo.

Chen Mo breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing this, as the first phase of the Diablo 'donut principle' was in effect.

There was a lot of debate whether or not Diablo 3 was successful. But based on the sales and feedback, even if Diablo 3 didn't reach the levels of Diablo 2, it was still a successful game.

The 'donut principle' referred to how the players would eat the donut from the outside in when playing diablo.

The outer parts were new players, deeper into the donut were mid-core players, and the hardcore players would be deeper still.

When they reach the centre of the donut, the players will realise that there's only a hole to leave.

The new players are drawn into the game by its art style, high quality gameplay, and exciting combat and story.

Mid-score players are attracted by the different combinations of abilities, equipment attributes, differences between classes, ranked ladder, and professional mode for greater challenges.

And when they become hardcore players, they will keep grinding everyday just to find ebtter equipment, experiment again and again for the best build, and would aim for the top every season as they relentlessly aim to be the best.

But after the hardcore players were done experiencing that, managed to find the best equipment, done climbing the ladder, or were just tired of the game, they would find the exit and leave the game.

Of course, there were players leaving before they become hardcore players.

But an important point of this 'donut principle' was to not worry about players leaving.

Many online games try their best in order to retain players, integrating daily or seasonal events just to hope that their players continue playing.

Although this worked, it could also create the opposite effect, affecting the ratings of the game. The players would find the game incredibly boring, leaving the game never to return.

This was where the 'donut principle' came in. New players could leave the game after experiencing the story, and hardcore players could leave the game after getting sick of climbing the ranked ladder. The game wouldn't use various tactics to try and retain players.

This meant that all the players would have played everything they wanted to play before they left. Dragging out a month's content into three months wasn't what Diablo was about.

The players would naturally return when the game received updates like new in game story shards, new classes, or new content.

Therefore the 'donut principle' suited Diablo's profit model and its playstyle.

So far Diablo's first steps seemed to have gone well. Chen Mo's idea of the art style and atmosphere seemed to be right judging from how focused players were on the game. It wasn't a game that had a niche audience, turning its unique art style into a selling point.

Diablo was ready to be sold in two weeks as the follow-up work progressed steadily.

In this time, many playtesting videos were leaked onto the internet as topics like 'Chen Mo's new game' and 'Diablo' were gaining more and more buzz.

"There seemed to be some leaks on the cinematics and gameplay of Diablo, have you seen it?"

"Isn't that some ancient RPG? What's so special about it."

"It really isn't, the graphics look amazing, and the cinematics seem to be higher quality than Warcraft."

"Really? Is he stupid? It's a singleplayer game. Even if he sells five hundred thousand copies at ninety-nine RMB each, that's just fifty million RMB gross, about thirty million net. That's not even enough for the cinematics right?"

"Yeah, the cinematics surely cost more than fifty million? Is he trading money for fame?"

"It's hard to tell, the game does seem quite fun. You guys should take a look at the gameplay, it seemed quite high quality."

"So what if it's high quality. Just the words 'third person' is enough to give the game a death sentence. There's no way the game gains popularity."

"But I think the game is so high quality that Chen Mo could've made it a first person game."

"Then... Then Chen Mo is just digging his own grave, there's not much else to say. I don't believe that it's possible for a third person game to gain popularity anyways, I'll eat my keyboard if it does."

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Chapter 196: Seventeen Difficulties

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

"I don't believe that either. If Diablo sells over five hundred thousand copies, no. Ten thousand copies, I'll eat my monitor!"

"I'll eat my USB drive!"

"I'll eat my coffee mug!"

"Why don't you guys just go for one hundred million sales? That way you guys don't have to do anything. What's the point of going for eight hundred thousand if you don't want to eat anything anyways."

"I've written down the names of the posters, I'll be going after you guys when Diablo makes it."

"Look at the brain dead Chen Mo fan."

"So what if I'm a brain dead Chen Mo fan. Think about it, haven't all of Chen Mo's games done extremely well?"

"He really has lost his marbles! You can keep singing the songs of praise, I'll be taking my leave."

"Calm down, Chen Mo's not some kind of god. He did RTS and casual games previously, all games that require insane innovation to get those results. Now he's working on RPG games which are mainstream, a third person one at that too. There's no way he could save it no matter how many innovations he has!"

"Have you guys even seen the videos before talking? It looks quite fun in the videos."

"It didn't look fun, so what if I hate third person RPG games!"

"Alright, we'll see when the sales come now. I'll be going after every single one of you when he reaches eight hundred thousand sales!"

There was a lot of discussion among the industry professionals too.

"Chen Mo's new game is about to go on sale, anybody keeping an eye on that?"

"Diablo? I thought we went through that already, niche audience for third person games and scary games. It'd probably get around three hundred thousand sales in the first month, what else is there to say."

"There were leaked recently, there are cinematics too. I heard it's really high quality."

"High quality RPG games are all over the place. I might believe if you said he'd make more innovations with casual games, but RPG games have been done time and time again, there's no way he could innovate anything new."

"I just like to remind you that everyone who underestimated Chen Mo has been proven wrong. Are there any other games that are releasing soon?"

"There are actually quite a few games releasing after Chinese new year, but most of them are online games, so there aren't too many conflicts of interest with single player games. Then again, so what if there was a conflict of interest, it's an RPG, could Chen Mo really whip up something new again?"

"Right? You could tell from his idea of Diablo. He's even making it in third person, that idea is from a few years ago."

"I think he didn't even do mark research, how else would he go so off script?"

"I don't understand either. It'd make sense if he made a simple game to test the waters, but isn't he stupid to spend so much money on cinmeatics and a high quality game?"

"Maybe he was inspired by that Warcraft RPG game because there were so many players. Maybe he thinks third person RPGs still have life in them."

"Well, he's thinking too much. How many players does that RPG map even have. That Holy Land game that was quite popular recently probably has at most a few thousand concurrent players. You have to be silly to make a game for a few thousand players right? What's the point of targeting that tiny group."

"Geez, we'll just have to see how it goes, that's really all we can do."

Diablo started selling among the cloud of doubt.

There were a few other MMORPGs released at the same time, but they didn't affect Diablo's sales much if at all. Single player games that sell copies are less affected by competitors, so the only deciding factor of Diablo's sales was its potential playerbase.

Most of the players on the computers in the experience store were playing Diablo, some of them even had a few players watching."

"I got the bounty!"

"My goodness, look at the attributes on this!"

"Not bad, it's better than what I have now, I'll equip it."

"My four hours is up soon, and I'm not done yet!"

"Hurry up, it's my turn."

In two weeks time, most of the the players in Diablo were now hardcore players who couldn't stop themselves.

Although Diablo was quite content rich, it wasn't a lot of game time.

There was a conquest in the game called 'Speed Racer', unlocked by completing all five acts within an hour on the highest difficulty.

Of course, this one of the extremes, but was possible to beat the game on in a few hours.

New players would have some trouble beating the game as Chen Mo increased the difficulty, but it would be at most ten or so hours as the game was designed to be beaten by everyone.

However, the players would discover that there was a choice of difficulties, Expert, Master, and Torment!"

Moreover, there was Torment one through thirteen!

That means that there are a total of seventeen difficulties in this game!

Many players who beat the normal difficulty would enthusiastically try out master difficulty, but would be absolutely destroyed by the mobs.

Many were shocked to see this. What was the point of Torment 1-13 when Master was already so difficult, wouldn't the small mobs be capable of destroying worlds?

Moreover, the increase in attributes given through level ups weren't much, so grinding levels weren't all that beneficial either, so how could the players keep gaining strength?

As they played on, the players finally realised, it was through equipment!

They realised the game was more and more complicated as they delved further into the game. In some cases, characters were a few times stronger when they had the proper equipment!

Moreover, the chance of good equipment dropping increases with difficulty. Players got really excited when they got equipment that were orange or above, sometimes even taking screenshots. They lost the excitement the more they played, but they couldn't stop themselves from playing more.

It wouldn't feel right if they didn't grind some rare gear.

Moreover, more and more players started developing and exchanging builds and strategies based on abilities and special equipment.

"How to deal more damage", "output order", "ranking various equipment", "techniques for grinding gear" started replacing discussions like "story", "how to play", and "game quality".

The staff who doubted Chen Mo finally understood the intentions behind the design.

The players were really confident in the game, waiting for its release to give the other players a big surprise.

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Chapter 197: Chapter 196: Incredible Sales

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Many members of staff were playing Diablo too.

A few assistants were discussing as they played.

"That's weird, I thought the game wouldn't be fun when I looked at the draft. Why am I completely addicted to it now? It just has to be part of my daily routine!"

"You got that right, the ominous art style didn't stop me from playing at all, it's actually more enjoyable because of that."

"Yeah. And there aren't that many different game modes in the game, nor are there daily activities. Yet I still grind the game every single day. I'll play one level after another, multiplayer after singleplayer, I just can't stop at all!"

Zhou Hanyu was shocked too.

When he first tried the game, it did feel quite stressful, but the stress mysteriously disappeared when playing through the story.

He found that the disappearance of stress was because of the constant change in emotions of the player as a result of the changes in scenes, colour, field of view and music.

Moreover, the art style made it more satisfying to kill monsters, especially when beating bosses in scary environments followed by a large amount of drops, all the pent up stress was instantly relieved.

The more he looked into it, the more Zhou Hanyu was surprised. He didn't think a niche art style like this could be executed so well, controlling the emotions perfectly at that.

Zhou Hanyu was thoroughly impressed, all of Chen Mo's work wasn't just luck, but all skill!

Fu Guangnan said to Zhou Hanyu, "It should be released today. The success of the game will completely depend on how well the players will take it."

Zhou Hanyu nodded, "Yeah, but I'm quite confident in this."

Fu Guangnan asked, "How many copies do you think we'll sell?"

Zhou Hanyu shook his head, "No clue. But judging from investment, this game and the cinematics cost about one hundred and forty million RMB. The manager is charging one hundred and twenty-eight per copy, he'd need to sell at least 1.8 million to bread even.

Fu Guangnan was a bit worried, "He's charging quite a bit for it, and the sales target is extremely high too!"

Zou Hanyu nodded, "Yeah, all I can say is that the cost is too high! The manager sure is willing to spend his money. Who else in the country would spend one hundred million on a third person single player game? They wouldn't spend this money even if they did have it!"

