Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 211 - Incredibly Popular - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 211 - Incredibly Popular Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 211: Incredibly Popular

Soon, reviews of Don't Starve started popping up.

"I noticed that the game is actually really rich. Although I was a bit lost at the start, but you can't stop once you get into it."

"I was wondering how this could be a sandbox game with such a small game? Turns out Chen Mo actually managed to make a really rich sandbox game!"

"Am I the only one who died in the first night to darkness..."

"1, first death was because of darkness, dying to unknown mobs. Second death was after ten days to hunger, third death was on day 11 killed by hounds during the night. For my fourth death, I caught a bird, found a pig village, fed spider flesh to one of them and started an alliance, started planning my future home, before becoming insane from too much spider flesh."

"To be honest, this game is terrible for new players. There are so many dangers you could die any time!"

"There's one thing you have to remember when playing this game: No zuo no die...[1]"

"The game is surprisingly good and addictive. But I have one question, how come there's nothing coming out of me when I'm eating so much? Why do I have to pick up after other animals? I want it to be self sustaining!"

"It looks like a small game, but there's a lot of good gameplay! You'd spend tens of hours just trying to learn the game, and you'll experience many exciting things during that process! I think the best part of this game is that there's no rule that the world has to follow, on the contrary, this allows them to create many different mobs, increasing the difficulty in the process!"

"To be honest, I've never starved to death. I don't know why the game is called Don't Starve, I think a better name for this game would be, '100 ways for Wilson to die'.

"I love this art style. Although it has a cartoony 2D art style, it's quite refreshing when every other game is in 3D.

"Although it's a small game, it's a sincere one!"

"I realised Chen Mo allowed mods like he did for previous games. I'm thinking about making a mod, how does a character mod sound? I'll import Arthas and his special ability will be eating corpses! Haha!"

"This game has a co-op mode too. It's an incredible feeling to play with friends all as different characters, helping one another survive!"

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Although Don't Starve didn't have a lot of downloads initially, it's reviews were as high as 9.5!

It was because most players who bought Don't Starve were Chen Mo's fans, who usually liked sandbox survival games like these, naturally, these players gave Don't Starve good reviews.

In the moments right after its release, Don't Starve was still a niche game without large scale promotion. As it had a niche art style and gameplay, it wasn't surprising that it didn't receive explosive growth.

However, with Thunderbolt Gaming Platform and Chen Mo's name on the line, Don't Starve received a decent amount of sales at twenty-four thousand copies.

Moreover, this number was still increasing, estimated to sell two million copies in the first month.

Don't Starve was a long-lasting game after all, and because of its distinct style and great reputation, it had huge potential for growth.

This number wasn't comparable to Lifeline as it was twenty times more expensive, it was normal to have less sales.

In his previous life, Don't Starve sold five million copies after making its debut in China. Of course Tencent Gaming Platform's great distribution played a part, as well as its good review on Steam.

Chen Mo's Don't Starve was considered a completely new type of game in the parallel world, so it was normal that its first steps started off slow. Once the players go up, the game would finally reach its full potential.

There were various different reactions as the players noticed the sales and ratings.

"Hooray! I hoped to see the Chen Mo who made Plants vs Zombies, incredibly creative, rich play style, a small game like this can be a classic game too! In my mind, this is the real Chen Mo!"

"Yeah, Chen Mo was wasting his potential making pay to win games!"

"I asked why Chen Mo wasn't updating Diablo, but I have my answer. You don't have to if you don't want to, Chen Mo, I'll forgive you for making a game like Don't Starve!"

"But it's still kind of sad, you can't replace the old with the new this soon, Diablo is still waiting for you!"

"Yeah, you have to think about the feelings of us Nephalem!"

"Warcraft players are shaking. It's sad that there's only one Chen Mo, how good would it be if there were more of him to make games!"

The players who liked Don't Starve gave it a lot of praise.

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The players who didn't like it hoped Chen Mo would make other games.

Diablo players were still waiting for a DLC.

This was why Chen Mo hoped Chen Mo could create copies of himself to provide for all different types of player.

Chen Mo's player base was now huge after developing so many games.

There were casual gamers who liked Plants vs Zombies and Lifeline.

Western Fantasy fans who liked Warcraft and Diablo.

Fans of Chinese themed games who like Wulin Legend.

And players who liked pay to win games like I am MT and Onmyoji.

It was hard to provide for everyone because of how different their tastes were. There was no way Chen Mo could make a game that covered all the bases either.

All these players could do was wait for Chen Mo's next move.

Industry professionals paid more attention to Don't Starve than the average player.

After Chen Mo developed Diablo to teach the ones who dismissed third person RPGs a lesson, nobody dared to underestimate Chen Mo again.

Every game Chen Mo released was something that was weird and completely different.

Such as the card game I am MT that was 'completely free'.

Or the third person single player game Diablo.

But he was met with success every time, proving everything the industry professionals knew wrong.

Nobody could deny the fact that Chen Mo hadn't made any mistakes so far, and anyone who uses layman's logic to explain his moves would inevitably fail.

TL note[1: It's a Chinese saying 'No zuo no die, why you try?" basically meaning, you don't have to do it, so why bother?

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Chapter 212: Lacklustre Diablo Follow Up?

Chen Mo releasing Diablo and Don't Starve one after another caused a decent reaction in the videogame community, although not one as big as the copying craze from mobile card games.

This was expected as the main characteristics of the game were really unique and hard to replicate.

Diablo did allow industry professionals to realise the market gap in satisfying hack and slash games, but how to fill that gap was a very difficult question.

If they followed Diablo and made a third person game with a dark art style, setting aside if they were capable of spending money to reach the quality of Diablo, even if they did, would the players buy a game that was such a blatant Diablo copy?

Therefore, the only way out was to make a similar VR game, which was exactly what Emperor Dynasty Entertainment was doing.

But for the other companies? There was too much risk involved with making VR games. Moreover, many changes had to be made to it, so companies who could take such a big risk were few and far between.

Don't Starve was also a similar unreplicatable game in the eyes of many video game designers.

Because nobody understood how it managed to sell this many copies.

Story? Art style? Music and audio effects?

Items? Playstyle? Sandbox mode?

One thing's for sure, this was a relatively successful sandbox game. This was because of its excellent quality and rich playstyle which replicates the physiological needs of humans, which triggers a desire to create in players.

But how could one create a sandbox game similar to Don't Starve?

Nobody knows.

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Sandbox games may seem nice to make, but they are actually incredibly difficult to develop. The successful sandbox games always seem easy to recreate during analysis, just that they didn't think of it.

Therefore, although the reviews were good for Diablo and Don't Starve, it didn't create a copying craze like mobile card games did.

Moreover, as Diablo looked better and better, it also gained more and more haters.

"There are players complaining about how Diablo sucks in the later stages on the official forums again."

"Yeah, I saw that coming. I've tried the game out too, it felt great at the start, but it became incredibly monotonous at the later stages of the game. If it wasn't for the desire to grind for equipment, I doubt many would continue playing."

"They'll get sick of grinding great eventually. The better the gear, the rarer it is. You might not even see one piece of usable equipment the more you play, and that just feels terrible."

"That only means that Chen Mo isn't invincible. Sure he could make games that are playing long into the future, this game isn't one of them."

It can't be helped. I think Chen Mo thought of this at the start. It's like a one time thing that's packaged really well with incredible cinematics. It feels good when you're killing mobs too. That's how they get you to buy the game as they neglect everything after they secure your money."

"That's quite normal. It's a single player game, you need to stop comparing it to the standards of online games."

"Chen Mo immediately pivoted to developing Don't Starve right after releasing Diablo. Obviously he doesn't expect Diablo to make him money in the long term."

"YEah, I think so too. Maybe Chen Mo is planning for the future by dipping his toes in all the different genres. If Diablo doesn't work out, he can continue with Don't Starve."

"I was shocked when Chen Mo released Diablo, but obviously it was just for show. Sure the sales were amazing, but the players are already sick of it. It's not going to last into the future."

"Yeah, I think the show's over."

"I heard that Emperor Dynasty Emperor is making a Diablo style VR game. Wonder how that's going."

"I think Yan Zhenyuan is working on it. There's no questions with the abilities of the video game designer, nor is there any with the distribution and funding of the game. I think the game will more than likely be popular."

"Yeah, maybe even more popular than Diablo as it's more immersive in VR."

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"It's hard to say, there's a lot of risk in porting a PC game into VR. It's like making a whole new game."

"Yan Zhenyuan is an S-grade designer after all, there isn't a single game he released that failed. Moreover, there's plenty of theory to support this game's success too. Think about it, killing enemies left and right in VR, it'll really be covering the market gap when that is released."

"That's true. Sigh, looks like Chen Mo failed a little bit here. He should have brought this game out later. He should probably be on his way to making VR games soon, if he brought it out in a year or so, he'd probably develop his own VR Diablo. He's just giving Emperor Dynasty ideas by releasing it now!"

Yan Zhenyuan was also playing Diablo.

He had a clear idea of the controls of this game so far. The high quality story and cinematics and the thoughtful detailed creepy atmosphere was just the packaging. The real core of the game is hacking and slashing and the balancing of the game.

Of course, the packaging of the game was so good the players felt like they got more than they paid for.

In reality, the later stages of Diablo completely depended on numerical simulation.

At the same time the players continue grinding, they are getting better equipment, increasing their strength, and moving to the next difficulties. Meaning the balancing of the game becomes the main driving force for players to continue playing.

This may seem like a model that worked at first glance, but so far Diablo didn't seem to be able to achieve this.

Yan Zhenyuan was also thinking about how to solve this problem as he was making a VR version of Diablo which was on PC. The profits of the game would be dramatically impacted if the players were sick of it after a month or two.

As VR games required much more financially than PC games, they could only wish they'd lose a bit less money if they sold the game by copies. The thought of making money like that was a fool's dream.

"I need to think of something soon."

Yan Zhenyuan's project was now in its first steps as all parts of development were moving along steadily, but he'd have to quickly think of something to ensure the longevity of the game.

It was almost November, and according to the roadplan, it should be in its test phase the coming June, and be released the coming August.

"Whatever, I'll move with the online game idea for now, have as much socialization and trading in the game as possible. Then I'll need to drag out the playtime and slow down how quickly new players level up.

Yan Zhenyuan decided that since the problem was really difficult to solve, he may as well take a page out of the book of online games and retain players through various online activities.

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Chapter 213: Chapter 212: Diablo's International Version

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

In the experience store, there were many surrounding Jia Peng, watching as he played Don't Starve.

It was over day seventy, and Jia Peng had more or less stabilized, maintaining decent levels for health, hunger, and sanity.

The others watching were trying to study his base.

There were two campfires in the middle of his base, one normal one and one endothermic one, both of which are used to regulate the temperature of the base.

There were many chests slightly further away from the campfires used for storage.

Next to the chests was a tent, crockpot, science machine, bird cage, lightning rod, and a fridge.

There were also various types of meat on the drying rack.

There were many traps all around the base used to defend the base against any incoming mobs too.

Saplings, grass, berries and other necessities were all arranged neatly in rows, making the players with OCD incredibly satisfied.

Wilson had a Miner hat on his head, lighting up his surroundings during night without a need for a torch. There were also various items in his backpack for various situations.

Chang Xiuya exclaimed, "Wow, Jia Peng your base is awesome!"

Jia Peng shook his head, "It's alright. I've seen so many posts on the interest that are way better than this. They look like something in the dreams of someone with OCD, mine's like a sow stall."

"That's amazing too! By the way, what does Chester and the Walking Cane do?"

Jia Peng was shocked, "Chester? Walking Stick? What are those?"

"Uhh... it's nothing."

Jia Peng didn't seem to care, "I find this game to be more playable long term than Diablo. Sure I was dying a lot at the start, but you can survive for quite some time once you get the hang of it. And it's so satisfying to hog all these materials."

"Yeah, and the co-op mode is incredibly fun too," added Zou Zhuo, "Everybody has something to do, you could be exploring, hunting, gathering, and some even just watching. It's so fun to play with a few friends."

"Yeah, that's true. And the characters all have different abilities, so they can do different tasks. I feel like I could play this game for ages," expressed Chang Xiuya.

"So cares about Diablo's DLC anymore?" complained Lin Xue.

Jia Peng scratched his head, "Heh, it can't be helped. Don't Starve is so rich in content, I'm completely addicted to it. As for Diablo, sure it's fun, but I'm kind of sick of it."

Chang Xiuya said, "Weird, I didn't expect a girl like you to like Diablo, Xue."

"Although I quite like Don't Starve too, Diablo feels better to play. Geez, maybe it's just a difference in taste. There are still quite a few players who like Diablo, why does it feel like the manager is ignoring them," said Lin Xue.

"He's really not," said Chen Mo, "Didn't the manager say he'd release a DLc eventually? We'll just have to wait."

Lin Xiuya stood up, "Geez, alright. I came here just to find out more about Diablo's DLC, but it seems I haven't been able to accomplish my mission today.

At this point, the international version of Diablo was nearing complete.

Meteorite Technology tried their hardest just as before. With experience from working on Warcraft in the past, the international version for Diablo went just as smooth, and it was nearing its release.

With Chen Mo's English translations, other translations were also going quite well. Chen Mo felt that th English version in particular was as good as the original.

Meteorite Technology was really familiar with the likes of translations, dubs, promotions, reviews, and approvals. They guaranteed that there wouldn't be any problems and the game could release internationally at the same time.

Everyone was really confident in Diablo's international release, so they spent much more money in promotions than Walking.

Diablo game introduction: Diablo is a third person RPG developed by Thunderbolt Entertainment. Players could play in up to groups of four. They can also pick from different classes, joining the eternal fight between angels and demons as a Nephalem as they play a part in the amazing plot.

Diablo's unique points:

Thrilling and terrifying apocalyptic plot, you will become the only savior of the entire world.

The dark art style allows you to always experience hopelessness as the whole world was on the verge of collapse.

Complete combat system with five main classes with hundreds of combinations so you can experience satisfying battles.

Numerous items so you can immerse completely in the grind!

The promotional materials were released in various countries all at the same time. Other than the most basic game introduction, there were various posters, cinematics, and gameplay footage released, showing the international players the best the game has to offer.

Diablo's logo, or the word 'Diablo' in a fancy font started appearing in the eyes of many international players.

"Have you heard of the Chinese RPG that's releasing soon? It's called Diablo."

"What does the name mean?"

"I think it's spanish for demon lord or demon."

"Let me look at the advertisements. Yeah the game does look quite interesting. The classes are pretty cool too, Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk... There's an eastern class, but the designer seems to know a thing or two about fantasy."

"Thank goodness there aren't any weird embarrassing classes."

"Oh, it's made by the same company that made Warcraft!"

"Really? Thunderbolt Entertainment huh. I was wondering why I haven't heard from them in too long. In theory they shouldn't sink that soon if they are able to make a game like Warcraft."

"Warcraft was incredibly fun, and I really liked the RPG maps. But Thunderbolt Entertainment seemed quite lazy, they haven't made any large updates for Walking since release."

"I heard it's a small company, and they've tried to maintain as small of a team as possible. Moreover, they have to develop various different types of new games, so they probably can't give these older games too many updates. Basically the designer is just trying to trap players."

"Oh, that's a disaster."

"Moreover, many games that Thunderbolt English develop aren't sold overseas. As far as I know, they made Onmyoji and a weird match three game, and never pushed any of that internationally."

"They'd probably only sell games like Warcraft that have a western fantasy theme overseas. I'm really intrigued just by looking at the story, I already have my wallet ready."

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Chapter 214: Dissatisfaction

All in all, there weren't any huge obstacles in the way of the international release of Diablo, and even went slightly better than Warcraft.

Thunderbolt Entertainment gained some fame overseas after selling Warcraft afterall, making an especially deep impression on players who liked themes like this, which was why Diablo managed to garner so much attention before it started selling.

Moreover, Western Fantasy themes, especially in Europe and America had always been popular, moreover, Diablo was an RPG, meaning that it'd have a bigger audience than an RTS game like Warcraft.

One thing that was different was that the international players didn't have too many doubts of complaints when it came to a third person RPG as there were more indie games overseas, with more players liking single player games.

Most of these indie games are made by smaller companies, which would naturally meet with some financial difficulties, which was why they could only manage third person RPGs. This meant that the players overseas were more accepting of RPG games like these.

After the pre sales promotions, many players were eagerly waiting for Diablo's release!

Diablo was priced at forty-nine USD, much pricier than Warcraft. This was because Diablo had a greater cost, was higher quality, and was an RPG game with greater acceptance.

Diablo officially started selling overseas.

Many players who had their eyes on this game bought and downloaded the game in the first moments it was main available, and many of these were hardcore Warcraft players. They believed that a developer who was capable of making Warcraft would produce an equally good RPG game.

Soon, these players were completely taken away by Diablo's unique style and high quality story.

The overseas players, especially players from Europe and America were even more familiar with the theme of the game compared to chinese players, so it was more likely for the players to all agree and recognise the execution of the theme.

At the same time, the ideas of Angels, Demons, and Nephalem were incredibly close to the hearts of the European and American players. The story of saving a world also fit with western Heroism, and Tyreal's morals also aligned better politically with the players.

The players worldwide had nothing but praises for this game.

-In the High Heavens.-

Tyreal, the ancient law of the High Heavens strictly forbids us from interfering with the mortal world!"

"Yet you have done so – brazenly!"

Imperius sat high up on his throne wearing shiny golden armor with flaming wings, signifying a god of some sorts.

Tyreal who was in silver armor didn't back down, "All I am guilty of, Imperius, is bringing justice, while you hide, cowering, behind your throne!"

"Silence!"

Imperius turned into a stream of light and rushed towards Tyreal, grabbing his breastplate with one hand."

"You will now answer for your transgressions!"

The gold and the silver started battle one another, and finally, Tyreal grabbed Imperius's spear and pointed it towards an archangel who was part of the Angiris Council and said righteously, "You cannot judge me! I am Justice itself!"

"We were meant for more than this – to protect the innocent!"

"But if our precious laws bind you all to inaction... then I will no longer stand as your brother!"

Tyreal grabbed his angel shoulder plates and let out a painful scream. His godly energy started flowing out of him, enveloping the hall.

Imperius stepped back and said angrily, "Sacrilege!"

Tyreal's wings fell to the ground before disappearing. A red flame surrounded his body, before tendrils of light rose up from the floor and grasped him, pulling him through it, into the mortal world.

He was the "falling star", falling from the heavens as the great fireball towards Tristram Cathedral

Diablo's story started a lot of discussion among the international players.

"To be honest, I was really surprised with Tyreal's story. Diablo's world seemed incredibly hopeless as the main character battled alone no matter where they went. I don't think they've made any allies at all, but I think Tyreal could could help a tiny bit at the very least."

"I think the writers executed Tyreal's character perfectly, flawlessly conveying his character through the story."

"As an angel of justice, he strictly abides by the law, rules and order, and maintains fairness and justice at all times, because this is the duty of the angel of justice."

"But at a critical moment, in order to save the world, Tyreal chose to stand on the side of humans, personally violating the law and order of the High Heavens, and abandoning his identity as an angel. I think that was really admirable!"

"Yeah, there are only a few games from overseas that managed to move me this much through the story, and Diablo managed that. It seemed that Thunderbolt Entertainment still maintained their high quality stories, this was excellent!"

It was similar to when Diablo first started selling in China, most players really liked the game at the start, especially the moments after they completed the story. The international version managed to maintain a score of around nine.

Moreover, the international players got attached to the theme quicker and easier, so Diablo's performance internationally was better than Chen Mo's expectation, estimating to have sold around six hundred thousand copies in the first week, and three million copies in the first month.

Chen Mo estimated that with overseas and Chinese sales combined, he would've sold around ten million copies. Although this doesn't compare to thirty million copies of the original in his previous life, this number was still incredible.

However, more and more angry comments started appearing following Diablo's huge success overseas.

Some of them were from international players.

"I feel scammed by the developers, the story was decent, and the game was high quality, but the post game is so boring! I can't believe it, this game doesn't come close to Warcraft's quality!"

"For sure, even when taking the fact that it is a single player game into consideration, this game was quite monotonous. This reminds me of a certain korean game, it looked great, but was a complete mess!"

"Ugh, I think the last two posters were a bit harsh, I do agree with them. There are no complaints in terms of the quality of the game and its story, but it's postgame doesn't even compare with the sincere indie games. That's why I'm giving it a seven.

"An incredibly boring game. I have no idea why the designer felt the need to add so many difficulties. Do they expect us to grind day after day to the highest difficulty?"

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Chapter 215: Reaper of Souls Released

Evidently, the international players were also feeling the lack of content in the post game. As a hack and slash game, the post game of Diablo was indeed quite monotonous. This was a conclusion most players could arrive at.

And the other criticism was from Chinese players.

The news of Diablo's international release quickly spread within the Chinese Diablo community..

"Have you heard that Diablo started selling overseas?"

"Didn't Chen Mo release Don't Starve not long ago? He hasn't even taken a break huh."

"He's quite brave huh. Obviously Diablo is an unfinished game, has he already given up us Chinese players? Is he going to release a DLC? Does he plan to run away with the money he makes overseas, never to be seen again?"

"Yeah, I'm angry too. If he has the energy to develop Don't Starve and release Diablo internationally, why didn't he channel that into making a DLC instead? It feels like we are just an afterthought!"

"I gotta go tag Chen Mo and give him a good thrashing!"

"Geez, whatever. It's a singleplayer game anyways, what else can you complain about after watching the cinematics. It's about time anyways. If you're really that bored, it's not a bad idea to try out Don't Starve."

"I don't like games like that, I wanna continue grinding in Diablo!"

"Haven't the players given plenty of suggestions? The suggestions thread is now over fifty pages, I wanna know if he's seen any of it, is he listening to us players!"

"I don't think so, why else would there be no news at all? He's probably gone!"

"I'm mad!"

"I'm going to give the experience store a visit and find out what's on Chen Mo's mind!"

The release of Diablo internationally triggered some dissatisfaction among players. Although the development of the DLC and the international version were happening in parallel, with neither coming into contact, the players didn't know this, nor did they want to hear that.

They just wanted a DLC that would satisfy them, one that would allow them to play Diablo long into the future.

Many posts were bumped on the forums as players vented their dissatisfaction.

-In the office.-

Chen Mo scrolled through his DMs on Weibo and some other discussions while asking, "Qian Kun, will Reaper of Souls be finished this week? I'm worried that my life might be in danger otherwise."

Qian Kun facepalmed, "Really? Can't the players wait another few more weeks?"

"It's already quite tight. It's been three months since release, and most players are complete sick of the game, mainly because its so difficult to grind the rarer equipment, and the hardcore grinders were done grinding. Needless to say, the normal players are bored of it too."

Qian Kun nodded, "I understand, it's almost done, but I think the balancing of the two classes aren't quite right. I'll work overtime to try and finish this within this week."

Chen Mo patted him on the back, "Thanks for your hard work. Once this update is released, we can set Diablo aside for the time being."

qian Kun nodded, "Alright! Don't worry manager, I'll finish it in time."

Chen Mo returned to the experience store after checking in on the progress, feeling that the update should be completed within this week.

Zheng Hongxi said to Qian Kun, "I think Reaper of Souls is quite high on the manager's priority list. But I do wonder, other than the two new classes and a few new quest lines, the main additions of the game is the Challenge Rift and the ranked ladder. Are these things really capable of extending the lifespan of the game?"

"In the manager's thinking, probably. The ranked ladder introduces a competitive element. Just like ranked mode in many other games, it triggers the players to try and reach the top for bragging rights, which obviously would do a thing or two in extending the player's playtime. But to be honest, I think these two modes are quite simplistic. It's basically a new dungeon and a ranked system. These aren't anything complicated. Moreover, there was already so much game content, wouldn't the players get bored of the game again?" Qian Kun turned the question around.

Zheng Hongxi gave it some thought, "What about competitive seasons and Expert mode?

"I think Expert mode would be something fresh for the new players to try out, but it'll only cater to a small audience. There is a lot of failure associated with that after all as they start over every time they die. Based on how difficult Diablo is, there probably aren't many players who are willing to fail again and again like that right?

"I think the competitive season works well with the ranked ladder. It should give the players something to feed off of for a bit, but I can't say now well it's going to work."

Zheng Hongxi replied, "Yeah, the game is quite self-restricting after all. It's a singleplayer at core, yet we are trying to drag out the life of the game to a few months and maybe even a few years. It's such a difficult task."

"Who said it wasn't? Whatever, lets chat after I'm done with work."

With a week's worth of overtime, the development of Reaper of Souls finally came to an end.

At the same moment Reaper of Souls was released on the Thunderbolt Gaming Platform, Chen Mo released a long Weibo as a reply to the players.

Diablo's expansion pack, Reaper of Souls is now live!

The new content in this DLC includes:

New classes: Crusader and Necromancer.

New act: A fifth chapter in the Diablo III storyline will be added, taking place mainly in Westmarch.

New Game Modes:

Adventure Mode: A mode where the world itself is the player's battlefield. Bounty quests are also available for the nephalem to undertake, with a reward for finishing all the bounties in each Act.

Nephalem Challenge Rift: Unlocked using Rift Keystone Fragments, it uses completely random terrain generation, spawns, and bosses. There are normal Challenge Rifts, and Greater Rifts. Completing Challenge Rifts grant extra loot.

Legendaries Gems have a chance of dropping in Greater Rifts, further increasing the strength of the characters.

Expert mode: High skilled players can play expert mode, characters will only have one chance at being the game. There are no revives once they die.

Ranked Ladder(Leaderboards) allow players to compare their progress to that of your gameplay region, friends, and clan members. The names of the top one thousand players in the Greater Rifts will also be on the Leaderboards.

Competitive Seasons: We encourage players to try and experiment to get as strong as possible. At the start of each season, players could create a brand new character alongside many other players. The ranked seasons will provide unique rewards, including legendary items, borders, banners, ,etc.(Seasonal ranked leaderboards will be separate from the normal ranked ladder).

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Chapter 216: Regaining Popularity

The players went wild as they saw that Weibo.

"What? Expansion pack for Diablo?"

"It's available already? When did Chen Mo start working on it?"

"Why didn't he say anything about it before?"

"I thought Chen Mo was too busy working on Don't Starve and Diablo's international release and had no time to work on the expansion pack!"

"I'm so happy I'm crying! He didn't forget us! Let's see what's in it!"

"Two new jobs and a new act!"

"From the promotional video, the cinematics are as good as the other ones, the story looks incredible too!"

"The new classes, Crusader and Necromancer look quite interesting. The female Crusader looks so pretty, I have to create one!"

"Let's see if there's any new game modes. Adventure mode? Experience your own story? Sure, that'll make grinding easier in the future."

"Hold on, Challenge Rift? Leaderboards? Competitive season? There's so many words... Alright, I'll read through them. It's like a list of things we need to do, first create a seasonal character, then grind like crazy in the Challenge Rift, then climb the leaderboards? Chen Mo's so thoughtful!"

"It feels like the leaderboards for mobile card games... Anyways, I hated ranked ladders previously, but I don't know how I'll live without it!"

"Expert mode? One life? That sounds exciting, I like that!"

"The expansion pack costs 88 RMB? I'm not sure if I'm going to buy it... It's not really worth it if I just continue to grind the same way after buying the DLC."

"You should buy it just for the two classes1"

"That's true, you go ahead and let me know how it goes."

With the quality assurance of Diablo, Reaper of Souls sold many copies upon release. This was mainly due to how long the players have been waiting. Many thought Chen Mo didn't plan to give it any updates, but nobody thought that he would release a whole expansion pack, one with a lot of content at that. This was news that shocked everyone.

Warcraft didn't get this treatment!

Moreover, no matter if Diablo's post game was boring or not, it was a high quality game, managing to attract many players in its early life.

Moreover, it seemed that this expansion pack had a lot of effort poured into it.

-Inside the experience store-

Many players playing Don't Starve switched over to Diablo the moment Reaper of Souls was released. It was filled with Don't Starve fans, but all of a sudden they were now in the minority.

"You're playing Diablo's expansion pack too?"

"Yeah, new story and new classes, I have to try it."

"You're giving up Don't STarve? I was waiting for us to all play together!"

"It's fine, this would only last a week or two. I'll try out the new classes before getting sick of the story, then I'll come back to picking up garbage from the ground."

"Yeah, the life of a Nephalem is calling!"

Zou Zhuo created a seasonal character, a female Crusader, and started grinding right away.

There were many players like Zou Zhuo, a competitive season was something fresh in the minds of many seasoned players.

It was because players bought the game at different times, some earlier than others. The players who started earlier would have a significant advantage over the later players, so it would be close to impossible for players who bought the game to stand a chance on the leaderboards.

Moreover, many didn't understand the game at the start, so they didn't put much thought into skills and equipment, and have been through many wrong turns. The gaps between players would be huge if they used their own characters.

Now that there was a competitive season implemented, as everybody needed to create a fresh character, everyone was starting from the same point. The noobs wouldn't be too far behind the higher skilled players, and the pros would still have some advantage. The ranked season got many riled up.

Zou Zhuo said to Jia Peng, "Let's get grinding. We'll play till night to get max levels!"

Jia Peng replied, "Uhh, the experience store closes at night."

"So what? We'll go to the internet cafe if the experience store closes, let's go!"

The expansion pack got many riled up on the Diablo forums too. Some were discussing the story, some the new classes, while others talked about the competitive season and leaderboards. There were even discussions about expert mode and legendary gems.

"Which classes would have the most advantage in the new season? Who would reach the top?"

"I'll be on the grind tomorrow, can anybody explain how the Barbarian should be played?"

"The new season has begun! Anybody wanna grind together?"

"I'm new, could anyone teach me how to play necromancer in preparation of climbing the ladder tomorrow?"

"This new kid wants to play the game after seeing the expansion pack, anyone wanna take me along?"

"Big damage thread, the different builds of Barbarian."

"Drop list: drop rates of different difficulties."

"Analysis Diablo damage calculation and different ways of increasing damage."

"New player introduction to classes.

Some of the more popular threads were bumped to the top. The players who left Diablo came right back to it upon hearing about the expansion pack as they looked forward to trying out the competitive season.

Soon, many of the complaint threads and recommendation threads were all gone, and the rating of the expansion pack continued to increase.

"I think this game is playable again! The competitive mode is actually quite fun, my daily grind is now filled with motivation!"

"Yeah, you'd spend so much time grinding before just for good equipment. So what? Nobody sees it, nobody to share it with. Now that there's a leaderboard to work towards, I feel so motivated to grind!"

"Although I'm completely sick of the story mode, I can still keep grinding in adventure mode. I could craft special equipment by completing special tasks, I can grind in Challenge Rifts, or even try and climb higher and higher in the Greater Rift!"

"Climbing the ranked ladder is so addicting!"

"The new job is great too! The skill set of Crusader and Necromancer are so well done!"

"And there's a lot of new content too. You can transmute items using Kanai's Cube, it's so great to gain so much strength so quickly. All the special equipment that we set aside previously have a use now!"

"Anyone tried expert mode? It feels so great! The feeling of dying from one misstep is crazy!"

"The expansion pack is excellent, long live Chen Mo!"

"Hey, you guys were so mean to him before!"

"Ahem, it's a misunderstanding, misunderstanding I tell you! From today onwards, I'm a braindead Chen Mo fan!"

"Chen Mo does remember us! I don't know if he saw the recommendation threads, but not including those recommendations was a great idea. This expansion pack was much better than anything in those threads!"

"Indeed, 'I'm smarter than the designer' doesn't apply to Chen Mo!"

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Chapter 217: Chen Mo's Coaching Lesson

Lin Xue was happily playing the new ranked mode in the experience store.

The stream was titled 'Crusader ranked climb'. There were many viewers with an incredibly active chat filled with discussion of the new competitive season.

Lin Xue was grinding Challenge Rifts as she interacted with chat.

"Why are there viewers asking me when I started playing again? As a player who loved Diablo, of course I started playing the expansion pack the first moment it was available?"

"Is the Crusader strong? From what I can tell, it's alright, it's not as good as Wizard or Warrior. Although I think I haven't figured out how to play this class yet."

"Is the new update fun? Incredibly fun! If the previous Diablo was a small slice of cake, looks delicious and tastes delicious, but you'd get sick of it after a few bites. But Diablo with the expansion pack is like a drug, you can't stop at all!"

"Where's Chen Mo? I don't know either, but he's probably in his office, so we probably won't see him. Uh, not now, I'm in the middle of a Rift, I'll go grab him after if I see him."

Lin Xue was also a regular at the experience store because she could try Chen Mo's newest games here. That's why she'd visit the experience store every few days and were now quite close with Su Jinyu, Jia Peng, Zou Zhuo and the others.

Lin Xue even bought a webcam in order to stream in the experience store.

All of a sudden, her chat went wild.

"Is that Chen Mo?"

"There's a wild Chen Mo, quick, go catch him!"

"I think that's actually Chen Mo!"

"Go get her, Xue!"

Lin Xue turned around to see Chen Mo entering the experience store. Perhaps he was a bit tired and wanted to relax on the sofa in the experience store.

Lin Xue was also really happy to see him, "Manager!"

This startled Chen Mo, "What...what are you trying to do!"

Lin Xue smiled, "Heh heh, it's nothing, my viewers want to see you."

She pointed the camera at Chen Mo, "Look, it's a real Chen Mo! You guys have been nagging me for so long, now you guys finally have a chance to see him."

Chen Mo was speechless as he felt like a circus clown with hundreds of thousands of viewers looking at him.

Chen Mo looked at Lin Xue's monitor, "Are you playing the new ranked season? If you're going to do it, stay focused on it. There's no way you could make it to the top if this is how you're playing!"

Lin Xue looked at the chat, "Manager, the viewers say they want to watch you play games. They're fine with either Warcraft or Diablo."

Chen Mo had his hand on his forehead, "You're the streamer, why are you looking at me?"

"It's something new! And luckily, I have an account here, you can just play on my account."

Chen Mo was helplessly pushed onto the seat by Lin Xue.

"But it doesn't really work if I play on your account anyways, since the game isn't too mechanically intensive. I'll just take a look at your equipment," said Chen Mo.

Lin Xue let out a sly grin, "Then help me shuffle around the equipment or something, there's heaps of stuff that I'm not using!"

Lin Xue was playing a female Crusader. She didn't have a lot of great equipment, but she managed to transmogrify her equipment to look quite good. She didn't have much equipped yet she had many items in storage.

"Your equipment is... straight garbage! None of your equipment are good at all, how am I supposed to play this?" said Chen Mo.

Lin Xue smiled, "You're Chen Mo, a videogame designer, the S-god that destroyed ranked in Warcraft. Can't you handle a little challenge like this?"

Chen Mo was speechless.

Sure it was a bit of bootlicking, it still felt great nonetheless.

"Alright, seeing as you buttered me up so well, I'll try and save your account."

Chen Mo looked at Lin Xue's abilities and drops. This build was completely garbage and would take a lot of effort just to reach 40 floors in the Greater Rift.

But he couldn't blame Lin Xue as the players on his world hadn't spent much time testing out builds in Diablo, nor was there an incentive to do so when there wasn't a ranked season, so it wasn't a surprise that the players' understanding of the game was relatively shallow.

Chen Mo already had an idea in mind and wanted to use this opportunity to get the players some inspiration, showing them the wonders of Diablo's equipment system.

Although her equipment was quite terrible, Chen Mo felt that he could save it a tiny bit.

After looking through the various items, Chen Mo finally found something resembling good news. As Lin Xue was the type of player to hog equipment, she had a few ancient and primal ancient equipment. She put them all away no matter how good or bad they were. She also had key items such as Convention of Elements, Aquila Cuirass and Swiftmount, which could support a decent build.

Chen Mo started pressing his buttons.

First was swapping out all the abilities, equipping Shield Glare, Bombardment, Steed Charge , Iron Skin, Consecration, Akarat's Champion. He then swapped out his passive abilities for Fervor, Indestructible, Iron Maiden, and Finery.

Afterwards, he swapped out the equipment too, equipping Aquila Cuirass, Swiftmount, Leoric's Crown, Belt of the Trove, Hellfire Amulet, Hexing Pants of Mr Yan, Illusory boots...

Chen Mo equipped all these seemingly useless equipment.

Moreover, Lin Xue somehow managed to have the rings The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted, which Chen Mo was very happy about.

Now he had the special effects of The Mortal Drama, Heart of Iron, and Convention of Elements.

Rolling for elemental damage, enchanting, adding gems...

After all that trouble, Lin Xue's Crusader was finally presentable at the very least. Chen Mo looked at the attributes of the Crusader, reduced freeze time, elemental resistances, and thorns were more or less up to par.

"Alright, it's done," Chen Mo closed the character screen happily as he gave it his all to form a decent build out of a pile of garbage.

Lin Xue was watching Chen Mo's every move as she watched him take out piece after piece of equipment and equipping them.

And at this moment, Lin Xue was really confused.

She only understood about 20% of what Chen Mo did.

First was the abilities, there weren't any sustained damage sources, Steed Charge was basically just a utility skill, and Shield Glare was a controlling skill. Iron Skin and Akarat's Champion were buffs, and Consecration is just a small AoE spell.

Out of the skills he picked, only Bombardment was a traditional damage dealing skill. However, it had a long cooldown, and it was completely luck dependent on how much damage it would do.

The equipment was even more shocking, Lin Xue only understood that The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted set bonuses: While this is the only item Set Bonus the character has, their damage dealt is increased by 100% and damage taken is reduced by 4% for every Ancient Item they have equipped.

These two rings were the natural enemies of every other equipment as you couldn't have any other set attributes with these two equipped. Chen Mo seemed to have decided on using various different equipment from different sets just to build around the rings.

But will this work?

Lin Xue is doubtful.

Chapter 218: Explosive Cavalry

The chat didn't understand his moves either, it could even be said that it was completely out of their scope of knowledge.

"Is Chen Mo messing around? There's no way that's going to work? Where's the damage?"

"Look at what he has equipped! Aquila Cuirass, Swiftmount, Leoric's Crown, Belt of the Trove, Hexing Pants of Mr Yan... They look good on paper but are completely useless!"

"Maybe he's not going for set bonuses, using the set bonus of the rings to increase his damage?

"Maybe because Xue's equipment is too garbage and this was the best he could do. But I'm still wondering, sure the attributes are high, but I feel that it just doesn't work... Will this actually help Xue to reach floor 45?"

"Have you guys noticed that Chen Mo went for thorns on all his equipment. Is that... even useful?"

"I've got a Crusader too, let me see... Oh! You can turn your damage into thorns damage through runes! That means Chen Mo plans to use thorns as his main damage source!"

"Is that so. I understand it better now. No wonder he brought Iron Maiden as one of his passive. But I still don't really understand, the equipment looks good, but does it really work?"

The chat was filled with question marks.