Fu Guangnan said, "All I could say that he sure is courageous, all we could do is hope that it sells well. It'll greatly affect the morale of the team if our first game is dead of arrival."

Zhou Hanyu nodded, "Yeah, hopefully."

Diablo finally went live on the third of July!

There was a steady stream of information about the game since the start of the year. It started with some original artworks, settings, then cinematics, then playtesting footage...

There were also many who had their eyes on the game, in particular Warcraft players and Chen Mo's fans. No matter how much the others underestimated the game, they still hoped that Chen Mo could surprise them.

These players didn't even hesitate before buying the game on the day of its release.

Diablo used a pay per copy model at one hundred and twenty eight RMB per copy. This was quite a lot for a single player game, especially in China. Warcraft only sold for eighty-eight, whereas Wulin Legend sold for just fifty.

Of course, the players knew that Diablo was extremely high quality and a lot of money went into cinematics, so the players didn't mind spending so much money.

But other than the diehard fans, the other players were watching from the side. Some of them were even mocking them as they waited for the news of Diablo's terrible sales.

Soon, the review from the first batch of players were on the forums.

"Friends who tried out Diablo, how did it go? Is the game good?"

"There was a post on how Thunderbolt Movies' quality had only gone up..."

"...What about the others?"

"The quality of the game is surprisingly good, completely different from those ancient third person games. I can't really comment of the others, but I feel that there's a lot of details that weren't accounted for."

"That's weird, I thought this art style would've kept me away from the game, but I didn't feel that at all when I was playing. But this atmosphere... It's hard to describe."

"It fits well. The art style and story fits well with the gameplay."

"How so?"

"It's not something that can be explained in a few sentences, you should just try it out... To be honest, it's a big game, and I felt that my one hundred and twenty eight RMB was well spent."

"How does it compare to Warcraft?"

"It's a different game. If you want to compare, it does feel similar to that Warcraft RPG map: 'Holy Land'. Other than the stronger adult themes of course."

"That maps quite good. If Diablo was really able to recreate that feeling, I'm a hundred percent buying the game."

"You are underestimating Chen Mo too much! Let's put it this way, there's no comparison. Comparing Holy Land and Diablo is like comparing kindergarteners to NBA players in basketball."

"Is the difference that big? Alright, I'll try it out too!"

"I heard there's a co-op mode, I'll carry you!"

The reviews maintained well above nine as the number of sales increased.

The video game media also started publishing their articles.

"Chen Mo with another Western Fantasy Game!"

"Unique art style, hopeless world, review of Chen Mo's first RPG game"

"Fierce fighting and unexpected surprises"

"Third Person RPG exceeds industry expectations"

"Chen Mo spending big money for cinematics again! Thunderbolt Movies proud production!"

"Expert analysis: Niche theme, high quality game but potentially small player base"

"Experts say that this game will struggle to break five hundred thousand sales, is Chen Mo losing money?"

There were praises and doubts as all eyes were on Diablo's sales. As it was a singleplayer game, only the number of sales could reveal the answer to the question.

Soon, Diablo's sales in the first week were released.

Two hundred and eighty thousand sales!

This was shocking news to all the industry professionals who doubted Diablo as this was pretty close to their estimate for the first month!

But more shocking news had yet to come.

Not only did Diablo's growth not drop in the second week, it kept its momentum, selling a total of four hundred and thirty thousand sales in the second week!

Obviously many players who thought the game was hopeless finally decided to buy the game in the second week, as player opinion of the game further improved the sales.

In the end, Diablo sold 1.87 million copies in the first month!

This meant that Diablo made two hundred and forty million RMB, or one hundred and sixty-seven million RMB net for Chen Mo!

He made back his huge investment within a month.

This shocked the industry professionals yet again. They didn't think that a third-person RPG that they have always despised and dubbed 'ancient' could become an extremely popular game!

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Chapter 198: How Did it Succeed?

The number of sales of Diablo became a hot topic among industry professionals after its release.

"Have you seen Diablo's sales? It defies logic! How is it possible that it sold 1.87 million copies in the first month?"

"My goodness, 167 million RMB in profit in the first month? How is it possible, I thought third person games are ancient!"

"I don't buy it either, there wasn't anything particularly creative about the game. Moreover, it's a single player game, yet it wasn't even as rich in content as online games!"

"And the players are rating it highly!"

"Was it because of the quality of the game?"

"Regardless of the quality of the game, if the game wasn't good, the reviews wouldn't be that great. But the problem is that there were many copies, and really good reviews!"

"We have to look into it deeper, there must be something we are missing."

Most designers were really troubled by this.

Even though CHen Mo made a record-breaking three hundred and seventy million RMB in a month using Onmyoji, the revenue on Diablo was on a completely different level.

The graphics of Onmyoji trumps over every other mobile game on the market, and there were significant changes in the gameplay too, utilizing the characteristics of a pay to win game to the fullest.

Everybody was shocked at Onmyoji's results when compared to the many games that came before it, but they still could make sense of it by looking deeper into it.

But Diablo was different as nobody expected anything from it before it started selling. Even Chen Mo's hardcore fans couldn't think of any reason why the game would perform well other than a blind trust.

It was only when the sales were released that these designers released their huge mistakes, thinking that there must be something special that they didn't notice.

At the same time the designers were investigating Diablo's success, there was a lot of celebration on various forums.

Many of Chen Mo's fans were trying to get doubters to fulfil their bets.

"You said you would eat your monitor, get to it now."

"There's also the ones who said they would eat their USB drives, mice, and coffee mugs. Bon appetit."

"He sold 1.87 million copies in the first month, how many copies did you guys say he would sell before? Can't be over eight hundred thousand?"

"Sorry, but us Chen Mo fans can do whatever we want."

"Hmm? This thread is dying. We can't let it die. Bump."

"Bump."

"Bonk."

"Boop."

"You guys are horrible for kicking them when they are down, I'll kick them too."

From various discussion forums to trending topics, everything was related to Diablo.

There were even two trending topics on Weibo related to Diablo, "Diablo" and "Diablo's explosive sales".

This hack and slash game was now in the eyes in many, gaining respect from designers who underestimated it using its near perfect results.

Many RPG designers in large companies like Emperor Dynasty Entertainment and Zen Entertainment were holding meetings to investigate Diablo's success.

Most attendees were A-grade PC RPG designers. They were all confused at how something as ancient as a third person RPG game could achieve so much success?

Hadn't that genre been retired ages ago? Why would they play games like these when there are first person MMORPGs?

In Zen Entertainment headquarters, a meeting was held, hosted by Yao Yu.

Yao Yu had the most experience among them, with Tale of the Sword and Legend of the Sword under his belt. He had strong knowledge in MMORPGs and single player RPGs, and was one of the best in terms of story writing.

Yao Yu also started playing Diablo after the sales for its first week was released, and have already managed to figure out Diablo's success.

Yao Yu started sharing his analysis with the other attending designers.

"After looking deeper into Diablo, I think there was one point that we all neglected, 'satisfaction'.

"I don't know if you realised, but the players often have to face hundreds of monsters in the game, and in some of the levels, they could fill up the entire screen. And as the players slash through these mobs, they get satisfaction that surpasses most MMORPGs through the damage numbers floating on the screen, as well as the visual and sound effects."

The other designers nodded in agreement.

"Yes, this is about the same as that RPG map in Warcraft. It's practically brainless, but it's really effective.

"It's mainly because mainstream RPGs are all online games. As a result of balancing requirements, the numbers in the game aren't all that flexible.

"Is that why Chen Mo made a singleplayer game?

"That means he thought of making a hack and slash game from the start?

"It's not just that. I've tried it out in Legend of the Sword and I was able to recreate a similar feeling through adjusting some numbers, but it was still lacking compared to Diablo.

"I've narrowed it down to three main points.

"First, Legend of the Sword is based on lock-on abilities, and most of them are single target abilities. In order to recreate that same satisfaction, the abilities should not lock-on.

"Second, Legend of the Sword was comparatively comfortable with a bright art style, the monsters weren't scary either, so the players would get bored easily after killing the same monster a couple times.

"Third, there is a limit to how many monsters can be on the screen in a first person game like Legend of the Sword. For example, the screen becomes really cluttered when there are over one hundred mobs on the screen, making it difficult to select targets and move.

"Perhaps it's better in VR, but it also introduces more problems. The biggest problem is that hack and slash games like these must be single player. Based on Diablo's cost of around one hundred and seventy million, it would cost around a billion to make a VR game. How many companies are confident to be able to recuperate such a huge cost in a singleplayer VR game?"

The other designers looked at one another before reaching a conclusion.

"That means we'd have to make changes to these three points to make a satisfying hack and slash experience?"

"Make abilities to not lock on, make the art style more gloomy, and change it to third person?"

"Isn't that what Diablo's doing?!"

"That means... Chen Mo thought of it from the start?!"

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Chapter 199: Analysis of Diablo

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

The industry professionals reached a stunning conclusion from all their analysis.

If they wanted to make the most satisfying hack and slash experience, the way Diablo did it was absolutely the best way.

Third person, singleplayer, abilities that don't lock on, and a dark gloomy artstyle. The experience would be significantly worse with any of these points missing.

That means that Chen Mo didn't make a third person game because of his lack of abilities, but he thought of it from the start. He wanted to make a game that focused on hacking and slashing to fill the gap in the market.

The viewers finally understood how Diablo managed to achieve this number of sales after their analysis. It was a groundbreaking, unique game with extremely high quality graphics and story. It'd be weird if it didn't sell well.

As they let out their collective sigh, there was only one question left to answer.

What was the lifespan of a hack and slash game like this? Would the players get sick of it pretty early on?

-On Diablo's official forums.-

"Help, which one of these equipment is better? Which one should I equip?"

"Anybody understand Diablo's story? Could someone gather all the information in the game regarding the settings and provide us with some analysis?"

"How much health should I have at higher difficulties?"

"I just started playing a week ago but I'm completely addicted. Anyone wanna add me and play together?"

"How should I utilize this orange piece of equipment?"

"Best areas for high quality drops, from personal experience."

Other than the respective posts about the story and gameplay, most of the other posts were about equipment and builds. Most of the players have reached the last stage of the 'donut principle' to become hardcore players.

These players were encouraging new players to join them too.

"I recently saw Diablo's promotional cinematic. I really like games like these as I can't handle 3D games. I'd like to ask if the game is just about killing mobs? Isn't that boring?"

"Yes it's only killing mobs, but it's not boring at all. As for why it's not boring... I don't know either, but you'll know after you try it."

"Yes, it's just grinding, and it's enough to last you a month."

"The later stages of the game are mainly about figuring out builds for characters as well as playing at higher difficulties. The game is extremely rich in this aspect. If you are aiming for the highest difficulty, this game will last you the rest of your life."

"Gather round, let's welcome the new guy! Once you're max level I'll help you grind equipment and get a decent build!"

Various videogame media were releasing articles about how Diablo succeeded.

"The reasoning being the attraction of hack and slash games."

"Niche audience at first glance, but immensely popular."

"The secret behind Diablo's huge sales."

"How did the severely underestimated Diablo launch its counterattack?"

"The art of Diablo's numbers."

"Chen Mo's first RPG game gains huge success."

There are even special articles published by the game media to analyze the entire plot structure and deep cultural connotations of Diablo.

"The charm of Diablo's story comes from its perfect representation of a world, a cold world filled with burning fires of hell and hopelessness.

"In the Fields of Misery, the farmer clung to the remains of his dead wife, insisting that she was just ill and resting.

"In the city of Caldeum, servants who fell to death as they were sentenced by the emperor.

"In Bastion's Keep, filled with soldiers you can't all save from Archangels.

"There are also corrupted fallen angels you can't save in the High Heavens.

"There are also the scenes that are always pitch black, with the only two lit scenes being the hopeless desert and the corrupted High Heavens. The world lived in the shadow of the Demon Lord, from the start to finish.

"We all know that Leoric became the Skeleton King after he lost his mind. During the process of defeating him, you will gather numerous sources of information, and understand his hopelessness and madness in the days before his death through his diary entries.

"There are also the diaries and letters collected on your path. Each of them reveal a tiny bit of the world.

"The diaries filled with hopelessness written by the criminals in the Cellar of the Damned before they turned into Ravenous Dead, Captain Haile who refused to back down after his army was wiped out, and the book that was dropped into cellars that drove prisoners to consume one another...

"This is a world filled with horror and hopelessness. You take up the role of being the saviour, killing thousand upon thousands of monsters, yet not making any changes to the world.

"This is a story about hopelessness, yet it manages to keep all of us immersed. This was probably the most attractive part of Diablo."

There were also articles analysing the hack and slash aspect of the game as a groundbreaking discovery to RPG games.

"A significant advantage of Diablo is the efficient use of fragmented time.

"This is an adventure game that supports up to four players. You can join and leave anything during the adventure. If you wanted to, you could play no more than ten minutes per session.

"Therefore, although it looks like a boring single player game, it's actually a incredibly friendly game for casual players.

"Moreover, Diablo's unique style allows it to differentiate itself from the other RPG games on the market.

"In MMORPGs, players maintain a close relationship as they are required to interact with one another frequently, participating in various events. This wasn't a huge concern in Diablo.

"There wasn't a worry of fatiguing from 3D games or a long time investment. You could play a bit of Diablo if you could spare ten or so minutes in your day. And no matter how you spend that ten minutes, you are bound to discover your next objective. It could be a certain equipment or a certain difficulty, but there's always a target to aim for.

"This was a game that isn't all that complicated, and all the credit for its strong life goes to simple hacking and slashing. The view we have on RPG games that we've had for so long.

"By going off script yet again, Chen Mo tells us that you can make RPG games in a different way. Third person RPG games aren't out of style, but just misunderstood.

"No matter how well it sells, it is still one of the best RPG games just from its unique style, and could even pave the way for other similar games!"

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Chapter 200: Celebratory Dinner

At a high class restaurant in the vicinity of the experience store.

The members of staff that worried if the game could even break even could finally relax after seeing Diablo's sales.

It was a proper big sale.

It was only the first month, the sales might be able to maintain this momentum for another two to three months. By that time, Diablo could easily achieve five or six million sales to become a high quality and popular game like Warcraft.

Although the scary art style did prevent a small amount of players from playing, since Diablo was a highly fragmented RPG game that was also high quality, it wasn't too difficult for it to sell more copies than Warcraft.

Chen Mo didn't cheap out of this celebration feast, getting his assistant Lin Xiao to book everyone a meal at a restaurant that charged around six hundred RMB per person.

Chen Mo didn't care about customs like these as his relationship with Su Jinyu, Zheng Hongxi and the others was closer to friends than employee and employer. Moreover, Chen Mo wasn't a big fan of going out.

But now that the team was larger, he should follow the customs of a serious company.

Of course he didn't need to have rules upon rules like certain departments. This gathering was somewhere between a gathering for friends and a business meal, focusing on celebration. The staff were free to drink if they desired.

Chen Mo lifted his pint, "I'd like to thank everyone for their hard work in the past six months. Diablo selling 1.87 copies is a fantastic result, all thanks to your hard work and corporations. This is to everyone here, cheers!"

Everyone lifted their drinks in the air too.

"Cheers to you, manager."

"Congrats for the sales, manager."

"It's all thanks to your creativity!"

"Yeah, we're just along for the ride supporting the manager."

"Cheers!"

Everyone was having fun and was happy for the huge sales as they all got bonuses and something noteworthy to add to their resumes, and a cool story to tell.

Zou Hanyu lifted his cup and said to Chen Mo, "This is for you, manager. I thought this was a company like the other ones I've worked at. But I've only just realised that this company is different from the others. I'm surprised that I was able to learn something working here. I never thought a game with an art style like Diablo could be successful. I'm thoroughly impressed."

Chen Mo lifted his cup too, "You say that, but it's only because of how hard everyone worked. I've only provided the overall concept for the art style and music, the rest of which were finished by you and Guangnan. There's no way this came would be nearly as popular if anyone here was missing. There's no need to restrain yourself, eat to heart's content!"

Chen Mo was quite happy too as Diablo went through a lot of trouble to release in China. Although this game made a record breaking thirty million sales internationally, it didn't do well in the Chinese market.

Chen Mo wasn't even sure if this game would pass the reviews or if the players would be accepting of it. Judging from the sales, there was no need for his worries as this game was more than enough to support his first step into RPG games.

"Manager, it's been about a month, and the first batch of players are starting to get bored of Diablo, should we make some changes?" asked Zheng Hongxi.

Zhao Yunting from operations replied, "I don't think so, we are selling copies of the game after all. It's pretty good if the players were able to play it for a whole month, do they expect to play it for the rest of their lives?"

"That means you don't understand the manager well enough. Just look at Plants vs Zombies and Warcraft, they are both single player games, but which one of those aren't suited to be played for a long time? The manager will release an update or two to extend the lifespan of the game," said Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo laughed, "Goldfish is right, there's an update and a DLC."

Qian Kun clapped, "Alright, let's sell another two million copies of the DLC!"

"I'll give you guys more details tomorrow on the updates. In short, there are two aims, developing a DLC which will have two new classes, seasons and competitive mode, and an expert mode. The other is a small game."

Su Jinyu asked, "We'll work on two games at the same time?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yes. As we have more helping hands now, DLC could be handled by the greater half of us. It's not in a hurry, I expect it to be done in around three months. The others will work on a smaller game."

"Manager, I think we should stick with bigger games. Think about it, bigger games make more money and improve our name. Why should we spend our time on smaller games," asked Qian Kun.

"It's not that simple," replied Chen Mo,"There are advantages to both big and small games. You could have the best of the best every day, but you'd get bored of it eventually. The smaller game is to help stimulate our minds."

Zhou Hanyu said, "Sure, we'll do that if that's what you've decided. We can't go wrong following in your footsteps."

Fu Guangnan was speechless, "Calm down with the praises!"

Chen Mo laughed, "Don't be so surprised. I've already mentioned it before, I look at tangible things so these praises don't affect me too much. The most important thing is that the games are done well, everything else are just minor details.

"When I promised everyone that we'll be making money together, it wasn't an empty promise, but it's not just about making money. I hope to make some meaningful smaller games to give the players some inspiration. I hope everyone here thinks the same. Making money is just something that happens along the way, our primary aim is to make good games, understood?"

"Yes!"

-In the office the next day.-

Everyone was in the meeting room waiting for Chen Mo to go through the plans for the next stage.

Chen Mo mentioned in the dinner yesterday, there will be two different projects happening in parallel, one will be an update for Diablo, the other was a new game.

The words Diablo: Reaper of Souls appeared on the projector.

"This new update is called Reaper of Souls. There will be two new classes, some new story elements as well as new game modes like a competitive season and expert mode.

"It'll go through both of them now."

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 201 - New Version and New Game - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 201 - New Version and New Game Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 201: New Version and New Game

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Chen Mo started going over the basics for the new version.

"The new version will be called Reaper of Souls. The biggest update are the two new classes, Crusader and Necromancer. There will also be some more elements added to the story, the main character will enter the Pandemonium to battle the final boss.

"There will be more side quests for Covetous Shen, Haedrig Eamon, and the three followers.

"Of course, the story is just to supplement the content of the update, the main updates aren't story updates.

"There will also be new mechanics in the game, including Transmogrification, Paragon Levels, and Expert mode. The information in the concept draft should be enough for you guys to work from as it's quite simple.

"The key point is the two game modes that will increase the lifespan of the game. I estimate that this should extend it by one or two years.

"About Challenge Rift and Seasons.

"Challenge Rift is a gamemode designed to help players get rare equipment.

"The players probably don't care much about the story when they reach this stage, probably caring more about grinding rare items. It won't matter where they grind the items as we'll provide time a shortcut through Challenge Rift.

"The competitive seasons are equivalent to ranked ladder. However, the way of climbing the ladder is different from Warcraft. In this game, older players have a significant advantage over newer players, which is why players will have to start from scratch at the start of every season.

"Each season should last anywhere from three to six months, we can freely adjust that according to how the players are doing.

"That's about it, any questions?"

Chen Mo checked their reactions after going through the overview.

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They all looked at one another. Evidently, most cared more about the new story and classes than the Challenge Rift and Ranked Seasons.