Most were looking forward to the performance of the build as they knew that this wasn't something Chen Mo pulled out of nowhere and must've had his own ideas in mind.

Chen Mo started a Greater Rift with the Crusader.

Lin Xue's previous record was forty-one floors. It wasn't even a clean victory as she slowly stumbled through sheer luck.

The higher levels of Nephalem Rift have yet to be unlocked, so it was impossible for Chen Mo to go straight to level sixty. This meant Chen Mo had to continue where Lin Xue left off.

After being teleported into the Greater Rift, hordes of monsters started charging in!

There were many more monsters in Greater Rift than the usual story mode, so this was much more graphically intense than usual.

Chen Mo wasn't phased by this as he used Steed Charge right away. The warhorse the Crusader turned into a shadow under the Crusader and charged directly into the hordes of monsters.

This felt like a sudden, huge acceleration comparable to putting on the throttle on a motorbike.

The chat was shocked, what's going on?

There was one yellow and three blue elites among the monsters with plenty more smaller ones. Isn't it suicidal to charge in like that?

The Crusader charged right into where the monsters were most dense. The monsters all followed him and formed a huge bunch.

The Crusader let out an angry growl as they used Consecration, Akarat's Champion, Iron Skin and Bombardment. Barrels started appearing from the skies dealing massive damage to the mobs.

At the same time, numbers started appearing on the screen. The weaker mobs started dying left and right, and the elite mobs were taking huge damage as well.

Lin Xue was shocked to see this terrifying speed!

She really struggled to beat this previously, and died numerous times. She didn't dare aggro so many mobs at the same time too as she took every step carefully.

However, Chen Mo didn't even seem to care, charging right into where the mobs are most dense. The bonus of the ring was incredible as the mobs died under all the damage as Chen Mo pressed the 1234 keys on the keyboard, casting whichever abilities were off cooldown.

Moreover, Chen Mo's horse never slowed down and pretty much always maintained Steed Charge. The hordes of mobs couldn't stop him at all as he moved wherever he pleased.

It didn't take long for Chen Mo to clear the Greater Rift. It seemed pretty easy too as it wasn't mechanically intensive. It was like a trip to the mall as the Crusader walked around the map, leaving behind corpses in their wake.

Lin Xue was completely shocked, "Manager... Are you and I playing on the same account?"

The chat was also filled with laughter, nobody thought that a pile of garbage could be turned into something so powerful in Chen Mo's hands.

Chen Mo beat another level of the Greater Rift and moved onto the next one.

Just like before, charging around and killing everything. Lin Xue had her eyes on the screen the entire time, it didn't seem like anything as changed! From one level to the next, the mobs were dying just the same!

Chen Mo continued at this pace and went to the level sixty-five before stopping.

Lin Xue was shocked to see that was her own account.

The levels didn't seem any harder at all!

When Lin Xue was playing, she felt that the difficulty increased by quite a bit from one level to the next. One level might be easy to beat, but the next may be very difficult.

But it seemed like it wasn't a problem for Chen Mo at all as he breezed through levels forty to sixty.

Chen Mo even equipped a few decent pieces of equipment that were dropped.

There was some difficulty around level sixty, and it stopped working starting from level sixty-five.

It was a set of gear that Chen Mo managed to gather from junk afterall. Many of these didn't have the perfect stats and quite a few of them weren't ancient either, meaning that the effects of the rings weren't fully realised.

Chen Mo stood up, "Alright, I'll leave it there for now, you'll have to figure out the rest yourself."

Lin Xue prevented him from leaving, "Don't leave yet, you have to explain how the build works!"

Chen Mo was speechless, "Hey, aren't you the top of your class? Finish your homework yourself!"

Lin Xue pouted, "Hmph, fine!"

Lin Xue angrily sat back in her chair.

Although she looked angry on the outside, she was quite happy as not everybody gets the opportunity to be coached by Chen Mo.

Moreover, Chen Mo's display today was incredible. She didn't expect how a bunch of crappy equipment could increase her strength so by much!

It was crazy to beat twenty levels just like that!

Without spending too much time complaining about Chen Mo, Lin Xue quickly looked at her equipped tab and looked into Chen Mo's strategy.

The chat also started their own analysis. There are even some who copied Chen Mo's exact build in their own game to try and figure it out themselves.

"Oh! I understand now!" Lin Xue finally understood how it worked after looking through the attributes and abilities of the Crusader.

This build was known as explosive cavalry[1] in Chen Mo's previous world. It's most well known for utilizing items from different sets and stacking thorns damage, then using Bombardment and Steed Charge to deal as much damage as possible.

The advantage of the build was how effective it was, the explosive damage, and how quickly it covers the map. Moreover, the items from the different sets worked well for a strategy like this. That was why this build had its time in the sun, and the peak of the build could even reach over level ninety.

Of course, there were many builds in Diablo 3 in Chen Mo's previous life. After a few updates, there were many builds that were better than this one.

But because Lin Xue didn't have any equipment that worked particularly well with this build, Chen Mo used whatever he had on hand to form a passable build to showcase the different ways the game could be played.

TL note[1: I think this is a Chinese build, similar builds exist in the western world but not exactly the same from what I can tell.

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Chapter 219: A New Life

It didn't take long before the clip of Chen Mo beating many levels in the Nephalem Rift using Lin Xue's account was plastered all over the official forums, and many diehard players were analyzing how Chen Mo managed that.

"Anyone else watched Xue's livestream? Chen Mo joined the stream, and the most horrifying thing was that he managed to beat twenty Nephalem Rifts levels after swapping out her equipment!"

"Really? I don't buy it, how could their strength be that much different on the same account? Twenty levels? How much stronger do you need to get?"

"The clip is all over the internet, just have a look yourself. There are recordings of the whole thing. The worst part is that Chen Mo looked through all of Xue's garbage equipment while mixing and matching different ones. He also had a really weird combination of abilities, yet he was incredibly strong!"

"Alright, I'll take a look!"

It didn't take long before it became the most popular thread on the official forums, causing an especially large commotion among Crusader players.

Crusader and Necromancer were clearly inferior to other classes in the Greater Rift as the other classes had more developed builds.

Although the expansion pack had been out for quite some time now, the players still haven't wrapped their head around these classes. Crusader in particular haven't had a proper build found out yet.

And naturally, Chen Mo's new build attracted the attention of many.

The players knew that everytime Chen Mo released a new game, he'd introduce a weird playstyle to the players. For example, he pioneered cyclone spam and mass mines in Warcraft.

Chen Mo's build must also be something worth looking into and was possibly very important to Diablo's deep and rich playstyle!

Soon, the players finally figured out Chen Mo's strategy with the help of many players and the recordings.

This strategy was named explosive cavalry and quickly gained popularity among Crusader players.

The idea of this build was to stack thorns and use the set bonus of The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted to best utilize the strength of ancient equipment. The more ancient equipment, the more damage, surpassing the set bonuses of a full suit of equipment using items from different sets.

In terms of abilities, Consecration, Bombardment, Iron Skin, and Steed Charge could be converted into thorn damage through runes, meaning that all these abilities were damage dealing ones.

And Akarat's Champion provided an incredible strong buff, providing substantial damage increase.

The last ability could either be Shield Glare or Laws of Justice to increase survivability.

The most shocking thing was the equipment that were all from different sets.

Not only did they improve the set bonus of the rings, they also improved the abilities, so these special equipment were incredibly useful for Crusaders.

Leoric's Crown, increase the effects of gems. With the help of a passive ability gem, the cooldowns of abilities are decreased dramatically with a diamond equipped in the crown.

Necklace: Hellfire Amulet, Gives the Crusader another passive skill.

Chest Piece: Heart of Iron and Aquila Cuirass, one for stats, the other for effects. The Aquila Cuirass makes it so the player takes 50% damage when the character has over 90% resource. Iron Heart makes it so the player receives bonus thorns damage equal to 300% of dexterity.

This was because the abilities this build didn't cost any resource, so it would always be full, meaning that the effect of Aquila Cuirass would always be on.

Belt: Belt of the Trove, Triggers Bombardment every six seconds. Bombardment was the main damaging ability of this build, so Belt of the Trove could be described as the most important piece of equipment as it increased their damage multiple times.

Pants: Hexing Pants of Mr Yan, resource generation and damage is increased by 25% while moving and decreased by 20–25% while standing still. As Crusaders of this build would be constantly running around, it perfectly utilized its special effects.

Shoes: Illusory Boots, allows players to move unhindered through enemies, improving the maneuverability of the Crusader.

Weapon: Swiftmount, doubles the duration of Steed Charge. In combination with the cooldown reduction, the Crusader would almost have 100% uptime on Steed Charge, meaning that the player could come and go as they wish without fear of being surrounded.

Infused weapon: The Mortal Drama, doubles Bombardment impacts.

Infused ring: Convention of Elements, increases damage to a single element. For a Crusader, the ring would cycle between Fire, Holy, Lightning, and Physical every four seconds. Thorns damage was considered physical damage, which means that it would further increase Crusader's damage output.

Although these may not seem particularly effective on their own, they all have their place in this build. When the Crusader are under the effect of all their buffs, the damage numbers from Bombardment will keep increasing, which was how Chen Mo managed to beat over twenty levels of the Greater Rift.

All Crusader players were shocked after learning about this explosive cavalry build.

How is this possible?!

These seemingly useless equipment somehow managed to play a key role in this build. Moreover, with this combination of equipment, abilities, and gems dramatically increased the damage output of Crusaders!

While Crusader players were copying the build, the other classes got some inspiration too.

Everyone finally realised there were so many more ways to play the game, no wonder there were seventeen different difficulties!

The players were now sufficiently riled up as it was a key point in time in climbing. All players of different classes were holding their breath as they tried their best to figure out the best build.

Like a firestarter in a barrel of gunpowder, the passion of all the players were realised all of a sudden. The hardcore players were all trying to figure out the game as they look into the potential of the weirder equipment. Even the players who weren't into exploring every nook and cranny of the game were participating in discussion on the forum for the best strategy and builds to beat as many Greater Rift levels as possible.

Diablo which had cooled down for a bit gained a new life with the help of the new update!

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Chapter 220: Revenue

Many industry professionals had their eyes on Reaper of Souls as well.

Everybody knew about Diablo's crippling decline. Players and designers alike were trying to figure out how to reverse the process and extend Diablo's life, but nothing conclusive was reached.

Many suggestions pitched by players or designers were quickly shut down by others. These suggestions would always entail changing the core of Diablo or make it decline faster.

As a hack and slash game, it was natural that people would get bored of it quickly.

And in the eyes of many designers, there was nothing that could be done as in order to solve the problem, the core of the game must be changed, which would obviously affect how fun the game was.

The pros and cons of a game like this were two sides of the same coin, and improvements difficult to implement.

But nobody expected Chen Mo to double down on the hack and slash element of the game.

You think grinding is boring?

Alright, I'll just add more ways to make you grind. Are you still bored?

Many players realised that it wasn't boring, but was actually quite fun!

It was like reverse psychology. Although the game seemed to be even more grindy after the release of ranked seasons and the leaderboards, people gained more enjoyment out of it.

There were even articles analyzing how Reaper of Souls managed to save Diablo's post game.

"As someone who got bored of Diablo, it's hard to imagine that Reaper of Souls had made such a big change in the game.

"First it increased the content.

"The expansion pack continued to maintain its unique atmosphere with mountains of corpses, feeling townspeople, and demons all over the place. This was maintained all the way, and you could feel the world calling.

"The best part was the confrontation between the main character and Adria. It was so satisfying to be able to kill that horrible witch again and again!

"What's most surprising was the Nephalem Rift mechanic. Different maps and random elements are joined together, making it so every level after being teleported into the realm feels like a crazy fever dream.

"And when you kill the last boss, the ground is positively littered with loot, and ancient equipment would drop almost every single time. Chen Mo created a simple yet effective system, launch the game, kill bosses, get rewards, quit the game. The players can skip over all the convoluted steps and enjoy the best of hacking and slashing.

"In truth, through the expansion pack, Chen Mo let us know that the core of the game is still grinding. Chen Mo used a few new game modes that suited Diablo really well to revive this game.

"The pros of this game: Dark atmosphere, adventures, long-lasting satisfaction, and amazing visual effects.

"If you like games where you kill hordes upon hordes of mobs, then without a shadow of a doubt, Diablo: Reaper of Souls is your best pick"

Diablo's expansion pack, Reaper of Souls, gave a new life to the game, extending its lifespan, solidifying Diablo's position in this genre.

And its unique art style and game play became a popular branch under the RPG tree as video game designers look into it again and again.

And the designer who was most inspired by Reaper of Souls was probably Yan Zhenyuan.

Reaper of Souls arrived after he decided on the post game of this new project, and even started working on the design documents of the game.

After investigating the features of Reaper of Souls, Yan Zhenyuan spent three days making huge changes to the design of the game.

Although this meant that a lot of work had to be redone, dramatically increasing the workload, Yan Zhenyuan was sure that it would be worth it in the end.

After seeing how Reaper of Souls solved Diablo's lack of a postgame, Yan Zhenyuan also noticed the problem in his previous thought process.

Yan Zhenyuan planned to incorporate techniques used in online games to extend the playtime, but from the looks of it, this way of extending playtime would surely affect the quality of the game.

And Chen Mo's way of solving that same problem was probably the most ideal thus far.

Of course there were differences in the design concept in VR and PC games, and as a S-grade videogame designer, Yan Zhenyuan wouldn't blindly copy it. However, he got some inspiration for this and gained a whole new found respect for Chen Mo.

"This guy is really something else."

The development of Diablo wasn't just to pave the way for future development of RPG games, but more importantly, it was a test in many aspects.

Testing the acceptance of players towards third person RPGs.

Testing the acceptance of dark, scary themes.

Testing the acceptance towards grinding.

And Don't Starve's release was to test the acceptance of players towards sandbox games.

Each of these points can be developed into games of different genres, and was a roadmap for Chen Mo's game development in the future.

Following Reaper of Souls' great success, Chen Mo had plenty of money on hand.

Diablo sold 9.8 million copies world wide. Although this doesn't come close to thirty million by Blizzard in his previous life, it was certainly a result to be proud of.

Reaper of Souls had sold 2.9 million copies, and this was before its release internationally. Almost all the players who would Diablo bought the expansion pack.

(And the Chinese players in this world finally got a taste of getting a game before the rest of the world.)

Don't Starve sold 4.35 million copies in China. This doesn't compare to his previous life, but it was almost a miracle for such a tiny sandbox game to do so well in this world.

Chen Mo managed to gain a lot in terms of popularity and money selling these two games.

Chen Mo had around seven hundred million RMB on hand for development. Diablo cost quite a bit in its development, and including Reaper of Souls, it cost nearly two hundred million RMb. Don't Starve's cost was barely anything in comparison.

High quality games like these cost a lot of money after all.

Thankfully, Diablo did equally well in the international market. Chen Mo's revenue is as follows:

Diablo Chinese profits: three hundred and forty million.

Diablo International profits: 1.23 billion.

Don't Starve Chinese profits: sixty-one million.

Reaper of Souls Chinese profits: two hundred and thirty six million.

Of course, Onmyoji and Warcraft were still bringing Chen Mo profits.

After working for so long, Chen Mo finally broke a milestone of three billion RMB for development.

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 221 - Slacking Off - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 221 - Slacking Off Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 221: Slacking Off

Chen Mo was enjoying some time in the sun on the balcony on the second floor of the experience store.

He was laying down comfortably on a recliner, with sunglasses on his face and a drink in his hand, just like on would in Hawaii.

Although it wasn't all that warm outside, it was still quite nice to hang out directly under the sun. One could imagine they were on a beach under the sun if they closed their eyes.

But the cozy atmosphere was soon broken.

"Manager, stop slacking off during office times! I thought you were going to finish the design document for the new game within this week!" Su Jinyu said angrily with her hands on her hips.

With the release of Reaper of Souls, Diablo's development was over. And due to the nature of Don't Starve, there wasn't a need to push frequent updates, which was by naturally starting slacking off, spending his time enjoying the sun, so lazy that he wasn't even bothered to turn around.

The day to day operations of the company, and the maintenance and balancing of games were covered by the new hires. All Chen Mo had to do now was to distribute the work and had plenty of free time on hand.

"Geez, sure is nice being the boss," expressed Chen Mo,

"...Manager, get up and start working on the design draft!"

"Geez, Goldfish, how could you still not understand after working with me for so long? Let me ask you, what's the most important part of making a game?"

Su Jinyu was shocked, "Uhh, execution and inspiration?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Not bad, you're learning. Then where does inspiration come from?"

Su Jinyu was confused, "Where does inspiration come from...? It just pops into your head out of nowhere."

Chen Mo shook his head, "No no no, inspiration comes from relaxation. How could inspiration come to you if you were working like a dog every day? I need rest, let my mind clear up, and only then will inspiration arrive."

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"Uhh, do you mean that we'll only start working once inspiration comes to you?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Of course. Remember, the most important part of making a game is making sure you have your bearings right. If you're not in the right direction, you'll just be wasting energy. So you trying to rush me just has the opposite effect."

"Oh, I'll leave you to it then. Take your time to gather inspiration then, manager."

After getting Su Jinyu to leave, Chen Mo continued to enjoy his time in the sun.

He wasn't waiting for inspiration or anything of the sorts, he was just being lazy.

After confirming the balance of the company, Chen Mo realised that he was much more wealthy than he previously thought.

"Should I consider buying a bigger experience store? Maybe a big house too while I'm at it.

"Yep, when I have a house, I'll need a wife, then I'll have kids. Will it be a male ball or a female ball[1]... I meant boy or girl?

"The baby formulas aren't going to be a problem, but would they need their own apartment close to the uni? I'd be able to afford it, but the problem is having a local household registration[2].

"Whatever, if I don't have a registration, I'll just send them overseas. I wonder if they'll be used to living overseas without the watchful eyes of any relatives."

Luckily nobody else heard of this as all this was just in Chen Mo's head. Otherwise Chen Mo would be reminded that all of his previous thoughts required a girlfriend.

If the players found out, they'd most certainly said, "It doesn't matter if you marry, or have kids, or be a bachelor the rest of your life. The only important thing is... that you get back to developing games!"

He was a warm human living in a cold world.

Chen Mo wasn't someone who had no desires, but to him, nothing else compared to the satisfaction of making games.

In terms of developing games, Chen Mo was a workaholic, one who would rarely take breaks.

Moreover, developing games were different from other industries as they needed to listen to the feedback from players and make changes according to market demands. This meant that it was hard to stop halfway through something after starting. Only when a game was released and was operating stably could he take time out of his day to relax.

This meant that Chen Mo had been incredibly busy recently.

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After having some time to think, his development road map wasn't exactly exactly as he liked.

He said to Zhuo Yao that he promised Zhuo Yao that he would make an incredibly popular PC game that would drive a lot of attention back to the PC market in two years. It's been almost three years, yet he doesn't even have a date planned.

On the contrary, he'd progressed quite a bit in the direction of VR games. Chen Mo thought it'd take him at least five years to even touch VR games, never expecting him to be within reach of VR games this early.

Of course, it didn't matter than it differed on small details, it was still all within his calculations.

The experience store was incredibly small for how popular and wealthy Chen Mo was. He had enough money and had a certain push to move to a bigger experience store for his 'face'.

However, upon considering that he was pressed for time for the next game on his agenda combined with the trouble with moving, Chen Mo decided to delay moving until August or September next year.

Chen Mo already had his assistant Lin Xiao look into finding a new place for the experience store, taking every part of that equation into consideration and consolidated it into a complete report.