"Uhh manager, obviously adding new story and classes are a must, but I'm doubtful if the Challenge Rift and ranked seasons could extend the lifespan of the game. I thought you would make an editor in games like Plants vs Zombies and Warcraft," asked Su Jinyu.

Everyone else nodded along, they clearly had the same thought as Su Jinyu, but was too embarrassed to bring it up themselves.

Chen Mo laughed, "It's not the same. The core of the enjoyment of Diablo somes from hacking and slashing. Moreover, the maps are all randomly generated, even if we allow players to add assets, they wouldn't be able to make many meaningful additions.

"Why are the players getting bored? Because they don't have a goal anymore.

"In other words, players were happily grinding away because they weren't sick of the game yet. But for the players that got the few key equipment but have no other goals in mind, they quit the game because they aren't sure what to do next.

"The competitive seasons are there to create competition, to allow players to try and compete against one another and to introduce a goal for the players. Challenge Rift on the other hand is more of an aid to reduce the more repetitive aspects of grinding, making the grinding process less offensive.

"Is there something like the map editors in Warcraft to extend the lifespan of Diablo indefinitely? Unfortunately not. It's because this is a hack and slash game, and we have to take care of any remaining hardcore players.

"Are there any other questions?

They were still doubtful, but the majority of them understood where Chen Mo was coming from.

Nobody was going to challenge Chen Mo's thought process as he was the boss, and it was fine as long as the boss knew what they were doing.

Chen Mo continued as they seemed to have understood the problem.

Design document for Don't Starve.

There was an incredibly simple concept art at the start of the document featuring a small pale man with messy hair sitting next to a campfire in the woods among trees, bushes and angry spiders.

The moon on the top right had the words Don't Starve ominously written on it.

Everybody was confused to see this name and concept art.

"Don't Starve? Like don't starve to death?"

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"That concept art also looks really weird, it looks like an indie game."

"Yeah, it doesn't look like it's from a big company. From the looks of it, it's going to have a niche audience."

"Is the manager done making money?"

"Let's see what he has to say."

Everyone was waiting on Chen Mo's explanation.

"First, it's just as you guessed. This game is reminiscent of indie games. As I said before, this game will serve as a practice to get everyone in the mod. It shouldn't be too hard.

"I'll quickly go over the gameplay. It's a survival game. The settings on this game are quite free, as science, magic, and weird monsters coexist in this world. Within reason of course.

"The only aim of the game is to survive, similar to survival mode of some other games. The difference is that we'll provide an incredibly rich equipment system. The players can collect rocks and branches around the map, craft tools, and finally create their own base, from nothing to everything.

"You could view it as a sandbox game.

"Of course, as a survival game, the main character should face various dangers at all times, including darkness, weather, and monsters. The players will die if they don't pay attention.

"We'll need to recreate a situation where the player is abandoned alone in the wilderness. They could die from cold or starvation, and also survive long into the game.

"That's the main gist of it, any questions?"

Chen Mo looked around.

Su Jinyu said, "I think it'll be a good game, I'm quite interested in it."

Qian Kun scowled, "Manager, I don't quite understand the selling point of the game. Although it sounds like a really cool game, I think it'll be really niche and won't sell many copies."

"There's no point in trying to estimate the number of sales before the game is made. The driving force of the game is to survive. The players will try their hardest to not die, and even be able to live more and more comfortably," answered Chen Mo.

"The desire to live, and exploring and gathering in order to do so is a very fun thing for the players to go through.

"It doesn't matter how popular or niche it will be.. You guys can treat this as a fun exercise and enjoy the process."

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Chapter 202: Chapter 201: Diablo in VR?

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Everyone started working on their tasks after learning about Diablo's new update and the design concept for Don't starve.

Chen Mo was quite busy as he had to focus on Diablo as he had to go through resources for new areas, new classes and the new story.

Most of the work for Diablo was managed by Zheng Hongxi and Qian Kun, whereas Su Jinyu led another group of employees to work on Don't Starve.

Diablo 3 didn't do well when it was just released and lost a lot of its players in a short amount of time. Especially with huge shoes left behind by Diablo 2 to fill, many players of Diablo 2 didn't recognise Diablo 3 as a sequel.

This situation was only amended on the release of Reaper of Souls.

Before this update, Diablo 3 had a 41% rating on Metacritic, rising up to 72% after the update.

After the update, the reviews of Diablo 3 increased dramatically, it could even be said that they were completely different games before and after the update.

And the way they saved the game were points Chen Mo pointed out previously.

Including a ranked ladder, removing limits for Paragon Levels, removal of Auction House, adding new maps, new playstyles, better differentiation between various difficulties, adding a competitive season...

These changes allowed players to find fun in Diablo 3, dragging it from the edge of death.

Although Chen Mo made many changes to Diablo 3 allowing it to be artistically closer to Diablo 3, this game still possessed a risk of a shortened lifespan.

The key factor was the change in the players' tastes. Diablo 2 had a classic design that paved the way for many other games, but the fact that there wasn't much competition then and and the nostalgia factor should also be taken into consideration.

Even if a remastered version of Diablo 2 that was completely faithful to the original was released, it probably wouldn't be successful as the market was now completely different.

After the team for Diablo 2 left Blizzard, they made Torchlight, and games like Grim Dawn were also seen on steam.

However, no matter if it was a game made by the original team Torchlight, or a very 'Diablo' Grim Dawn, they never came close to Diablo 3's success.

The reasons were complicated, but the changing times certainly played a big role. You can't do the same thing over and over again as times changed.

Reaper of Souls was the most successful third person RPG that stemmed for the harsh lesson Blizzard learnt. Therefore, Chen Mo wanted to take some elements from Reaper of Souls to extend Diablo's lifespan.

As for Don't Starve.

This was similar to Lifeline, Chen Mo hoped that Su Jinyu and the others will get some enjoyment in the process of making don't starve and learn a few lessons from it.

Which was why Chen Mo didn't provide too many ideas, instead challenging them by having them think about the settings that should be in the game.

In Chen Mo's previous life, Don't Starve was an indie game, but definitely wasn't niche.

The multiplayer version of Don't Starve sold nearly five million copies on steam. And when it was included on Tencent Gaming Platform, it broke one hundred thousand sales in the first two weeks, selling five million copies in the first month.

There was no question for Don't Starve Charm as a high quality single player game. Chen Mo also wanted to use this opportunity to test the acceptance of the players of this world towards open world and sandbox games, as well as providing his employees something to do.

Chen Mo was also working on releasing Diablo overseas while he worked on the update for Diablo and Don't Starve.

Having worked together for Warcraft, the representative from Meteorite Technology didn't try to make any changes to the pricing, reaching an agreement to release Diablo overseas in no time.

With a success story like Warcraft in the past and an incredible result of Diablo in China, Meteorite Technology didn't have much to worry about.

The strategy was the same as before, releasing it worldwide at the same time.

Everything went smoothly with Warcraft paving the way. Chen Mo was quite hands off this time too, only asking a few questions here and there to ensure that the english version best conveys the atmosphere of Diablo.

Chen Mo wasn't going to care too much about Diablo's performance overseas as even if it wasn't explosively popular, it wouldn't do half bad, focusing instead on completing Reaper of Souls.

Chen Mo received a call while he was working.

It was from Xu Xiaojun, a representative from Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's advertising department.

Chen Mo was shocked, Why was he calling?

They have previously communicated for the bet related to I Am MT, where Lin Chaoxu got Xu Xiaojun to communicate with Chen Mo directly for the promotional spot.

But the two of them have never communicated since as everyone knew that Chen Mo had strong ambitions and would naturally be an enemy of Emperor Dynasty Entertainment.

Chen Mo answered the call, "Hello?"

"Hi Mr Chen Mo," greeted Xu Xiaojun, "I've called today to discuss a potential collaboration."

"Collaboration?"

"Yes, Diablo's sales were surprising to say the least, have you thought about turning it into a VR game?"

"Not currently, if there's nothing else..."

Xu Xiaojun quickly interjected, "Hold on, please listen to our proposal. Diablo has a relatively dark and hopeless world which helps with player immersion. And when considering that the players play the role of a hero saving the world, it makes for very satisfying gameplay, which is why the game is suited for VR.

"Us at Emperor Dynasty Entertainment hope that we can collaborate to make a VR Diablo. of course, as you're the developer of the game, we'll respect your decision.

"You're probably not well equipped enough to make VR games and are probably lacking in money. We hope to arrange an S-grade videogame designer to collaborate with you to make a VR version of Diablo, how does that sound?"

Chen Mo remained silent for a few moments before replying, "I don't think it's a good idea. I'll make a VR version myself, thanks for your concern."

"Please don't be so quick in dismissing this opportunity, hello?"

Chen Mo terminated the call before Xu Xiaojun could finish his sentence.

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Chapter 203: What To Do

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

On the other side, Xu Xiaojun hesitantly hung up the phone.

In the meeting room, Lin Chaoxu asked, "He declined?"

Xu Xiaojun nodded, "Yeah, and he was pretty firm on that too."

Lin Chaoxu wasn't surprised, "It's expected. A hungry designer like him wouldn't give up his games so easily."

In the meeting room, Lin Chaoxu, Xu Xiaojun, and a few other designers from Emperor Dynasty Entertainment were in a meeting. Yan Zhenyuan was also there too.

"I think Chen Mo has big plans for this world. HE probably plans to turn the world into something of the level of Warcraft," said Yan Zhenyuan.

Lin Chaoxu leaned back on his chair, "Now that we're here, we can throw the plan of cooperating with Chen Mo into the bin. Let's think of a plan B."

Yan Zhenyuan smiled, "What plan B, we can only do it from the ground up."

Lin Chaoxu looked at him, "How confident are you?"

Yan Zhenyuan replied after a pause, "Seventy percent."

Lin Chaoxu nodded, "That's enough. Based on his current abilities, he probably can't turn Diablo into a VR game. Even the people at Zen Entertainment start at the same time we do, they won't have much of an advantage either."

"As long as Chen Mo doesn't do something weird, there shouldn't be any big bumps. Although he's just an A-grade designer, he's been incredibly successful, he'd always manage to find some weird perspective on games, giving new life to genres that we thought were done for."