Moving to a bigger experience store was a big deal after all. Chen Mo wanted it to be sufficient for at least another five or ten years to avoid having to move again soon after they settled down.

Next was to continue spending money to increase his abilities.

Chen Mo sometimes forgets that he was a transmigrater with a system like this.

It was due to how costly this system was, so the frugal Chen Mo would constantly forget its existence.

Moreover, developing new games and moving to a new experience store also cost a lot of money. Chen Mo didn't want to spend too much money into the system as he maintained his stance of 'good enough'.

He turned on the virtual screen of the bracelete.

It was one hundred thousand RMB per draw. There were many different types of rewards from drawing, such as design (numerics, story, professional knowledge), presentation (art, music, cinematics), and equipment(consumables and permanent).

As Chen Mo just entered the second stage, strictly speaking he needed all of it.

Chen Mo gave it some thought and decided to spend ten million RMB to start.

Chen Mo decided to calm down on spending too much money on this upon considering his usual unlucky self. This was the most expensive pay to win system in the world bar none after all.

TL note[1: It's a quote from a fantasy comedy film called One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes. https//v_19rwvnjw40.html

[2]It's something that's not required to buy a house in the area in China, but does make the process easier.

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Chapter 222: Drawing Prizes

The ten million RMB was turned into ten thousand diamonds.

It cost one hundred diamonds to spin once, meaning he could spin one hundred times. The system was really thoughtful as there was a new level on the side of the machine with a note :"Draw ten: Spend 990 diamonds, 10*whatever you drew."

"... What a great deal," Chen Mo said sarcastically.

That meant spending nine hundred and ninety gems would multiply whatever you drew by ten (not ten different equipment).

And save ten diamonds.

Chen Mo rolled his eyes at the thought that ten diamonds meant ten thousand RMB, but there was nothing else he could do but accept it.

He pulled the spin ten lever.

The reels started spinning with various types of equipment flashing on the screen. It didn't take long before they settled down.

Design – Numerics – Numerics balancing skillbook (level 2)

One book turned into ten because of the spin ten. Ten identical level two numerics skill books appeared on the screen.

"Huh, not bad," Chen Mo tapped on the skill books before they turned into stars and flew into his fingertip.

Various knowledge of balancing flew into Chen Mo's mind. Various types of calculations, tableaus, and various balancing concepts and ideas were now part of Chen Mo's arsenal.

Balancing numbers were incredibly important to Chen Mo as PC's greatest weapon, MOBAs, were strongly dependent on balancing. Without proper balancing numerically, there was no way the final product was going to be balanced.

It was nearly impossible to have a proper competitive system in an imbalanced MOBA, not to mention the difficulty of retaining players.

Chen Mo continued to draw.

He pulled on the lever, the reels started and stopped again.

Design – professional knowledge, architecture skill book.

Another ten books.

Chen Mo let out ah 'oh'. Even though he didn't need it, it was useful nonetheless.

May as well consume it.

After consuming the ten architecture skill books, many relevant knowledge appeared in his mind, including composition, special buildings, and even some structural drawings.

He moved onto more.

Design- story- story writing skill book (level two)

Design – professional knowledge, architecture skill book

Design – professional knowledge, architecture skill book

Chen Mo was a bit bothered by the amount of architecture skill books he'd drawn as it felt that he couldn't utilize all this. But since he drew them, he may as well consume them.

He continued spinning.

Presentation – Art – Photoshop Skill Book.

"Hmm? Photshop? What?"

With some doubt in mind, Chen Mo consumed the ten skill books.

Chen Mo understood what it meant after consuming. Photoshop meant improving details, adding details to rough models to increase the amount of detail.

Take older games for example, other than having rougher models, the graphics on the models were low quality to start with, and was the main obstacle to overcome in order to have a high quality game. After mastering this ability, Chen Mo's art skill can be increased further, bringing rough graphics and models to a higher quality.

"Not bad, I wouldn't mind a few more of those."

Chen Mo continued.

Equipment – Consumable – Efficiency Adjuster

"Oh? New equipment!"

This caught Chen Mo's attention. Sure he had drawn many special equipment before, but there were only so many different types of equipment in level one, such as Memory Playback Potion, Super Accelerator... He was finally met with new equipment in level two.

Efficiency Adjuster: Increases thinking and acting speed after use, with a maximum of ten times. The higher the efficiency, the shorter the duration. Double time lasts for one hour, ten times lasts for twelve minutes.

"Hmm? Not bad!"

This was similar to Super Accelerator, but was obviously much better. First was the ability to adjust how many times efficiency he wanted, the other was no side effects, meaning he could use it back to back.

As it was a consumable, Chen Mo didn't use it immediately.

He continued spinning

Equipment – Consumable – Jinx Curse

"Hmm? Jinx?"

Chen Mo was confused and looked at the item description.

Jinx curse: After consuming, whatever positive thing the user says in a public space will have the complete opposite effect. Triggers, warm-up time, and effects are completely random.

Chen Mo was speechless. He could tell that this was a very dangerous equipment, not only was it hard to control, there were many restrictions too.

It must be done publicly and must be something positive, either praises or encouragement. Moreover, whichever line it triggers on, how long it lasts, and what it does was completely random. It might be utterly useless, or incredibly game changing.

"I'll save it for now, I'm afraid that I'll misuse it." Chen Mo decided to keep it in his bracelet for a later time.

He was afraid of triggering it after wishing he'd have a healthy safe life, then dying by his own hands.

He continued drawing.

Presentation – Art – Photoshop Skill Book

Presentation – Art – Photoshop Skill Book

He was now almost out of diamonds after spinning two more times, with a hundred more diamonds left. He decided to save the leftover one hundred diamonds for next time.

Overall he received:

Ten Level two Numerical Balancing Skill Books.

Ten Level two Story Writing Skill Books.

Thirty Architecture Skill Books.

Thirty Photoshop Skill Books.

Ten Efficiency Adjuster.

Ten Jinx Curses.

Chen Mo was quite happy with what he got so far. Although Chen Mo wanted to continue spinning, he ultimately stopped himself.

"It sure is difficult to suppress the desires to gamble," muttered Chen Mo.

Su Jinyu came upstairs again once Chen Mo was done.

"Manager, there's a delivery addressed to you."

"Alright, thanks," said Chen Mo as he stood up.

The two of them went downstairs together.

Su Jinyu asked, "Manager, what did you buy this time. It's a huge box, and the delivery guy said it was a valuable item."

"About that... You'll know it a bit. It is quite valuable."

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Chapter 223: Building Blocks

In the first floor of the experience store, Chen Mo was accepting the large delivery.

It was so tall it was up to one's waist, and was impossible to tell what was inside.

Su Jinyu asked curiously, "What's inside, manager? The delivery guy said it was valuable, what can be so big yet so valuable? Doesn't look like anything electronic related."

Chen Mo laughed, "You'll understand in a bit, get Qian Kun, Zhou Hanyu, and Zheng Hongxi over. The other staff members can join if they want too."

"Okay," Su Jinyu went back towards the office.

Chen Mo opened the large box using a box cutter to reveal smaller individually packed boxes. Chen Mo moved the smaller boxes into the meeting room and threw the large box away.

Soon, Su Jinyu brought the others to the experience store.

Qian Kun, Zhou Hanyu, Zhao Yunting, Zheng Hongxi, and Fu Guangnan were all here, as well as a few other members of staff. The frequent visitors of the experience store such as Jia Peng, Wen Lingwei, Chang Xiuya and Zou Zhuo gathered around as well.

Chen Mo got everyone to sit in the meeting room.

"Manager, are these... Leggo[1]?" Wen Lingwei recognised what was on the table.

Chen Mo nodded as he handed out the boxes, "Yeah."

Qian Kun, Zhou Hanyu, and Zheng Hongxi each got a medium sized box. The others were smaller boxes and a final huge box.

Chen Mo looked at the others and said, "You guys can take one if you're interested."

Jia Peng, Zhao Yunting, Su Jinyu, and Chang Xiuya all grabbed one, leaving behind three small boxes and one large box.

Chen Mo asked Wen Lingwei, "You're not joining?"

"I'll pass, I've played this plenty of times when I was younger."

Su Jia looked at the box in her hands, "Manager, is this a snow castle... It's huge!"

Everyone else was looking at what they got too.

Qian Kun got a Mothership.

Zhou Hanyu got a miniature sports stadium.

Zheng Hongxi got a cathedral.

These three boxes were of medium size.

Jia Peng got a black sports car.

Zhao Yunting got a green T-rex.

Su Jinyu got a snow castle.

Chang Xiuya got a train.

These four boxes were slightly smaller.

They were all confused as they looked at the boxes in their hands.

Zheng Hongxi asked, "This cathedral is built from tiny blocks? How can it look so real?"

Chen Mo laughed, "Alright, get working on it. Don't mix the blocks if you leave them on the table."

Su Jinyu was confused, "Uhh, manager. Is it a good idea to do this during office hours?"

"Of course it is. This will be your next task. This has to do with the next game we are working on."

Everybody was confused.

"Alright, what are you staring at me for, get to work. Don't think these are child's play. It's not easy to do a good job.

They looked at one another before opening their boxes and taking the blocks out.

Zheng Hongxi was shocked to look at the huge amounts of tiny pieces in front of him, "Can all these tiny pieces really be built into a cathedral? Why can't I believe this?"

Zhou Hanyu laughed awkwardly, "I planned to buy one for my son, but I never did it. I didn't expect me to play before he did."

Jia Peng scowled as he read the instructions, "It's so complicated!"

"There are so many tiny parts!" exclaimed Chang Xiuya.

Qian Kun looked at the price tag on the box, "My goodness, this mothership is three thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine RMB! It's too expensive!"

Wen Lingwei looked at everyone else dumbfounded, "Is this... your first time touching Leggo? What happened to your childhood?"

"You're joking, who could afford a four thousand RMB toy in their childhood." said Qian Kun.

Chang Xiuya nodded, "Yeah, this small box costs almost six hundred RMB."

"Looks like senior exposed herself as coming from a rich family." expressed Jia Peng.

Wen Lingwei rolled her eyes, "How did you reach that conclusion?"

Everyone grabbed the tiny parts out and started reading the instructions.

Each set had many many parts. Chang Xiuya's train had over seven hudnred pieces, and Zhao Yunting who got the simplest green dinosaur had almost two hundred pieces.

Qian Kun's Mothership and Zhou Hanyu's sports stadium was even more outrageous. A one person prototype at ninety three pieces.

Jia Peng had a black sports car. As it was relatively easy, he progressed quite quickly.

Jia Peng appreciated its exquisiteness as he assembled it.

The windshield was really solid, and you could even see the tiny driver through it.

The hood can be opened, the spoiler can be adjusted, the doors and be opened, and you could get the driver in and out of the car too.

All four wheels on the car spun freely as well. The quality and build of this sport car seemed on par with specialised toy sports cars.

Even the logo of the sports car and the headlights were really detailed, it looked like a perfect piece of art.

Chang Xiuya was also completely focused on assembling her train.

From the picture on the box, the train was red with a little man on the barricade on the side of the train, signaling. There were carriages behind the train too as well as a crane to load and unload the goods from the train.

There was even a digger and a smaller helicopter on the train.

Moreover the doors to the crain, digger, and helicopter could all be opened, and people can be placed into them too.

Chang Xiuya was struggling a little, only managing to set the tracks down and assemble the main part of the train.

Qian Kun was really struggling.

The mothership was huge and had smaller solo aircrafts inside and on the deck. He had only managed to assemble two of the smaller aircrafts and was a long way away from starting on the mothership.

With his eyes on the manual and his hands working, it didn't take long for Zheng Hongxi to finish assembling the cathedral.

Su Jinyu was going quite well with her snow castle. However, she forgot a small piece during her assembly, so she had to take apart a lot of it to fit it back, leaving her a little broken on the inside.

The others watching didn't really care for it at the start, but once the first item was finished, everyone's interest was piqued and started helping.

Some were arranging the pieces.

Others were helping with the manual.

Some were combining parts together.

All working while discussing.

Chen Mo smiled, it seemed like everyone enjoyed something like this.

He opened the largest box and pulled out various tiny pieces of different colours.

It was different from the others as it didn't have a manual or a picture of the finished product. There were only pieces of various colours of specific sizes.

TL note: [1] Intentional misspelling, addressed next chapter.

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Chapter 224: A Dog Made From Bricks

Wen Lingwei looked at all the bits and pieces in front of Chen Mo, "Did you buy all this?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah."

"What do you plan to build?" ask Wen Lingwei.

"You'll know once I'm done.

Chen Mo started building, piece by piece.

Wen Lingwei was really curious as she watched each and every movement of Chen Mo.

Normally, people would buy Leggo sets, such as Jia Peng's car or Su Jinyu's Snow Castle. These were all designed by designers then broken into smaller pieces. They'd buy the set and follow the instructions in the manual, it was only a matter of time to build the whole thing.

However, there were some unusual players too.

There are people titled Leggo Certified Professionals outside of China. These people don't buy finished Leggo designs, but buy random blocks and create anything they could imagine.

Buildings, sculptures, oil paintings, etc.

They also judge their work like they would any other artistic piece, creating classic sculptures such as Venus and David, and even some celebrities.

This way it wasn't just a problem of time, but talent as well.

Using pieces of rectangular blocks to make a one to one replica of a person was incredibly ridiculous, yet some manage to do it, attracting a lot of attention as well.

There was a little piece inside Wen Lingwei who suspected Chen Mo was a Leggo master as well.

Chen Mo grabbed pieces he needed from the big pile in front of him. He was looking for light yellow, dark brown, and black. From the looks of it, light yellow was a large majority of the pieces he grabbed.

Chen Mo moved quite quickly as well, one piece after another without much thinking time.

However, Wen Lingwei had yet to figure out what Chen Mo was building.

Chen Mo hadn't really touched Leggo prior to this. He had assembled a few sets of Leggo, but had never touched it since arriving in the parallel world.

But because of how high his arts level were at, being incredibly original arts and modeling, combined with the huge amounts of Architecture Skill Books he just drew, with the Reaction Speed Serums and Hand Speed Boost Potions, he had the whole thing under control.

If he had a rough idea in mind, he could swiftly turn it into life using Leggos.

Soon, Chen Mo's foundation was done, three legs, a butt, and a tail.

Wen Lingwei was so shocked her eyes were wide open as she could already tell it was the lower half of a dog, one that was sitting at that.

Chen Mo didn't seem to be slowing down at all as he continued building.

Soon, its waist, its paw in the air, its brown collar, and the head followed one after another.

After adding its black nose and eyes, Chen Mo breathed a sigh of relief and called it odne.

"My goodness manager, are you playing the same thing we are?"

Everyone was stopped dead in their tracks for more than half an hour as they watched Chen Mo build the dog.

The dog was cream in colour, with a brown collar. It was sitting with its right front paw in the air, head slightly tilted as if asking its owner to pet its head."

"Wow, you built a bachelor dog[1]!"

Chen Mo didn't respond.

"Can I touch it?" asked Wen Lingwei.

"Sure. Don't worry it won't break unless you drop it."

Wen Lingwei carefully patted the head of the dog.

The plastic of the Leggo was really familiar, but even though she touched it with her own hands, she still struggled to believe that it was made of Leggo.

It was the same size as a medium dog, and looked really similar to. Or perhaps it was better described as a mosaic of a dog.

This felt like a character from an old game recreated in real life.

Although it was pixelated, it looked really realistic, perfectly capturing the essence of a real dog.

Wen Lingwei exclaimed, "Not bad, manager. You could probably become a Leggo Certified Professional, maybe even a Leggo Master."

Su Jinyu asked, "Is that good?"

Wen Lingwei nodded, "Of course, there's probably under ten of those in the entire world."

Qian Kun was shocked, "My goodness, the manager is good at everything. How much do Leggo Certified Professionals earn?"

Wen Lingwei gave it some thought, "Hard to say, but something like this would probably sell for a few thousand USD."

Qian Kun was shocked, "That only took him half an hour right? That means he'd be paid over fifty thousand RMB an hour? My goodness!"

Chen Mo replied, "That's not much anyways,. you'd work tirelessly everyday and still earn less than Onmyoji while doing nothing."

The silence was deafening.

If Chen Mo wasn't the manager, he'd probably be taken outside for a beating.

Chen Mo stretched, "Geez, that was quite easy. You keep working on it, try and get it done as soon as possible. I'll tell you about the new games once you are done, so you'll be dragging down the progress of the new game if you worked slowly."

Everyone got back to their seats to work on their sets.

Qian Kun kept scratching his head, "Why did you give me the hardest one. I can't take the burden of being the one delaying the new game!

"Help me!!"

Before thinking about the new game, Chen Mo was thinking about how to get the leaders to understand his creative intentions better.

He wanted to make a game that didn't exist in this world, and one that didn't seem all that interesting.

Chen Mo though Leggos would work best.

There were building bricks in this world too, which had a similar name to Lego in his previous life, named Leggo.

Although these were really popular overseas, there weren't many people who could afford Leggo because of how expensive it was.

Qian Kun's mother shit cost four thousand RMB with two thousand nine hundred and ninety six incredibly detailed pieces. The finished product was nothing less than an artwork.

The cheaper ones started from two hundred RMB, and most families couldn't afford spending that much money for a toy for their children.

Once the kids got older, there were more toys to choose from, so they wouldn't pick Lego either. Even if there were people interested in Lego, they wouldn't buy the sets one after another, buying one or two tests for the taste of it at most.

Therefore, Lego naturally had a smaller audience in China, as seen with the tiny amount of people who have played with Lego in his office.

TL note: [1] It's commonly used as an insult, making fun of someone for being single, usually a guy.

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Chapter 225: Appear, My World[1]

There were many reasons for the lack of knockoffs too.

First was sales, a high quality detailed mould was really expensive. If there wasn't a guarantee of selling millions of it, there's no doubt that the business would go bankrupt. There was no way these knockoff companies could invest that much money into it, nor could they sell that many.

Second was a problem with quality. Leggo had over seven thousand different parts with twelve different pipelines, the mould would cost anywhere from forty to two hundred thousand Euros to produce.

The error in the parts can't exceed one hundred of a centimeter, and there was a machine involved in testing if the parts fit well together, with less than twelve faulty parts per hundred thousand.

The maintenance team had to check around three hundred moulds a day. Taking the consideration of human hours and quality assurance, there was no way they could decrease the price.

A core part of Leggo's competitiveness came from the lack of constraints. They could release one set today, another tomorrow, planes, boats, tanks, cars, buildings... There were always more things to release, so it was hard for competitors to make knockoffs.

That was why knockoff Leggo factories were put in such a bad position. If they decreased the price, there was no way they could guarantee the quality; If they assured the quality with little to no difference in price, why would they buy the knockoffs?

That's why there were very few players in Leggo despite how fun it was, leading to a gap in the market in enjoyment such as these.

Therefore, following the lack of abundance of Leggo, sandbox building games hadn't appeared in this world either.

Chen Mo wanted to fill this market gap and let everyone know that the fun in creating is endless.

After testing the waters with Don't Starve, Chen Mo more or less what the players in this world were after. There were many players who liked sandbox games, and the players in this world weren't any less creative.

Don't Starve had sold over four million copies and had no signs of stopping. Player made mods were also appearing left and right.

From Plants vs Zombies, to Warcraft and now Don't Starve, the players had shown time and time again how creative they were.

After some consideration, Chen Mo felt that the time was right to release a sandbox game that had even more potential to be popular.

This will serve as Chen Mo's first step into VR, and seemed like something safe and had a good outlook.

More importantly, it was a good opportunity for Chen Mo. If the game did exceedingly well, it'd create some talking points surrounding his game and Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's VR game. By then it'll be free buzz for his game, which would do wonder in promoting it.

After thinking it out, Chen Mo started working on the design document for Minecraft.

There were only two simple reasons for picking this game. First, it was incredibly successful, it was almost synonymous with sandbox games; second, it was quite easy to make, and was the most feasible one for Chen Mo so far.

However, there were still some risks involved in making a VR game.

As the making of VR games was hugely different from making PC games. Setting aside the technical aspect of making games, there were also differences in design concept, infinitely increasing the risk of making a VR game.

No matter the design concept in his previous life or experience in his parallel world, they were all focused on mobile and PC games, barely touching VR games.

Even if some experience in making console games can be transferred to VR, the differences were stark.

Moreover, the closer a VR game got to real life, the most expensive it was, the more detail that needed to be attended. Various resources would also increase dramatically.

The best part about Minecraft was because it was a game with pixel art, meaning it was less demanding on various resources such as models and animations. With his experience from his previous life in hand, he was incredibly familiar with its design concept.

The first goal of the development was to create Minecraft entirely and port it directly to VR, allowing players to collect, and build in VR, with the core enjoyment of Minecraft still in place.

The second goal was to improve on Minecraft, bringing its graphics and details to another level, making it fit better to the tastes of players in this world.

The third goal of development was to make some changes to its gameplay. Because of various reasons, a lot of interesting playstyles weren't feasible in the previous world. As the technology was more developed in this world, more ideas can be brought to life that couldn't be in the previous world.

The core of Minecraft was pretty simple. First was building, which was entirely similar to building Legos. Other game modes like Survival were all additions to the game and could be added later.

The design document was done in no time as it was finished within an evening.

The next day, there were still quite a few in the meeting room in the experience store tackling the largest set.

Zheng Hongxi's cathedral was the third last to be completed. Although it had a lot of parts, its composition was quite simple, there weren't any huge problems if they followed the manual step by step.

The finished product looked great, the steeple and windows in particular looked identical to cathedrals in real life.

Zhou Hanyu's sports center was the second last to be completed. Although the sports centre itself was quite complicated, the things surrounding it were quite easy to assemble.

Qian Kun's mother ship was the last to be finished, as the mothership was huge with many smaller ships inside it, it was a huge hassle to complete.

After completing the mothership, Qian Kun leaned back in his chair to breathe a sigh of relief, "My goodness, that was so a toy like this takes too much effort!"

The meeting room was like an exhibition of Legos with various different themes. There was a T-rex, snow castle, racecar, train, cathedral, and a sci-fi mothership.

And Chen Mo's bachelor dog of course.

"No kidding. Although there were ancient and modern themes, animals, and robots, everything matches quite well together. The designers at Leggo are quite talented in that aspect," expressed Zhou Hanyu.

Zheng Hongxi couldn't get his hands off the cathedral either, even taking a few pictures.

At this moment, Chen Mo walked into the meeting room, "Let's see... Not bad, so everyone finished their tasks."

Qian Kun breathed another sigh of relief, "Thank goodness I didn't drag everyone behind. Thanks for everyone's help at the end."

"Manager, you said you'd show us the concept draft for the new once we were done with assembling these sets. Where's the draft?" asked Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo laughed, "Relax, follow me. We'll talk more back in the office."

TL note[1: Minecraft's Chinese name directly translates to 'My World', so there's a double meaning there

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Chapter 226: Disagreements in Idea

In the office, everyone was waiting eagerly for Chen Mo to present the design document.

Although they enjoyed themselves playing Leggo, the majority still didn't understand why Chen Mo had them do that, and even less so the connection between that and the new game.

Moreover, Chen Mo previously hinted at a VR game previously. Many thought Chen Mo would develop a game around Azeroth or a VR RPG game following Diablo, but they were now doubting that after playing with the sets.

What is the relationship between Leggo and the new game?

The powerpoint titled 'Minecraft design concept' was displayed on the screen.

It was even simpler than Diablo as the presentation ended under ten minutes.

There were three main points, the rules of the game, the packaging, and additional modes.

The rules included the settings of the entire world, the restrictions players had with gathering and building, day-night cycles, killing monsters survival mode, crafting equipment, etc.

The packaging referred to making each block look as best as they can, allowing the players to connect things in game to real life.

Additional modes included the additional game modes that should be added in the later stages of the game, such as survival mode, creative mode, multiplayer, etc.

"That's about it, any questions?" Chen Mo asked and looked around for their responses.

Everybody looked at each other with the same expression on the face, "That's it? Are you joking?"

Zhou Hanyu cleared his throat, "I don't think there's a big problem with the design concept, it was presented quite clearly. But as a VR game, isn't Minecraft a bit... simple?"

Zheng Hongxi nodded, "I think so too, there aren't any story elements in this game. There isn't much in terms of numerics either. It doesn't even come close to Warcraft in terms of its complexity, much less Diablo.

Zhou Hanyu added, "Yeah, and aren't the demands for graphics a little bit too low? The other VR games all go for a realistic look, going as far as rendering individual strands of hair. Based on what we have so far, I don't even think we'll have five fingers."

"I think there's room for discussion whether or not the joy of the game could single handedly support all the sales. Sure building Lego was quite fun, but we'll need some kind of instructions. If we were given a bunch of different bits and pieces, who'd be able to get on the level of manager? We'd be able to make a horrible monster at best," said Qian Kun.

Su Jinyu also pitched in, "Yeah, I think so too. The main problem I have is, how many players out there are able to utilize their creativity and explore the entire unrestricted world? Moreover, VR players are a smaller market to start with."

Usually, the few original members also had some doubts for this design concept draft.

Even though Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi had incredible trust in Chen Mo, that was built on grounds where Chen Mo's design concepts weren't dramatically different from theirs.

Evidently, Minecraft didn't match what they had hoped to be Thunderbolt Entertainment's first VR game.

Chen Mo laughed as he didn't mind the doubts the others had for his design concept.

Chen Mo spent all that effort to raise his three assistants to have their own thoughts and ideas after all. He wanted them to have their own perspectives instead of just having their head down and following whatever Chen Mo wanted to do.

All these questions meant that they had their own thoughts, which happened to be a good thing.

Chen Mo asked after a few moments, "What do you guys think about Don't Starve?"

Everyone was shocked, before Su Jinyu answered, "Umm, the gameplay's great, the sales were great, but it wasn't a top level game."

Chen Mo nodded, "What was the secret of Don't Starve's success?"

"Umm... recreating the needs of survival, rich gameplay, and a sandbox game that allows players to explore and create freely," answered Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo nodded, "That's right. The reason Don't Starve succeeded was because it was a sandbox game, and one that included the survival aspect. Did it have high quality graphics?"

"...no," replied Su Jinyu.

Chen Mo raised another question, "Does Don't Starve have a story? Is it complex numerically? Does it have a good new player system? Did you guys manage to guess the sales before its release?"

Everyone looked at each other.

Chen Mo continued, "It doesn't have a story, not a complex numerical system. There is basically no new player system, and everyone thought it would be a niche game before its release, nobody thought it would sell over four million copies. What does this tell us?

"It tells us that there's no need for a story in sandbox games, there's no need for a complex numerical system, nor is there a need for a good new player introduction. What sandbox games need is freedom. With freedom, we can sacrifice anything.

"Like the pixel graphics, sacrificing everything for freedom."

Chen Mo paused to look at their reactions.

Everyone was thinking about the meaning behind Chen Mo's speech.

Chen Mo continued, "What's the smallest piece of Leggo? 7.8mm width and length, by 9.6mm tall. It's less than 1cm in volume.

"Why was it that specific size? Because if it was any smaller, it'd be hard to build with, any larger and it won't do well with details. Leggo's dimensions took into consideration its utility and usability, the best result the designers arrived at.

"Similarly, if we want players to have creative freedom in Minecraft, we also need to care about both usability and utility."

"And we would arrive at pixel graphics every time. Do you remember the dog I built? That's pixel graphics. Therefore, we have no choice other than to do the same with our game."

Now, most understood what Chen Mo was going for.

Chen Mo's idea was as follows, first make sandbox games like Leggo, which was why only pixel graphics could work. Moreover, Chen Mo thinks that it was enough to guarantee creativity, other aspects such as graphics, numerics, story, and playstyle weren't important at all.

The design document was birthed under ideas like that.

A few moments of silence followed as everyone contemplated Chen Mo's words.

Su Jinyu nodded, "Sure, I understand. Since you've thought of this clearly, I support this idea."

Qian Kun added, "Ok, we'll try that! I think if a game could recreate the joy of building Leggos, it'll surely be fun!"

Zhou Hanyu also pitched in, "I still don't fully believe in it, but I'll think more into the graphics department. Even if it was pixel graphics, there's bound to be a best looking pixel graphic in the world."

Chen Mo laughed, "Don't worry, this game won't disappoint."

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Chapter 227: VR Game Development Principles

How popular was Minecraft in Chen Mo's previous world?

In a nutshell, it is the most successful indie game in terms of popularity and business bar none; it's the second most sold game in the world, exceeding 100 million copies, second only to Tetris.

Upon considering 2009, the year when Minecraft was released, there were already quite a few decent PC and console games, it was nothing short of a miracle to be able to achieve success like that.

Moreover, Minecraft could and was ported to PC, console, tablets and mobile.

There are some more numbers that could back up this incredible popularity.

In 2014, Mojang the studio responsible for Minecraft was purchased by Microsoft with 2.5 billion USD.

Minecraft had over 4.31 billion views on Youtube.

There were over ten million players joining the beta test, making it the most popular game in beat.

Ordnance Survey of Britain recreated the entire British Isle with twenty-two billion blocks.

What mysterious power did the game have to be able to attract so many players?

To put it simply, Minecraft dramatically decreased the difficulty of making a 3D object on computers.

Many have had ideas of creating their own space/world. They might realise it through sandcastles, Legos, or paper mache when they were younger, and use games to do that when they get older.

There are many ways to create a virtual world on the computer, but traditional 3D softwares possessed a steep learning curve, and many didn't have the patience to do it from scratch.

And Minecraft was a way for the vast majority to easily create a 3D world.

They just had to put the block down.

There was no need for materials, textures, rendering, terrain, vegetation, or particle effects. All you had to do was place down the block you chose.

The blocks in Minecraft were all 1m*1m*1m, so players wouldn't find themselves losing perspective in the virtual work, and the finished products would be more believable too.

Moreover, Minecraft wasn't just a method for creating worlds, it had really rich gameplay as well.

For Chen Mo, porting this game to VR was something really challenging, and really meaningful.

After having gone through the design document, everyone started working. Chen Mo's mention of tech-trees, artstyle, and the game modes were enough to keep them occupied for a long time.

There wasn't anything to use as reference after all, how would you approach a game that was similar to Leggos? What would it look like? How do you deal with details?

This was something everyone had to think long and hard.

Chen Mo went back to his office on the second floor of the experience store and started looking into the restrictions he had making VR games.

The Illusion Game Editor supported VR games, but the ways of making a game were much different than PC and mobile games.

As an A-grade videogame designer and an honorary member of the Game Committee, he had plenty of rights in the Illusion Game Editor and could start working on VR games.

Chen Mo had already looked through the process of making VR games since he became an A-grade videogame designer, he just wanted to look through it again.

Chen Mo had experienced VR games himself, through Earth Online. Simply put, VR allows players to upload their consciousness into the VR gaming pod, and was able to receive feedback from it too.

The VR gaming pod replaced the needs for inputs/outputs such as keyboards, mice, and displayers, bridging the gap between consciousness of the player and the virtual world.

The gaming pod is also able to analyse the consciousness of the player.

For example, if the player wants to reach their hand out to grab something, the gaming pod would be able to recognise that input and turn it into an action within the game, allowing them to pick up that object in game.

It was a similar case with walking, climbing, jumping, shooting, all of which were done in the same way.

Theoretically, the VR technology of this world could analyse any intentions the player has, but it was up to the designers to translate them into actions in games.

In a cold weapons game, the player could think out pulling the trigger in game, but the game would reject as such an input shouldn't happen.

Whichevers input to support were all up to the designers.

If you were a soldier with a gun in the game and wanted to place the gun beneath your feet, but the designer didn't intend for such an interaction, nothing would happen.

It may sound weird, but it was something players get used to after playing a while. (Just like in AAA titles where you could only do whatever the story has you do.)

Therefore the more actions the designer planned for, the more freedom the player had, the more things they could do, the more real the game would feel.

With that meant a greater hardware demand and a more tiring gaming experience.

This was also why RTS games weren't common in VR.

No advantage in terms of graphics.

Huge resource demand.

It took a lot out of the players, meaning they couldn't play it for long.

For example in a VR RTS game, the player would need to select units and what actions they would perform constantly while thinking about their tactics. This was extremely taxing on the players.

Even though it was the same on PC, players had to do all of the same things, but everything was done using mouse and keyboard, and a lot of it could be muscle memory, decreasing the load on the player.

Therefore, some VR games would intentionally simplify some actions to prevent tiring the players out from repetitive actions, and in turn extending the amount of playtime.

For example, in some VR games, all attacks and punches, with no input into which direction, angle, or strength in order to simplify the number of actions which in turn reduces the demand on the players.

Moreover, VR games are able to stimulate all senses, including sight, hearing, smell, and touch.

The visual signals transmitted to the players are just like the 124 bifocal nature of humans, with around 25 of focus, just like real life.

Hearing and smell were also transmitted to players to stimulate real life sound and smells.

Next were the differences of design concepts in VR.

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Chapter 228: Basic Rules of the World

Every game had design restrictions based on their platform.

For example, racing games on PC always only had two perspectives, from the inside of the car or outside the car.

It was because the field of view in first person PC games are usually 75 to 90, whereas humans have a 124 field of view.

Meaning, because of restrictions of a display on PC, it was impossible to have complete representation from a human point of view outside of having two more monitors.

Most players wouldn't get two more monitors just to play racing games, so the viewing angle within the car would feel really narrow.

At times like these, a view from the top of the car is needed as the field of view is widened, meaning that the players could see more, making it feel more natural.

(This applied to PUBG as well.)

This design of having two different perspectives was a result of limitations of PC.

Similarly, although VR games were way better at conveying games than PC, it also had a similar downfall. The designs of VR games were also restricted by VR technology.

Most popular VR games were in first person mode, and the flow of producing games all followed the same 'release on PC before porting to VR' model.

First step of porting a PC game was to improve the quality of the graphics and models to meet the requirements of a VR game. This improvement would normally cost about ten times the resource. This was also where most of the money goes.

The second step was to port PC controls in VR controls. This was mostly done in the game editor, converting signals received from players using special equipment and converting it one to one to the established controls.

For example, the design could use his intentions of jumping and link it to jumping in the game. When the players would think about jumping, the character in the game would follow.

The game would also have an increased field of view up to 124. Other senses such as smell, hearing, and touch would also be ported to the VR.

Third step was to make minor changes according to the game to make it feel better for VR players.

After looking through the main points he had to consider making a VR game, Chen Mo started working on the rules of Minecraft.

In the first stage, Chen Mo planned to make it on PC and recreate the original before porting it to VR.

First was the basic rules of the world.

Chen Mo planned for single player modes as well as local and online multiplayer modes.

Of which, singleplayer and local multiplayer could be interchanged (just like Diablo 3), and the worlds could grow indefinitely as it would be procedurally generated by the game (A limit on players should be added.).

Online maps should support up to ten thousand players. The world would be locked at one hundred thousand square kilometers, which would be similar in area to a province.

The basic resources would be more or less the same as the original Minecraft, such as stone, water, lava, sand, gravel, gold, iron, coal, wood, leaves, diamond, ice...

More could be added depending on the situation.

Other crafting material such as sticks, planks, leather, seeds, equipment used to gather such as shovels and pickaxes, transportation such as rails, minecarts and boats, tools for fighting such as sword, helmet, and chestpiece... There were hundreds of these, and more could be added in the future.

Although Chen Mo hadn't looked at the design document for Minecraft, he could guess what the generation rules looked like.

First was generating the base of the world and the shape of the land.

Generate various biomes and their -edges, adding hills and mountains- adding ocean edges to these biomes- minor adjustments- add rivers.

Step two was filling in the stone, water and air blocks based on the height limit.

Third was completing the biomes, adding grass and stone if it was plains, adding sand and stone if it was a desert... Filling in the entire map as well as adding bedrock.

Fourth was generating special structures such as caves, ravines, ore deposits, villages, temples, ocean monuments...

Special structures such as villages and desert temples were formed using predetermined resources. Chen Mo thought that he could add more special structures to make the world feel even more alive.

Fifth was generating light.

Sixth was adding special units (furnaces and chests have their own random algorithm).

Seventh was generating pools of water and magma. Obviously lava pools have a much lower spawn rate than water pools.

Eight was adding ore. The types of ore are mainly determined by the height, such as dirt, gravel, coal, iron, gold, restone, diamond...

Ninth was adding the little details such as sand, clay and gravel next to bodies of water, plants, trees and mushrooms on soil...

Last but not least was adding mobs such as cows, shepe, pigs, and chicken.

Of course, this was Chen Mo's guess. It might be different from the original Minecraft, but it wouldn't be too far off.

After this process, the world was complete and the players could start exploring as their own little character.

The actions players could perform in the original game included moving, jumping, attacking, mining and placing. There were also some animation mods that added climbing, hanging, sneaking, and facial expressions.

Chen Mo could do all of these animations and increase the animations the players had to make it feel more realistic (of course, the graphics needed to be improved accordingly).

A dozen or so animations weren't a big deal for a big VR RPG game, nor will the players feel drained and overwhelmed by the number of controls, allowing the players to play for a long time while improving the depth of the game.

Moreover, Chen Mo was thinking about improving on the other aspects of the game.

For example, in the original the players could craft doors and sticks with planks using the world bench. Chen Mo planned to expand on this to allow the players to craft more items while making it more clear and concise.

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Chapter 229: Yan Zhenyuan's Thousand Hells

It had been nearly four months since Yan Zhenyuan started working on a VR version of Diablo.

Although Emperor Dynasty Entertainment tried to keep everything to themselves, it was inevitable that the news would get out.

Of course there were many rumours, nobody could tell which was true or false.

Yan Zhenyuan's VR game was called Thousand Hells with an original IP. Rumours has it that a deal was made with a popular web novelist to release a novel by the same name at the same time.

This game had strong ties to Buddhism, and had a similar style to Asura from Chen Mo's previous life.

Thousand Hells was based in a world of eternal darkness filled with demons. Various demons from the thousand hells broke their seal and invaded the human world. The player plays the role of the six realms as they enter the depths of hell to banish countless demons, reestablishing the seal, saving the human race.

Thousand Hells had six different classes, or the six different realms, heavens, demigod, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and hellspawn.

Just like Diablo, all the classes were damage dealing classes with different methods of dealing damage.

Heavens was similar to holy magic, an embodiment of holiness.

Humans were similar to hunters or assassins, which was the hero who represented humans.

Animals should shape shift into beasts similar to druids, but their different forms were all mythical creatures.

Demigods were similar to berserkers to barbarians, violent and had great survivability.

Hungry ghosts were similar to necromancers with the ability to summon demons to fight by their side.

Hellspawn were similar to Warlocks with control over dark magic, based around damage over time and negative effects. It was different from heavens as it represented a part of hell that stood by humans.

The classes in Thousand Hells were well designed, as it manages to incorporate the six realms deep into its design while bringing out the uniqueness of the different classes.