Lin Chaoxu laughed, "Are you afraid of him too, Mr Yan?"

Yan Zhenyuan shook his head, "I'm not. But I'm not some dunce liek Qin Xiao, you still have to give some respect to genius video game designers like him.

"Especially one that can start new genres, they'd always have their own ideas and understanding. It's easy to get into a rough spot if you're just copying without understanding."

Lin Chaoxu asked, "Then do you have plans for the new game?"

Yan Zhenyuan gave it some thought, "Actually, we learnt from Diablo that there's a huge demand for satisfying games, especially RPGs. There are very few games that are as satisfying as Diablo, so there's a huge gap in the market.

"If we want to develop a similar game, there are two paths we can take.

"First is a PC game, but what we can do will be incredibly restricted. We really can only make a third person game, so no matter what we do, it'll be a game that 'copied' Diablo.

Lin Chaoxu nodded, "Yeah, that's not going to work."

Yan Zhenyuan continued, "So I think it's best to make a VR game. We can try to create a similar satisfying feeling in a VR setting.

"It probably would turn out quite well as VR games don't have the same problem with field of view and at the same time, it'll be even more scary. If we could create the essence of Diablo, it'll sell really well too."

Lin Chaoxu nodded, "Then what about the profit model? Do you plan to sell a single player game by copy or make it multiplayer?"

Yan Zhenyuan replied after a few moments, "There are a lot of risks associated with a single player game by copy. Because of how the game it set up, the later stages of the game only consist of killing mobs repeatedly. It's hard to say if it'll work if it was on VR.

"An online game would be the safer choice, but because it's a game that's mainly about killing mobs, we can't have groups larger than five. Otherwise, it'll be a big group against another big group, completely ruining the atmosphere of the game.

"Therefore, I think that we should work with what Diablo has, have a single player mode or up to a group of five. Moreover, we can allow players to interact in towns and allow them to trade. Chasing good equipment will be the driving force for playing long term."

Lin Chaoxu nodded, "Yep, that's what I think too. I'll leave that to you. We'll direct more funds for this project, so you don't need to hold back on anything."

Yan Zhenyuan nodded, "Understood."

So far in Emperor Dynasty Entertainment, Qiu Jiang was working on Moon Lord's Prophecy, Qin Xiao was working on Wolf Soul. These were the best products Emperor Dynasty Entertainment had to offer, so the two of them couldn't take any time out of their schedule.

Yan Zhenyuan on the VR games Yan Zhenyuan had developed earlier were now more or less stable, and possibly even on the decline. Which was why Lin Chaoxu thought it'd be a good idea to have Yan Zhenyuan to work on a new VR project.

Coincidentally, Diablo provided some inspiration.

Of course, converting a third person PC game like Diablo into a VR game has its challenges. It was more or less making a new game from scratch.

That's why Lin Chaoxuo wanted to see if Chen Mo was willing to collaborate with Yan Zhenyuan to greatly reduce the risk. Although it was extremely unlikely that Chen Mo would agree, it was worth a ask anyways.

In the end, Chen Mo declined as expected.

So there was nothing Lin Chaoxu could do but entrust all of this onto Yan Zhenyuan.

Lin Chaoxu absolutely trusts Yasn Zhenyuan with his abilities.

Among the most prestigious S-grade video game designers Lin Chaoxu had under him, Qin Xiao always preferred to work alone but always delivered, Qiu Jiang was the most flexible with many great ideas, Yan Zhenyuan on the other hand was well balanced. His worst games would still fetch some profit and big failures were never on his agenda.

Therefore, Lin Chaoxu felt that it would be best for Yan Zhenyuan to handle this.

-Inside the experience store.-

Chen Mo received a message while he was working.

Qiu Jiang: "I heard Yan is working on a VR game similar to Diablo, take care."

Chen Mo was confused, checking out the message twice to confirm that it was from Qiu Jiang.

What is this insider information?

Chen Mo replied, "Whose side are you on?"

Qiu Jiang replied, "Neither, I'm just reminding you to make some preparations. I wouldn't want you to have nothing in retaliation as Yan beats you into the ground. That'll be so lame."

"So you just want to see us tear at each other's throats then. What's wrong with you."

"I'm just hungry for some drama, what's wrong with that?"

The corner of Chen Mo's mouth twitches, "I knew about it when Xu Xiao called me earlier. You guys at Emperor Dynasty wanted to copy it when you saw that the game was doing well. I would've known that without you telling me."

"Alright, I'm just here to remind you. You can play the game however you want, just don't get stomped into the ground by Yan. He'd probably take a year to develop the game, I'm rooting for you." replied Qiu Jiang.

Chen Mo was speechless as he put his phone away, What's Qiu Jiang trying to start!

Though Qiu Jiang's message wasn't completely useless. Now he knew that the VR game would take at least a year, meaning that it'd be until August next month before it was even playable.

What could Chen Mo do?

Spend a year making a VR game himself to release it at the same time as Yan Zhenyuan?

That's not realistic in such a short time frame as Chen Mo had no experience with VR games.

Moreover, Chen Mo already set down his plans and could change it as he does fit.

"Think, what's my next step?"

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Chapter 204: Chapter 203: Brainstorm

Su Jinyu and a few other staff members were brainstorming in the meeting room, trying to figure out a way to make Don't Starve fun.

"According to the manager's hint, it's a survival game right? So we should build the game around surviving.

"There should be two main factors in play: things that help with survival and things that harm the players.

"What kind of resources would there be and what kind of negative factors are there? Thinking back to the real worlds, weather, temperature, monsters, food... These could all be included in the game.

"That means the source of enjoyment for this game is to have the players control a character to survive in a completely foreign world. They'll need to explore the map for resources and use them to help them ward off the negative factors.

"We have the outlines of this game at this point. The game seems quite fun judging by the core gameplay.

"Next will be the overall design of the game. The players will need a few statistics to judge how well they are surviving. A simple example would be health.

"The players' health would decrease when they are attacked, get frozen or burned for example, and the game will end when their health reaches zero.

"What else? The game is called Don't Starve, so obviously the manager wants us to integrate a food value into the game. The players must search for food and would be worse off if they don't take care of it. It could even decrease move speed or something.

"From the looks of it, our target is in sight.

"But there are still flaws. There feels to be something missing outside of these two factors.

"Yeah, these two factors feel a bit lack-lustre. For example, rain, snow, hail, or drought, affects humans in real life, but how do we do that in game? Do the players take damage when it rains? Or do we reduce their food bar when it rains? That doesn't really make sense.

"Moreover, if there only two factors, the players would feel like they are playing a videogame character instead of a person which ruins the immersion."

"Yeah, it feels like there's a missing factor..."

Chen Mo walked in as they were thinking.

"The other attribute should be sanity," said Chen Mo.

This caught Su Jinyu's attention, "Sanity? To represent how the players are doing mentally?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Bad weather or other terrible events will decrease the players' sanity. Similarly, they can increase it with certain items.

"When their sanity reaches zero, the character becomes insane. They'll experience hallucinations and the world world would look different, and shadow creatures will start attacking the player.

"The players will recover a certain amount of sanity after killing the shadow creatures. On the other hand, the game ends if the players are killed by them."

Su Jinyu gave it some thought, "That's a great idea. Hunger, health, and sanity combined would be a great way to describe the state of the character. You sure are good, manager."

Chen Mo laughed, "It's nothing, you guys will figure it out eventually. This is more or less a must in a game like this."

Su Jinyu said, "Manager, you should brainstorm with us. I realised that there are many interesting aspects for a game like Diablo Starve. If we properly develop the game, it'll be a great one!"

Chen Mo rolled his eyes, "Of course, why would I get you to develop a game that didn't have potential. You guys will have to hand in your homework without my help. This is for you guys to gain new perspectives, you can't expect me to hold your hands the entire way."

Su Jinyu pouted, "Fine..."

Chen Mo casually changed the topic, calmly saying, "Emperor Dynasty Entertainment is working on a VR Diablo."

Su Jinyu was shocked, exclaiming, "Huh? Since when? What are we going to do? Why aren't you worried at all?"

Chen Mo leaned back into his chair, "Why should I be worried? They're working on a VR game, there's not much I can do there."

Su Jinyu quickly followed up, "What should we do? And what's wrong with Emperor Dynasty Entertainment copying us!"

Chen Mo asked her to calm down, "Relax, it's fine. It's hard to tell if Diablo could be successfully made into a VR game. It might take a long time to amend some points that aren't suitable to be copied. It'd take at least a year for it to finish."

"We should pick up our pace then, manager. We'll make a simple VR game in half a year to test the waters, and use the other half of the year to make Diablo into a VR game!"

Chen Mo was speechless, "You're going too far. We can't do that in such a small time frame. There's no need to worry, I'm just using it as a reminder to make sure Don't Starve goes smoothly without any delays. I want to use it to test some player reactions.

"I have plans for what games to make in the future, at most I'll have to make a few minor adjustments. It's not worth it to mess up all our plans just to go head to head against Emperor Dynasty Entertainment.

"I'm planning to release Don't Starve in two months, meaning the end of September. Of course, as it's going to be the first version, we'll need to push updates based on player feedback, and release mods for the players to pick from.

"Reaper of Souls should be done in three months with an extra three weeks in testing, meaning it'll be released mid-November. We'll set Diablo aside after that's done."

"We should have plenty of player feedback by November. By then, it'll be all hands on deck to make a VR game to try and compete against Emperor Dynasty Entertainment."

"Alright!" Su Jinyu said clapping, "I'll try and move it along as fast as possible to produce a demo earlier for discussion."

Chen Mo nodded, "Sure, but you don't have to be in such a hurry. Two months is plenty, make sure the quality is up to par."

There was no need for going over Don't Starve's success. No matter sales or the brand, it was considered a classic indie game.

Chen Mo chose this game as practice for the others not only to help them be more creative, but to also test the players' acceptance of sandbox games.

Sandbox games usually have large maps with many different mechanics and a high degree of freedom with a lot of room for creativity. Creativity is a core element for games like these, allowing players to achieve a goal using resources provided in game.

There are games that give players a lot of freedom in this world, but in Chen Mo's eyes, these weren't particularly successful sandbox games.