Most importantly, the six classes all had inspiration from classes in Diablo. The demigod for example took some inspiration from Barbarians in Diablo.

With a successful PC game like Diablo as reference, the chance of Thousand Hells succeeding would be much higher as it minimised the risks.

Based on the current available information, Thousand Hells did an impeccable job in terms of its packaging.

In terms of the gameplay, as Thousand Hells was still in its early stages, there hadn't been much leaked regarding gameplay other than the basics.

The players would play as the embodiment of the six realms as they fight their way into hell, killing waves upon waves on enemies to seal the demons away, returning peace to the humans.

This was similar to Diablo 1 where the players fight their way into hell.

Each level of hell featured a relatively large procedurally generated map, so was the entrance to the next level, which required exploration to find.

There were differences in art style from floor to floor, fire, ice, mirrors, knives, blood...

Of course there wouldn't be a thousand different themes in a thousand different levels, the themes would have to be reused for a certain amount of levels.

Similar to Diablo, there were horrifying elements such as execution, climbing up mountains of blades, pots of boiling oil and other hopeless elements.

(Of course this game was rated 18)

When considering that it would be even more visually stimulating, Yan Zhenyuan would surely make some beautification to the contents of the game to prevent the realism from keeping the players away.

There were human towns at the higher levels of hell to allow players to trade and interact with one another.

It was a relatively empty world with an ancient, technologyless theme. It was hard to tell which period it was from other than some religious elements.

Other things such as the social system and other unique play styles have yet to be leaked.

Chen Mo was thinking what the final product would look like.

Based on the information so far, Chen Mo could already tell what Thousand Hells would look like on PC, but he had no clue what it would look like on VR.

There was a huge change in field of view afterall, with many changes following that. Chen Mo thought that it might be similar to Dynasty Warriors.

Of course, all would be clear after the game was made.

The three assistants were trying their best to finish some of the smaller details in Minecraft.

Qian Kun handed over a document to Chen Mo specifying Minecraft's crafting system.

In the design document, Chen Mo hinted at a crafting table and how to make various tools without specifying which tools, leaving that to Qian Kun to design.

Chen Mo looked at the crafting system design document.

"MAnager, the early stages of the game are quite clear cut as the players could craft tools and weapons. Tools included axes, and pickaxes, and weapons included sword and armor. But I'm not quite sure about the late game, what's the technological ceiling of this game?" asked Qian Kun.

Chen Mo replied after a few moments, "Really high."

"How high is really high?"

"Rockets."

Qian Kun's eyes widened, "R-rockets?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Remember that there were trains, cars, and rockets in Leggo? Consider adding those to Minecraft."

Qian Kun scratched his head, "WHat? Isn't a rocket too complicated? Moreover where would it go?"

"Think outside of the box. There are two ways of crafting in Minecraft, one is arranging items in a specific order in the crafting table, the other is placing blocks in the world, and it crafts itself.

"For example, I'll arrange blocks into the shape of a man to form an Iron Golem.

"We could also add more complicated tech trees. We could use several unique items to craft a control unit, and when combined with fuel, reinforcement, and switches, we could create trains or even rockets."

"I think I get it," replied Qian Kun.

Chen Mo continued, "It doesn't have to be based on real life. You could create a whole new tech tree in this world just like Don't Starve."

Qian Kun seemed to have understood, "Alright, I'll... Rewrite this then."

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Chapter 230: First Version

Chen Mo planned some huge changes, but it'd probably only be realised in the second or third stages of the release.

A part of it was to implement a more complete tech tree to allow players to place down blocks to build more advanced items such as cars or trains, and potentially recreate modern cities.

Of course many have done this in his previous life, but a lot of it was stationary and non-interactive. Chen Mo wanted to add these technologies as a core part of the game.

However, these were problems to be dealt with in the future.

It didn't take long for Minecraft's PC Demo to be completed.

However, everyone outside of Chen Mo thought that it was horrible to look at.

Chen Mo didn't mind as he tried out the demo of Minecraft on his laptop.

Everyone else were nervously watching behind Chen Mo as they feared Chen Mo wouldn't be satisfied with that.

The starting menu was incredibly simple with only two buttons present, 'Start game', and 'Quit'. Chen Mo hit 'Start game', and the world started generating.

Soon, the game started.

The game was in first person with no other UIs such as health, hunger, or inventory. There was a simplistic hand on the right of the screen to represent the player's hand.

The player could fly freely in the demo. Chen Mo flew around in the world to check out the terrain and other generated resources.

Ocean, mountains, rivers, grasslands, trees, animals...

The land was in order without any major problems. The graphics weren't great as they were placeholders Zhou Hanyu added in a short amount of time, more or less identical to the quality of graphics in his previous life.

It would look alright on mobile, but it'd be horrible on VR.

Chen Mo flattened the top of a mountain in game and started building using cobblestone.

Soon, a small cobblestone formed on top of the mountain.

Chen Mo ran around the house for a better look before he entered the building, seemingly quite satisfied.

"Yep, that's great. This feels right, just keep going in this direction. Just focus on hitting the first goal and I'll prepare the rest," said Chen Mo.

Everyone got back to their seats and continued working.

Zhou Hanyu said, "Manager, I'd like to discuss some things in terms of the graphics."

Chen Mo nodded, "Okay, I've been wanting to chat with you anyways. Let's talk in the meeting room."

The two of them headed to the meeting room. Zhou Hanyu then pulled out a few printed images.

"These are the ideas I have in mind, but I haven't decided on which one."

Zhou Hanyu handed CHen Mo different pictures as he explained.

"There aren't major differences with the art styles, just some differences in the small details. It's hard to have more detail in pixel graphics anyways."

Chen Mo looked through the pictures and picked out the one he liked the most, "This one, and I have a few things to remind you.

"First, as special resources such as water and lava or the sky aren't required to be in blocks, make sure they look as realistic as possible.

"The style for other blocks, in particular the mountains, should be soft. Try softening hard edges and make it look more dynamic and aesthetically pleasing.

"The other was the 3D feel. You could use lighting and shadows to make the blocks feel even more 3D, such as gaps between planks or bricks. This can make it feel more realistic.

"You should also add more details to patterns to make the game feel less grainy.

"You could also pick more contrasting colours for different blocks to help players differentiate between them.

"The game should give off a bright, fairytale-like world.

"You should refer to Leggos when it comes to details such as character models. Special tools such as swords and pickaxes don't have to be in pixels, it'd be great if you could make it look like a high quality Leggo build.

"The characters should be on the cuter side and make them more detailed. I want to add facial expressions in the future, so the faces of the characters should be clear enough to identify that face and facial expressions.

"Also, I want to add a 'Chisel mode' in the future, to allow player to break down 1m*1m*1m blocks into 64 smaller blocks, so take that into consideration too."

Zhou Hanyu took down notes as Chen Mo explained.

Just as usual, Chen Mo explained everything in detail to avoid miscommunications.

"Alright, I understand," Zhou Hanyu made notes on everything important.

"You can start preparing the graphical resources, we can add more details after the first version is complete, when we port it to VR. You have plenty of time, so make use of it," said Chen Mo.

Zhou Hanyu nodded, "Sure."

The development of Minecraft had been going well so far, although it wasn't particularly hard anyways as the original game in Chen Mo's previous life was built by a single person.

After having the rules and settings of the world down, Chen Mo took the building of special buildings which would be added during world generation such as villages, mineshafts, and temples into his own hands.

Chen Mo planned to add more hand-made resources into the future to add into terrain generation.

The PC version of Minecraft was on par with the original version before Chinese New Year came.

Everyone was quite happy with the game at this stage, but many still didn't feel well upon considering the fact that this was the VR game that would go against Thousand Hells.

The high quality graphics of Thousand Hells was miles away from Minecraft after all.

Chen Mo declined all activities before Chinese New Year to focus on Minecraft.

Chen Mo only showed up to the Awards Ceremony and didn't participate too much, and neither Diablo nor Don't Starve was awarded.

It was within reason as these games didn't fit the tastes of the judges. Diablo was a western fantasy game with an incredibly dark theme, and its playstyle wasn't particularly revolutionary either; whereas Don't Starve wasn't for an award as it was a smaller game.

Moreover, the judges of this world didn't have high expectations for sandbox games. In the eyes of many of the judges, Don't Start was just a niche game that happened to get higher than average sales, and couldn't make it as one of the greats.

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Almighty Video Game Designer #Chapter 231 - Transfer Complete - Read Almighty Video Game Designer Chapter 231 - Transfer Complete Online - All Page - Novel Next

Chapter 231: Transfer Complete

The development of Minecraft continued after Chinese New Year.

The game was still a ways away from the final product after the first stage. It was already quite a feat to recreate Minecraft, but Chen Mo wanted more, hoping to recreate it in VR.

The next step was to port Minecraft to VR.

-Second floor of the experience store-

Chen Mo took off his special consciousness gathering helmet to stretch his neck.

The consciousness gathering was complete, now the thoughts of moving, jumping, attacking, placing, using, crafting were translated into actions in VR.

Chen Mo then entered everything into the Illusion Game Editor, linking the thoughts to movements in game.

Conversion of the rules from PC to VR was also ongoing in the game editor.

The conversion to a 3D PC game to VR was quite quick. Of course, if the game was innately big and had a lot of resources, this process would be much longer.

Luckily, the rules of Minecraftwas quite simple with not many resources in play, so the conversion happened quite quickly.

Chen Mo installed the VR version of Minecraft onto the gaming pod to try it out.

Soon, Chen Mo's consciousness entered the VR world.

A new world was generated as specified, and Chen Mo could feel himself fully immersed in the world.

However, the situation could only be described as very terrible.

First was the horrible graphics.

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In VR, the field of view of the players were increased, so some of the rougher details can't escape the eyes of the players.

The jaggedness of the pixel graphics were incredibly obvious.

Looking down revealed an ugly, blocky person, with legs like meat in a can and no fingers.

Looking around revealed the trees, rivers, mountains, and animals, all of which wasn't what Chen Mo had in mind.

These graphics were acceptable on PC, but with the wider field of view in VR, all the flaws were magnified, so bad that it almost feels like another game.

The movements were smooth, and the feedback from the environment was incredibly lacking.

In VR, players didn't play the game using keyboard and mouse, but using their consciousness. Although CHen Mo already gathered the thoughts for all of the controls, he realised that it was far from enough after trying it out in game.

It was quite lacking, especially when compared to a mature VR game like Earth Online.

For example, Chen Mo felt as though he was on a unicycle when he was moving as it was really weird without any bobbing. It felt like he was floating through the air too, as opposed to having his feet on the ground.

There wasn't any feedback grabbing tools, and actions such as jumping, mining, and placing felt like someone else was doing it.

All in all, the first VR version of Minecraft felt the same as VR goggles in his previous life, other than a change in perspective, there wasn't much difference.

This version was so bad it felt insulting to have his VR pod run the game.

These problems seemed to have stemmed from Chen Mo's inexperience with VR games. Luckily it seemed to be an easy problem to solve with enough time and effort into it.

Improve actions, add view bobbing.

Add various haptic feedback.

Add resources for the other senses such as smell and hearing (improving them to a high quality of course).

And improve all aspects of the graphics at the same time.

Although it was still the same pixel art style after being imported to VR, Zhou Hanyu improved on many aspects as per Chen Mo's request.

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Basic blocks such as dirt, stone, glass, good, and leaves had patterns to make it feel more textured and softened the edges.

These changes surpassed the graphical quality of many mods in his previous life.

Moreover, Chen Mo added a 'Chisel Mode'. This allowed basic blocks to be broken into sixty four different pieces to allow players to perform detailed work, making creations resemble closer to real life.

This 'Chizel Mode' was also used during world generation to soften the edges of the blocks to make the world feel more tied together and realistic.

Other than blocks, characters, animals, adn weapons were all formed as though they were Leggo, keeping its cute art style while adding detail.

The characters for example, although it still maintained the 3:1 ratio of body to head, the head, arms and legs were no longer cubes, but round, just like Disney characters in Leggo. It made the characters fit in better in the world, while giving the models more detail.

At the same time, in order to make it better fit with multiplayer, CHen Mo added a few more models.

These models also took inspiration from the people from Leggo, with various different types of costumes such as suit and tie, cowboy, casual wear, firefighter, race car driver, pirate...

Moreover, the players could mix and match their tops, pants, hats, and shoes.

These clothes didn't take much effort as they were cute versions of it after all, unlike the bigger games that specify every single strand of hair.

Chen Mo also added a basic set of facial expressions with a happy face, sad face, and angry face, allowing players to freely use in game.

The second stage took a relatively long time, over two months in total.

This version was finally a passable VR game.

Although it's still pixel graphics, it wasn't rough or repulsive.

The characters were still cute and simple, but had various different animals for walking, jumping, and taking damage. The field of view would slightly move as the body felt the vibrations, just like real life.

The feedback from the game was also quite complete, making the game feel much more realistic with walking, jumping, attacking, placing feedback implemented.

The players would feel their hands grabbing onto the wooden handle of their pickaxe when mining, and they could feel the vibrations through their hand into their body.

Minecraft had been successfully ported from PC onto VR. Next was the most important step or adding more to the game as well as additional game modes.

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Chapter 232: Additional Game Modes

As the main source of entertainment of Minecraft came from creating, everything Chen Mo added to the game was built around creation.

First the game modes.

There were four game modes: Minecraft (Single player), Somebody else's world (Local Multiplayer), Everybody's world (Online mode), Chen Mo's world (observer mode.)

Single Player mode was just like the original, with Survival, adventure, and creative gamemodes, the players could experience all the game had to offer through these modes.

Just like Diablo, the players could open their single player worlds to allow other players to join either through random matching or specific invitations.

In local multiplayer mode, the host had rights to kick and mute players, as well as the ability to revert those changes.

In online mode, Chen mo hosted many servers, each able to fit ten thousand players with ten thousand km of explorable land.

This world wasn't a planet, but a galaxy.

All servers started off the same with identical maps, but players could make changes to the world as they wished. How the server ended up looking completely depended on the players.

With this many different servers change would result in the same amount of unique worlds.

The players could set up clans within servers, they could be peaceful or be hostile and attack or steal from other clans or even attack and destroy the buildings of the other clans.

Basically, servers may be able to world together towards a common goal or go at each other's throats and be in a constant state of chaos.

Players could visit Chen Mo's creations in Chen Mo's world, or observer mode, and couldn't make any changes.

Second, the construction trading system.

Chen Mo considered including a construction in the game to help the players who couldn't build at all. Moreover it could help the game generate some side revenue.

Chen Mo will build many different buildings in Chen Mo's world, some may be from real life such as ancient palaces, clock towers, cathedrals, twin towers, or even things from fantasy world such as Stormwind City, Bastion's Keep, or something more sci-fi such as Space Stations or Space elevators.

The blueprints of these buildings could be bought with a price, and the players would own the methods of building them forever. With enough resources, they could replicate these structures no matter in single or multiplayer mode.

Of course, the players could use their creativity and build completely original creations.

The players could release the blueprints for the buildings they built and others could purchase the blueprints from them (if there's anyone who's willing).

Third, the tech tree.

The tech tree was incredibly simple in the original Minecraft. Although the players could make computers using redstone, they couldn't make cars, planes, or spacecraft.

Chen Mo planned to include a full scale tech tree to allow players to build spacecraft to migrate into space.

(That's why online mode was a whole galaxy)

OF course, these tech trees wouldn't be the same as real life. For example, all special methods of transportations are composed of fuel, force generation units, control units, main ingredients, reinforcement materials and other components.

The force generation unit was akin to generators, control units are the control plans, main ingredients referred to the main material referred to what these methods of transport were mainly made of, and the reinforcement material made sure they wouldn't disintegrate when travelling at high speeds.

The players could craft any of these modes of transport as long as they had the right resources and arranged them in the right way.

(The players could customise them, but only how they look.)

Of course, things such as control units, fuel, required special materials, and the players would slowly explore how to craft them. The players would go through the experience of climbing the tech tree, starting from nothing and turning the world into a world filled with technology.

Moreover, the tech three also had an alchemy system. The players could receive various effects by brewing potions using various ingredients, such as the ability to survive in space.

Of course, the tech tree and the rest of the world have to be unlocked progressive over time. The players have to reach certain requirements to progress to the next stage as they slowly but surely leave their mother planet to the rest of the galaxy.

With these additional mechanics as well as a more completely new player introduction, Chen Mo believed that this VR Minecraft will be more attractive than the original!

The final stages of development were now on the agenda, the game could finally be considered complete with all these additional play styles added into the game.

The first beta test of Thousand Hells was also out.

As Thousand Hells had a lot more content than Minecraft, they'd test and review the feedback earlier, as abilities of various jobs, difficulties, and other relevant gameplay had to be tweaked to reach its full potential.

-Inside the world of Thousand Hells.

This was an ancient city that was in perpetual darkness. There are temples, shrines, and various ancient buildings. The towns were riddled with hopelessness, filled with monks practicing tapas[1, disease-ridden beggars, and struggling peasants.

Chen Mo picked a male human. He looked just like a normal human with a longbow behind him and a dagger at his waist, suggesting that he was a dangerous character.

He looked around as if he was looking for someone.

"Manager?"

Chen Mo turned around to find Lin Xue's female Heavens character behind him.

Lin Xue's character looked like a god with various weapons floating around her. She looked incredibly elegant as her clothing was completely spotless.

"You're here." said Chen Mo.

"Yeah, but I'm wondering how you become a beta tester. I thought only a few of Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's beta testers have a chance of getting a key?" asked Lin Xue.

"I paid for it of course. Lin Chaoxu wasn't going to give me a key even if I asked for one."

"... Fair point."

"Let's see how this game plays," said Chen Mo.

One after another, the two of them headed towards the massive gate to hell in the village.

TL note: [1] refers to meditation and self-discipline

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Chapter 233: Thousand Hells Beta Test

Chen Mo and Lin Xue went through a simple tutorial before they officially entered the gates of hell.

There were a few low level demons that had to be defeated to save a few villagers to complete the quest.

After saving the blacksmith and shopkeeper, these functions were unlocked. Of course, there weren't many functions available, most likely unlocked in the future.

As they entered the gates of hell, countless illusions surrounded the two of them as if they were transmigrating to a new world. This was just actually just a loading screen.

However, a large group of demons charged towards them the moment they finished loading.

There were tiny baby skeletons, skeletal birds flying in the sky, demon snakes with many teeth, giant scorpions with their stingers held high...

Chen Mo used his Volley ability to rain down arrows from the sky at the monsters.

And to be honest, VR and PC felt completely different.

In VR, Chen Mo's field of view was identical in real life. Combined with the sounds, smells and haptic feedback, he felt more immersed into the game than PC games. He could still feel that it was a game, but many aspects of the game strongly resemble real life.

Of course, the smells weren't completely disgusting, and were just there to add to the atmosphere.

Using his bow and arrows and various abilities, the monsters in front of him fell one after another.

His character would use abilities the moment Chen MO thought of it. Chen Mo could feel the bow in his left hand and the string on his right. He could even feel the vibrations from letting go of the arrow.

The groans from the monsters came from all directions, as the players become more and more immersed under such a tense atmosphere.

OF course, the players could turn, move, and jump with everything mirrored in the game, making it feel incredibly realistic.

Lin Xue's Heavens character let out a range of different spells. Lightning rained down from the heavens turning monsters into ash; pouring rain turning the ground into mud, trapping and slowing down these monsters.

Soon, the monsters ahead of them were all gone as their corpses disappeared.

The two of them collected the equipment and monster shards that were dropped.