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Chapter 205: Chapter 204: Don't Starve and Sandbox Games

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

In this world, most sandbox games are done by overseas developers. Take Earth Online for example, allowing players to work, buy cards and houses, and experience different careers in game. This was one of the games that provided players with a high degree of freedom.

However, it wasn't truly a sandbox game.

Sandbox games had two main features, rich content, and allowing players to create freely. Although Earth Online was a content rich game, the game still operated under the restrictions of the designer as they weren't allowed to make much if at all.

It should be emphasised that the ability to create is a core factor in sandbox games, meaning the players could create whatever they want through resources provided by the game.

Games that didn't fulfil this aspect couldn't be considered a true sandbox game.

Of course, there were a few products experimenting with this aspect done by overseas developers, such as allowing players to choose whichever characters they want to play, or what whichever car or house they wanted. But these were all part of the original game and were added to give the players a choice and wasn't a core aspect of the game.

Therefore, Chen Mo wanted to use Don't Starve to test the reactions of players to a game like this. It if turned out to be successful, the way to his first VR game would be decided.

Of course, another key factor was that Don't Starve was relatively easier to make compared to other sandbox games.

In Chen Mo's previous world, the first version of Don't Starve was completed by three developers in eight hours. Obviously this was a primitive demo version.

The complete version took over a year, but most of this time was spent on testing and figuring things out as well as finding the identity of the game.

For example, Don't Starve's team had gone through intense discussions, some thought that because it was a survival game, allowing the players to become stronger and stronger as they progressed through the game while others thought that because it was a survival game, the players should lose everything upon death.

After the intense discussion, they decided on the latter.

This game also had a simple yet unique art style. Players and monsters only had four directions with simple animations.

The only thing that Chen Mo found troublesome was the difficulty settings of the game. However, with the help of Memory Playback Potions and the collective brain of his staff, it wasn't hard to make a game similar to the level of the original after ensuring that they were heading in the correct direction.

Chen Mo planned to make three modes: Survival, Adventure and Co-op. The first two shouldn't need any introductions, whereas co-op would allow players to play and experience the game together.

To be frank, co-op also happened to be the most popular mode.

The core of the game was clear, allowing players to explore and gather resources, craft various items, and try their hardest to survive as long as possible.

The basics of the game included but are not limited to: Terrain generation, attributes and usage of different items, differences in attributes for different characters, monster respawn rates, as well seasons and environment.

The map was also incredibly rich in content as there were various different biomes including plains, swamp, meadows, mines, forest, caves... different biomes had different features as well as different mobs.

At the start of the game, the system will generate maps according to a seed. The maps could greatly differ from one run to the next to ensure that the player experiences something different every time.

Moreover, the game also had seasons as a core part of the game.

During spring, rain becomes more common and plants grow faster.

In summer, plants may spontaneously combust and the players would heat up quickly, causing them to overheat.

And during winter, plants grow slower and the players may freeze.

Seasons as well as various other factors combine to pose a great threat to the players as they are forced to prepare for the next season to prevent great losses.

After the foundations of the world are laid down, they'd continuously add to the world to make it a rich, large, and complex world.

Chen Mo planned to include nine playable characters in the first version, including Wilson, Willow, Wendy, Wolfgang, WX-78, Wes, Wickerbottom, Woody, and Maxwell.

Certain requirements had to be met before some of these characters could be unlocked. They also have different abilities. For example, Willow the firestarter is unlocked after surviving nine days, with the ability to start fires as she wished while being immune to fire damage.

The monsters in this game could be split into four main categories: humanoids, animals, weird beings, and artificial intelligence, each with their own quirks.

Many humanoids possess a certain intelligence and could be bribed compared to animal based monsters. Different monsters drop different items when killed, some could be turned into equipment, others can be turned into food.

Don't Starve also had a rich equipment system, including things that are used day to day (light sources or used for gathering), consumables (foods or ingredients), and weaponry (weapons, armour, traps).

Moreover, some items can be further processed. Food that goes bad quickly can be placed on drying racks, campfires, or crockpots to be processed further to extend their lifespan.

Of course, as a sandbox game, a huge part of the enjoyment comes from player developed mods and allowing it to become part of the game.

These mods are usually present in game to allow players to pick and choose, and obviously would have different effects. Mods can provide statistics, reduce the difficulty of the game, while other mods add more content.

With the inclusion of mods, the player can change the difficulty of the game as they wish while increasing the amount of playable content. For example, new players could decrease the difficulty of the game with a mod to help them live longer.

The development of Diablo: Reaper of Souls and Don't Starve were moving along swimmingly.

At the same time Diablo continued to gain popularity.

After selling a shocking 1.87 million copies in the first month, it maintained its momentum into the second month, selling 1.68 million copies, meaning Diablo raked in nearly four hundred and fifty million RMB in total.

Most of the new players still found the game fun. They are still on the path to challenging Diablo, going through on quest at a time in Nephalem as they can't stop themselves from hacking and slashing mobs.

However, other voices start to show up.

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Chapter 206: Player Opinions

There were many new posts in the Diablo official forums.

"Diablo is so fun, I can't stop at all. There's nothing more I want to do after I get off work than doing three hours of grinding!"

"Yeah, this game is basically made for us that get motion sickness from 3D games. The best part is that in the later stages of the game the game isn't all that taxing on the body so you could play anything. It feels so good to watch my damage numbers go up."

"Previous poster, you probably haven't played for too long right? I'm ready to quit the game."

"Quit? Why?"

"It's so boring. I was one of the first to buy the game. I finished the story in two or three days, and the rest of my time spent on this game was just grinding equipment. It was quite fun to grind equipment at the start, but the satisfaction eventually fades away."

"I agree, the post game is really monotonous. You just grind on the same four maps again and again. It was quite fun at the start, but once you more or less have everything you need, there's no point to grining more. Eventually you'd have to grind two or three days before getting something usable and you'd feel miserable if you didn't make any progress."

"But I think I could play this game for a few months just grinding away."

"That's just you. How many players truly enjoy the grinding?"

"I think you guys are on the wrong side of the discussion. This is a single player game. Have you guys played Tale of the Sword? You also only go through the story once before being done with the game. How can you expect a singleplayer game like this to last a lifetime?"

"But this is a Chen Mo game. All his previous games had a pretty long lifespan. Moreover, Diablo was really fun at the start, I expect it to last me at least a year."

"Geez, I don't know anymore. Let's see if Chen Mo will release a new update."

"I'm fine with DLCs too!"

Following that discussion, more and more posts of players giving recommendations started appearing.

"Is there some special game mode you can add to Diablo? Wasn't there a lot of daily quests in I Am MT and Onmyoji? Those games aren't that content rich but were still quite playable after a long time. Surely you could do that too in Diablo right?"

"Please stop talking, don't make Chen Mo bring those terrible mechanics from pay to win games into a high quality game."

"But it really feels meaningless to play Diablo now!"

"It's a singleplayer game, how much time do you want to spend on it."

"Stop talking, previous poster. We're here trying to think of ideas. What do you guys think about a map editor like Warcraft?"

"I don't think much about it. They are two completely different games, there's no comparison to be had!"

"I think we should give Chen Mo more time. Diablo could be considered a revolutionary game that is different from other RPGs. Chen Mo must be thinking about how to extend the lifespan of the game, we'll just have to wait. Moreover, even if he can't solve that problem, a DLC is not a bad idea."

"Geez, we'll just have to wait for DLCs."

In the experience store, Chang Xiuya was watching the ending cinematic after finally beating Diablo.

A new light was in the endless sky above the clouds.

"In the end, it was a mortal heart, had saved two worlds from ruin, and cast down the prime evil, forever.

Diablo's corpse fell in front of the camera, falling from the high heavens turning into ash before disappearing forever beneath the clouds.

The high heavens which were previously corrupted slowly regained normality as the sun shined.

"A new day breaks for both angels and men."

The corruption disappeared as they were met with sunlight.

"For mankind's greatest champion, the Nephalem, rose to confront the darkness that we in our pride would not face."

With orchestral music in the background, the camera panned to a long shot of the High Heavens, looking scared and solemn under the sun.

"My brethren, I will take my place among you once again, but this time as a mortal."

Tyreal walked onto a set of invisible stairs.

"Since justice has been met this day, I will now stand as wisdom. On behalf of those who risked all to save us."

"Forever more, we shall stand together, angels and men, in the light of this glorious new dawn!"

The was set on the recovered high heavens before the cinematic ended.

Chang Xiuya stretched, "Geez, I finally beat the game. I'm so tired. This game really isn't meant for us who aren't mechanically skilled. I was so tense when I finally got to idea."

Zou Zhuo said, "Don't think there's many others who tried so hard to beat the game just for the ending..."

Changn Xiuya yawned, "It can't be helped, you have to finish the story when it comes to games the manager made. But I do have a question, why is the angel Tyreal a middle-aged black man?"

"Uhh, the manager had explained this previously. It's because when Tyreal transmigrated through the ozone layer, he had his face first. It wouldn't make sense to maintain a pale face after all that friction and heat..."

"... What an explanation."

"But I always had a question. From the looks of it, the story of Diablo seems to have finished as the Demon Lord was slain. There can't be much to add in terms of enemies right?" asked Zou Zhuo.

Chang Xiuya shook her head, "Not necessarily. Who knows where that soul stone landed in that final scene. I feel likes its foreshadowing something."

"That's true. But I care more about what happened before than after. Have you realised that Diablo's story was the latter half? How come the Great Evils and Baal, the Lord of destruction were only mentioned in scripts without any actual arcs?" asked Zou Zhuo.

Chang Xiuya replied after some thought, "Probably because the story had been written early on, but the manager only chose to use the latter half? Didn't Warcraft do the same?"

Zou Zhuo nodded, "Makes sense. But I think the manager should consider making use of the story that occured before this game and make a DLC or something. Based on the quality of Diablo, he could continue making money off this by releasing new classes and adding new scenes as the brand is so well known by now."

Chang Xiuya added, "Yeah, perhaps even a VR game!"

Zou Zhuo waved his hands, "No no no. Make an Azeroth VR game first, so many of us Warcraft players are still waiting on that."

"Geez, that too. The manager has so many great IPs on his hand, I hope he can start making VR games soon."