The monster shards were the currency in this game. They could be used in trading, changed into coins, or used as a crafting ingredient.

Chen Mo used Shadow Walk and rushed towards a small group of monsters.

Chen Mo aggroed the mobs before the two of them used their abilities. Both of them were long range characters, and both were quite good at the game and had great synergy without the need to communicate their thoughts.

After nearly an hour, the two of them cleared out all the monsters in the first floor and the miniboss guarding the first floor. This meant they fully cleared the level, allowing the sun to shine again.

At the same time, the entrance for the second floor appeared.

The two of them were level seven after an hour of battling. They unlocked two new abilities, making five combined with the three they started with.

Chen Mo found out that all classes have a limit of twenty abilities, but were only allowed to carry seven at any time. This was perhaps an attempt of reducing strain on the players.

Chen Mo guessed that this ability system was identical to Diablo. They could pick and choose seven abilities and unique builds with their equipment, with no strong or weak abilities.

The first floor was quite easy as it was just to help players get the hang of the game.

Lin Xue looked at Chen Mo and asked, "Manager, you still playing?"

Chen Mo shook his head, "Not for now. I just wanted to check out what the game was like. You go ahead, I'll need to go back to working on the new game."

"Then I'll stop too, let's play together when we are free," said Lin Xue.

Chen Mo laughed, "Perhaps you'll never play it again as I'm almost done with the new game."

"Really?" asked Lin Xue, "What genre is the new game manager? I heard it's a VR game?"

Chen Mo nodded, "Yeah. You'll know soon enough, I'll make sure to get you to playtest."

Lin Xue exclaimed, "Alright! But manager, I have a question."

"Hmm?"

Lin Xue was a bit hesitant, "Uhh, manager, many said Thousand Hells copied Diablo, and said that you were making a VR game as a cover to hit back at Emperor Dynasty Entertainment, is that true?"

"Hitting back? No."

Lin Xue nodded, "Oh, I thought so too. You've never made a VR game after all and lacked experience in many areas, there's no need to go head to head with Emperor Dynasty Entertainment in that regard."

Chen Mo said, "The reason I made a VR game wasn't to hit back at the Emperor Dynasty game, but to destroy them."

Lin Xue was shocked, "What?"

"Obviously the reason I made a game to release the same time as Thousand Hells was to teach them a lesson, what's there to question there?"

Lin Xue was shocked, "Uhh, how are you feeling after playing Thousand Hells?"

"I was about seventy percent confident before, but now..."

"Fifty percent?" asked Lin Xue.

"A hundred percent," answered Chen Mo.

"...Manager, you're bluffing. I think Thousand Hells did well in many aspects. This theme is quite refreshing too, are you really that confident?"

Chen Mo laughed, "You'll now when the new game gets released. I'll be going, bye!"

Chen Mo's character disappeared.

Lin Xue was still confused.

"Did he start telling tall tales daily now? But he doesn't seem to be bluffing based on his tone..."

After checking out Thousand Hells, Chen Mo had a good idea of what the final game would look like.

It would be a very mature VR game, even if it wasn't hugely popular, it'd be slightly popular at the very least.

There was nothing much to complain about the gameplay. It wasn't any worse than a successful VR game like Tale of the Sword, and could compete on the same grounds as some overseas VR game.

Yan Zhenyuan's idea of a hack and slash VR game was really well thought out, and was something that was executed particularly well.

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Chapter 234: Development Complete

As VR games greatly expanded the players' field of view, the players still could clearly see the distance between them and the monsters in first person view.

Various abilities are used through thought instead of using keyboard and mouse, dramatically reducing the chance of misplays.

At the same time of improving the immersion, Yan Zhenyuan also made changes to some aspects of the game that didn't suit VR games quite well.

Tone down on the dark atmosphere, avoid making monsters that are too disgusting to avoid player discomfort.

The levels are designed to avoid the players being stabbed in their back so they don't have to constantly look around and get tired quicker.

Suitably reduce the move speed of the monsters to reduce the difficulty of 'kiting'.

Basically, the early stages of Thousand Hells allow the players to feel the satisfaction of hack and slash games so they don't have to panic by adjusting the difficulty of the levels.

Moreover, the take took some inspiration from Diablo in terms of the ability system, equipment system, and post game.

More likely than not, the core enjoyment of the post game comes from grinding for equipment to kill more monsters.

Thousand Hells was quite small for a VR game as many of the resources from level to level can be repeatedly used. Moreover, as the levels are procedurally generated, designs for levels didn't need to be stored either.,

At the same time, the game naturally had fewer story and additional game modes as it was a hack and slash game unlike other large scale MMORPG games, meaning that it was a smaller investment too.

(This felt a bit like Diablo 1.)

Therefore, Chen Mo guessed that Emperor Dynasty Entertainment would probably be quite happy with the game, and Yan Zhenyuan completed the task assigned to him by Lin Chaoxu.

Next was probably plastering advertisements all over the place to generate buzz for Thousand Hells, adding it to one of Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's finest games.

But Chen Mo was confident that no matter how well Thousand Hells turned up, it would have a permanent problem it could never solve- number of players.

It might sound satisfying to hack and slash in VR, but VR games naturally had fewer players than PC. Moreover, these games with darker art styles had fewer players to start with.

Therefore, Thousand Hells would usually make money, but there was no way it would be hugely popular.

Of course Emperor Dynasty Emperor never expected it to make big money as VR games require a huge investment. It was a great sum of money just to have doubled their investment.

If Chen Mo made any other VR game, he really couldn't be sure if he really could 'win'. He hadn't made a VR game afterall, and lacked experience in many different aspects in VR games, he'd have to fall into many pitfalls just to gain experience in them.

But Minecraft?

Chen Mo was confident that his VR version of Minecraft would shock the entire gaming industry.

Minecraft was out of development a week after Thousand Hells was released for testing.

This was the real, complete VR version of minecraft. Not only did it contain the classic elements of the PC game, there were many adjustments made just for VR, improving in many aspects.

THe graphics were dramatically improved while staying true to its core.

Perfectly fitted the VR platform.

The four game modes, the building trading system, a completely new tech tree... All of which were complete.

Cheers came from the office.

There were many doubters in the beginning, but there was nothing but praises once the finished game came out.

Everybody was shocked to see how well it fitted with VR, especially after experiencing the VR pod!

Although there were still doubts if the game could beat Thousand Hells, but everyone had the same idea, the game would surely be profitable.

It was hard to tell how much it would bring in as it had to deal with many different factors such as advertising, feedback... and luck.

"Thanks for working. We'll spend our next days working on the rest of it. Yunting, find beta testers from players of Plants vs Zombies, Warcraft, and Don't Starve. Make sure they are the really creative type, such as the ones who've made popular mods. They'll be our first testers.

"There aren't any VR gaming pods in the experience store so far, but we won't have Minecraft on PC yet. If the players want to play Minecraft, they'll have to download it on their VR pod at home.

Zhao Yunting nodded, "Alright, not a problem."

Chen Mo continued, "Keep your eyes peeled for the feedback from these testers and send them to me. We'll make changes accordingly. And everyone else who has nothing to do will build buildings in game.

"Don't lose focus on this last stage, stand your posts.

"And Lin Xiao, let all major video game media know that I'll host a game announcement event."

Lin Xiao nodded, "Alright, should I prepare the powerpoint for the announcement event?"

"No need, I'll do that myself. Arrange the location for me. I want a five star hotel nearby, try and make it as posh as possible. It's our first VR game after all, so we have to make it as official as possible."

Lin Xiaoo nodded, "Alright, not a problem!"

Minecraft and Thousand Hells both entered the last stages of development.

Thousand Hells' advertisements were going full steam head, it could even be described as overwhelming.

The advertisements of thousand hells could be seen on various streaming sites, video game sites, major forums, and spots in VR gaming pods...

Many videogame media also released their articles as soon as they could.

The groundbreaking VR game masterpiece Thousand Hells is coming soon!

Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's newest release, a shocking world of angels and demons!

Gamepaly of Thousand Hells leaked!

Analysis of Thousand Hells' unique ability system

An incredibly satisfying VR game

Thousand Hells' classes revealed, taking inspiration from the six realms.

Many fans have caught wind of this fairly early on and knew that Emperor Dynasty Entertainment was developing a VR game similar to Diablo.

Moreover, some players were in the beta test and have tried the game. Gameplay, classes and feedback were all leaked online.

Most players had nothing but praises for Thousand Hells after having played the game as it was an incredibly complete VR game. There were any noticeable flaws in the game, and it was filling in a huge market gap for VR hack and slash games too.

Many players had their eyes peeling for Thousand Hells' official release.

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Chapter 235: Announcement Conference

In the shadow of the hype surrounding Thousand Hells, there was another news brewing in the videogame industry.

Chen Mo was hosting a video game release conference and invited many videogame media too.

ALthough there hadn't been much leaked about Chen Mo's game, there were still traces of the game among videogame industry professionals.

IT could be a VR game, which was in development for over seven months.

And they didn't know anything else.

Many videogame media could tell something fishy was going on.

If it was a VR, meaning Chen Mo's first VR game, it would be a huge deal.

Chen Mo entered the PC game market using Warcraft while he was still a B-grade videogame designer. Warcraft's huge success whipped up a storm in the RTS gaming industry, and even sold well overseas.

Everyone was curious to find out what Chen Mo's first VR game would look like.

Moreover, the timing matched perfectly with YAn Zhenyuan's Thousand Hells.

In theory, the two games could release in July or August.

Why could Chen Mo pick this time?

Evidently Chen Mo knew that Thousand Hells would affect his sales. However, as he didn't plan to delay his release, he clearly wanted to go head to head with Thousand Hells.

There was a lot of discussion among videogame journalists.

"Have you heard about Chen Mo's videogame conference?"

"Of course, I've heard of it ages ago. I think most video game media have heard of it, and the senior editor already had me prepare questions."

"What do you think Chen Mo is going for? Going head to head with Emperor Dynasty Entertainment? He's quite bold to release the game at the same time!"

"Thousand Hells more or less copied Diablo, of course he's not happy with that. Don't you get Chen Mo's personality? Has he ever let anything slip?"

"You're saying, 'copy my game, I'll beat you up' kinda deal?"

"Something like that."

"You're joking! To be honest, sure there's no doubting Chen Mo's mobile or PC games, but he's never made a VR game!"

"I think so too, moreover his previous opponents were all A-grade video game designers. He's facing Mr. Yan this time around, probably one of the most stable S-grade videogame designers in China. Moreover Thousand Hells is incredibly high quality, what if Chen Mo loses this time?"

"Maybe Chen Mo think's it might be more embarrassing to lose after postponing the release of the game, and that's why he's forcing the release."

"But he hasn't even announced the release date. Nobody would know he had delayed the release of the game if he just shut up for another two months!"

"That's true, that means Chen Mo is incredibly confident?"

"PErhaps. One more thing, Chen MO's game should only be in development for six months? He was still working on Reaper of souls last November. What kind of VR game could he make in seven months?"

"Yeah, from various sources, Yan Zhenyuan had been in the works for a year. Chen Mo had half the time and still dares to go head to head with Thousand Hells?"

"Geez, I've got no clue. Whatever, we'll see when it's released. To be honest, I wouldn't expect anything from anyone else, but Chen Mo... I think he could give Mr Yan a run for his money."

"Yeah, let's see when the conference comes."

-On the day of the conference, in a hall in a five star hotel in the Imperial Capital.-

Most of the videogame journalists in Imperial Capital were in attendance. There were even some who flew in from Magic City or even further just to attend and ask Chen Mo some questions.

All the staff of the conference were hired professionals, so everything was in order.

There were banners, balloons and signage outside the hotel, and the journalists were directed by staff right from the entrance.

The meeting hall was nicely arranged. The decor and the mics were really well done with various themed backgrounds and even a professional camera crew.

The title of the powerpoint: 'Thunderbolt Entertainment Game Announcement Conference' was on the massive scene, main speaker being Chen Mo. The powerpoint was really plain and featured nothing from the game, so there was no way for them to guess anything about the game.

There was a lot of chatter before the event officially started.

"Five more minutes before it starts."

"This is Chen Mo's first video game conference right? I think all his previous ones were done over Weibo."

"Yeah, Thunderbolt Entertainment is quite an influential company in terms of profits, looks like they'll slowly before more and more official into the future."

"Not bad, the conference is quite well done, unlike a mess some of the other smaller companies usually make. Just a shame we don't know what it's about."

"How's Chen Mo's presentation skills?"

"I think he worked on some casting for Warcraft, so that's certainly not a problem."

"He's here, it's about to start!"

Chen Mo walked in front of the screen with a mic, and a huge wave of applause came from the audience.

Chen Mo had a smile on his face, "Thank you. Thanks.

"Many thanks for everyone to take time out of their day to join me at this announcement.

"Although this conference is recorded, it isn't being live streamed. Since I know you, and you know me, let's just skip over formal stuff. You are here because of my game anyways right?

"I can guarantee that this conference is a serious one, there will be no bluffs. Of course, this is especially directed at 's Han Lu.

Chen Mo proceeded to look at Han Lu's seat.

There was a wave of laughter from an audience. Han Lu's articles from Chen Mo's interview had more or less become a gag.

Chen Mo laughed and continued, "Alright, let the conference begin.

"Many of you might have heard that I'm going to announce a VR game. This took a lot of mystery out of today's conference. Perhaps it might've taken away the hype around 'Chen Mo's first game'.

"Of course that couldn't be helped as I never tried particularly hard to hide it either as there were so many ways it could leak. But since I've got through all this trouble to honest a conference, could you guys take pity on me and forget about all that you've heard?"

The journalists couldn't help but laugh, This Chen Mo guy sure has a lot of gags up his sleeves, he's a born actor!

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Chapter 236: Still Announcement Conference

Chen Mo continued.

"Alright, let us begin.

I know everyone here is filled with doubt, what would Chen Mo's first game look like? What platform? Probably PC or mobile. Geez, it's so mysterious."

Chen Mo couldn't even hold in his own laughter.

The journalists were also laughing along, "Quit the stand-up comedy, show us the game!"

"Alright alright, onto the new game. However, let's watch a simple cinematic before we start talking about the new game."

Chen Mo stood to one side and a cinematic started playing.

This caughted the attention of the journalists.

EVerybody knew that Thunderbolt Entertainment was also known as Thunderbolt Movies, the video game company who was most willing to burn money on making cinematics. The ones in Warcraft and Diablo were classic examples of that.

Will the cinematics this time around be as incredible?

There was a cut.

The sun was rising in the background and a little man ran towards the camera.

The whole scene was incredibly brightly lit from the sun. It was also highly saturated, but everything was formed by blocks.

Cube shaped clouds, trees, grass, rocks...

The person looked like a toy but was still quite adorable.

A huge slide was built in countless cubes. The person slid down from the slide and flew into the sky. His wings on his back opened up, flying through forests and valleys before reaching a boat on the ocean.

Whales that were also formed using blocks tossed the ship into the area.

The character hit a block in the air that looked like TNT and exploded before falling onto a rooftop.

The character looked forward.

The building in the background slowly lit up, and the entire city followed.

Upon closer inspection, all the buildings were also built using blocks. There were many iconic buildings such as Beijing National Stadium, Beijing National Aquatics Center, and Yellow Crane tower.

The entire city looked incredible grand as everything was lit.

The camera panned into the sky, revealing the logo of the game built in blocks, Minecraft.

This was where the cinematics ended.

There was applause, but it wasn't particularly enthusiastic.

Many of the journalists were confused, What was that?

They were looking forward to a cinematic similar to Warcraft or Diablo's level, they didn't expect a short one minute animation.

Could that be Chen Mo's new game?

Chen Mo walked to the front of the stage, expecting the reaction he got.

"I know there may be some questions, don't worry, I'll explain in a bit.

"This game is a VR game called Minecraft. You may be wondering, why Minecraft?

"In short, it's a sandbox game. Many of you may have played Leggos. This game is built around the fun that you get from Leggo sets.

"So, what can you do in the game?"

Chen Mo went through the Powerpoint as he explained.

"This is a world built in blocks. You could view it as a world built of Leggos. In this world, you can freely move blocks and make the world however you want it to look.

"You could dig out a huge maze in a mountain.

"Or build a grand flying city using glass.

"You could also recreate real life buildings such as the sports stadium, the Great Wall, or the opera house. Of course you would need some architectural knowledge, and a lot of patience.

"To put it simply, you could build basically anything you want in this world.

Chen Mo flipped through the slides, with images of the sports stadium, Great Wall, and opera house built using blocks.

"Moreover, there are rich additional game modes.

"For example, survival mode. You have nothing on you once you spawn in, and you must gather wood and stone to build your own house, avoiding dangerous monsters during the night and try your best to survive.

"Or local multiplayer, you could look for other people's worlds, or invite other plays to your house and build together in the same world.

"Or online mode. In every server, ten thousand players can band together and create in a ten thousand kilometre squared area. Every server would be unique.

"Moreover, there is a tech tree in the game that is completely different from real life, as well as a unique trading system..."

Chen Mo's explanation was clear and concise as he introduced every bit of Minecraft to the journalists.

There were various different reactions coming from the journalists.

Some were really into it.

Some couldn't understand it.

Some were whispering and shaking their heads.

Some had a blank look on their face as they didn't know what to make of this.

Evidently, even those who were interested in the game were slightly disappointed.

Everybody knew that western fantasy was Chen Mo's strongest point. No matter Warcraft or Diablo, Chen Mo was the best in the country at handling western fantasy.

Moreover, Chen Mo put all that extra effort into maintaining World of Azeroth, updating it periodically to tell the story of Warcraft's world. The players were all waiting and hoping that Chen Mo would turn the world of Azeroth into an MMORPG.

Many thought that Chen Mo made Diablo to pave the way for RPG games, and the next game would most likely be a first person RPG.

But?

The new game was an RPG, a first person RPG, a VR game. But this was completely different from what they were expecting!

Although the graphics were pretty good, although the content was rich, although the players could create incredible buildings in game, it looked like it was made for children!

Leggo? That's for kids!

It would've been fine if it was a mobile game, it was still fine on PC because there were more younger players on these platforms, so there would most certainly be more players who would be interested in games like this.

But on VR?

VR pods cost tens of thousands. Other than kids born in rich families, only successful adults could afford something like that.

Which of these adults would be willing to lay down in their expensive gaming pods to stack blocks.

Chen Mo's speech was really entertaining and filed with content, most journalists were taking this seriously and jotting down notes.

But there were also many who lost interest in it as they unwillingly shot a few clips and took down a few important points waiting for the event to end.

There was a journalist that was particularly disappointed who sent a message to his senior editor, "My goodness, Chen Mo developed a building game..."

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Chapter 237: Question Time

Chen Mo reached the last slide on his power point.

"Alright, that's all the content I have for this game announcement, go ahead and ask any questions you have. The next half an hour is reserved just for Q and A.

The journalists now have a good idea of what the game was like after sitting through his explanation and gameplay footage.

Many journalists raised their hands upon hearing about the QA.

Chen Mo picked a random journalist in the front row, "The man in the glasses, go ahead."

The man stood up and grabbed a mic from a member of staff, "First I'd like to thank you for that very entertaining presentation, I'm really interested in the game. But I have a question, if this game is a game that is built around building, is it really a good idea to release it on VR? There aren't many teenagers who play on VR, have you thought about that?"

Chen Mo nodded, "I understand what you're getting at. Let's put it this way, Minecraft is a game for all ages, we hope that adults can gain the same fun as everyone else, so I don't think there's anything out of place with the game. Alright, now the lady with blonde hair.

"Nice to meet you Mr Chen Mo. Why would you pick a game like this as your first game into the VR game industry? Are you targeting the puzzle game genre?"

Chen Mo shook his head, "No, just as I said before, it's a game for all ages. My target audience is the whole world. I hope every VR gaming pod has Minecraft installed."

Everyone was shocked at that statement as it sounded like something someone overly confident would say.

A middle aged journalist asked, "You have added a few additional gamemodes for Minecraft, but it's still not as many compared to the larger MMORPGs, do you plan to release DLCs in the future to add more content?"

Chen Mo shook his head, "Minecraft is not like other MMORPGs. We hope that the players will make their own mods for the game just like Don't Starve. I think Minecraft is already a complete product that doesn't need anymore DLCs.

The questions kept coming, and the questions became broader and broader. Most of the questions were about Minecraft at the start, but in the end, questions about Diablo, Don't Starve, and World of Warcraft were being asked. There were questions on Chen Mo's next steps.

Chen Mo got through all of them, skipping over the ones he didn't want to.

Last but not least was Han Lu.

"Nice to meet you. Emperor Dynasty Entertainment's S-grade videogame designer Yan Zhenyuan is about to release his VR game Thousand Hells. There are plenty of discussions out there thinking that the game copied Diablo.

"Do you think it's a copy? And why did you announce Minecraft now, are you trying to compete directly with Thousand Hells?"

Chen Mo laughed, "It doesn't matter if it was a copy or not. Video Game designers get inspiration from many different sources, and sometimes it's from other games. Sometimes, the thoughts of video game designers just happen to collide, so I don't mind that at all."

Han Lu asked another follow up question, "That means releasing Minecraft the same time as Thousand Hells is just another coincidence?"

"Of course not."

"Huh?" Han Lu was confused.

Chen Mo laughed, "It's just a learning experience as it's my first VR game after all. But you guys have something to look forward to. Which of these two games would sell more or be more profitable?"

The journalists were shocked.

What is he playing at?

He was being nice and modest at the start, with all that about being alright with referencing games and just for experience, but what was that at the end.

You intentionally announced the game the same time as Thousand Hells, and want us to guess who gets more sales?

Is there even a point? This and Thousand Hells are on completely different levels. Just on the difficulty of development, Thousand Hells was already miles ahead!

No matter sales or profits, you lose!

Many journalists were frantically making notes. Chen Mo said he wanted to compete against Thousand Hells? This should be a good headline.

Many thought that Chen Mo was just trying to gain free publicity for his game.

Chen Mo asked, "Uhh, one last question. How would you rate Thousand Hells?"

"Uhh, I'll need a few seconds to think in order to answer that."

He grabbed his bracelet on his left wrist using his right hand and thought for about ten seconds.

The journalists were shocked by this.

This was a dangerous topic, and Chen Mo could easily reject the question if he didn't want to answer. It would have been fine to say a few courteous lines if he hadn't played it.

But Chen Mo was seriously thinking about it?

Chen Mo seemed to have gotten his thought process straightened, "Geez, to be honest, I don't why you guys asked this question.

"How is Thousand Hells? Do I even need to say anything? I think it's a perfect game, it will most certainly be a best selling game.

"Is there anyone who thinks Mr Yan will fail? Impossible, what are you thinking about? Think about it, Emperor Dynasty Emperor is the videogame distribution channel in China. Mr Yan has a lot of experience behind him too, and the game filled in the market gap of VR hack and slash games. The stars have basically aligned for him right? It's impossible for him to fail.

"The entire gaming industry this year is just waiting for Mr Yan to do his thing. I think this year is the year for Thousand Hells, because the games this year will find it really difficult to compete against Mr Yan's game.

"As for the sales, let's put it this way, it's impossible for it to not be popular. He has the Emperor Dynasty Gaming Platform behind him, there's no way it isn't popular right?

"I've played Thousand Hells too, the game is incredibly fun and incredibly high quality. There's no questioning that the game will be popular.

"Alright, let's end it there, that's all the time we have for today.

Chen Mo walked off stage after finishing his statement.

The journalists were all dumbfounded, looking at one another.

What? Chen Mo praised Thousand Hells a bunch at his own video game conference!

And he was being so over the top with all that about the stars aligning and this year being the year of Thousand Hells.

They were all really confused.

Is Chen Mo trying to... jinx his rival?

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Chapter 238: Lukewarm

Many videogame media released their articles for Minecraft following the conference.

Chen Mo's newest game: Minecraft

Chen Mo's first VR game exposed

Minecraft: Pixel art building game

Minecraft and Thousand Hells released at the same time

Chen Mo: nothing but praises for Thousand Hells during his conference

These articles went over the details that were shown during the conference, including the playstyle, as well as some gameplay footage.

Soon, the news was spread among the players. There were various different reactions, but most of them had some element of shock.

Chen Mo's first VR game is a building game?

But most of them could tell what the point of the game was just by looking slightly deeper into the articles.

From the looks of it, it was a game based around creating. Just like Don't Starve, it featured an open world and more complex online modes.

But even Don't Starve players had some doubts about the game.

Don't Starve was popular because it was a smaller game that could be played on both PC and mobile. Moreover, it was priced at a competitive twenty RMB.

However, Minecraft is a VR game. VR games are usually quite expensive, Earth Online for example was priced at three hundred and ninety nine USD, and VR games of similar calibre would cost around one to two thousand RMB in China.

Some Chinese MMORPGs were relatively cheaper, some even around five hundred RMB. But those games usually had microtransactions such as it was incredibly difficult to break even just by selling copies of the games.

Although most of the VR player base was in a higher income bracket, but wanting them to spend one thousand RMB for a building game?

Nobody would spend that kind of money even if they had plenty right?

There was a lot of discussion on the forums too.

"What's Chen moi thinking? How could he make a building game as his most crucial game when entering the VR market? Honestly, I haven't seen a VR puzzle game make big money."

"From what Chen Mo said, the game isn't just a simple puzzle game, it's still a sandbox game similar to Don't Starve."

"But the main fun of the game is creating! Moreover, how many copies can he sell as VR games are priced so high. Is he able to break even?"

"I think breaking even isn't a problem. The game has pixel graphics, and a lot of the game is built by players. Many of the resources can be reused too. How high could the development cost really be?"

"It probably wouldn't cost much to develop the mobile or PC version, but porting it to VR would still cost a pretty penny. And you've seen the real gameplay videos, the graphics are really detailed. Chen Mo probably didn't skimp on spending money, it wouldn't look as good otherwise."

"I think it's in the millions, but it can't be over twenty million. That's peanuts for CHen Mo."

"Twenty million for a VR game is incredibly low. Chen Mo could price it lower and sell more copies. If he sold each copy at two hundred RMB, he could totally make it all back. Would the people who own VR gaming pods care about a measly two hundred RMB?"

"I don't think it's as you said. Is Chen Mo worried about making money at all? I don't think he cares about wasting twenty million. On the other hand, he'd care more about his first VR game being a total trainwreck!"

"And he's releasing it at the same time as Thousand Hells too. It'd look so bad if he lost to Thousand Hells in all aspects!"

"When he loses, he could say that he made a puzzle game and didn't stand a chance."

"We'll see. I can't afford a VR gaming pod anyways. If the game performs well, I'll just have to try it out in an internet cafe."

Soon, Thousand Hells and Minecraft started showing their faces all over the internet. Although the games never mentioned their rivals, the players could tell that the games have treated each other as such.

Thousand Hells in particular showed many aspects of their characters, maps, special effects, story, and gameplay, all of which were incredibly detailed, and the game seemed really satisfying to play. All the players were incredibly excited for its release.

Players showed their eagerness for Thousand Hells on the forums. Beta keys were being sold at prices over two thousand RMB, even higher than its initial release.

But on Chen Mo's side of things, everything was kind of lukewarm.

A lot of the basic resources were revealed early on on Minecraft's official forums. They didn't try to make a big deal about revealing all of it. The only thing noteworthy was the cinematic that was shown during the conference.

The reactions to the cinematic were also so-so as it was easy for the gameplay to differ greatly from actual gameplay. Many games have incredible cinematics that are completely different to the gameplay.

Moreover, the cinematic lacked any charm as it looked like a child's drawing compared to the cinematics of Warcraft and Diablo.

The players were all incredibly confused.

Chen Mo had many ways to promote his own games. He made an animated series for I am MT, used Arthas' sketch for Warcraft, the song A Life of Fighting is but a Dream for Wulin Legend, and Gokuraku Jodo for Onmyoji...

But how come there was nothing for Minecraft?

They just did a shoddy job in promoting the game, how many people would care on its release?

Among all the confusion, Chen Mo finally made a move.

Chen Mo unexpectedly posted a Weibo at noon that day: "Minecraft: Forbidden city. Note: All of this is actual gameplay."

The players were utterly shocked.

Forbidden city?

Does that mean Chen Mo built the Forbidden City using blocks in Minecraft?

They started watching the video.

Although there have been many games in the past that recreated real life scenes, those were all done by professionals, and most of the time, they were only for looks.

But Minecraft was a building game. If the Forbidden City really was built, doesn't that mean players could run around in the Forbidden City?

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Chapter 239: Forbidden City

Many players who didn't care about Minecraft clicked on the video filled with doubt.

And they were completely stunned by it.

"This is real gameplay?"

"It looks so good, how could it be real gameplay? Where are the mosaics?"

"What's the difference between this and high quality cinematics? Are you lying to me again Chen Mo?"

The Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City was the first shot in the video.

The camera went under the gates, over the Jinshui Bridge, arriving at Taihe Gate.

The camera Zoomed in to reveal a stone lion was built using blocks. Although it was mosaic-like, it looked exactly like a stone lion.

The camera went over white jade stairs. Although the dragon sculpture on the middle of the stairs wasn't perfectly recreated, the general shape of it was there.

Many cuts followed to show details of the buildings.

Glorious roof tiles.

The plaque in the centre.

Lanterns on the side.

Serene forest and pavilions.

As well as the interior of the palace.

Beds, desks, cushions, incense burner, bonsai...

The camera panned to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, with the nine dragon screen, and the golden throne was in the middle of the screen.

Many different cuts from different angels followed alongside a Chinese background music to reveal many more details of the Forbidden City.

Finally, the camera banned backwards, the doors to the city closed, and the music fades out.

But the cinematic hadn't ended.

There was a smaller scene at the end revealing a timelapse of the build.

From the foundations, to the red pillars, shiny glass tiles... showing the entire build process.

The players watching had their eyes and mouth wide open the entire time.

Chen Mo's Weibo was also shared countless times, with more and more comments under it.

"Get this documentary out of my face..."

"Was this really built in Minecraft?"

"My mom asked me why I was watching a video on my knees."

"Chen Mo's an architectural genius! Have my knees!"

"I heard there's a palace in real life that recreated this pretty well."

"I'm interested in this game now! Can you really recreate the entire Forbidden City? That means it's going to work for other buildings too?"

"It's so detailed! Although you could tell it's made of blocks, it looks so good I might just lick the screen!"

"Is this hard to make? I imagine if you gave me... a hundred thousand years I could do it to."

"It's probably quite difficult, but it's only fun if it is!"

It wasn't some special large scaled promotion, but just from one Weibo and video, the hashtags #Minecraft and #ForbiddenCity was now trending!"

The video also gained more and more views.

And the way this gained popularity was not the same as Gokuraku Jodo.

Gokuraku Jodo gained popularity from the ACG community, then slowly spread to everyone else.

But this Forbidden City video gained its popularity though the recommendation algorithm and news outlets.

This was treated as the biggest news of the day in the gaming section of news outlets, as they were shared everywhere.

It was even read out on the news. Many who weren't into videogames heard about Minecraft and how someone built the forbidden city in game.

This wasn't like the usual advertisements. The video caught the eyes of many and was filled with Chinese culture. This tickled the fancy of many traditional media as it piqued the interest of many non-gamers.

And the name Minecraft became a familiar word among the people.

"Chen Mo made Forbidden City in Minecraft" was a topic that was gone over and over again. It even looked like it could overtake Thousand Hells.

It was a trending topic for a whole week.

Just as the buzz was dying out after two weeks, Chen Mo released another Weibo.

"Minecraft: Recreated Yuanmingyuan Park (Summer Palace). Note: Still actual gameplay."

Another one?

It has only been two weeks since the release or Forbidden City, and you release another one already? It's Yuanmingyuan Park at that!

The video gained even more popularity with the help of Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was an actual building, but Yuanmingyuan Park had been destroyed agest ago with only a stretch of wall left.

Many educational shows have tried rendering Yuanmingyuan Park in perfect condition. However, fully recreating took a lot of money for not a lot of profit, which show would make such a terrible financial decision?

It'd be a few images at most, but images will never be as realistic as a video.

Everyone knew how incredible Yuanmingyuan Park was as it was known as the park of the parks. Everybody had to imagine what it looked like, and nobody had any idea what it originally looked like.

But Chen Mo recreated the whole thing in Minecraft!

This got the players even more riled up as they couldn't wait to watch the video.

The video started with some text.

"There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace.

"Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar building, and you will have the Summer Palace

"Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it here a sanctuary, there a harem, elsewhere a citadel, put gods there, and monsters, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it

"Have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, basins, gushing water and foam, swans, ibis, peacocks.

"Suppose in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace, such was this building.

— Victor Hugo.

This was written by the French poet Victor Hugo to Captain Butler to denounce the destruction of the Old Summer Palace by the British and French forces. This description about the Old Summer Palace in this passage became a classic piece of classic description, remembered by countless people.

The text faded away to reveal the map of Yuanmingyuan Park.

The camera panned upwards to reveal Minecraft characters. It was only now that the players released the map they were looking at was in Minecraft.

The character walked to the ruins of the Old Summer Palace and found a special portal.

They jumped into the portal and were transported to another world.

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Chapter 240: Old Summer Palace

The character was transported to another world after stepping through the portal.

There was a massive fountain in front of him in a garden filled with blooming flowers. There was a beautiful palace in the background as well. The whole scene looked heavenly combined with the blue skies and clouds.

Soon, the buildings in Yuanmingyuan Park appeared one after another.

Dagongmen, Palace of Heavenly Purity, Hall of Supreme Harmony, Ruyi Pavilion, Ru Gu Hanjin, Natural Drawing, Bitong Academy, Zuishi Linliu, Yuetan Yunju, Wuling Spring Scenery, Wenyuan Pavilion, Xifeng Beauty, Pinghu Autumn Moon, Pengdao Yaotai, Guanlan Hall, Unique Cave, Western Building, Lion Grove Garden, Yulinglong Pavilion...[1]

Classic buildings in the park appeared one after another.

Clear water of the lake, well maintained garden, Chinese style buildings, Western style buildings. Everything had their own unique features even the trees were different.

Moreover, there was a character exploring the park where there wasn't one for the Forbidden City. The audience had a better sense of scale with a little man for scale.

The day slowly turned into night and the lights in various buildings lit up harmoniously as their beauty complemented one another.

And when dawn came along, everything looked heavenly under the yellow glow of the sun.

Finally, the background music faded out before the character woke up in a shock from their sleep.

He was still in the ruins of Yuanmingyuan Park.

A melancholic background music started playing as the character looked at the ruins in front of him in dismay, before an abrupt end to the video.

Yuanmingyuan Park piqued the interest of the players once again before the buzz from Forbidden City faded again.

"The second video is out, this time is The Summer Palace! Chen Mo showed us that not only can you make real life buildings in game, but ones that don't exist too!"

"That was so quick! It's only been two weeks since Forbidden City's release, how did he release Yuanmingyuan Park so soon?"

"Building the entire park in two weeks? It'd be tough even if you worked day in day out! There must be an easier way to build these things, maybe there's a generation algorithm or something."

"Makes sense. But the game does seem really fun!"

"And this video was much better than Forbidden City. The introduction of the character showed us that the buildings are on the same scale as real life, and the addition of a story helped with the imagination!"

"That's incredible! It'd have to support him on the basis of these two builds!"

Not only did the videogame media hop on it the second it was released, even some traditional media did the same.

There was even a news channel that took a few minutes during their off-peak times to showcase the two videos and Minecraft.

The Game Committee in particular were really happy with these videos as it promoted Chinese culture. No matter recreating the Forbidden City or The Summer Palace, both were entirely positive things to have happened. The officials even decided to reserve a promotional space on the official app store and on the Illusion Game Editor.

Minecraft gained immense popularity after the release of these two videos and even looked like it could overtake Thousand Hells.

Moreover, more and more players wanted to know more about its sales date and price.

Chen Mo was still working hard in the office.

He used an Efficiency Adjuster and was building various buildings in Minecraft in what could be described as a demonic speed.

It didn't look as good or was as immersive on PC, but at least it wasn't as tiring. Chen Mo spared no time in creating various incredible looking buildings as he spent twelve to thirteen hours a day doing just that. There was no way he could sustain that in VR.

Chen Mo's reaction speed and hand speed was incredible after all the potions. His efficiency was even more incredible with his rich newfound knowledge in architecture and the help of the Efficiency Adjuster.

Of course, Chen Mo was lazy whenever he could afford it.

There was a mod called WorldEdit in his previous life that dramatically reduced the building time. Chen Mo added these features during Minecraft's development phase so he could build these complicated structures as the developer of the game.

Some of the more laborious parts of building were done using programs and fixed using some editing magic, allowing Chen Mo to work faster.

He had been working hard for a long time, with many buildings that were completed during the development process, he just didn't release it.

He released these two amazing builds intentionally to attract some attention to Minecraft.

But he wasn't done yet. Chen Mo planned to add a mode called 'Chen Mo's World' after its release which would contain even more incredible buildings which he would have to update.

Therefore, Chen Mo had to keep working hard until release so he could build as many incredible builds as possible to showcase how rich the gameplay was.

The worst part was that only he could do this as there wasn't much the other could do to help. It was insane to recreate the entire Forbidden City, and Chen Mo was probably the only one in the world capable of doing that thus far.

But this wasn't a boring task as half his staff would be watching him build.

"Manager you're incredible. I'm thoroughly impressed."

"I'm getting nauseous from how fast he's moving. I don't understand how the manager manages that."

"I feel like I'm playing a different game than the manager..."

Chen Mo worked even faster under the praises from everyone else as real life and fantasy buildings appeared one after another.

Many video game designers were also discussing the matter between Minecraft and Thousand Hells.

"Chen Mo's incredible. How did he manage to develop a building game like Minecraft? The two clips of the Forbidden City and The Old Summer Palace was incredible!"

"Yeah, and the videos only contained actual gameplay. That means the players could do the same too, that's incredible!"

"Yeah, I was so confused when I heard Chen Mo was making a building game. I thought that wasn't his style? Especially when he was completely overwhelmed by Emperor Dynasty's promotions at the start. I thought Chen Mo was going out of style already, but it seems like the tides are turning with these two videos!"

"And he probably got the people at the Game Committee so happy by spreading Chinese culture! That's what they like! Chen Mo must be getting a promotional spot on the official app store."

"But it feels like only Chen Mo could do that. I haven't understood how CHen Mo was able to build the entire Forbidden City? How many tools does he need to assist him?"

"Didn't he say that it's all built by hand, block by block?"

"You believe that? He's probably just saying that. It'd take more than a year to build something like that by hand without any assistance. It'd take more effort than developing the game itself!"

"Maybe... Chen Mo is super human?"

"He has to be using some tools. We'll know when the game is released!"

TL note: [1] These are all names of places in the garden. Some of these are poetic, others are literal. There aren't proper translations for most of them either, so these weren't translated so well.

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