Zou Zhuo added, "Yeah, it should be in the near future. The manager had so many successful works recently, he probably has enough funds to make a small VR game. Who knows what he's thinking."

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Chapter 207: Don't Starve Released

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Chen Mo sketched as he walked out of the office towards the experience store.

As he was working on Reaper of Souls and Don't Starve recently, most of his time was spent in the office discussing details of the game. However, he would periodically check on the experience store and sometimes get some peace and quiet in his office on the second floor.

Chen Mo was caught by Zou Zhuo and Chang Xiuya as he stepped his foot into the experience store.

"Hey, the manager's here."

"Manager, there are many players discussing about the post game of Diablo on the forum. Have you seen it?" asked Chang Xiuya.

Chen Mo nodded, "Yes I have."

Chang Xiuya continued asked, "What's your plan then, manager? Although I don't have a good grasp on the situation, I think the players want to spend more time in the game and provided a lot of suggestions to do so."

Chen Mo sat on the sofa and flipped through a random book he grabbed, "I've looked at most of the recommendations, and none of them are worth considering. Diablo's DLC is in works with new content and gamemodes, I'll announce it soon."

"New classes? This caught Zou Zhuo's attention, "What new classes, is there a Death Knight?"

Chen Mo facepalmed, "You're kidding! Death Knight is a class exclusive to Warcraft. There will be two new classes this time, Crusader and Necromancer. There will be new story scenes too."

Zou Zhuo asked, "Really? When will it be released?"

"It's been going well so far, probably November," answered Chen Mo.

"Huh?" Zou Zhuo was visibly disappointed, "That means it's going to take two months or so, I can't wait that long!"

"It's a proper DLC, so there's a lot of stuff to do. You think I can just conjure an update out of thin air or something."

Zou Zhuo nodded, "Geez, fair enough. But based on the forum discussions, most older players can't wait anymore. Perhaps you should give a hint? Just so everyone has something to look forward to."

"Diablo still has a steady amount of sales, meaning that there is still an influx of new players. It shouldn't be a problem short term, so I'll save it as a surprise."

Zou Zhuo was speechless.

"Oh, I do have a new game for you guys to try out," said Chen Mo.

Zou Zhuo exclaimed, "Huh? You're making a new game again manager? I thought you said you were going to give Diablo a new DLC?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah, a new game and a DLC."

Chang Xiuya asked, "Really? What type of game is it? I want to play something like Plants vs Zombies!"

"It's hard to describe, but it's a survival game. The first version should be out in half a month, then we'll go straight into selling."

At the end of September, more than two months after Diablo's release, a game called Don't Starve quitely appeared on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

There wasn't much promotion this time, Chen Mo didn't even post a Weibo.

Many players thought their eyes were playing tricks on them when they discovered the new game upon logging onto the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform.

There was a lot of confusion among the happy surprise.

"What? How come Chen Mo released a new game without saying a single word about it?"

"Don't Starve? That sounds like a cool game. It's on both PC and mobile too? Crossplay as well!"

"Uhh... This game is quite small at around two gigabytes. What type of game is this?"

"Let's download it and see!"

"It costs twenty RMB!"

"That's not so bad. But judging from the price, it's probably a smaller game."

"It has to be, it has only been two months since Diablo was finished. This isn't enough time to make a large game at all."

"Let's look at the synopsis."

Don't Starve introduction.

This is a sandbox game that combines adventure, survival, role playing, training, and crafting. The character is placed in the desolate world, and must use their very two hands to survive using materials available around them. Of course, if you could arm yourself to defeat the demon in adventure mode, (maybe) you could return to the real world.

Game characteristics:

Rich in game resources and an expansive unknown world.

Plan your every move to best use your resources in order to survive.

Use your creativity to explore the endless limits.

Face the unknown danger in this world with friends in co-op mode.

The vast majority of players were shocked to see this introduction.

"All that text just to say it's a sandbox game similar to Earth Online!"

"It doesn't sound quite right. Earth Online is such a huge game, whereas Don't Starve is a measly 2GB, how could it call itself a sandbox game? How many elements could this game contain?"

"And Chen Mo made this in two months too! Two months for a sandbox game! Are you kidding me?"

"Uh, I looked at the graphics, and it was pretty simple. It's in 2D so the graphics don't take up much space. Perhaps it has a rich gameplay. I'll buy it to try it out, it's a Chen Mo game afterall."

"I think Chen Mo seems to be heading onto a certain path. This game looks like one of those games where the player is constantly under pressure as they try and survive in a desolate world. Think about how torturous that would be, what's the point of this game?"

"They said that in the introduction, it's a survival game, you survive as long as possible."

"Geez, I don't understand the intent behind a game like this. Why didn't he just spend his time on a Diablo DLC? It must be his young creative blood acting up."

"I think so too. Look at the graphics, it predominantly uses black, the proportions of the character, and this weird art style. I think this is Chen Mo's play thing, why else would he not do any promotion of this game."

"Whatever, I'll pretend I never saw this."

"I tried it out, and the game is actually quite interesting. The introduction said players could push the players' creativity to their max. Remember Plants vs Zombies and Warcraft?"

"I don't think Chen Mo did this. Maybe it's something an assistant made for practice? And they put it onto the store to take my money?"

"... I believe in Chen Mo's character."

"Alright, I'll try it out just because it's Chen Mo.

Although many players managed to ignore the game, a large portion of the players forked out money to buy the game. Other than trusting Chen Mo's brand, a portion of these buyers bought it because it had a clear source of enjoyment with a unique art style.

As a self-proclaimed sandbox game with survival in mind, could the game be as fun as cited in the introduction?

This was a question on the minds of many.

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Chapter 208: Collecting Junk

In the experience store, Su Jinyu excitedly watched Jia Peng launch Don't Starve.

"Just try it! I'm not lying, it's really fun!" said Su Jinyu.

Jia Peng wiped sweat off his forehead, "Ahem, calm down. This has to be your work since you're promoting it so hard. Am I right?"

"Yeah, but the manager did provide some guidance," answered Su Jinyu.

Jia Peng couldn't believe it, "If I remember correctly, your last game was Lifeline? And the story was written by Zheng Hongxi too."

"So? Does that mean you don't believe me?"

"Ahem, it's nothing. I'll try it out."

Filled with doubt, Jia Peng launched the game.

Just like Plants vs Zombies, Don't Starve was available on both PC and mobile and had crossplay support. As there were differences in the controls between PC and mobile, the lobbies were split into PC and mobile. However, players could still join any game they wanted.

The game started off with a cinematic.

In a weird, joyous, and dark BGM, a bird came to the window of a small house. The camera cuts through the window, revealing Wilson's failed experiment, sitting in a chair very annoyed.

At this moment, his radio started talking.

"Say pal, looks like you're having some trouble!

"I have secret knowledge I can share with you.

"If you are ready for it."

Wilson was happy, surprised and nodded without hesitation.

"Ok then!"

A scary shadow appeared on the screen, followed by countless knowledge flowing into his mind.

Wilson tried his experiment again.

Rats, nails, gears, welding, blood rituals...

In the end, he produced an ominous looking portal.

"Excellent! Now throw the switch!"

Wilson was a bit hesitant.

"Do it!"

Wilson pulled the lever. A dark shadow appeared from the ground, grabbing onto Wilson before pulling him into the ground.

And that was the end of the cinematic before entering the game.

The UI was really clean and simple, just as advertised, with a dark humourous theme.

There were four main options to pick from, Start Game, Mods, Settings, and Quit.

Jia Peng thought the game would be quite difficult because it was a survival game. He decided to explore Mods and Settings to check for an option to decrease difficulty.

There were a few mods that Su Jinyu developed in Mods, such as building tutorials, show food attributes, and keep the status bar on.

These were basically the official mods that didn't throw off the balancing of the game while giving the players some guidance so they didn't feel lost in the game.

Jia Peng selected a few mods out of the bunch then moved on to check on the settings. Jia Peng was confused upon seeing the huge amount of settings, deciding to just start the game under the watchful eye of Su Jinyu.

Generating world...

Rendering Wilson's beard...

Dealing with game theory...

Inserting horrible monsters...

The game was quite dark just as advertised, unlike the horrifying style of Diablo, this was more humorous.

The terrain, trees and rivers all looked like simple sketches, which presented itself as a unique style.

Wilson layed on the ground with the weird long faced wizard Maxwell standing over him.

"Say pal, you don't look so good."

"You better find something to eat before night comes!"

Maxwell then disappeared without a trace.

Wilson stood up before the game officially started with the camera zooming out.

Using his mouse, Jia Peng commanded Wilson to hop and skip all over the map.

The sound effects were quite rich in this game, making the world feel less scary with the sounds of footsteps, birds, gathering, and the occasional breeze.

Of course, this might be because it was day.

There were various resources on the maps too, saplings, trees, flowers, bushes and carrots.

Jia Peng walked around and relaxed a bit after realising there wasn't anything that could harm him nearby.

There were four attributes on the top right, days (time), hunger, sanity, and health. Other than sanity, the others were quite self explanatory.

The higher the better, probably, thought Jia Peng.

Wilson continued to waddle around the map as Jia Peng didn't know where to go as he picked up anything he could on the way such as saplings, bushings, rocks, or nuts.

Jia Peng still had plenty of space in his inventory after all.

After running for quite some time, he decided to open up the map as he was lost. He realised that he had been walking in a straight line this whole time, and the map was way bigger than he thought.

"This map is huge!"

Jia Peng felt overwhelmed as it felt like there was so much to explore.

Harvesting grass tufts, picking up sticks, picking up rocks, picking up pine cones...

After gathering for a few minutes, Jia Peng could tell that he was doing something wrong, and decided to check the tab on the left.

There were only six different options so far, Tools, Light, Survival, Science, Fight, and Dress. There were probably more to come judging from the empty space.

There were many things to pick from. He decided to craft an axe as he had the resources for it.

After a few swings of the axe, a tree fell, dropping wood on the ground.

After picking up the logs, Jia Peng looked deeper into what other things he could craft.

It seemed like everything had their uses, but he didn't know where to find those resources. He'd never seen the likes of spider silker, rope, or gold.

"Maybe I should make a pickaxe and start mining. Spider silk... maybe there are spider mobs somewhere?"

Jia Peng continued running around in search of the materials.

"Hmm? There's a boulder!"

Jia Peng crafted a pickaxe and started hacking away at the boulder. Soon, rocks, flint, and gold dropped to the ground.

"Hmm? It even dropped gold!"

Jia Peng moved onto the next boulder and started hacking away.

Jia Peng was happily hacking away at the boulders, despite his initial impression.

The fact that he could collect rare resources for survival along with the satisfying, rhythmic clanking of the pickaxe against the bounders made the gameplay really satisfying.

Filled with glee, Jia Peng commanded Wilson to pick up everything that dropped onto the ground. At this moment, he noticed a pig house and a pig walking on its two hind legs.

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Chapter 209: Exploring Don't Starve

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

"What? Why is it walking on its hind legs!"

Jia Peng equipped his axe as he thought about hacking away at the pig to see if it drops meat.

But in the same moment, night approached.

Wilson muttered to himself, "It's getting late. It will be dark soon."

The pig also said, "HOME TIME!"

The pig then returned to its house and stayed inside.

All Jia Peng could do was watch this happen.

Jia Peng decided to forget about this pig who walked on its hind legs and continued wandering.

The night was approaching and his vision was reducing.

Jia Peng looked at the time indication on the top right nervously.

There were three zones in the dial for time. The largest yellow zone was for day, orange for dusk, and grey was signified night.

It was now dusk, light started to get scarce but there was still time before night.

Jia Peng continued picking away at boulders while contemplating what to do during the night.

"Normally I'd have to build a house or something right? But obviously I can't build one now, but there has to be something I can do.

"I should eat a few berries to replenish my hunger first."

Soon, night approached and the entire screen turned dark.

Although Jia Peng didn't know if there was a side-effect to being in the dark without a fire, he still instinctively crafted a torch.

With a torch in hand, Wilson can continue on his merry way in darkness.

The torch produced a very limited radius of light and its health bar was decreasing rapidly.

"Hmm? I can light trees on fire too?"

Jia Peng hovered over nearby trees to realise he could right click them to light them on fire.

Jia Peng tried it out, and sure enough the whole tree caught on fire. It even spread to another nearby tree.

The fire even caught Wilson the firebug on fire, taking away some of his health.

This gave Jia Peng a shock, but he soon calmed down after realizing it wasn't a big deal.

After a few moments, the tree stopped burning leaving behind two blackened trees.

Jia Peng enjoyed that process and proceeded to burn down all the trees he came across.

After setting a few more trees on fire, Jia Peng realised that his torch ran out. He then switched to his axe and started chopping away at the burnt trees.

"Hmm? It dropped two pieces of charcoal! That's a thing?"

Jia Peng quickly picked up the charcoal. Although he didn't know what use it had, based on the game so far, all resources have its uses. It might now have a use now, but it would surely come in the future.

And just like that, the first night ended, followed by the auto-saving of the game.

Jia Peng breathed out a sigh of relief as he managed to survive the first night.

Although the nights were tense, limited the players' vision, and had a spooky background music, there wasn't much to fear about the night. As it was his first time, it was normal for him to feel nervous.

Although his first day was a bit pitiful as he fueled himself on berries, he gathered a lot of resources, managing to fill up two thirds of his inventory.

After going through the first night, he realised how precious daytime was. Jia Pengsat up straight ready for another day of exploration.

After a lot of exploration, Jia Peng heard pigs from far away.

Jia Peng controlled Wilson to head in the direction of the sound to find more pigs walking on their hind legs. But this time, it wasn't just one, there were many.

The pigs were running around fighting against Merms.

"You're done for!"

"Us pigs will have a feast!"

"Ahhh!"

There were around ten monsters in this area split into two teams. The pigs and the merms were swinging punches at one another. These monsters looked huge, much stronger than Wilson. Combined with the sounds of the punches, the situation felt really dangerous.

"What's going on? Why are they fighting? Please don't hit me, I'm just passing by."

Jia Peng's first reaction was to run away. With so many strong monsters in the area, he'd probably die in a few seconds.

But the desire to watch how this would turn out overwhelmed his fear.

"I'm not encouraging, I'm just watching, " Jia Peng carefully parked himself at the edge of the confrontation to watch the battle.

The mobs didn't even bat an eye to Wilson as they were fully involved in the battle.

A merm let out a final scream before dying, leaving behind the frog's legs and a fish.

"Hmm?!"

This caught Jia Peng's attention, he'd have to grab the meat after eating berries for a whole day!

Moreover, the mobs seemed to be occupied by the battle, they won't notice me right?

Jia Peng slowly walked towards the frog legs.

"Nice, I got it!"

Jia Peng backed off after grabbing the legs. However, he soon realised that his worries weren't needed as the mobs didn't even seem to notice him.

Jia Peng checked out the stats of the frog legs, 12.5 hunger, -10 sanity.

"Why does it reduce sanity? Is it because it's disgusting to eat it raw? I'll save it for an emergency then.

Jia Peng had Wilson wander around this group of monsters, keeping his distance as he feared they would turn on him.

Soon, all the merms died and Jia Peng swooped in to pick up all the frog legs and fish.

"Wow, I can't believe that worked!"

Jia Peng didn't want to overstay his welcome either, leaving happily with frog legs in his inventory.

Jia Peng looked at his inventory satisfyingly.

"This game is actually quite fun."

Jia Peng grabbed a drink before continuing his battle in Don't Starve.

What Jia Peng had experienced so far was but only a small part of what Don't Starve had to offer. He hadn't even encountered complicated stuff like building bases, science machines, surviving summer and winter, and the hounds that come to visit periodically.

The difficulty of the game would continue to increase. New players who think they have the situation under control in particular are prone to having a game over in one single mistake.

However, Jia Peng already experienced the joy of the game in gathering and surviving.

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Chapter 210: Spirit of Don't Starve

There were many points which attracted players to Don't Starve, but it all comes back to the 'Survival' aspect.

According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, needs are divided into five major categories: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

The five needs form a pyramid, with the most bottom playing being physiological, and self-actualization on the top.

The lower the need, the easier it is to realise, but also the most important and urgent.

That means if a person lacked food, safety, and esteem, they should feel the strongest for food. In that moment, safety and esteem wouldn't be as important.

This was why under incredible food stress, humans would hunt large beasts (giving up safety) or beg for food (give up esteem).

Maslow's hierarchy of needs can also be applied to different industries, including video games.

Many game designers build the complete hierarchy of Maslow's needs in the game, using to drive players to chase fictional numbers in the game, and be so immersed they can't stop themselves.

A simple example would be pay to win games that sell 'strength', which focused on safety and esteem in the hierarchy of needs.

The weaker players would face the danger of being killed every moment they are in game. As they face a lack of safety, this drives them to spend more time and money in game in order to regain safety,

The stronger players on the other hand have a certain amount of safety, so they pivot to chase the needs in esteem or self-actualization, such as taking from the others, forming a guild, gathering this underlings to battle others as they fork out more and more money just to chase the high.

Normally, very few games reach the 'physiological needs' level on the pyramid as it was difficult to develop, and didn't fit into a majority of games.

The physiological needs of humans are quite simple, consisting of food, water, health, and reproduction. However, games wouldn't usually have their players run around to gather food or water. They usually wouldn't have hunger in the game as they could only fit in so much content in the game, with better ways to spend the time of the players.

Don't Starve exploits this oversight, conveying all aspects of survival.

Moreover, Don't Starve wasn't just a simple game. As one delved deeper into the gameplay, they will realise that there was a lot of content in the game.

It was different from many main characters with huge motivations. Wilson's existence was just for himself, he didn't need to save the world or save others. His only aim was to survive, and everything he does in the world of Don't Starve was literally just that.

Don't Starve is a highly stylized game with a very mature mindset.

The world of Don't' Starve wasn't well realised nor have a deep story, it could even be said that it escaped reality. The art style and music was filled with dark humour, yet feeled incredibly real in the face of death.

The feeling of absurdity and reality runs through the Don't Starve, which is strengthened when combined with technology and magic in the game.

Living moving robots, pigs living in groups, tombstones in forests, remains of the ones who came before, horrible monsters... These scary settings may seem unrelated at first glance, but were closely related upon deeper inspection.

The world was a highly integrated unique magical world.

And Don't Starve's lifespan came from its rich content. It may seem like a simple 2D game, but it was more playable than some large works.

The mobs were really complicated, each mob provided unique food items and resources which the main character could utilize using campfires, drying racks, crockpots and traps.

Moreover, there were many things the character could interact with, harvesting by hand, chopping, mining, digging, lighting, planting... The players could interact with anything, including the map itself. Precious materials could also be used as fuel in a time of need.

There are also various materials the players could obtain. If the player wanted some pigskin, they could go head to head against the pigs, or they could look for abandoned pig houses, using the altar, or planting spider dens near pig houses and let the spider kill the pigs for the players.

And when the players get gathered as much as they need and start losing interest in the survival mode, when the players lose interest in trying to survive, the players will discover a whole new challenge in adventure mode.

Moreover, it was also a cool emotionless game mode, any oversight could lead to unrecoverable consequences in the face of survival.

And so, survival becomes more and more desired. When the players will get a huge sense of bliss as they find a patch of carrots and berries in front of a pig village.

Many players only realise how good it was to have a full stomach after playing Don't Starve.

And it was because of this that Don't Starve was able to attract so many players who were interested in surival games and retain their hardcore players. There were even players who weren't even close to getting bored of the game a few years in.

It was because every playthrough of Don't Starve was a different journey.

Moreover, like many sandbox games, mods were the core of the longevity of a game like Don't Starve.

Setting aside official DLCs, the players could also find a lot fun in mods they create themselves.

Character mods for example, One Piece characters such as Zoro (has their own blade, can cut trees, no sense of direction, map is always dark), and Ace(has fireball, regains sanity next to fire) were created. Assistant mods included more, better description, building guides, functional mods included permanent tents, expanded backpacks...

There were also large scale mods such as Hero in the Dark, which had enough content to last players half a year. These large scale mods could almost be considered their own game.

Of course, Chen Mo decided to create just a few of these more common mods that don't affect the gameplay much, leaving the other mods up to the players.

This was the nature of sandbox games, only when the players play their part will the game's full potential be realised.

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